Echoes from Below

[Help! My wife started eating raw meat! She says it's tartare!]

[Did someone hear the song last night? My cat died of fright.]

[I'm an ENT doctor. I've been receiving a lot of patients with abscesses behind the ears, but when I cut into them, I found…]

With trembling fingers, I tapped into that doctor's post. The original poster's ID was 'The Scalpel'.

The post was of a blurry photo accompanied by a block of text.

[Upon incision, no pus was present, only this semi-translucent, scale-like tissue. Moreover, the tissue appears biologically active. It continues to writhe after being removed from the body.]

[I attempted lab analysis. DNA sequencing indicates that it does not belong to any known terrestrial organism.]

The replies were even more terrifying.

[Dude, run! This is the first stage of Deep Sea-fication!]

[Don't cut it! Those are their egg sacs!]

[I have them too. You can’t scratch them off. The more you try, the deeper the itch goes.]

I touched the back of my ear. The place where I scraped off the fish scale started to itch again. The itch did not feel like it was on the surface, but was coming from deep inside my bones.

I could not help but create an account with the username 'Drowned123'. I created a post.

[I started listening, and a fish scale grew behind my ear. I dreamt that my room was flooded. What should I do?]

I regretted it immediately after I posted it. I was literally falling into a trap.

In less than a minute, someone replied to me. The ID was a strange symbol, like a vortex.

[Welcome to the food chain. Stay moist. Do not resist.]

What did that mean? Food chain? Was I prey?

Then, I received a private message from a 'Dr. Chenowith'.

[Don't listen to them. If you don't want to become fish food, send me your address right away. I have the inhibitors.]

Inhibitors? Did that person know something?

I hesitated. Who could trust anyone on such a strange and dodgy platform?

Right at that moment, my doorbell rang, which made me jump. I almost dropped my phone.

I looked through the peephole to see Albert Winston, my neighbor, standing outside my door.

Albert was a friendly old man who would greet me happily whenever we bumped into each other.

However, he was acting a little weird that day. He had a thick raincoat on. He wore his cap so low I could barely see his face.

It was not raining in the corridors, not to mention that it was summer, so why was he in a raincoat?

"Lily? Are you home?"

His voice sounded muffled as if he was talking through a thick curtain.

No. More like talking through water.

He added, "Could you lend me some salt? I've run out."

Salt?

My heart skipped.

I thought about the saltiness I felt in my dreams. I remembered the eyeball.

"Albert, I'm sorry. I ran out of salt too," I replied through the door.

"No, you do have it. I can smell it."

Albert's voice suddenly turned soft with a hint of greed. "You smell freshly of salt. On you."

Thump!

He banged on the door. It was not something loud and hard, but more like a soft lump of meat slamming against the door.

"Open the door. Let me… Let me have a taste."

Thump, thump.

The thumping got more frequent. I pressed myself against the door, sweating profusely.

"If you're going to continue behaving this way, I'll call the cops!" I yelled

The movement stopped, and there was dead silence.

A long time later, I heard a sigh, just like the one I heard in my earphones last night.

"What a pity. It's not fully ripe yet."

I heard footsteps, but not of leather shoes tapping against the tiled floors. It felt like wet and sloppy, like bare feet against the mud.

I slumped to the ground, staring at the crack beneath the door. Water slowly seeped in, and in the water, tiny threadlike shapes writhed like worms.

I had to get to the bottom of that. That 'Dr. Chenowith' person was probably my only hope.

With trembling hands, I replied to Dr. Chenowith.

[I can't give you my address, but I need to know the truth.]

They replied instantly.

[Smart. Exposing your coordinates too early will only get you killed faster.]

Then, he sent a document link.

[Deep-Sea Bioacoustic Research Log. TOP SECRET]

I opened the document to see the file filled with fragmented audio transcripts and photos of handwritten notes.