B27C22 - Restrain

A whip in the darkness. I never saw it corning. It slapped against me, gripping, hugging, holding.

Another!

The two almost thirty-foot-long tentacles, iron-strong arms, tightened around my head.

The squid used the tentacles to yank the rest of its body toward me. I felt the tug. I felt the water moving. I could picture the photograph I'd seen of a squid mouth, a bizarre hawk's beak.

Then an arm, thicker, stronger than the tentacle. And another!

I thrashed wildly, tearing free one of the arms. The suckers ripped away chunks of my skin. I smelled my own blood in the water.

My tail! I couldn't move it. And the squid was on me. ON me! Too close for echolocation to see anything. I was wrestling blind. And unlike the squid, I had no arms.

The squid was smaller, much lighter, basically weaker. But it had agility. And it had arms. I had a mouth.

Imagine a fight between a gymnast, small but with full use of arms and legs, and a three-hundred-pound linebacker who can only use his mouth.

The squid was locking me up. And now I was sinking.

Down to where the atmospheric pressure would crush even me.

Down to where my burning lungs would force me to exhale.

Down to black death.

<NO!>

I lunged and rolled. The squid hung on. I hammered it with pulsed clicks. Again and again! But my own body mass was helping to shield it.

I echolocated again and again, but it was on me. Then, one burst of clicks caught a wall of denser water and bounced back. It drew me a fragmented, eerie picture.

The squid was huge! Its arrow-shaped head, long as a small school bus, was pressed close to my head. Its sharp, snapping beak was only inches from my left eye. Eight twenty-foot arms and two longer tentacles clutched and tore at me. Sharp-edged suckers the size of saucers Super Glued the creature to me.

I was weakening.

It couldn't be!

No, I begged. No, it couldn't happen!

But the squid's grip tightened, tightened, relentless, like a python, imprisoning my tail, paralyzing me.

CLICK-CLICK-CLICK-CLICK-CLICK!

Whale clicks. But not from me!

<Tobias!>

<Hang on, Rachel, I'm here!> Tobias cried and fired again.

The squid convulsed. I felt its spasm of pain. Its arms fell away from me.