His biggest fear was shells. Plain and simple. At the ripe age of seventeen, Vincent Marlowe had experience with shotgun shells. He’d seen the damage they could do, how men, armed with shells, were capable of wiping out an entire village. If they could do that on land? What could they do in the depths of the ocean?

Professor Donohue had gone down a laundry list of fish and other sea creatures to be wary of. Crestations he’d been familiar with for years. Since he was old enough to know of the dangers that the ocean possessed.

“You bring the Limewire back, you hear?”

Those were Donohue’s parting words as Vincent (Vinny, to almost all the villagers) set sail. Vinny watched as Donohue and the dock got smaller and smaller. Then the fog swallowed them whole. Making them and village a cloudy, distant memory.

Why hadn’t Donohue warned him of the shells? Was that species that elusive? A specimen shrouded in such mystique, that the most intelligent of their island had no intellect of them? Vinny peered over the side of his boat, arms growing sore from the constant rowing. He couldn’t see any fish, and thankfully he couldn’t see any shells.

But he did see the large shadow under his tiny boat. And that large figure saw him…his mere snack for the day.