The ocean is calm and dark. A cloudless night sky full of stars rests above my tiny fishing boat. I’ve found myself stranded out here on this vast plain of water somehow. I called for help, but I’m not sure when it’ll arrive. Until then, I’m stuck out here, all alone.

All alone.

All alone, except for the thing beneath me.

A shadow in the water approaches me, slowly but surely. Maybe it was a simple trick of the light? No, no trick of the light could create a shadow that consistent. It’s something.

It’s almost reached my boat. Closer and closer.

Now it’s licking the edge. Slowly creeping under the nose.

It’s completely under the boat now, and I’m not sure what I expected. For the boat to be tossed up into the air, perhaps? Well, whatever it was I expected, it didn’t happen.

I expected the shadow to go away after it appeared from behind the boat, but after it got a few feet away, it turned around and began circling the small fishing boat like sharks do in movies. Could it be a shark? Would I see a fin if it was? I don’t see a fin. Maybe it is there and it’s just too hard to see? Am I overthinking this?

The thing continues circling me. I need to calm down.

But what do I do if it’s here to attack me? The engine isn’t working, I can’t drive away. I have a small paddle but I could never move the whole boat on my own fast enough to get away from it.

The shadow gets bigger. It’s rising to the surface.

I see two, big, yellow eyes pop up from the water. It’s no shark, but something else entirely.

What do I do? This isn’t a creature I know about.

It looks at me, blinks twice, then sinks back down into the deep blue.

The shadow shrinks, and hastily turns around to flee back to great big ocean.

Is it leaving me alone? Could it have decided I wasn’t worth looking at?

Either way, I don’t know what that was, and I’m not sure I want to know. Hopefully help will be here soon, and I can forget I ever saw anything.