Melvin Spauvac's impressive amateur homemade submersable.

Melvin Spauvac's impressive amateur homemade submersable.

From the "tales that leave you wanting more", series.


Inspiration song- "Fixing a hole". Beatles.


Alarm clock rings.

Melvin Spauvac rolls away from the noise, and painfully onto his morning wood, is jolted into further wakefulness, rolls back, is forced to stand all the way up to reach the off button.

He sits back down on the edge of the bed for awhile, dream subsiding, wood subsiding, head wobbling but clearing, stomach bubbling.

Lifts his leg, lets out long morning fart.

Waves hand behind back to dispurse the smell.
Morning excercises.
All the way awake now.

Upsy daisy, Mr. Spauvac.

Heads to the kitchen, opens fridge, gets out the jam, the cold cuts, and the bowl of egg salad prepared the night before, and starts making sandwiches.

Wraps the sandwiches in saran wrap, stuffs them into a brown paper bag, slips a single individually wrapped twinkie in.
All set now.

Looks down.
Hobbles back to the bedroom, finally puts some pants on.

NOW all set.

Out to the office now, fax machine is tweetling, waits a bit, come on, come on, damned cover sheet. There.
Ah, the new map's in.

Checks the coordinates with a compass and slide rule held against a globular form painted black and imprinted with all the known galaxies.

Knods with satisfaction, and finally heads out to the garage.

And there she is.
The white albacore.
The envy of the amatuer submersable community.
Not the prettiest, or the most expensive, but the best.
As far as Melvin cares anyway.

Pats her for good luck, and climbs up into the top hatch.
Closes, screws 'er tight, gets the sandwich bag situated, and we're ready to go.

Fires up the power, flicks an array of switches, turns some dials to the settings on the faxed in map, and presses the big red button.

Pedestal opens, leaving the white albacore dangling 2 feet above the floor, and seconds after, the the boson tunneler fires up with a green hiss.
Garage floor wavers, becomes transluscent, and at last the anticipated moment.
The support claw releases, and drops her in.
Gloosh.

Melvin taps at the CD player, and gets Sgt. Peppers fired up.
Opens bag, unwraps the peanut butter and jelly and slowly nibbles waiting to reach the right depth.

When the sandwich is done, depth is reached, so, fires up the sonar and waits.

3 songs into the CD, the fish start showing up.

Melvin digs out one of the disposable cameras from the glove compartment, as wells as his notbook with the blue pen stuffed into the ring binder.

Lot of the usual types today.

Glowey things.
Mostly circular.
Couple squares.
Trumpet thing with a flagella.
Pink one today, that's new, snap, scribble.

Goes on like this for about 45 mintes.

Then Big Bob comes.

He seems angry.

Doesn't see the albacore though.

Nope, fakeout, he's coming right at her.

No prob, Melvin's already unwrapping the egg salad sandwich.

Loads it into the sample/launcher hatch, and blasts it into Big Bob's mouth.

Big Bob hates egg salad as much as Melvin.

He'll stay away for a good week or so now, before his tiny fish brain forgets.

Then, about three fourths of the way through Sgt. Peppers, and half way through the roast beef sandwich, and well after the twinkie, is when the really odd thing happend.

Melvin mistook it for a freaky new type of trumpet fish at first.

But nope, it wasn't.

It was a submersable.
And only about 8 yards away.
And not one from the submersable society either.

This one was coming up from the ocean floor, and upside down.

And by squinting, Melvin could see the occupant.

A woman, about 5 foot 3, 120 pounds, torquise skin, luminescant blue hair in a sort of prince albert with two pony tails in the back, and pink eyes.

She seemed to recoil in horror when she noticed Melvin.

Gee, thanks a lot lady.
Eyeroll.

Snap, scribble.

And with that, she worked some controls out of sight of the edge of her porthole, and the submersable quickly receeded back into the ocean floor.

Melvin noted that it was getting late, and he ought to head back himself.

So, he finished his sandwich, got all his junk situated, and raised back up.

On the way back up, he noted there were still 5 more shots left on the film.
He was tempted to use 'em up on any old thing to get it developed quicker, but he reminded himself that'd be wasteful as well as unprofessional, so stuffed the camera back into the glove compartment after the journal.

Tommorrow.
Sort it out tommorrow.

THE END.

Good. What I want more of though is:

Loads more description of the guy's submarine. At least how big it is, a 'model' name and a size. Give technobable specs if need be.

Where is this? Something like 'Sanfransico Bay' or even 'Lake Lainer' would do. Or make up a name. Names make things real. Guys and submarines need names.

I don't know where you're going with the mermaid woman. She should either be weirder or sexier in my opinion.

The submarine society meetings and codes should be referenced.

If the beatles is playing, you should quote certain lyrics as being interrupted by the plot events to get a feel of it still playing in the background.

I just realised you did give the guy's full name in bits. You should state it all at once once and make a comment on how he loves/hates it or a joke what people say about it.

You didn't get that?
There IS no lake.
He went into the floor with a phase thingy.

Ah.

No, I didn't get that.

Eh, maybe I skimmed by it too fast.

Wanted to not make a big deal out of it, like it was as normal a thing as the sandwiches and the alarm clock in his world.

Though, I sprinkled enough weird little clues that if you read it a couple more times, you should see, well, some freaky shit.

Is that it? The whole story? Or is it the first chapter?

I really enjoyed it. But I want background, and more about the mermaid chick. Who is this guy? Why is he doing fish research? Why did another submersible come from the bottom, upside down?

I need questions answered, Slim!

BTW, it's submersible, with an "I". I think.

Yep, hence "tales that leave you wanting more".

Well, it worked!

I want more, dammit!

I hate unanswered questions in a story. It leaves me....unsatisfied. Like sex without orgasm.

But that's a personal preference.....

Well, the general consensus seems to be that at the least it needs another draft.

Meh, later. After Heck2.

Hey....you keepin' the Slim avatar?

For awhile.

Sick of Kool-Aid. Gives me motion sickness, and it reminds me of who made it.

Now I just gotta get used to callin' you Slim, instead of Kool Aid Man...

Well I caught the phasing-into-the-floor bit. Where'd he go, some kind of sub-quantum dimension? The Bleed? And I reckon the mermaid girl was from another dimension on the other side of the phase . . . or something.

It reads like a glimpse into a shared-continuity universe that you can pull bits out of whenever you want to tell a story, but all the stories tie together. Is that what you were going for?

Essentially.

Yep!

Hmm, more or less.