Deepline

A Story by Bluepanther

A man out sabotaging fishing gear makes a surprising discovery...

Damn deeplines, Bodhi thought bitterly.
His hands were raw from helping the winch pull up the coarse rope, miles of it, an endless drudgery of hand-over-hand hauling. This one was especially heavy, and it didn’t help that it was pitch dark out.
To be fair, what he was doing was illegal, so his only choice was to work at night.

In his 30 years of life, Bodhi had never seen a live abyssal porpoise. Only dead ones, hooked on lines or hung upside down and dripping blue blood on ships. In all honesty, he wouldn’t mind if he never saw a live porpoise. He just wanted to stop seeing dead ones.

So for the past three weeks, at sundown, he and Red and Dominic had taken their motorboats out to where the fishing ships had sunk their lines, found the buoys, sawed through the ropes, and pulled them up. It was slow going, but he’d seen too many ships with their hauls of porpoises to sit around and do nothing.

Finally, he was coming to the end of the rope. He’d been counting hooks, placed every quarter mile, and was up to 10. One more to go. The calloused blisters on his hands had broken open and were bleeding again, and he was soaked and exhausted. This was his third and final line; Chico and Red had already pulled up five between them. That left two buoys to go, but the sun would be up soon, so Red had cut the lines and let them sink to the ocean floor. They'd called a night.

The rope jerked suddenly in his hands, almost pulling him off balance. The winch stuttered to a halt.

“S**t!” There was something hooked on the final lead. Not a porpoise; this was stronger. So far he’d been lucky. Nothing major had been hooked on any of the ropes he’d pulled up that night. A couple of smaller fish and an angry squid wrapped around the hook’s bait, but that was it.
The rope was yanked again, this time to the left, as whatever was on it struggled to get away.

“Easy now, calm down,” Bodhi murmured to the dark water, trying to project his thoughts to the animal. “You’ll only hurt yourself more if you struggle like that.” He slid across the deck to grab a rope and the wire noose he used for holding big fish, then went to the winch and cranked in the rope by hand until he heard a splash in the darkness--it was at the top.

He leaned over the edge and trained a light into the water. Nothing, nothing… there! Just below the surface, something large and purplish-gray rolled, flashing a white underbelly. A shark? He grabbed the rope and heaved, bracing his boots against the side of the boat.

The thing’s head came briefly out of the water.

Bodhi dropped the rope and jumped back, slipped, and fell hard, knocking the wind out of him. Gasping for air, he scrambled to the far end of the boat, heart hammering against his ribs. That was not a shark.

He stayed huddled under the bulwarks until the splashing died down and he could breathe again. It was silent except for the whistle of the wind and the dull slap of waves against the hull. Cautiously, he stood up and edged over to the railing.

The thing was still there, floating motionlessly, either exhausted or dead. The bottom half was studded with luminescent spots and shaped sort of like a shark, with a sleek, muscular tail and caudal fins, but the top half was eerily human.

It had two arms, webbed hands, and a discernible head. There were eyes, black like a shark’s and very large, but no nose or ears. The mouth was wide and lipless and crammed with hundreds of 3-inch needle teeth. The lower jaw was impaled on a hook.

Bodhi closed his eyes and tried to collect his thoughts.
First, the facts:
This was obviously just some undiscovered species of sea animal.
It was hurt.
Second, the conclusion:
Seeing as it was an injured sea animal, hooked on a deepline, Bodhi had an obligation to free it.
Third, the opinion:
What in the everloving f**k?! Hell no!!

The conclusion won out.

Gritting his teeth, he looped the wire over the tail and drew it tight, then threw it over a support strut and pulled with all his strength. The wire cut his hands and the boat tilted with the weight, but the tail rose above the deck after a few good hoists. He tied it off and stood back for a few seconds, feeling the ache in his shoulders.

With a shark, he’d normally secure it to the side of the boat while he worked the hook out, but this thing had the hook lodged so deeply in its jaw that he was afraid he’d have to bring it on board. Bodhi swallowed.

He leaned over the side again, was reassured to find no movement, and steeled himself. The skin, he found, when he wrapped his arms around its midsection, was surprisingly warm, but no less slimy. A wave sloshed over his face and he had a sudden terrifying thought that he would fall overboard--be in the water with this thing--

With a massive effort and a loud protest from his back, he heaved the creature over the side and onto the deck. Out of the sea, it sagged in his arms, and he felt the sandpapery texture of dermal denticles.

Maybe it was some sort of shark, evolved by chance to uncannily resemble Homo sapiens.

“Either way,” Bodhi muttered, letting it slide to the floor and pulling a pair of pliers out of his pocket, “You’re seriously creepy.”

He knelt down by the creature’s head and peered gingerly into its mouth. It was worse than he’d thought: the heavy-duty hook had actually pierced through the lower jaw. He whistled softly.

“You must have a bite force like a crocodile, huh? I’m impressed.” The creature had bitten the hook upside down, so the point came out the underside of the jaw. Bodhi would have to reach into the mouth in order to pull it out. Not a pleasant thought.

He glanced at the thing’s face and saw the dark blue iris watching him. He jerked his hand away from the teeth hastily. So it was still alive.

He licked his lips. “Look. I’m trying to help you here, so just… don’t bite me. Please.” Talking to a sea monster. Great. Just great. He looked up at the horizon, which had taken on a definite pink hue. It was now or never.

Heart pounding audibly, he held the lower jaw open with one hand and stuck the other in amongst the wicked-looking teeth to grasp the hook with his pliers. He saw with a trickle of alarm that the thing’s eye was now staring glassily at the sky, as if dead.

And suddenly, he realized that he really, really didn’t want it to die. Why? He wasn't sure. Maybe because this thing, as much as abyssal porpoises and tuna and dragonflies and humans, had a right to live. Or maybe because its life had been violently interrupted by creatures it knew nothing about, and that was a wrong to be righted. Whatever the reason, if he didn't want it to die, he'd have to work fast.

Trying not to think about what it would feel like to get his hand bitten off, he tugged experimentally on the hook. It didn’t budge. He tried again, wiggling it slightly, wincing every time the movement sent a trickle of blood out of the thing’s mouth. Still nothing.

Growing desperate, Bodhi cast his eyes around for something, anything, to help him. They fell on a pair of boltcutters stowed under the pilot’s chair. Those could do the trick.

He grabbed the boltcutters and lined them up with the hook. One quick squeeze, and the metal snapped with a ping. Just in time, too; the sunrise was rapidly growing stronger, and soon the fishing ships would be out to discover that their equipment had vanished.

Bodhi gripped the end of the hook and pulled it through the creature’s jaw easily. If it felt any relief, it gave no sign. Mouth dry now with fear for its life rather than his own, he untied the tail and lifted the thing for the last time, staggering to the side of the boat and dumping it awkwardly back into the ocean with a heavy splash.

It floated limply on its back.
“Come on… come on!” he yelled, slamming his already abused hands onto the railing. “Please.”

A minute passed, then two, then all at once the powerful tail scythed across the water and the creature righted itself.

“Yes! F**K yes!” He leaned over the side, grinning wildly as the thing turned beneath him. For a second they locked eyes, and Bodhi felt something pass between them, something like understanding. Then the tail flicked and it was gone.

Bodhi stared down into the blackness for another minute, searching, then blew out a breath and ran a shaking hand through his hair. “Jesus Christ.”

The boys were never gonna believe this one.