OK, I've finally gotten an internet connection, so I'm going to keep this short and to the point.

Please forgive any mistakes. I’m running on caffeine and nightmares, and the drops of rain hitting the tin roof above me are making me jumpy—

Ready to bite my fingernails off.

I work on an oil tanker. Or maybe I did and don't anymore, I'm not sure. It doesn't matter. What matters is that two days ago, the oil tanker I was working on hit something and started losing cargo into the ocean off the Peruvian coast.

I say cargo because although we were supposed to be carrying heavy crude, what we spilled was not crude. Yes, it was black and viscous, and if you saw footage of it you'd believe it was oil, but believe me when I swear it was something else entirely.

Something unnatural.

I have no idea if the spill made the news or not (probably not) but even if it did—or will—ignore what they say about it. It's a cover-up. It has to be, because there's no way in hell they'll tell you the truth about what we all saw.

I don't even know how to describe it.

Think of a spill you're familiar with, one you've seen in pictures: Deepwater Horizon, Amoco Cadiz, Exxon Valdez.

Now imagine that black stain on the surface of the water not just floating there but bubbling, frothing and reaching out with inky tentacle arms, attaching themselves to the side of the ship, rocking it, as they climb snail-like toward the deck, and all of us sweating as we stand in stunned silence watching.

I don't know what my thoughts even were.

At first I didn't believe my eyes. Then I thought, Fuck me! It's alive.

I didn't hear anyone say a word until one of those arms shot out, grabbed one of the crewmen, squeezed him so hard his innards started oozing out of him, then tossed him into itself, where he sank into blackness.

I want to throw up just remembering.

That's when someone screamed, and we all started screaming. Some of us ran dumbly towards it and others away, trying to find some place to hide. I saw friends of mine beat those arms with wrenches, before the liquid got into an orifice, distending them like balloon-men until they fucking popped into human rain.

It was bedlam.

Then I ran too—and that hideous thing followed me!

I saw a guy lop off three metres of one of its filthy arms with an axe, and the lopped-off bit just continued along, inching forward like a death worm, taking its hideous revenge on him before merging back into the original limb.

One of them slithered after me down a corridor, and when I thought I was just far enough ahead to duck into one of two passageways, the thing split in two, stalking both possibilities. Imagine the whole ship like that, pregnant with those oily tendrils leaving their mucous all over the floors, hunting us down.

Then the sirens came on.

A message blasted across the intercom telling us to get to the upper deck.

Even that was cut short, punctuated by the gargle of death.

I was lucky enough to to make it, but I don't know how many of us died before they got the escape choppers in. Maybe half. Last time I looked back, there wasn't even a ship anymore, just a dark mound drifting on the ocean.

When they got us back on land, they herded us into a room to give us a debrief. But I saw the mix of lawyers and machine guns, and I wasn't having any of that, so the moment I could, I ran.

Into the jungles.

Into night.

Now here I am, typing this fucking madness into the internet on a dial-up modem somewhere.

I'm sure they'll come for me too.

But I got the truth online, and there's no one they can kill to erase that.

As for it, God help us all.