Week Thirty-Three Winning Entry

PROMPT: EXPERIENCE

Twenty meters.

The water was already getting darker. Lisa Berkley hated the confined feeling that the blackness brought with it. The experience was frightening She forced herself to relax. She couldn’t use up the air in her tank before she got to the bottom.

Forty meters.

The wreck of the Calliope should be right beneath her. The old pirate she’d paid to find her husbands boat told her it would be here. She hated the cold and the claustrophobia. But she had to know. She grabbed her tether life-line to the surface tighter.

Sixty meters.

At this rate, she’d only have about ten minutes at the bottom to find the wreck, confirm that it’s her husband’s boat and have enough air left for her staged assent.   The dive master she hired to take her here—the only one in Puerto Escondido– had explained in graphic detail what would happen if she got the bends. Made her sign a waiver when she insisted on going down alone.

Seventy-four meters.

A shape loomed beneath her. Her dive light bounced off the gleaming metal cleats of a freshly sunken boat. About twenty –feet long, the deep-v hulled craft lay on its side. Swimming to the back, she made out a word painted on the stern. A word she’d painstakingly painted only three weeks ago.

Calliope.

Her fears confirmed, she slowly made her way along the ship to see if she could find the cause of the sinking. The hull seamed intact. But there were small holes riddled above the water line…bullet holes.

“Jose, it’s Lisa,” she said into her full mask microphone. “Do you copy?”

“Si, senora. Are you all right?” a static-filled voice came back immediately. “I was getting worried.”

“I’m fine. I found the boat. It looks like it’s been shot up pretty bad.”

Static.

“Jose? Did you copy?”

“I’m truly sorry senora. You weren’t supposed to find the boat. Your husband found the treasure, but wasn’t willing to share.”

There was a tug on the line, and Lisa’s tether and communication line went slack.

Lisa remained unusually calm. She realized now what and who her husband had been involved with. She vowed to make it to the surface and make those responsible pay.

That thought alone accompanied her as she made her way slowly to the surface…