6,000 Fathoms
Written By: Jessica Gonzalez
Narrated By: Shelley O’Rourke
A marine scientist encounters something strange and terrifying on a deep-sea dive in the depths of the Mariana Trench. When she makes it back to the research ship alive, she believes she's narrowly avoided death. But then her body starts to change, and she realizes there may be fates even worse than that.
Collection Four: “Among Us”: Stories about Aliens, Infomorphs & Other Invaders
Episode #: Two
Release Date: Wednesday, March 11th
Est. Runtime: » 26 Min
Standout Lines:
"Anything could be lurking at the bottom, 6,000 fathoms deep. And because we’re scientists—because we’re human—we just had to go looking.""I shoot through the water as if I was born in it—because I was born in it. My limbs stretch out in front of me. I remember when they ended in hands, five fingers on each one. Fingernails painted pink. That seems like centuries ago."From the Author:
In October of last year, some friends and I went to visit the Queen Mary - a retired British ocean-liner-turned-troop-ship during the second World War, now retired and permanently docked in Long Beach, CA. For most of the year, it operates as a hotel, maritime museum, and convention space. But it has a history of being haunted, and every spooky season, the ship and surrounding harbor are converted into a Halloween festival called Dark Harbor. This is what my friends and I were there for.
The festival features haunted mazes, live entertainment, monsters, and--if you can find them--secret speakeasies where you can explore different parts of the ship while sipping on themed beverages. I love a haunted maze as much as the next Halloween enthusiast, but it quickly became clear that these speakeasies were going to be the coolest part of the experience. The first one we found led us into the engine room, where we were given free range to roam around and wonder at all the dials, wheels, gauges, and pipes that keep a ship as big as the Queen Mary moving. A sign on the wall let us know we were 5 fathoms below sea level. When we finished our drinks and emerged, we decided our priority for the night would be to find the rest of them before our time ran out.
The idea for this story came to me when we found the one in the boiler room. The word "cavernous" doesn't do it justice. It was massive, dark, and largely empty, except for the giant water heaters that towered over us and the suspended metal pathways that led us through them. Every surface made of metal that sent strange groans and pinging sounds echoing around us with every step. And a good forty feet above us, one of the coolest scares of all the mazes (a rickety bridge that seems to fall away beneath your feet for a terrifying half-second) drew screams from other festival attendees every thirty seconds or so. I searched for another sign to tell us how deep we'd gone. This time it was 10. It was in that room, as I pondered how little we know about the sea--especially at its deepest--and as people shrieked above me, that this story was born. Happy listening!
— Jessica
