Under the waves

Atmospheric flash fiction

I have absolutely no idea where we are, or even if it’s night or day. But I do know that I don’t want to be here.

My wide eyes are filled with deep grey walls and even deeper grey shadows. Just one soft amber lamp guides me from the false safety of my bunk to the bulkhead door. Amber, not red, and please, please, dear God, let it stay amber.

My bare feet reach for the metal floor. I am wrapped only in the blanket of a low rumbling hum that both suffocates me, and comforts me, while I wait in terror for the next unwanted metallic creak to pierce its warmth and make me sweat with fear.

I turn the bulkhead handle, oh so slowly, half expecting the heavy metal door to burst open and the cold black water to flood in.

It’s the waiting that I find worst.

No sound, no unnecessary movement, nothing to occupy my mind and force my thoughts from what is surely about to happen.

An inch of steel; that’s all there is between me and the depth charges that are wafting down, gracefully turning and swaying this way and that, as the North Atlantic currents draw them closer to us.