The call

I made the below short story as part of a writing course, the assignment being write a 500 word story where character has to choose between a physical object they want and an antidote to a disease which will kill them in 24 hours. AI rejected the first draft for quality and adhering to the assignment. I re-wrote the thing focusing in on a single scene, and found that despite being obvious “Show dont tell” is both powerful and easier said then done.

Final draft
The window above rattles as another black wave slams into the rocky cliff. I look back down at the next dull white cardboard box on the shelf, this one labeled Showa 13, and calculating these records are from 1938. Too early I think, but I run my eyes over them, just the same.  “Fish collection record - June”, “Katsura bay coral growth observations”, “Katsuo populations of the Boso Katsuo”. The titles spark no visions of black waves as big as cities, no slithering ropes of lettering, and none of the electric sensations of power flowing through me that I have been chasing. Not this one I think.

Pushing the box back, I notice a droplet red fall to the floor from my face. A public warning, coming between the morning news, rings in my ears. “The phenomenon known as the “Call” is caused by atmospheric anomalies from the Kuroshio current. Symptoms include headaches, visual hallucinations, and psychosis. This stress can damage the brain, resulting in permanent damage and death within 24 hours. If you experience nosebleeds with these symptoms please contact your doctor.” I pause, my heart pounding. Still hovering with indecision, my eyes are drawn to a wooden crate sitting half in shadow below. It is darkened with rot and stenciled with military style Kanji for “coastal defense unit”. Pushing my panic aside, I move towards it. 

I'm kneeling down on the cold concrete when my phone buzzes. “You have been selected for a new Call vaccine trial. Visions and any other symptoms you may be experiencing will be cured. If you are not able to receive the vaccine today at Tokyo University, due to limited supply, you will no longer be eligible”. I glance at my wrist. It's only 17:33, if I leave now, I can get there in time, maybe. I weigh my choices; go back and survive haunted by these visions or find the book here, now, and hold its power in my hands, even for just one minute. It's an easy choice. After months of chasing visions, there is little left back there.

I dump the crate onto the ground and recognize unintelligible kanji carved into a book cover. Inside I find typed pages detailing the wrecking of a Spanish Galeon, the San Francisco in 1609. According to the report, the ship hit a strange storm off the coast and wrecked here, where the Miskatonic Onjuku Marine Research Institute, and I, now stand. I read “Our measurements indicate a large underwater formation as the origin of the small bursts..” I read on and my body pulled tight. I feel a danger here far too great to fight or even witness, something old and very wrong. As I try to get up, my body refuses to move. I know the books secrets now. The visions don’t mean anything, they are mere echoes rippling outward from the thing under the water into all of us.

First draft

I listen to the message half way between the dock and the boat, on top of a rotten timber plank. “Please come to Tokyo University Medical hospital emergency wing B today. This is completely new…..the water borne infection…”. I glance down at my wrist. Despite the ink black tentacles of clouds it's only 16:03, if I hurry I could make the last express train back to Tokyo, maybe get there in time. 

I look at the boat, where the others were hunching down, bracing against the rocking boat and the upcoming ride. Kenji looks across, a questioning look in his tired eyes. “Will you be coming? This was your idea, your location.” barely audible over the ocean. 

We were studying the Kuroshio, one of the four major global ocean currents. It unexpectedly moved closer to Japan over the last two years, bringing a 30 kilometer wide zone of choppy waters, unpredictable powerful currents, and potential disaster for the region right to our coast. We’d exhausted our funds sending a dozen instrument filled buoys in to gather data, hoping to predict its movements and give warning to the world, or at least grant money to keep the Miskatonic Onjuku Marine Institute afloat for a few more years. But each of the previous bouys disappeared into the ocean without any readings or GPS transmitted, leaving us without insights or resources.

“Sorry just one minute”. I slipped a backpack off my left shoulder, dropped the phone in, and felt the book pressing into my body. 

I’d told them that I used AI to predict where we could find our buoys. I lied. Of course, I had tried but I stubbornly refused to acknowledge the Kuroshio existed, erroring out when the name of the black current was mentioned. In desperation, I’d searched our pre-internet institute archives, and found the book, bound in crimson leather and buried behind a cardboard box. With it was a black and white faded photo of six seriously looking Japanese soldiers and typed records dated in the war years describing research on a Spanish Galeon sinking in the region around 1868. 

The map was meticulously hand drawn, and as I later confirmed, to scale. It showed the Kuroshio in its current position, close to the coast, which should have been impossible. Even stranger were the notes scribbled across the map. They were not Japanese kanji, or any language I recognized, more like interlocking ropes than writing. The letters gave me gut wrenching vertigo. But gradually, my eyes watering as I stared at the map, and a pitch black presence seeping into my mind, I began to understand their horrible meaning.

There is no going back now. I know where we will find our buoys, what took them, and what it wants. I step across the plank into the boat and hunker down, I’ll give it Kenji first.