My Steel Bubble

Prompt from DailyPrompt.com

This is why the posting was a two person job. Not just that the sub is designed to be operated by more than one person, but because sitting on your own in a tiny steel bubble drives you mad.

But here I am. Alone. In a tiny steel bubble at the bottom of the ocean.

Am I mad yet? I don’t know. I don’t know if I can know. I think I’m not yet. But maybe that’s delusion.

The silence is oppressive. Waves don’t reach this far. Bobbing, crashing, sunshine, that’s all surface stuff. Down here the silence is thick and sticky and watches you.

I’ve been singing to try and scare it off but it’s not working and now my voice has given out.

I hate Alex with what is probably an unreasonable passion because he didn’t mean to have a heart attack or whatever it was and certainly not while outside the sub but it’s all his fault I’m trapped here. And it’s his fault he’s dead.

I should probably feel bad about that but I’m too scared.

While the sub is docked to the research point I have power. While I have power I have air and water and light. But no food.

It’s a good thing Alex died outside the sub so I don’t have to decide whether to eat him because I have quite enough to stress about but on the other hand it’d be nice to have the option I suppose.

We’re too far down for radio. The project was meant to last a month so nobody is going to notice I’m gone until then. We’re gone. Alex is more gone than I am but at least he doesn’t have to worry about getting rescued or not.

I could unmoor and try to navigate to the hab. At least there I can die in comfort. Moderate comfort. More comfort than this deep sea camper van offers.

But this is a two-person sub and I’d be trying to navigate it alone and I don’t want to die.

I drink another glass of tasteless water to put tears back in my body. I need them right now.

I’m all alone in a yellow submarine. A yellow submarine. A yellow submarine.

Well I mean it’s more orange but that doesn’t fit the mitre AT ALL.

The habitat is twenty miles at a bearing of one hundred and where did that smear come from where’s my cloth there it is…

One hundred and eight.

But there’s the ridges in the way. So I’d have to chart a course around. On my own. While trying to steer.

I can do it in stages. Steer and stop and chart.

So long as I don’t drift too much and I don’t take too long and I don’t drop dead of a heart attack.

But I can’t sit in this bubble for a month. I’ll go mad. Madder?

I guess it’s time to say goodbye to Alex.

Prompt was “write about someone who lives alone in a bubble”.