It was 3:00 PM on a Thursday afternoon when a beautiful bouncing baby boy named Ryland was born in a small town in Wisconsin. Unrelated to this, but at the very same time, a top-secret submarine was launching off a top-secret island. This submarine held 10 specially trained men in perfect health and condition. None of the men had ever had a significant problem in life, besides one had an absent father, and one had scoliosis as a child. The purpose of this submarine was to explore a part of the ocean that had never been explored before.
You see, unbeknownst to the general public, a new mouth on the floor of the ocean had been discovered, which was suspected to be deeper than the Mariana Trench and twice as mysterious. Well-respected ethical scientific establishments had sent remotely operated vehicles to explore it, but they all came back with nothing to show for it. Every computer they tried to send down there came back blank, wiped, zip-zilch-nada. Well, every computer came back blank, except for one message.
“Send more.”
And here the submarine enters from stage left. A man named Theodore Hughes had caught wind of the trench, and, as a tycoon of the tech and science industry, he wanted to be the first to explore it. So he gathered the 10 men, built the submarine, and sent it down. For three days he sat in his glass office and bit his nails until one of his scientists appeared with her hands folded in his doorway and informed him that the submarine had returned. He nearly jumped out of his seat and followed her down to the meeting room where three somber scientists informed him of the results of his experiment. The submarine came back with everything wiped just like all the previous computers, but that wasn’t all. All the men were gone. Disappeared without a trace, like they had never been there. The first scientist said this with a tremor in her voice, and Theodore started to shake a little bit too, until she led him down to the dock where they kept the submarine.
In the submarine, completely unexplained, with no discernible source, were jewels. Piles and piles of them, shining all different shades and hues. Red rubies, green emeralds, diamonds clear as the rain. They reflected in Theodore’s eyes like stars in the sky. The scientists jabbered around him, birds squawking in his ears, but he didn’t hear them. He reached in and grabbed one single, perfect sapphire. It looked like the depths of the ocean.
“Send more.”
And so they did. It became harder and harder to find people to volunteer, so eventually they started taking people. People nobody would miss, Theodore reasoned. Sometimes beggars off the streets by his big glass buildings, but usually children from his factories with no family listed in the registry. Well of course, most of them had no family listed in the registry. Every time a submarine went down, it came back full of valuables. It wasn’t always jewels, sometimes it was gold or just straight green cash, but whatever it was, Theodore wanted it. It was enough to cover up the disappearances and then more. He became a billionaire and built himself a mansion on the beach, the salty coast of California. The time he didn’t spend playing golf and writing formality emails, he spent staring out at the ocean from his balcony. It waved and waved, back and forth, back and forth, and sometimes he swore he could see hands sticking up from the water. Whenever that happened, he would turn away and stare into the blue sapphire ring on his pointer finger instead.
One day he gave the order to send down another submarine. “Ten, just like always.” he instructed his assistant, turning around in his chair. But he told him they didn’t have ten children.
His chin dropped down to his chest. “Don’t say the word children.”
“But that’s what they are, sir!”
“Just don’t say it!” he snapped, his mouth turning sour. “Anyway, what do you mean we don’t have ten?”
“We’ve sent them all already, sir,” Theodore could hear his feet shuffle on the marble floor. “There are only seven left in the factory.”
“Well send seven then!” he snapped again, starting to feel like a snapping turtle. He swiveled around in his chair to look at his assistant. He looked quite clammy and his eyes were firmly locked to his shoes. “And hire more when they’re gone.”
So, they sent seven children in the submarine. Three less can’t do much harm, Theodore thought. But when the submarine came back, it came back empty. No jewels, no gold, no money, no message. Theodore felt something inside his head pull taught to near snapping. How could he have been so stupid not to hire more before now? He really should check in on his factories more often. He’ll have to make sure to get ten next time. He mulls this over on the way back to his mansion, biting at his fingernails. He leaves the car without speaking to the valet and decides to take a swim. The ocean always calms him, and it’s a beautiful sunny day. He goes in to change into his bathing suit and comes back out to wade into the water. As he walks into the tide, he looks over to the private plot of beach neighboring his and sees a couple children building a castle in the sand. Or a sprawling expanse of castles, almost as big as themselves.
He looks away and starts to swim further out, pushing thoughts to the back of his head when he pushes the water back with his hands, but when he gets further, he starts thinking of all the bodies in the water. Why is he okay with swimming in an ocean full of bodies when he wouldn’t be okay with swimming in a pool full of bodies? Bodies of children, bodies of children, bodies of children. He feels a hand on his leg and gasps, but there’s nothing there when he looks down. He feels it still, pulling him gently, tugging at his ankle as if to say “Look at me! See me! Help me!” like a drowning child. He feels another on his other leg, pulling harder. There’s nothing there, he says, there’s nothing there. But he feels himself being dragged down into the water. There’s nothing there, surely there’s nothing there, he thinks as he struggles against the force. Down, down, to his chest, to his collarbones the water rises. Invisible hands, hands of children in the water, on his feet and legs and eventually on his shoulders, pushing him down. The last thing he ever sees is his sapphire ring, fallen off his finger, floating up towards the surface of the water. He reaches his hand up and grabs madly for it, but the hands drag him down away from it, away from everything, and straight into my mouth.
Quick question: Did you write this after studying the gilded age?