Desperation

She tugged on Juri's arm with extraordinary strength, the kind Juri was sure only came in times of crisis. For a wonder, Juri dug in her heels and shook her head no.

"We can't, Selene. We can't go down below. It's not a good idea," she shouted back.

The sound of the raging storm was so loud now that shouting was the only option.

"What are you talking about?! Are you insane? We can't stay out here, Adam's right! We'll be hurt! We might even be thrown over the side!" Selene screamed.

Blind panic loomed behind her eyes, which were glassy with terror.

"You're right; we can't stay out here. But we can't go down to the bottom of the ship, either. If we do that we'll be trapped. When it happens, we'll be trapped down there, and we'll die."

"When what happens? You sound like an insane person! I'm not listening to you. I'm going, okay? I'm going down to the -" Selene's screaming sentence was cut off by a sickening cracking noise.

It didn't take a genius to understand what that noise was, as much as she wanted to pretend she didn't know what it meant. She turned her head slowly, so slowly, and watched as something large and slithering smashed down onto the deck.

Their deck, she thought wildly, their deck and not the deck of some stupid horror movie. That can't be a tentacle slithering around, maybe looking for something good to eat, except that there most certainly is. As Juri watched, the tentacle shot forward and wrapped itself around a guy whose name she thought was Ivan but having gotten caught up in the grisly scene couldn't quite remember for sure.

His blood splattered in all directions as the tentacles slashed him.

Not before wrapping around his body like a snake and then dragging his body below the sea. The deck around the appendage split dangerously when it moved, making the ground beneath Juri, Selene, and the rest of them shake.

Juri stumbled, went down to one knee, and then righted herself again. Her balance was immediately tested again as the water the ship struggled through knocked it violently to one side.

"Oh my God! Oh my God, it pulled him in, Juri! It pulled him in! The monster, it pulled! There are monsters in there, oh my God, there are monsters!" Selene wailed, eyes shut tightly against the unbelievable carnage on the deck, at the top of her lungs.

Without thinking about what she was doing, Juri slapped Selene across the face, really hard. The force of it made Selene open her eyes, and she looked at Juri with hurt, naked shock. She wasn't yelling anymore, though, which was good.

Maybe Juri could get her to move if only she could figure out where she was supposed to move them to. Meanwhile, the owner of the grotesquely large tentacle dug into the badly splintered deck, then lobbed another tentacle onto the surface.

"It's pulling itself up," Juri whispered to herself, "it's pulling itself up because it's hungry and it's going to rip the ship apart in the process."

"What?" Selene asked wildly, digging her nails into Juri's hand and leaving little crescent moons of blood that would only be noticed later, "What did you say?"

"Nothing, don't worry about it. Just come with me now. Can you do that? Can you run?" Juri asked quickly.

Her eyes bore into Selene's, willing her friend to find it within herself to snap out of it and take some semblance of action. When her eyes remained glassy, Juri felt a wave of despair rising. Then it was replaced with what little real awareness Selene could manage, and the two young women began to run out of desperation.

Juri led them through splintering wood and spaces where once there had been ground to walk on and now there was nothing at all. Dimly, she was aware that the creature on their deck was not the only one in the process of boarding the ship.

The screams that wormed their way into their ears seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere all at once, and from her peripheral vision, Juri saw things she feared she would never be able to forget.

Assuming that there would be time to try and accept what was seen, the thought of living through the ordeal felt like a lot to look forward to at the moment.

The things bullying their way onto the ship loosely resembled octopi, or at least it was the only thing she could offer up as a comparison. Some of them were as small as bear cubs but the others looked to be the size of ferocious adult black bears.

They looked so gelatinous she couldn't believe they held solid form, and yet they were solid enough to bat passengers and crew members alike into the roiling ocean.

These sea monsters were solid enough, strong enough, to rip a person Juri didn't know in half so that the remaining deck was splashed with a garish red. Juri tucked her head in then and ran full speed, dragging Selene along with her by sheer force of will alone.

The Captain's bridge was where they would go. There was no safety anywhere, she had no delusions that there would be, but Adam had to know what was happening. Not about the storm but about what was happening, if she could make him believe the truth.

They were close, too, close enough that Juri could hear Adam's voice ringing out into the storm. He was shouting, his voice cracking, and the same thing over and over again.

"It doesn't work! None of it works! We won't reach anyone!"

Juri ran another three steps before she understood what Adam's words meant and came to an abrupt stop. She watched as Adam pulled the phone off of the bridge's wall and hurled it across the room, crashing it through the window in a shower of broken glass. None of it worked.

Not the phone, not the ship's instruments, none of it. Whatever impossible thing was allowing the foul beasts to breach the ship's hull was also blocking any hope of communication. Once she understood this part it wasn't a hard jump to understanding what would come next.

"We're going down," she whispered, her eyes filling with tears.

Fortunately, there was little time to sit with this horrible new knowledge. She heard another ear-shattering splinter and once again fell to her feet as the ship finally gave up and split itself in two.

Like the Titanic, the pieces of their once great ship had started to sink under the sea. There was little for them to do but grab onto something and hold on for dear life.