A weird short story strewn together from two pages of rambling, practically incoherent, nonsense trying to become a tale. Most of this was rewritten recently, and it became a weird story about a shipwrecked World War II pilot, a shark, and a goddess of the sea.
The Goddess of the Oceanic Realm
Part One: Adrift with the Nereid
uncertain of what is out of place, and equally suspicious of the intentions of those surrounding them. But nonetheless, this is our hero, offering some bleak silver lining, a drop of hope, meaning, or inspiration…
I exceeded the threshold of tolerance and prepared to take on those who pushed me to these ravenous unbearable depths. It does not matter whether or not I die in this moonlight so long as the hero gets a chance to strike a fatal blow and deliver me sweet revenge. But the uncertainty suffocating their path may prevent their encounter with those who perpetrated perceived crimes against me.
The goddess of the oceanic realm cradled my slimy flesh beneath the sea. She asked me softly, “Why do you whisper to yourself when you are alone and bored, wishing you were dead?” The tone of her voice was slightly venomous, hinting at possible malice.
“This is what happens when I force my creative impulses,” I explained. “I lose my delusions of security and realize if death is where fate leads us regardless, why wait? And thus, I become drained of the vitality that drove me to create something in the first place.”
Both the goddess and hero offered no reassurance for either my survival or vengeance. She was growing angry with my impatient confusion. The hero was swimming in the dark, blind, following the scent of blood… The divine spirit of the ocean spoke again, “Do you whisper because you can’t feel love in the lack of your importance in our universe?”
The hero’s eyes glazed over, unaware of my hatred for this nereid. It mattered little if they destroyed me so long as they devoured her as well. Killing her would grant my soul salvation at last, but she was not going to die without a fight. Large steel fins sprouted from the goddess’ scaly back as our hero got closer.
Under a vast starry sky, I could feel the ripples from their fighting beneath the calm surf, causing my vessel to slightly rock back and forth. I could hear the faint sound of a family of whales breaching the surface off in the distance. When the trashing directly below my belly softened, I somehow knew that our hero, likely a whitetip shark, had been victorious, silencing the goddess who had been taunting me for weeks… I could now die in silence. I can now rest in peace…
The sun was up and shining when I awoke next, and there was a large boat casting a cold shadow over my withered damp form. A raspy male voice could be heard shouting something in a language I didn’t understand… Had I been saved? Was this burdensome life to continue? Was the Earth not done with my poor soul yet?
Part Two: Recovered and Salvaged
By the time my feet touched the dirt of my home in Tennessee, the war that left me deserted on a small desolate island in Polynesia was over. The Axis powers had been defeated, finished off with a pair of bombs silencing the final Japanese resistance. My plane had crashed in the Pacific and destined for death, I was cursed and saved from drowning by a mythical beast called a nereid.
She displaced me from the wreckage and I became beached, cast away on an isolated tropical landscape filled with bugs and snakes. There, I argued with the goddess over the futility of existence and the absurdity of the persistence to survive, even as all hope appeared lost. The horrible beast constantly lured me out to the waves, mocking me for my fear and weaknesses. Unable to take her torment longer than a few months, which I survived thanks to vegetation and crabs and a small pool of fresh water in a cave in the small jungle that had become the setting for my personal depiction of hell…
Eventually, I succumbed to the sea deity’s teasing, building a crude raft and setting out to sail into oblivion, destined to meet the grim reaper in the choppy Pacific tides.
My first night I slept seldomly but when I was able to doze off despite the nereid circling beneath me, I dreamt of the great God Poseidon, who told me he would send a hero, an Oceanic whitetip shark to eat the wretched sea devil.
I was not expecting to be saved, only avenged. On top of that, it came quite a surprise that almost 80 years had gone by since experiencing that plane crash. My body has not aged more than 10 years, though. The only explanation is time travel. The ancient goddess of the shady ocean depths had transposed me not only across space when she saved me, but across time as well. I told no one about the incident and was able to squeak by with a stolen identity for a good while…
Everyone I cared about was long dead. The youngest children in my extended family were old folks now, if not dead, too. It’s seemed silly to try and track anyone down. I went to another state and got a job under the table with a local market… that lasted almost 10 years. And then everyone’s identity became big goddamn deal...
The year is now 2029 and because I was unable to prove my citizenship to the country I fought for in the second World War, I am ironically ending my bizarre journey on an airplane full of miserable people, all of us destined for the dreaded concentration camps in the wilderness of Wyoming.
Perhaps now I will share with someone my journey for I only kept my travels a secret out of fear of being identified as insane. But now… what’s the difference?
Written by BW Derge, All Rights Reserved 2025
© USA
This was a short story composed in 2025 called "The Goddess of the Oceanic Realm"
