Just as I said two weeks ago, here is the first piece of fiction I am sharing with you. I was so surprised when I found out it won runner-up in the competition I entered it for this week!
So, please dive into Kathy’s isolated work at the oil rig and experience the horror she brings.
The Moirai Shadow
Kathy stood back, shielding her eyes as the rotor blades whipped the air into a frenzy. She took one last look at Lindon’s silhouette behind the glass before the helicopter began its ascent. Mist swirled around the platform, clinging to the iron struts and giving the rig a ghostly, skeletal appearance. The machine hovered for a moment, suspended two feet above the deck; on the far side, the heavy door slammed shut with a metallic echo, and then it rose, vanishing into the grey.
Kathy turned away, unable to watch him leave despite the promise that they would be reunited in a fortnight. They had rowed about her staying behind last night, but she had remained firm. She needed to see the project through, to shut the rig down properly and organise a year’s worth of research before returning to the mainland.
Feeling foolish, she turned back to watch the helicopter cut across the sky, now no larger than a child’s toy. She followed it with her eyes until the speck vanished over the horizon. All she was left with now was the endless, churning sea, the howling wind, and her skeleton staff: three scientists and two security guards.
It had all started a year ago when she was appointed to head a research team on this decommissioned oil rig. Their remit was to study a strange strain of prehistoric algae. What started as a routine discovery mission shifted the moment the results came back. The algae, nicknamed Moirai, turned out to be more virulent than anthrax. Six months ago, the military had moved in. Now, they were being told the rig was finally being mothballed. Or so they thought.
Kathy retreated to her quarters. The wind threw itself against the glass, making the frames rattle in their surrounds. The room had felt homely when she shared it with Lindon; now, it felt hollowed out and deserted, much like the rest of the superstructure. She pulled the curtains shut. There was nothing to see anyway, just endless black water stretching in all directions. Two weeks. Fourteen days, and she would put this episode behind her to start a new chapter.
A sharp knock at the door broke her trance. Jane, tall and blonde, filled the doorway. “Lindon got off okay?” she asked.
“Yeah. No problems,” Kathy replied, forcing a small smile.
Jane walked over and wrapped her arms around her. “You’ll be back with him before you know it. Until then, we’ve plenty to keep us busy.”
Kathy embraced her friend tightly. “I know. Where’s Tom?”
“Cleaning out Lab Three. We’re almost done; he’s packed everything he can. The goons were circling earlier, making sure nothing ‘confidential’ was being nicked.”
“Were we stupid, Jane?” Kathy asked quietly. “Not to see where this was going?”
“I’m not even sure the company knew. Let’s just get this over with and get home.”
Kathy nodded. When they had first arrived, she had revelled in the isolation. Now, the rig felt like a cage.
“Coming down for dinner?” Jane asked.
“I don’t fancy it. Do you mind if I bail? I think I’m just going to sleep.”
“Okay, sweetheart. We’ll see you tomorrow. Start the countdown, only fourteen days.” Jane gave her a final squeeze before stepping out, the heavy door clanging shut behind her.
Despite her racing mind, Kathy fell into a deep, heavy sleep, drained by the emotional toll of the departure. She woke with a start as her door flew open, hitting the wall with a bang.
“You need to come. Now!” Jane screamed.
“What? What time is it?” Kathy sat up, disoriented.
“Two in the morning. Kathy, something awful has happened.” Jane was hysterical, practically dragging Kathy from the bed. Kathy grabbed a hoodie, pulling it over her pyjamas, and followed Jane into the corridor. The rig moaned in the gale, the very foundations seemingly vibrating with dread.
They raced down the internal staircases to the lower levels, to the pool where the submersible was docked. As they reached the platform, Kathy saw Tom. He looked ashen.
“Thank God,” he breathed.
“What’s going on?”
“I couldn’t sleep, so I came down to start stripping the sub. The water usually calms me... that’s when I found them. I should have known something was wrong; the door was already unlocked.”
“Found who?” Kathy asked.
“Bert and Ernie. The guards.”
The room was circular, dominated by the gaping hole in the floor where the ocean churned below. On the far side of the platform, Kathy saw a tangled mess of hair and gore. A few feet away lay a second, indistinct mound.
Kathy knelt as close as she dared, the metallic stench of blood coating the back of her throat. She reached out to turn the head towards her to identify the man. She recoiled instantly. The nose had been sheared off. One eye had been torn from its socket, dangling against a pale cheek by a single, white nerve cord. The lower jaw was gone, along with an arm and a foot. Even after six months of daily contact, she couldn’t tell which guard it was.
“The second one is worse,” Tom whispered. It looked as though the body had been dismantled; limbs had been torn from their sockets and flung across the cold steel floor.
“Who did this?” Jane sobbed.
“I don’t know,” Kathy said, her voice trembling. “But we need to get out of here in case they’re still in the room. Move!”
She shoved the others toward the exit, slamming the door and sliding the deadbolt. “Help me!” She began heaving a heavy equipment cabinet across the doorway to barricade it.
They spent the remainder of the night huddled in the mess room. No one ate. They simply clutched mugs of tea for warmth, never taking a sip. They ran through every scenario, but none made sense. Tom suggested an intruder, but the scanners showed no movement since the helicopter had departed twelve hours earlier.
“Maybe someone got off the chopper?” Jane suggested.
“I was there,” Kathy insisted. “From landing to take-off. No one got off, I promise you.”
The only explanation, however impossible, was an animal.
“But what animal?” Tom asked.
“Maybe something we don’t know about,” Kathy replied darkly. “After all, we didn’t know about Moirai a year ago.”
By seven that morning, the research didn’t matter. The evidence against the government didn’t matter. They just wanted to live. They headed to the communications centre to demand an emergency evacuation. Tom dropped into the chair and began toggling switches frantically.
The radio was dead. No static, no lights, no life. Kathy saw silent tears track through the dust on Jane’s face.
“Don’t worry, we have the satellite phones,” Kathy said, though her heart was hammering. She opened the storage locker. Her stomach dropped. The cradles were empty. Every single phone was gone.
“Fuck,” Tom whispered over her shoulder.
“We’re stuck. We’re going to die here!” Jane’s voice rose to a scream. “I’m taking the lifeboat. I don’t care about the storm, I’m not staying here to be eaten!”
Jane bolted for the door.
“Jane, wait!” they yelled, racing after her. Kathy caught her by the arm. “You’ll die out there in this swell! We stay here, together. We stay away from the pool and the water. It’s only thirteen days. When the scheduled pickup arrives, we leave. We just have to wait it out.”
Kathy wished she felt even half as confident as she sounded.
For the next ten days, they lived in a state of hyper-vigilance. They moved as a pack, never leaving one person alone, even outside the washrooms. The wind battered the rig, throwing salt spray against the high windows, but the interior remained deathly silent.
Kathy didn’t know what woke her on their final night. She opened her eyes and felt the wrongness of the room immediately. The familiar sounds of her friends’ breathing were gone. The room was silent.
Fuming that they had left her alone, she hurried to the control room. The thermal sensors showed two heat signatures on the external deck. What on earth are they doing out there?
She pulled on an oilskin coat and pushed through the heavy exterior door. The wind nearly took her off her feet. Reasoning that a fall into the Atlantic would be fatal, she threw the switches for the floodlights, illuminating the platform in a harsh, white glare. For protection, she grabbed a fire axe from the emergency red box.
She moved toward the corner where the sensors had tripped, the winch station. The machinery was whirring, the cable inching slowly downward. She leaned over the railing. In the churning foam below, she saw the dark, triangular fins of sharks.
Then, the floodlights hit the man dangling from the winch. When he looked up, Kathy found herself staring into the terrified eyes of Tom. He didn’t scream; he couldn’t. He opened his mouth and a wet, gargling sound emerged just as a shark breached the surface, latching onto his leg and dragging the cable taut.
Kathy lunged for the controls to reverse the winch. The electronics had been smashed to pieces. She searched for the manual crank handle, missing. She tried to jam the axe handle into the gear socket, but it wouldn’t fit.
Hope drained out of her. She looked back over the edge. Tom was gone from the waist down, the sea turning a violent crimson as the frenzy intensified. He looked into her eyes one last time before the light faded from his.
A piercing scream erupted from the far side of the rig. A woman’s scream.
Kathy ran. Halfway across the deck, she realised with a jolt of horror that she had left the axe behind.
She found Jane. Her friend was standing perfectly still, her head locked into the frame of the industrial crusher. The machine had been tilted on its side, the heavy hydraulic plates moving inward with agonising slowness. Jane was handcuffed to the frame, a metal rod bolted behind her neck to keep her spine straight.
“Talk to me!” Kathy sobbed.
Jane opened her mouth. Kathy gagged. Jane’s tongue had been removed, leaving only a jagged, bloody stump. The plates were already beginning to fold Jane’s ears back.
“I’ll get you out, I promise!” Kathy screamed. She grabbed a metal pole from a nearby bannister, using it as a lever to try and pry the plates apart. The industrial hydraulics didn’t even flicker; the pole snapped like a twig. Jane’s eyes turned bloodshot from the pressure. She looked through Kathy, her gaze fixing on something behind her.
Then, Jane’s head gave way like a ripe melon.
An arm snaked around Kathy’s shoulders, pulling her back. A familiar, warm voice whispered in her ear.
“You really shouldn’t have chosen them over me, Kathy.”
He released his grip. Kathy spun around, staring into the eyes of the only man she had ever loved. “Lindon? Why?”
“All my life, I’ve been second best,” he said, his voice eerily calm. “Second to my brother, second in my class. You were supposed to be different. But you put me second to them. You stayed for them instead of leaving with me.”
“But... I saw you leave. The helicopter...”
“You saw me get in. You didn’t look long enough to see me get out. You were too keen to get back to your friends.”
Kathy remembered the door slamming. He had closed it from the inside and slipped out the other side while the mist shielded him.
“We’re going to take a romantic trip to the bottom of the ocean in the sub,” he smiled.
“The hull isn’t rated for that depth, Lindon. You know that.”
“I know. We’ll be together for eternity. Now, are you walking, or am I carrying you?”
“I’m walking,” she spat.
The stench of the pool room was unbearable. He shoved her through the door toward the two putrefied remains of the guards.
“Sit there,” he commanded, pointing to the gore-slicked floor between the corpses.
Kathy collapsed, sobbing as the fluids from the bodies soaked into her clothes. Lindon ignored her, humming to himself as he punched in the launch sequence for the submarine.
Her leg brushed against a severed limb. She began to gag, but then she saw it: the glint of a combat knife tucked into the dead guard’s boot. Moving with agonising slowness, she kept her eyes on Lindon’s back. She slid the blade free and hid it up her sleeve.
Lindon turned with a flourish. “Finished. I thought we could go watch the sharks. Shall we?”
He grabbed her by the shoulder as they reached the sub’s hatch.
“Take your clothes off. You stink of them.”
She began to undress, her hands shaking. As Lindon bent down to unlatch the heavy circular hatch, Kathy lunged. She shoved him with every ounce of strength she possessed and bolted for the exit.
Lindon was fast. He caught her by the hair, yanking her head back. Kathy spun, the hidden blade flashing in the light. She buried the knife deep into his eye socket.
He shrieked, releasing her. She threw herself through the door and slammed it shut just as he surged forward. The heavy steel edge struck the hilt of the knife, driving the blade through his skull. He fell backwards.
Michael Abrahams settled the helicopter onto the ‘H’ with practised ease. He was here to evacuate the remaining five staff before the government sanitised the rig; blowing it to pieces to bury the Moirai secret forever.
He spotted a lone woman slumped against the railing. He hopped out of the cockpit and approached her. Michael had worked with many veterans, but he had never seen a look as haunting as the one in this woman’s eyes.
“You Kathy?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“Where are the others?”
She didn’t look at him. “There aren’t any. It’s just me. Can we go?”
Every bit of Michael’s training told him to ask more questions. But the sight of her shaking hands stopped him. He helped her into the cabin.
As he climbed back into the pilot’s seat and started the rotors, Michael felt a chill that his thermal flight suit couldn’t block. Looking back at the rig through the glass, he felt as though the Devil itself was watching them depart. The best thing for this place, he decided, was for it to be reduced to pieces.