Carol Moncado

After a kinda crummy morning, I had a good time chatting with Jan and doing our Flash Fiction Friday.  This one needs a couple of caveats, but I’ll post them at the end.  Jan will be posting hers on her blog shortly.

So we set the timer for ten minutes and away we went!  The first sentence was the prompt.

The diver entered the hull of the ship through the gaping hole that sank her.  He wanted to explore a bit before he had to head back up to the surface.  He glanced behind him and saw his wife and dive partner close behind.  They slowly worked their way through the ship and then out through a portal on the deck.  He motioned to her that he was going to go over the side to look at that part of the ship.  She nodded and followed him.

The shipwreck was at least 200 years old according to the dive master.  The aging of the wood, the overgrowth of the [stuff] attested to that.  He went around the bow of the ship and came to an abrupt halt.  Or as abrupt a halt as one can come to when in the water.

His wife touched his arm as she rounded the bow behind him.  Bubbles floated in front of his face as he pointed towards the site that had stopped him mid-swim stroke.

There on the floor of the ocean was a dead sailor.  It wouldn’t be shocking if it was the bones of a sailor that had belonged to the ship when it sank, but this sailor was different.

The body was only partially decomposed.  He could see dog tags.  The uniform was modern.

So what was a dead sailor doing pinned underneath an old shipwreck in his dress whites?

He shook his head, grabbed his wife’s hand and kicked rapidly, propelling them upwards.  Time to call NCIS.

Caveats:

I know nothing about diving.  The little I do know comes from a couple old Baywatch episodes and random stuff I may or may not have picked up here and there from somewhere – or at least I think I did.  So I may be way off on the diving stuff.  Ah well.  No research allowed for Flash Fiction :).

NCIS is my all time favorite television show.  Ship at the bottom of the ocean [combined with the inability to get the opening scene from season 1 episode The Immortals out of my head] and you get NCIS :).