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Writer's pictureGlenn Bresciani

Atlantic Hunting Grounds


Sailing the chill waters of the Atlantic Ocean, the cargo ship MS Harper was the only speck of brightness in the vast moonless night. Floodlights illuminated the shipping containers stacked on top of one another. Some scuffed, some dented, all of them with their rectangular space occupied by a brand-new Korean car. 

Fluorescent lights shone through the bridge windows, while inside the bridge, the night watch was convinced that they were the only ship for miles. Harper’s radar told them so. It detected nothing. But that’s understandable, as radio waves have never once bounced off the supernatural. The two exist in completely different realms.

A shipwreck ploughed through the trail of water churned from MS Harper’s propeller. Its pitted hull and keel peeked above the waves, rusty rudder as menacing as a shark fin. Below the waves, a school of tuna scattered to avoid being swallowed whole by the broken windows of the shipwreck’s upside-down bridge. 

No hesitation, no mercy, the shipwreck attacked its prey, rammed the tip of its bow into Harper’s starboard side. 

The collision knocked the night watch off their feet, flung the rest of the crew out of their bunk beds. 

Metal bit into metal, a shower of sparks brighter than the stars up above. A metallic screech, the only voice for a dying ship.

The shipwreck’s objective is reached, Harper’s hull has been breached. Now the hunter can move on, seeking new prey.

Harper’s bow dipped below the ocean. Her stern rose into the air. Sea water swept through her corridors and cabins, converted the living quarters into a submerged coffin. She disappeared under the waves; her bow pointed directly at the seabed somewhere below. The soggy corpses of the crew floated through Harper’s interior like astronauts in zero gravity.

The shipping containers tumbled through the watery void, each one with a tail of air-bubbles, more effervescent than the gaseous tail of a comet. Down, down the containers went, faster than fallen angels plummeting into Hell, taking with them Harper’s cargo, capital gain, delivery goals—all of the ship’s ties to humanity were forever lost at sea.

Water seethed as Harper rolled her great bulk, neither sinking nor surfacing, neither here nor there. How a cargo ship could slip between the cracks of physics, only the supernatural knew but would never tell. 

Inside the bridge, the corpse of the captain floated towards an instrument panel, her swaying hair slithered around her scalp. The pale light from a screen glowed upon her bloodless lips and broken veins scribbled across her bloated face. 

Not even a stray prawn, swimming into the pilot’s gaping mouth, could prevent the corpse taking the helm. The shipwreck started to rise until her bottom hull and keel resurfaced. Like the gills of a fish, ocean water flowed in and out of the jagged gash in her hull. 

Shipwrecked Harper, and her undead crew, sailed the Atlantic Ocean. All that water, stretching to the horizon in every direction, is now her hunting ground.


 


Glenn works as a support worker in community aged care. Fantasy and sci-fi are his favourite genres that he enjoys reading and wants to write about. Glenn could spend hours reading about mythology, and would like to see ancient Persia become as common as medieval Europe in fantasy novels. Glenn wishes that the process of writing a short story was the same as eating a bowl of ice creamevery spoonful is a pleasant experience, and it’s all over in about five minutes. His fantasy short story, set in ancient Japan, has been published in the Valor anthology from Dragon Soul Press.

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