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Gem’s sewer was dark.
Damp, dripping, wet.
Metal bars parted on the edge of where the sludge dripped into the river, allowing just enough space for a person to slip through.
A lot of stuff could be found in the sewers. Thankfully, Gem’s didn't link up with any sort of waste disposal, so she could search freely throughout them.
There she was now, trudging through the mostly clean water in search of who-knows-what.
The sewer felt off today. As though there was something lurking in the darkness. Or, perhaps that was her nightmare from the night before, leaving lingering feelings of unease.
The images flashed in her mind, not caring for her consent to do so.
She was trapped. Stuck in a corner with no way to get out. Water bubbled around her as she tried not to breathe in. But she was running out of air.
She didn't know why she had even come into the sewers today.
Sometimes, she could find some good, valuable stuff in these tunnels. Other times, which was more often than not, she just plucked out seaweed- lakeweed, she supposed- and random boots and tires and blocks from the depths.
Her mind was telling her to breathe, to inhale and take in a deep breath. She so desperately wanted to, but she also desperately didn't want to drown.
Gem’s orange hair was pulled back into a high ponytail, so as for it to not get in the way of her searching.
But she didn't have any air left inside of her. It had filtered out from her lips, when she had screamed. It had exited from her nose as she tried to steady her quick-beating heart by blowing out a bit of her air.
She was grateful, in that moment, for the existence of waiters and full-arm-length, waterproof gloves. Getting herself covered in slime would be a less than stellar experience. As she reached blindly through the piles and piles of lakeweed, she briefly felt something smooth.
Her hair was flying- floating, that’s right, she was still underwater- all around her. Where had her hair elastic gone?
She grabbed it, hoping that it was a smooth, valuable stone or mineral of some sort.
A swish of water made her whip her head around to the side.
But when she tried to pull it out of the pile of kelp, it wouldn't move.
It had found her.
So she pulled, and pulled. She tugged hard, but it refused to budge.
It didn’t move.
Until it did.
Gem barely had time to jump back before something reached upwards and out of the pile. It was a bright magenta, with giant, pale yellow suckers. Despite the bright colours, she felt her heart nearly jump out of her chest.
She didn't even think. She knew- somehow she knew, how did she know?- that she couldn't fight it. So she spun around.
The water splashed as she dove into it.
Eyes stinging from being forced open underwater, Gem could feel the liquid shift and ripple as she dove deeper and deeper.
She kept going. Her heart beat hard- so hard that it hurt. But she couldn’t stop.
She turned her head, ever so slightly to the side, and what she saw was horrifying.
The tentacle was following her. It was grasping the side of the sewer walls and pulling itself forwards. It was a terrifying sight, especially since she could see a blurry, dark form following behind it.
There was no way to stop the scream that tore itself from her throat.
Though, it was less of a scream and more of a mangled gurgle. The water bubbled up around her, grateful for the oxygen that it had stolen from her.
If she weren't submerged beneath water and layers of lakeweed and kelp and trash, there would be tears leaking from her eyes. Tears of fear. Pure and utter fear.
She turned back around and kept swimming, biting her lips to assure their closure.
Her movements felt slow. Too slow. She couldn't out-pace it. It was going to catch up to her, sooner or later. Alas, she had to try to get away.
Faintly, she noted the way that her lungs squeezed. They were beginning to run out of air.
She wanted to go towards the exit, but it was in the exact direction that the monster was. So instead, she continued the path that she had already begun to take.
When she rounded a corner, heart in her throat, she could only frantically swim towards the furthest corner. There was nowhere else to go. Her worst fear had come true; she had nowhere to run. Hands pulled the tall, lively kelp to the side. She managed to swim behind it and pull it together.
It did absolutely nothing to hide her, but it was her best bet. She had to make a conscious effort to not inhale, to not breathe. It hurt.
A wave of déja vù passed over her. She had done this before.
She had done this before.
Even just a few hours before now.
She had been chased- she could remember it all now. The dream was vivid in her memory, as though she had just woken up, breathless from fear.
Both of those described her at this moment, actually.
Breathless; her lungs burning constantly, reminding her that she couldn’t inhale. Couldn't breathe. Couldn't do what humans- and most hybrids- need to do to survive.
Fear; coursing steadily through her veins, along with a slowly-running-out adrenaline. It certainly didn't help with the need for air, and, if anything, only made the longing worse.
Her hair had come undone- of course it had, just like in her dream- and bright orange curls drifted around her.
It was silent. Eerily so. Gem might even say she would have preferred to hear the underwater splashing of the creature, over the skin-crawling silence.
But then, she saw it.
The tentacle.
Heading straight towards her.
She had nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, no one to save her.
And so she closed her eyes and braced herself.
The tentacle made slow work of her. It seemed to want to play with its new toy first.
A slimy, gooey textured sucker placed itself on the side of her neck. She squirmed slightly, but kept her eyes firmly shut.
It quickly changed its grasp to circle her neck. It tightened its hold, a small bit at first, but it soon squeezed so hard that she felt her airways refuse to co-operate with her.
Naïvely, stupidly, she tried to gasp. The only thing that resulted in was water filling her mouth. She could do nothing but swallow it, thanks to yet another tentacle covering it.
The monster shook her around. She tried not to scream again. Despite knowing that there was only a minimal chance of her survival, she felt the need to fight until her very end.
Her eyes, which she had been trying desperately to keep closed, seemed almost to bulge out of her skull, and were therefore forced open. They stung relentlessly as blurry shapes met her vision.
And all of the sudden, there was no air left to be rationed.
She watched, unable to do anything, as the world spun.
Kelp, coral and trash circled around her. Gravel, stone, bricks and tuff pulsed in blurred formations, leaving her dizzy and confused.
As the world faded from around her and she let out her last, garbled scream, one last thought drifted through her mind.
“Why in the Void’s good name is there a giant octopus here?”