Dreams of the Deep

Drip… Drip… Drip…

The sound was both quiet and deafening. A small, steady drip that somehow chilled Caspian to the bone and caused his hair to stand on end. It was a noise he had always hated, the sound of water.

Caspian struggled to open his eyes. His eyelids felt heavy as if his lashes had suddenly turned to lead and it took him a moment to force them open just a slit. This revealed little, his vision was blurry and his head pounded with the sound of dripping, causing him to wince at every little drop. His whole body felt heavy and numb.

Drip… Drip… Drip..

His eyes slowly began to cooperate and he turned his head downwards towards the noise. Breath caught in his throat as his eyes snapped open, focusing on the source of the drip. The soft brown of his hands had been stained a deep, slick crimson that flowed from some invisible and unfelt wound on his palms and rolled down his arms to drip steadily in the water below. Water that sunk quickly into inky black depths.

Drip… Drip… Drip…

Caspian stared on in horror at his hands, trying to see where the blood was coming from but unable to see the source. He didn’t move or breathe for fear that whatever held him on the water's surface would remember fluidity and swallow him whole. Eventually his lungs began to burn and soon they won out over his closed throat, dragging in a ragged gasp that made no noise. The only noise was the sound of dripping.

Drip… Drip… Drip…

And then there was something else.

It started low. A strange creaking noise from somewhere beneath him that gradually drew closer and was joined by an odd clicking. Caspian remained frozen, now staring down past his hands and through the cloud of red that grew out from him.

Something was moving below.