The lone survivor of an oil rig disaster at sea debriefs with the company therapist. (10 minute read, 1,962 words).

Critical Incident Debrief Log
Arctic Station // November 13th, 2001
Interviewer: Dr ——–, Critical Incident Response Officer.
Interviewee: Mr ——–, Survivor
Incident Codename: Moon Baby

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Survivor (S): We used to call him Baby.

Critical Incident Response Officer (CI): Who?

S: Michaels. The one who found the creature. We used to call him Baby. On account of him being so short. And also because he was a pussy. He had little weak girly hands. He could barely turn the handles on the drill pressure release.

I didn’t hate him. But he was asking for what he got. Being so weak and small and working out on the rigs. He was asking for it. Peterson hated him the most. He’d put his kit up on the overhead pipes. Or his lunch or his torch. Sometimes he put Baby up there so he couldn’t climb down. He’d sit there with his little girly legs dangling in the air.

That was Peterson in a good mood. When he’d drunk too much, things got worse for Baby. And Peterson always drank too much. Baby was too chicken shit to do anything about it. That’s what made the rest of us hate him. He was just too weak for the ocean. He should have been back in a nice suit and tie in a little office cubicle like you mate. Sorry, no offence.

CI: None taken.

S: Baby was just different to the rest of us. He was smaller and weaker, and he didn’t talk the same. When he was on downtime he didn’t drink. He just sat reading in his bunk or watching the water out on deck. I mean, we’re surrounded by a million litres of the stuff, he’s spending all day pumping it out of the core chamber. And then when he gets a moment to himself, he sits and stares at it. Maybe he wasn’t all there. That’s what they started to say. Especially after that octopus squid creature suckered its way on deck.

CI: Tell me about the creature.

S: I reckon if Peterson found it we would have been having fried squid for dinner. Lucky for the octopus it was Baby who found it. It had crawled onto the elevator. If Baby did his morning check even a minute late, the slimy thing would have slipped down into the wellbore and that would have been the end of it.

But Baby was always on time. And when he saw it, he got so excited. Baby was like a puppy. It didn’t matter how much you kicked him he kept coming back for more, wagging his tail, hoping you’d pat him, tell him he was a good boy. It was like he forgot what we thought of him or where he was. He called us over like he’d just found Christmas morning in the chute.

Peterson went for the thing but Baby grabbed it up. That took everyone by surprise. Peterson was no chicken shit, but there was no way any of us was going to touch it. Peterson was gonna kick it, not hug the slimy fucker. It didn’t look like anything I’d ever seen. From one angle you thought it was just an octopus, but then it had these bent up wings on it’s back, and when it looked up at you I swear to god I thought for a minute…. Well, no octopus has a face like that.

CI: What kind of face?

S: I must have already been getting blurry doc, it doesn’t make sense.

CI: Tell me what you saw.

S: The face was human, a boy’s face. And Baby treated it like it was human from that moment. That monster was his new best friend.

CI: Why didn’t you tell us about the creature?

S: We just assumed it was part of the project. Part of whatever we’re supposed to be drilling for. I guess you’re still not going to tell me what that was…

CI: You signed the non-disclosure agreement that outlined–

S: Yeah yeah I bloody know. It’s all corporate jargon. But that’s the whole point, isn’t it? None of us knew. But we knew it wasn’t oil. I’ve drilled for oil before and this was different. It was the wrong depth. Anyway, we figured Baby’s pet freak was some sort of side effect you know. A radioactive mistake.

Maybe you lot never told us because we were digging up uranium or I don’t know. You don’t get a weird fucking half-octopus, half-dragon half-baby unless you’re doing something to the water. Whatever it was I don’t think we wanted to know. The money was too good. I was already drinking to forget. I didn’t want to add something else to the list. And even though Baby was a little bitch and we all hated him, didn’t mean we were gonna grass on him. We weren’t snitches.

CI: Tell me about the incident.

S: It didn’t happen straight away. It was a few weeks later. Baby took that fucking squid everywhere with him. How stupid could you get? He was already a target. It was like he didn’t even care about his safety any more. It just made Peterson hate him more.

One night, after Baby went to bed, sleeping with his little friend up on the top bunk, Peterson got drunk enough that he came up with this crazy plan to get at Baby. He was going to fuck the octopus. Put his dick in it. Right next to Baby. He was gonna fuck that thing until the sound of it woke up Baby.

Can you imagine the look on Baby’s stupid little face? But when he climbed up to Baby’s bunk, it was empty. We searched all through the quarters for them. And then we went topside, and we figured out where they were pretty quick.

CI: How did you find them?

S: We followed the sound of that thing. It was making these noises, like a child calling, howling. It was bright as day out on the deck, because of the full moon. I looked up and saw Baby, with the octopus on his shoulders, wrapped around him like a hat, and he was climbing the scaffolding on the second level. It looked like the leggy freak was pulling him higher and higher, reaching up to the moon. We went the long way around, and by the time we got up to the platform, he’d started to climb the Derrick. Which was stupid.

CI: Why?

S: The Derrick goes straight up to nothing. It’s just a tower that leads nowhere. So all we needed to do was sit on the platform and wait for him to get tired. Peterson came up with a plan for when he came down. We were gonna have squid for dinner after all. Well not all of us, and not fried. Just Baby. Peterson was going to ring that creepy thing’s neck and force every tentacle down Baby’s throat. If he didn’t chew, he’d choke.

We sat and watched Baby standing on the very top of the Derrick. I knew looking at them why they were there. Even though it made no sense to me. The squid wanted the moon. It was reaching for it and making this sound like “oooo Mooob Boooon Ooooln”. And we started shouting at him.

I don’t even remember what we were screaming. But I remember I hated him Baby and the squid for making me be out there just in my boxer shorts in the freezing fucking night under that cold moon on the wet steel shell of that fucking rig that was digging for god knows what. I couldn’t blame anyone else. So I blamed Baby. Peterson screamed up at him. All the ways he was going to kill the octopus and kill Baby.

CI: Was that more anger than usual on the rig?

S: I suppose.

CI: What happened?

S: I… I think something went wrong in my brain. Because everything became a bit fuzzy around the edges. The octopus was standing on Baby’s shoulders, and he was reaching with his arms for the stars with his creepy wings stretched out and then with no warning he reached down an put his mouth tentacles straight through Baby’s eyes, pushed them into the eye sockets until the tentacles vanished and Baby’s eyes were gone. The sound coming out of the octopus had been quiet. But then when the thing filled Baby’s head with its tentacles… The sound changed.

It was coming out of Baby. And I’d never heard him make no sound like that. Not when Peterson beat him, never. It was like the sound the octopus made but so much louder. The thing was playing him like a trumpet, blowing through him, through his eyes, through his mouth, to the moon.

I could see Baby start to change as he wailed. His arms were growing longer, they were dragging along by his feet, and his feet were folding under him. It was like he was made of rubber and someone was pulling on his legs and arms, trying to make him taller, pulling him up towards the moon.

He wasn’t short any more. He was the tallest man I ever saw. But he didn’t have enough skin to cover arms that long. He started to tear. I thought I heard his bones popping, but the sound was too close. I turned and saw Peterson next to me coughing up sick. Peterson wasn’t bent over He was staring up at Baby, and the sick was falling out of his mouth all over his shirt, he was just standing there. I looked back up, and Baby was so tall that his legs couldn’t hold him any more. The wailing was so loud I couldn’t hear the waves on the deck.

CI: Did you see the alignment of the stars at that moment?

S: The stars? I wasn’t looking at the bloody stars mate.

CI: What was the drill depth on the morning of the incident.

S: What are you talking about? Didn’t you hear what I just told you? Forget about the drilling. I can’t remember any of that. But I remember what I saw. The last thing was a wall of blackness, and when I closed my eyes the ship was falling beneath me, and when I opened them again, something had risen up out of the water. Something so big it blocked out the moon and Baby disappeared, and then all I could see was this thing, this enormous squid arm, rising out of the waves, taller than the whole rig, taller than the moon.

CI: R’lyeh has risen.

S: I keep seeing those tentacles in my dreams. And right now…. I think I’m hallucinating.

CI: What are you seeing?

S: I can see them now doc, just like back on the rig.

CI: What can you see?

S: They’re growing out of your mouth.

CI: Soon you will see clearly for the first time since the fall of the Old Ones.

S: This isn’t right.

CI: R’lyeh has risen. The dark lord returns.

S: Oh god they’re growing longer.

CI: ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn!

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