Filmer sat on the familiar office chair and leaned tiredly on the desk with his elbows. Water dripped from overhead with an incessant tic tic tic onto a stack of paper at the far edge of the desk. It dripped on what used to be his journal. The words were no longer legible.

The room had been decorated with an ocean theme that made him feel sick to his stomach. All around him were vibrant colors and jagged, organic edges that served as a constant reminder of his impending doom.

The light above was a dull yellow-orange color.  A color which could not be seen under the surface under normal circumstances. It was a small comfort that had become everything to him. With that light as company, he did not feel the water all around him, the crushing pressure of it, did not feel as though he was already gasping for breathe and inhaling only salty, fishy water. The incandescent bulb above flickered briefly (did it just acknowledge his fondness of it? He fancied that it did) then resumed it's steady, ugly shine.

He wiped the splatter from the surface of the desk with his sleeve and used the other to dry the remaining streaks of moisture. The drawer on the bottom left had kept his remaining supply  of paper safe from the leaks. He retrieved a piece of it and placed it at the center of the dry portion of desk before him. The pen he had been using for the previous seven months (blue ink, of course, and the cap thoroughly chewed) was nearly out of ink. This would have to be short.

He began writing.

I'm Filmer Versteeg. You would have known me quite well, but my journal has recently been destroyed. All three hundred pages and six years of it. I'll do my best to sum it up for you, but I must be quick about it. My pen is nearly out of ink, you see, and I've been cut off from where I keep the other pens.

I don't know for sure why I am writing this. I suppose I just want some piece of me left behind when I go. There is another reason this is futile, come to think of it. Once I'm gone, dead, caput, merde, DEAD, there will be no one left to maintain the place. The leaks will grow, those cursed leaks, and they will grow and grow until there is nothi

He stopped writing. A single, deep sigh escaped his mouth and he dropped the pen onto the floor. The mood had become so desperate these last few days he did not even feel like chewing it.

The light above flickered once more, buzzed loudly, and then went out.

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Author guidance for This story

An experiment--a city built in the depths of an ocean--has gone terribly wrong. Something happened. Some event decimated the city. Now, the few survivors, cut off from each other by the destruction of the event combined with the crushing pressure of the depths, try to survive, and, ultimately, find their way back to the surface.

Create a character, or use one you've already created. Put them somewhere you might find in any average city, but deep underwater and now entirely isolated from other sections of the city.

Third person past.

I'm hoping for eventual character interactions, which might mean we'll eventually be writing other people's characters into our chapters. It'd be best to keep that to a minimum since we won't know the character's of others as well as our own, but it'll have to happen eventually. The reason I mention this is that I think it'd be best to pick a character you aren't too attached to so you won't be offended if someone else needs to write your character into their chapter.

I'm starting with Filmer. He's kind of a neurotic janitor. He tended to the cleanliness and small matters of maintenance of the governmental quarters before the event. He's been isolated to this place and survived off of the non-perishables he's collected from the quarters. He spends most of his time doing what his limited skills allow to keep the leaks in check.

If you'd like, I can put in here a brief description of any new characters introduced for reference purposes.

updated Sep 12 '10 by Atropos