Hungry Darkness: A Deep Sea Thriller Read Online Free Page B

get up. He had moved back into a kneeling position and picked up the flashlight. He wanted to shine it around, try to see into the water around him instead of only being able to see blackness with occasional slivers of shaking moonlight. The blow rocked the boat again, but instead of the usual back-and-forth that usually followed, the boat developed and increasing list to starboard. Then Emilio spotted something hanging onto the side of the boat.
    His hands started shaking, but Emilio was able to turn on the flashlight and aim it at starboard. In the round light, what looked like a giant pink snake with splotches of white and green was clinging to the side of the boat and apparently trying to flip it. Emilio panicked. He reached back and used his right foot to kick at the thing. It was much harder than he expected. He kicked again. The thing moved, half of it rising up and reaching toward him. That’s when Emilio saw the two rows of enormous suckers. He wasn’t looking at a weird snake, he was looking at a gigantic octopus’ arm.
    His mind reeled. There was a fileting knife somewhere. No. No time to look for it.
    The motor!
    He could turn it on and beeline it straight to shore.
    Something pulled on his left leg. Emilio went down hard, his right shoulder cracking against the wooden seat near the bow. He screamed, but the hit had taken a lot out of him, and what came out was more like a grunt than a scream.
    The arm around his leg slithered up a few inches and then tightened. The bones snapped. The sound filled Emilio’s head for a second. Then the arm yanked his body and pulled his lower half out of the boat. Then it began pulling again, slower this time.
    Emilio tried to grab on to the boat, but the thing pulling him under was too strong. A second arm slithered up his back, its suckers becoming attached to his skin. Emilio could feel them pulling off chunks of flesh in a few places. The huge arm reached Emilio’s arm and pulled it away from the boat with the same ease with which he pulled bait fish out of the ocean with a flick of his wrist. With half his body already underwater, the fisherman bent his right arm and used it as a hook by sticking it under the seat in the middle of the boat, praying the wood wouldn’t crack from the pressure after so many years of sun and saltwater. His right hand and forearm became the only things keeping him out of the warm water.
    Emilio was screaming, but he was short on air. An arm that had come straight out of the water was wrapping itself around his head. It was going to cover his mouth.
    The next pull was the last Emilio felt. His shoulder popped out of its socket and the flesh and muscle keeping it glued to his body tore with a loud crunch. Blood flew into the night air like drops of shadow. The arm slapped him in the face, curled around his head, and squeezed.
    Emilio was dead before his severed arm hit the bottom of the boat with a thud no one was there to hear.

 
    Chapter Six
     
    Gabriel Robles could hear his phone buzzing. He kept expecting it to stop and then hear the beep that told him he had a message, but whoever was calling apparently really needed to get a hold of him because they just kept calling back every time it went to voice mail. Finally, irritated and with a full bladder that was demanding attention with the same insistence as the caller, he reached out, grabbed the buzzing apparatus, and swiped his finger across the screen without even checking the number.
    “Yeah?” Gabe’s voice belonged to the zombie of a man who had died in the middle of a serious bout of laryngitis. He could feel something crusty nested on the right corner of his mouth. The sun coming through his window told him it was late morning, but with no clients scheduled until 2:00 p.m., there was no reason to be up before noon.
    “Good morning, may I speak with Gabriel Robles?”
    The woman at the other end of the line sounded jovial, fresh, not like someone who’s been hitting redial for