He loved to go scuba diving. He went down to the sea every weekend. Alone. He loved to dive alone. There was nothing like being alone on the bottom of the sea, just you and the fish.
He went out in his little boat, threw out his anchor. Went down slowly, adjusting the pressure in his ears. He was used to this. He swam along the sand and corals, looking at fish. It was an other world down here, so quiet, so beautiful. So big, and no one to bother him.
He saw something strange in a distance. A greenish light. It looked like some kind of glass bowls. He went closer. There were creatures there, in some kind of space suits. Aliens! He thought, but he couldn’t really believe it. But what were they? They looked like octopuses, but seemed to have only four legs. Four flexible legs, a glass bowl over their heads. He looked at the bowls. There were more of them there. They had no suits on. They had eight legs. The suit had the legs in pairs.
They were octopuses! Intelligent octopuses! But why… how… Suddenly he understood. They had to come from the deep seas, the final frontiers of human knowledge on earth. The suits were for the pressure. They had to be, there was no other explanation. They were scientists from a deep sea civilization! He was amazed. Their technology seemed to be at least at our level, maybe even more advanced. Different.
Suddenly everything goes dark. Ink. Something surrounds him, ties him down. When the ink settles, some kind of mechanic tentacle is holding him down to the fond of the sea. He was their prisoner. Bad deal. He had about twenty minutes of air.
He tried to fight loose, but there was no way. The octopuses seemed to be communicating. They were examining him, looking at his tank, his wet suit. His face. They seemed intrigued, like this was the greatest discovery in their history.
It was. Down here he was the alien. An intelligent life form beyond the outer limits of Water was affirmed. Many amongst them had been saying this for a long time. The sceptics would have to surrender.
The creatures made measurements of him. The ones inside the glass balls were taking notes, moving around with some gadgets. The ones outside seemed to be investigating him, doing research.
He could see his air indicator on his arm. He had ten minutes left of air. He needed to get out of there. Now. The creatures were moving around him, studying him. Moving around hastily, using strange devices.
Five minutes left.
He started panicking. Tried to get loose. There was no way, the strange cable held him fast. He could hardly move a finger.
Two minutes.
Panic. He screams, twisting his body. The creatures were investigating his oxygen tank, seemingly untouched by his fear.
One minute.
One of the creatures pinches him with some kind of needle. It stings a bit. A small container fills with blood.
He starts suffocating. Air is out. The creatures are looking at him. They seem to discuss his state. They let him go. He swims up towards the surface way too fast, but not fast enough. The lack of air is making him dizzy. He passes out near the surface.
He wakes up in the hospital. Some fishermen had come by, seen his boat. One of them threw himself in the water, saving him. A hero.
He never dived again. He never told anyone his story, but he often went back to the shore of the incident. Down there somewhere there are investigating creatures like himself. Creatures exploring the limits of their world.
https://flash-365.com/2016/11/22/octopi-peddlers-and-the-value-of-a-bag-of-salt/
Fictionspawn 
My brother is an avid scuba diver and likes to shark dive and shipwreck dive.
Some years ago, he was doing a shipwreck dive and made the mistake of grabbing a cable, which made a sound like a fish in distress.
As he left the site, he looked beneath him. He was being paced by three sharks, a large female and two smaller males. He is normally pretty calm during dives, but knowing that the sharks saw him as prey, he began to panic. He forced himself to control his breathing so he wouldn’t hyperventilate.
He looked down again and saw the large female was heading right for him, her mouth open. There was nothing he could do except make eye contact. At the last second, she turned away.
By now he was lost but managed to find his boat eventually. The sharks lost interest in him and left. Predators expect their prey to be passive or frightened, and when my brother made eye contact, it was the act of another predator, not prey.
If it had been me, I’d never have scuba dived again, but he went to another site and went back in. He still participates in the sport, occasionally traveling to other parts of the world to shark dive (in a cage).
Go figure.
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I must say! Sharks are probably the animals who scare me the most. Something about the helplessness of being in the water, and the fact that they often just cut of a limb or two and live you bleeding. Death is a lot less less scary that that.
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I agree with you on death being less scary than what a shark might do to a person, fictionspawn.
What an alarming story, James. I once — when you told a fictional story at your site — thought of a fairly new camera invention, for exploring shipwrecks, that I had recently seen with regard to the wreckage at Pearl Harbor. The two didn’t have anything clearly to do with each other, but maybe I was onto something. I should have said something.
I don’t remember the name of the camera, but it had a National Park Service logo on its side. The expert was showing the lower levels of the sunken ship to a sailor who had lived there and had survived that particular attack. It felt very sentimental to me. I was sentimental for the man as well as for valuing government exploration and expenditure; it may have crossed my mind when you were thinking of NASA and John Glenn.
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Thank you for reading, Marleen!
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Lively fantasy with a serious message – evolved creatures shouldn’t be underestimated!
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And who knows what the seas might hide…
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Pixar would have us believe that octopi are secretly grumpy creatures with hidden hearts of gold, but nothing could be further from the truth, and I believe your story proves that. It’s not for nothing that the Kraken resembles a giant octopus or squid.
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