Stay Away from the Water

Many of my friends have asked me over the years as to why I never swim in the sea, I have never been honest with them, making excuses such as: "I don't want to swim through people's piss" or "the sea is cold". While both of the previous statements may be true, that isn't the real reason why I prefer dry land. I've never told anyone why but I just cannot keep this bottled up inside anymore. My name's Dwayne by the way.

It happened 8 years ago, I was 10 years old. Me and my family went down to the beach at Felixstowe to make the most of the sun, living in the UK we rarely get any hot days so when the weather forecast said it was going to be sunny all day we all rushed to the beach. It was a fun day, we built sandcastles, skipped stones and pretty much did anything a normal family would do at the beach. The beach was exceptionally overcrowded by midday and you would see some guy's moobs pretty much everywhere you looked along with kids thrashing in the water, struggling to swim as their parents tried to help them, you had the occasional kid running to their parents, claiming to have seen a scary monster in the water obviously mistaking seaweed for a tentacle of some kind.

Me and my sister decided to play on the groynes you know, those concrete structures that are supposed to interrupt water flow, we usually go there looking for crabs with our nets. I stuck my net in the water and swiped it around, hoping to catch a crab after a few minutes of sweeping I felt something in my net and pulled but to no avail, I thought it must have been a very big and strong crab, this made me even more excited so I pulled even harder, I even called my sister over to help but even our combined efforts couldn't force this creature to give in, we gave one last pull but it pulled harder, so hard in fact that we let go of the net and lost it to the sea. Not wanting my parents to yell at me for losing the net I tried looking for it, hoping the crab would've let go and the net would be floating somewhere while my sister went to search elsewhere. In what I thought at the  time to be a stroke of luck, the net was floating next to the groyne, I could literally just about reach it from where I was squatting, I got down as low as possible to retrieve the net but in that moment of desperation I slipped on some seaweed and fell into the icy cold water.

I'm not going to lie, I'm not a particularly good swimmer so I struggled to swim up to the surface of the salty, cold water. I was just about to break through to the surface when I felt something snag onto my leg, I desperately tried to pull myself free but whatever it was too strong, thinking it was seaweed I looked down to see if I could untie it, I felt my blood run cold. It was a hand, not a human hand though, this one was webbed, jet-black and had three digits each ending in talons that must have been an inch long. Looking around I regrettably saw what this inhuman appendage was attached to; an eel-like head with six glowing white eyes and double rows of needle-like teeth, it had a vaguely humanoid form with two arms and legs but that's where the similarities to humans end; it had a tail longer than its body and its legs ended with webbed, reptilian feet. I couldn't believe what I was seeing and needless to say I was scared out of my mind, if I didn't drown first, this thing would certainly be the end of me. I did the only thing I could, I thrashed about as much as I could trying to loosen its grip, I kicked at its head to try and discourage it, I felt my body slowly getting weaker and felt as if I was about to lose consciousness. The creature eventually lost interest and let me go, I swam to the surface as quickly as possible, looking back for a moment to see the creature swimming off, in the distance I saw many silhouettes of creatures similar to the one that grabbed me. I reached the shore, still shaken by my experience. I completely forgot about the net and chose not to mention it to my family, they would never believe that I was attacked by sea monsters.

In the end my dad had to swim out to retrieve the net, he wasn't attacked by the creatures, they probably only attack children, needless to say that was to be the last time I swim in the sea.

I will always remember that day, those things, I still don't understand how something like that could exist in the Britain's seas without anyone noticing until today, every now and then there are reports of children who claim to have been attacked by something while swimming and in more tragic cases there were reported drownings, the bodies were always found, some horribly mutilated with large gashes on their bodies and teeth marks around the throat, so these monsters obviously don't attack children for food, no, they kill for sport, that is why I urge you now, if you have children, keep them away from the sea! Those things will kill them without remorse! I'm 18 years old now and I haven't been in the sea since that day and I don't plan to.