After catching my breath, I was ready to continue onward.

There were almost no windows in this corridor, leaving everything near pitch black. It seemed logical to assume each room would have an emergency light source of some kind, so I decided my current objective would be finding a lantern.

To start, I crawled on my hands and knees towards the wall at my left, and then began to shuffle forward until I hit a doorway. I had no clue what the room I was entering was filled with, but I simply had to hope there was light to be found.

I blindly groped the walls, hoping for some sort of cabinet or closet to reveal itself. Eventually, I came upon a bag hung on the wall. Reaching inside, I felt a variety of objects, many of which I could not make out. What I did realize upon grasping, though, was a packet of matches.

Taking it out, I felt three matchsticks inside. I could not rely solely on the light they gave in the long run, but I could certainly use one for the time being just to see my surroundings. The matches were slightly wet, but with a few shakes it was most likely dry enough to ignite. I placed the head against the textured part of the package and ripped, and in a moment the surroundings were illuminated by a faint orange light.

Immediately, I was taken aback. The wetness on the matches and the entire wall was not river water as I had assumed, but blood. The entire wall was coated in smearing red handprints. The bag I found glistened red with fresh blood. Whoever left the room in that state was still around.

I could barely collect myself before the match sputtered out. Without much thought, I took out the second of the three and lit it. I had little time, so efficiency was my top priority.

With a hasty inspection, I saw that the bag had little objects of use inside. Even when I was trying to keep the match still, the flame began to wear out. I had to be quicker.

I looked about the room. It seemed to be private quarters… A bed. A chair. A desk… And a candle turned on its side atop said desk.

The light went out, but I memorized where it was well enough to make my way to the desk, and then to the large candle.

I sent the final match alight, and then the candle. Dropping the package to the ground, I held the candle in my left hand and retrieved the revolver with my right.

It was finally time to find my way out of the steel crypt, and I was lucky enough to bring myself protection from the maniac roaming the halls.

Going back to the corridor, I still saw very little. The candle I had only allowed me to see a few meters ahead of me, and it made me quite visible to whoever crawled in the dark. It was better than being blind, I decided. I was the one with the pistol and I had to be able to aim it.

I continued through the uphill hallway cautiously. For a few minutes, it was deathly quiet, then a piercing scream echoed through the metal chambers. Instinctively, my finger tightened on the trigger. If I was any more tense, I would have let off a round into the dark. Luckily, I was able to control myself, and my presence was still largely unknown. As much as I hated to approach the area where the scream emanated, there was no other choice than to go up if I wanted to escape.

The gun rattled and shook as I nervously aimed into the shadowy corridor in front of me. My arms were already tired from the frantic swimming only minutes earlier, as was my mind wandering and dizzy. I had to keep as much focus as possible. With how I felt, I was more likely to shoot my own foot than anything in front of me.

The bloody stains on the walls became fresher and fresher. There were prints on the floor from both someone’s hands and bare feet, meaning whoever was with me was traversing with on all fours like an animal…

The ship had sunk over a month from when I arrived, and there were no other crews to try and gain entrance to the insides, meaning that whoever this was had to have been a crewmate… I could only imagine what would happen to the psyche of someone forced to drink from the river and crawl in endless darkness for so long. Of course, from the scream, I could tell there had to be others. The mess hall was completely flooded, though, meaning any food left was gone. You either starved or became… Something not entirely human, at least in spirit and mind.

But I had to keep my mind on the task at hand. Much caution had to be put in my walking. With how wet my shoes were, I was likely to either slip or squeak against the slick metal. In either case, I would instantly lose the upper hand when it came to the maniac hiding before me. Take it slowly, I told myself. If I was going up, I was making progress.

As I approached the area the scream resonated from, I could hear the faint sound of bare feet and hands slapping against metal. It was growing louder.

He was coming towards me.

I covered the candle and ducked into the nearest room. As quietly as I could, I closed the door and turned the latch to lock it, although it seemed it was broken. There were many chairs and pieces of furniture that looked like they were used to barricade the door, but all of them were thrown aside and most likely useless at that point. I had to settle for the door being shut, but not locked.

Looking around the bed chambers, I heard a groan. On the floor was a man covered in blood, painfully raising his head to look at me. He breathed rasped breaths as his body was illuminated in the candlelight. Blood slowly gushed from large bitemarks scattered across him. Human bites. Long strands of flesh were ripped from his arms and legs, leaving him completely crippled. Part of his throat was bitten out, but he still managed to speak in a gargled whisper. “Kill… me…” The maneater outside didn’t just cannibalize the other survivors… He kept his food living… Fresh until they had no more meat to give… Again, the sailor spoke, barely raising his finger to point at the revolver in my hand. “Please… kill… me…”

I looked at my revolver, then back to him. It was right to end his suffering… but… If I used my pistol, the cannibal would know exactly where I was…

With painful guilt, I slowly shook my head. “I-I can’t…” I whispered back.

The man started to spasm in sadness and pain. Tears formulated in his eyes as he whispered through a choked windpipe. “Please…”

My throat clamped up with emotion. My body shook even harder than before as I was at a crossroads over what to do… If I shoot him, I’ll end up in the exact same state… I thought. I couldn’t use the revolver, or else I was dead. That meant I either left him there, or…

Noticing that I was in private quarters once more, I placed my candle on the standard desk and stuffed the revolver down the back of my trousers. Raising my hands up, I asked the sailor a silent question. He swallowed anxiously, giving a timid nod.

Slowly, I approached him. Getting on my knees, I wrapped my hands around his bleeding throat. “I’m sorry…” I whispered, and he merely stared into my eyes with a resigned gaze. I sat there for a long while, hesitating. The crewmate noticed, urging me with a struggled nod and a weak grunt.

Finally, I closed my eyes and began to squeeze. He exhaled deeply as his body tensed. What little movement he had left in his mostly eaten arms and legs were used as they weakly squirmed. More blood began to rush out of his neck and onto my hands, soaking each digit with the hot, sanguine, liquid.

I couldn’t bear to look him in the eyes as I did it, and instead closed mine as the next few seconds were spent clamping down on him.

Tears ran down my face as I counted the seconds in my head, trying to distract myself.

Two minutes, eleven seconds…

By the time it was finished, both my hands, wrists, and knees were soaked with blood. It became difficult to stand afterwards, both from how sick I felt and how slippery everything had become. I noticed there was a bed at the far side of the room, letting me dry my hands on the sheets as best I could.

Returning to the desk where I sat the candle, I saw a picture sitting on the wood. It was the same man on the floor, with a wife and an infant child happily smiling. Beside it was a piece of paper with a pencil beside it. It looked as though he had tried to write a note, but since there was no source of light in the room, everything scribbled on it was completely illegible. Hope drove him to write, but reality kept the words from coming out.

I picked up the portrait and placed it in his lifeless hand before I began to leave. I had seen death before, but never have I had to do such a thing…

Getting to the door, I retrieved the revolver from my pants. My offhand reached for the handle, but it shook so greatly that I could not grab hold. Every time I came across trauma, I tried to ignore it and pretend it never happened… But there my hand was, soaked in blood…

I gently placed my forehead on the door and tried to breathe. I had to fight off the urge to sob at what I had done, and instead stood there for a long time forcing myself to take deep breaths. I was not that sort of person. I only wanted to live normally… Yet I was destined to bathe in suffering, as it seemed.

Time went by quickly. I would have never known I was standing there for any significant amount of time if hot candlewax didn’t spill onto my hand. I still had plenty of light left, but that shock was enough to make me realize I was wasting time, and eventually the maneater would come back for seconds…

Finally snapped out of it, I reached for the door once more. My hand was not much better than before, but it was enough to grab hold and turn.

Once back into the corridor, I took no time to begin walking up the hall with haste.

If I had to guess, the cannibal was returning to where I emerged for water, which meant he would likely be behind me when he came back to his victim.

Keeping an eye and the revolver behind me, I continued. A few minutes of silence passed as I gained more and more altitude. Eventually, though, the sound of wet flesh galloping on hard steel became audible once more.

Someone had tampered with his food, and he was looking for revenge.

I had less than a moment to decide whether I should hide, run, or hold my ground. He knew I was around there, and he had the means to wait me out. Hiding was not an option. I could run, but my shoes were slippery on the metal and he was acclimated to his hunting grounds. My best bet was to drop the candle at my feet, place both hands on the revolver, and pray that his teeth would not hit before my bullet did.

The candle slowly began to roll down the corridor as my heartbeat quickened. The galloping got closer and closer as I tried to steady my aim.

Nerves got the best of me as I accidently pulled the trigger and let off the first shot. Keeping subconscious count, I knew there had to be four shots left.

After the deafening pop of the gun rang throughout the metal corridor, the maneater stopped for a second. Instead of galloping, I began to hear a shrill chuckle reverberate from below. The crypt crawler found humor in my fear.

The galloping started again, this time with much more confidence. The rolling candle still showed nothing, though, leaving me to only guess how far he was. I let off another shot, hoping I had estimated where the cannibal was. Another miss. Three shots left.

The movement became faster as he grew closer. Finally the candle had rolled far enough for me to get a glimpse at the maneater. He was covered in matted, wet, hair. His extremities were frail and thin like he was starving, but he had a bulging abdomen like he had gorged himself.

Finally granted vision, I tried to shoot again, and again it merely bounced on the metal floor. Two shots.

I began backing up as he got even closer. My time was running out, and every shot was immensely far from its mark.

Then, something surged up my right arm. The burning, acidic pain all down my limb surged with agony in the exact patterns of the eldritch symbols. In pain, my arm shifted and twitched, taking my aim to a drastically different position than it was.

My hand cramped as my finger pulled. I saw the naked maneater’s blood-soaked face and flesh-ridden teeth in the muzzle flash as he lunged towards me. The revolver shot went straight between his eyes, leaving nothing but a corpse to ram into my body.

The pain in my arm soothed as I took deep breaths while pushing the grotesque man off me. I was covered in even more blood, but I could not care less. He was dead, and I needed to push onward.

The candle was long gone, and I had no intention to retrieve it. I had to be close. Just keep going. You can’t stop now. My thoughts said in encouragement.

I clambered as quickly as possible up the corridor, now without fear. The hallway became steeper and steeper, eventually making it more of a climb than it was a walk. In any case, I continued, and within a few minutes I reached the end.

Light seeped from cracks in the warped metal wall. I continued to follow the brightness, eventually finding a small round window like the corridor that was underwater.

It was closed and far too small to escape from, but it granted me view of the outside. The cloudy night sky was hard to see, but it still filled me with hope. I was so close.

Bloody hands were stained on the glass of the window, and all around it. It appeared that the maneater also found the opening but, like me, was too large to escape through it.

I still had hope as I began to search the rooms near the window. There were a few crates of food, all opened and eaten. A few eaten rations all about. The one thing of use I did find was a variety of wrenches and hammers, covered in blood and scattered across the floor.

I had one last hope as an idea formed in my psyche.

Picking up a large hammer, I went back to the window. It was covered in blood, hair, and grey matter. It seemed to be the cannibal’s weapon of choice before he realized his teeth could do.

I tried to smash the window open, but with what little strength I had, it barely made a crack. With determination, I kept going, and eventually that crack turned into a growing spiderweb of breaks. After what felt like an eternity, I sent a final strike to the window and burst a sizable hole out.

Finally, I cleared the opening of stray shards of glass and pushed my arm through, point the revolver towards the sky, I pulled the trigger and let loose the last shot, sending an echoing blast of noise throughout the river. All I had left to do was wait and hope the others heard me.

It was a nightmare, but I had both the flowers and my life. Things could possibly even go back to normal… Although…

I knew that not to be true.