Fiction Point Episode Fourteen: On the Hill the Kraken Wakes

 On the Hill the Kraken Wakes

Aiden knew he had to move once he had studied the local area and discovered his house was only 50 metres above sea level. There was a hill 4 miles outside of town and that was 100 metres higher. So, he sold up and bought a new house at the most affordable mid-way point on the hill and moved his family in just as sea levels started rising.

Aiden could now wake up in the morning and watch the sun glistening off the shallow pools which occupied the deserted town below. Then dinghies became the in-thing, with power boat motors revving the commute into adapted high-rise offices. Yet everyone knew it was not going to last, as the height of the sea level accelerated.

 

One day, Aiden noticed their nice neighbours the Fleetwood’s, their children and their dog, had left and gone elsewhere. There was some logic to that, everyone was all ways thinking of moving to higher ground, he just thought it odd they hadn’t said goodbye.

Eventually, when Aiden and his family did move again, they had the pick of the best homes right on top of the hill, and it was all for free. When the waters had finally swallowed their old house, and there were just a few families left, they all wondered if that was as high as the sea was going to get.

Then, one morning, Aiden discovered they were the only family left on top of the hill. He had gone to visit the McCallister’s to discuss a little barter. Their front door was left open and there was a pungent smell, like fresh earth after a lot of rain. As he called out, he noticed there was a thick gooey slime coating the walls, on the upturned furniture, up the stairs, in the bedrooms and on the beds. He also discovered the same thing in the Sanderson’s place: no people, just slime.

As Aiden whispered to his wife the discovery, so his two children listened behind the door. They decided it was time to tell daddy what they knew.

‘It’s the Kraken,’ said Dominic,

who was slightly older than Freya, who was only five and a half. ‘We’ve seen it before. It comes out of the sea at night and uses its fingers to take people away. It wraps them up in a parcel and then goes back into the sea to eat them because its hungry.’ ‘Yes,’ said Freya, ‘it’s the sea monster.’

Aiden laughed, to humour his children, and to put his wife at ease. ‘Well, if the Kraken does come,’ said Aiden, ‘we will poke its eye out, cut off its tentacles, and have fried octopus for tea!’

The next morning Dominic and Freya couldn’t find mummy and daddy. So, they played in the front garden, and then made up a song, as they looked out to sea:

On the hill the Kraken wakes

To see what he can eat and take

He wraps them up and takes them down

To where we left the house in town.

END

Acknowledgement: John Wyndham, The Kraken Wakes

Flash fiction by Simon Marlowe, 7^th Aug 2021

Words: 500