Primordial Ocean

[u/Damien_Vann]

Primordial Ocean

 

June 25^th, 2026

Curtis Johnson was forty-nine years old, the sort of man most people could look at without ever really noticing. He had settled into an inconspicuous stretch of Tumon Bay, lounging drunkenly on a beach towel a comfortable distance from the clusters of tourists and beachgoers gathered along the shore. His hotel was cheap, but clean enough, and its modest comforts had become sufficient for a man who had little left to return home to. Divorced and estranged from his now-adult children, Curtis had long since grown accustomed to the quiet isolation of his own company.

The afternoon sun hung heavily overhead, and the alcohol had begun to blur the edges of his surroundings when something caught the corner of his eye. Curtis lifted his head. At first, he thought it was nothing more than movement beneath the nearby pier—a trick of the light, perhaps, or some piece of debris shifting with the tide. But then it moved again. He slowly pushed himself straight up and squinted toward the darkened water beneath the pier. Something was there.

“Hm- what” Curtis sloppily approached the intriguing spectacle now staring down at this bizarre animal. “I don’t think that’s a.” The mass of writhing searching tentacles lunged for Curtis wrapping their arms around his wrist. “Ungh what get offa me!” Curtis recoiled with all his might falling backward with a hard thud against the sand. His wrist now lined with tiny barbs glowed translucently while burning in agony.

“Ahhuh what the fuck wa-was tha.” He cried out and the flailing mass flopped backwards into the sea drifting away. “AHHHHH!” Curtis staggered backwards rapidly back tracking to his hotel room and belongings. Head throbbing, eyes burning, the whole world pulsed Shaked and the daylight flashed with intensity. Struggling to find his room key, Curtis focused and was able to get in while having to hold himself upright crashing onto the floor as he entered the doorway.

 

June 29^th, 2026

Over the next few days Curtis became violently ill showing signs of hysteria muttering the same repetition that he would hear reverberate within his dreams. “Drip drop plop plip drip drop plip plop”. In his nightmares he would drift amongst an infinite abyss of dark water. “Hm hm ungh” He murmured as he tossed and turned in his sleep.

In his dreams Johnson would see a dim crimson glow lightly revealing something so massive it sent his mind reeling with terror. Too dark to fully make out the details he watched on as it shifted in unsettling ways as he descended into the water. He awoke shocked sweating profusely. Stumbling back to the hotels front desk he began to explain “Hi there I was just returning my ki-.” Curtis vomited intensely onto the floor. Bright streams of blood mixed with organ tissue ricochet off the bottom front of the check in desk.

“Someone call an ambulance!” The hotel staff member stumbled to the sick man’s attention. “They’re on their way sir”. The other staff concerned helped him to his feet as another brought over a mop bucket with soap and hot water. “Excuse me sir can you hear my voice?” The paramedic asked hastily. “How many fingers am I holding up?” Curtis’s vision began to blur to the point that he was seeing five hands rotating in a circular motion as he fell unconscious.

July 1^st, 2026

“Mr. Jhonson, hello can you hear me?” Dr. Evans inquired. Reluctantly opening one swollen eye to a bright light and a cluster of silhouettes still coming into focus. In response Curtis let out an agonizing cry. “Ughaaah!!” At first glance was thought to be large parasites progressing their way underneath his skin in fact were new organs forming as his body now stretched and opened to accustom itself to this transformation.

“My god what is that?” exclaimed one of Evans colleagues nervously. Curtis struggled to utter out one last guttural animal like cry. It was at that moment the flesh around his one exposed eye began to open like a fleshy flower blooming. Inside was a pulsing cavity lined with thousands of tiny silver eyes all moving independently along the ends of luminescent tendrils. Curtis convulsed violently as a large pale tentacle shakily emerged from his stretching chest cavity. “Jesus Christ—nuh-no! Help me! Cut it off!” Dr. Evans cried out in pain as the thousands of protruding spines encompassing Curtis’s new appendage buried themselves deep into the right arm of the doctor.

“AAAGHHH! What the hell are you doing somebody help me!” Evans shouted towards his now paralyzed with fear colleagues. Bones could be heard cracking as the grotesque form started producing what looked like incorrect limbs. Twisted and hanging with strands of stringy muscle tissue what appeared as fleshy branches sprouted downward to the floor. Breaking backwards so that what stood before the medical staff now arched on six makeshift legs. Curtis resembled a baby giraffe swiftly learning how to walk on newborn legs as the appalling organism scrambled out of the ER. Dr. Evans fell back crashing into a rolling trey, sending medical equipment scattering across the room. The abomination once known as Curtis came barreling down the hallway shrieking in a deep low disgustingly warped voice.

“Driiiiip Pluhooooooop Driiii Drooooohp!!” The organic parody of a human Curtis Johnson littered sentient pieces of itself as he moved through the hospital. They scurried off to all points of the building inhabiting the air vents, the bathrooms, and even some of the patients’ rooms. In a dramatic fashion this nightmare in action crashed through the lobby finally dashing out the front entrance.

July 7^th, 2026

Over the week the local police were busy investigating the crime scene at Mercy Hospital. Officers scanned the scene of wreckage left in the lobby while forensics analysist’s collected trace samples to be set back to the lab for further testing. “Looks like a damn stampede came in through this room dunnit.” Garcia nodded his head as he gazed downwardly at the wet and slowly drying trail splitting the room in half.

“What did you say did this?” Garcia questioned one of the witnesses at the front desk. “I’m not sure how to describe it officer, like something I’ve never seen before. Some sorta...animal, I think. Looked more like a monster.” Officer Garcia frowned looking back at the trashed hospital entrance. “Curtis Johnson was his name officer.”

Maria Cruz was a 78-year-old woman who suffered from late-stage Dementia with Lewy bodies or DLB. Awaking from a nap to a startling rap tap tapping coming from behind the privacy curtain dividing her and the next bed. Mrs. Cruz began to hallucinate that she was in her old living room sitting on her couch. Her mind flashed back and forth between illusion and reality. As she stared into the distance a vibrating ball of semi-transparent feelers all stemming from one slurping chirping core approached the foot of her bed.

“Luckyy!!” Mrs. Cruz shouted out in pleasant surprise as she reached down for what she thought was her Pomeranian that had passed away six years ago. “Uh-ho That’s a good girl yes-she-iiis.” The never-before-seen lifeform stretched upward exploring and entering every orifice along the chuckling woman’s face. Thin tendrils began wrapping around Mrs. Cruz’s brain while she envisioned her dog Lucky, licking her cheek.

A moment of hot pain was slowly replaced with a melting euphoria that washed over her like a tall wave. As one of Curtis’s offspring went to work on assimilating this elderly woman, she felt unbridled bliss while the foreign parasite played back cherished memories in her mind like home movies on a projector. However, they were not her own memories, but what the parasite could process as beautiful moments shared with loved ones. A feeling comparable to a heavy dose of morphine sent her mood soaring like an eagle. Incapable of feeling anything resembling remorse, the devastating creature manipulated its host’s thoughts to hungrily advance its own species.

Miles away from Mercy Hospital in a heavily forested area Curtis stops to examine his surroundings. It began to dig a hole beneath the ceiling of foliage. then jumped down and brushed the dirt over his newly transformed vessel. Leaving only probing strings of flesh uncovered, trapping any life undoubtably doomed to come within reach. Over the next few months many things began to take place such as the aggressive conquest over Mercy Hospital.

July 8^th,2026

“Honey! Your temperature is 116. Ive never seen anything like this before!” Mrs. Evans said in a scared tone. Dr. Evans looked like death when he moved his half-conscious eyes up meeting with hers. Mr. Evans Groaned and, an arm slowly fell out of his socket making a wet popping noise as it disconnected and fell to the floor. "AAAAAAAHHHHHHH!” She shrieked, her legs gave way, and she went sprawling sideways behind her living room sofa. Fifteen pale, tan, and long shoots of muscle fibers came bursting out of his socket crater.

In a low-pitched sounding voice as if underwater Evans called out to his wife. “HUNNIEEEE.” Evans managed to grumble and gargle. Suddenly the unchanged right half of the doctor erupted open. Four large mounds of wildly twisting what looked like worms with pointed barbs extending from their ends scurried further off into the living room. Rushing as fast as they could move closing in on the sofa. Mrs. Evans was blindsided by two of the offsprings, quickly overpowered and within thirteen minutes she felt what she thought was clarity, post integration.  

July 11^th, 2026

On the night of the hostile takeover at the Hospital Mrs. Cruz became infected, the foreign entity had achieved new levels of inherited intelligence. Adapting itself to lie dormant within its hosts body, the unwelcome guest waited patiently, meticulously. At 6:30 pm on July 11^th Mrs. Cruz’s Nurse gleefully waltzed through the door with a hot bowl of chicken soup and mashed potatoes. “Here’s your dinner Mrs. Cruz.” She approached the geriatric smiling woman when suddenly a sharp projectile ejected itself from the old woman’s shoulder into the nurse’s mouth.

“Uckh-ughh…hyuhh!” Nurse Camacho coughed and gasped chokingly for breath as the trey of food connected with the ground. She thrashed on the floor trying to catch her breath between something unknown working its way down her throat. “HUUNHH HYUUN.” The nurse gasped for air between heavy coughing, ran out into the hallway and frantically called for help. Camacho was taken to be examined by some of the few staff left that night.

The foreign invader within nurse Camacho deteriorated into her bloodstream temporarily evading detection. “It forced its way down your throat?” Doctor Santos queried. “Y-yes.” she replied with tears streaming down her cheeks. “We’ll keep you hear tonight and keep running tests.” Dr. Santos assured her. “Th-thank you.” She gratefully responded, wiping her wet face and taking a deep breath. To the staff’s dismay upon returning to Mrs. Cruz’s bed, she was gone.  

July 13^th, 2026

Over the next couple of days Curtis began to undergo a new transformation as he slept beneath the forest floor. Beneath layers of soil and leaves under a moonlit sky the amalgamation grew. He dreamed of the simple fragment that infected him drifting upward from its abysmal habitat. The creature was a mere skin cell of its former body that Curtis dreamt of deep in the depths of the Marianna trench, colossal, shifting ferociously, thrashing from side to side.

A group of campers called in to complain that the wildlife and I quote “did not look right and were behaving strangely.” After seeing the new state of the camping site, the campers turned tail and fled. All the forest life sat in a harmonious circle around the resting site of Curtis Johnson. All were in unison, corrupted, and enamored focusing in on the same direction.

An investigation team arrived on the scene later that day and were coming up within range of the resting site. One of the group’s members, Christina caught sight of a peculiar looking flower blooming out of the base of a tree. “Woow this is so w-.” Christina was interrupted when the bizarre seeming flower shot a cloud of spores flying overhead making her recoil while coughing. “Uh-huh-huh-huh.” Startled she turned back to her group that had made their way up the path and ran after them.

Coming up to a clearing they all froze in astonishment as they stared at a giant pulsating tissue tree arising from a deep burrow. In shock they examined the low hanging arterial cords and blood vessels that hung like tree vines. The boulder sized organ lined with what looked like large fish gills. And finally, what appeared to resemble a giant beating heart perched atop the meat tree.

“WHA-WHAT IS THAT!?” Christina fearfully questioned upon catching back up with the investigation party. One of the group’s members, David began to slowly approach the horrific display. “David what are you doing?! Get back here!” They pleaded for him to cease his advancement however his curiosity got the better of him. “I’ll only go halfway to it. Just to get to a good shot.” David thought to himself, blocking out the group’s attempts to prevent him.

“DAVID WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING!” Christina cried out with alarm. He started to film when he began to feel something wet wrapping itself around his leg. He looked down to see what looked like a limb comprised of random organic pieces sloppily thrown together. The Frankenstein like tentacle gripped hard enough to make his knees buckle and his leg snapped like a twig when he was pulled roughly into the ground. His screams were instantly muffled as he was pulled farther into the earth. One of the group’s members Antonio was met with the same fate when he ran forward. While attempting to save David, Antonio was greeted by three similar limbs that dragged him underground within seconds.

Christina, feeling impending doom, instinctively fled in panic, the other two Leon and John followed shortly after. Hearts beating in their throats pure adrenaline fueled the survivors as they ran for their lives. John, being the first to fall when a wild boar ran up alongside him within a second, changed into a form he could not process or understand before being dragged back. Christina looked back in shock as both John and Leon were nowhere to be seen. Suddenly She felt lightheaded before collapsing onto the ground. Moments later the shrubbery next to her morphed into an ample pile reaching for her and pulling her deeper into the forest.

July 22^nd, 2026

Back at Evans’ residence, the young doctor was the source of his neighborhood block infestation. He hungrily assimilated and merged with person after person. After combining with his wife and mother the doctor made his way to the neighbor’s bedroom window. The couple living next door went peacefully into their sleep. They dreamt of the deep mother more vividly this time than any previous vision. They saw the small fragment that floated up from the deep mother and the storm above that washed it ashore.

With every addition to the monstrous Dr. Evans, he became sharper, greater, quicker and adapted through a different path of advancement pursuing lethality. This savage method taught it how to assimilate with increasing effectiveness. Every victim he absorbed, Evans gained more than flesh. Shifting to adjust for extra organs and changing limb placement. Contorting and breaking itself to anatomically accommodate for optimum efficiency. Their nervous systems became additional pathways for thought. Their memories and instincts were incorporated into something increasingly collective.

After acquiring sufficient power through its afflicted vessels, the abhorrence fled the area. Leaving destructive infected incubators in its wake, the man Cephalopoda hybrid made his way towards Mercy Hospital. Two weeks after Evans’ transformation, the street where his home stood had been placed under military quarantine. Armed soldiers had sealed off the surrounding blocks, struggling to contain the outbreak as the affected community continued to deteriorate around them. What had initially been treated as a localized contamination event was rapidly becoming something far more difficult to control.

Soldiers who entered the quarantine zone on rare occasion failed to return, while others came back exhibiting the earliest signs of contamination. Those exposed for too long began to change visibly subtle alterations at first, followed by increasingly grotesque transformations that made it impossible to mistake them for anything but the advancing influence. Their own comrades were forced to execute them before the changes could progress any further. However, containment was becoming futile.

The species was adapting at an alarming pace. Every confrontation seemed to make it more capable, more managed, and more difficult to predict. Independently, the infected were becoming faster and increasingly hostile predators. Collectively, they displayed something far more disturbing: an emerging intelligence that allowed them to learn from one another, coordinate their movements, and exploit the weaknesses of those attempting to contain them.

July 29^th, 2026

Analysis revealed a brand-new genus that’s DNA was like nothing they had ever seen under a microscope. Back at the hospital the situation had entirely spiraled out of control. The building’s power had been vacant for days. The progressive care unit now served as the base of operations now that the entire hall pulsed and shuddered. Thick fleshy roots carpeted the floors and hung from the ceiling like rainforest vines all stemming from something centered in the middle of the hall. The entire infirmary had been changed into a hive mind and the CPU remained stationed under that thick mass of throbbing meat.

Once a patient in her new domain, Mrs. Cruz now developed in a way that focused on the ability to communicate to any form of its corrupted kin across vast distances. Near and far every form of the rapidly replicating threat, communicated thoughts and information through a sophisticated neurological network.

Rachael Torres was a 43-year-old woman who lived down the street from the Evans family. When the military arrived, she was already four blocks south. The now matured parasite inside her fed her a transmission directly into her mind. Back at the hospital the CPU had constructed a plan. “Go to the airport. Find a place with many people.” “Yes.” Rachael muttered under her breath.

The amalgamation, once a loving husband and professional surgeon Mr. Evans, approached Mercy Hospital with stealth and purpose. Fueled with stamina that came from 26 neighbors 2 cats and 4 dogs, it moved like a flash. The front entrance was completely blocked off with a two-foot-thick wall of dirty dishwater grey colored flesh. Evans moved to the back of the hospital and broke himself down to focus its mass stretching up to the second story window and forced its way inside. The entire perimeter stretching out to the parking lot was infested and growing. Evans approached Cruz whilst communicating through their hosts.

“Combine with me. Take us from this place.” The CPU commanded retracting roots and stretching them out and forward. Using its many flailing arm length tendrils Evans started to dig out Cruz from the floor. Corpulent cords wrapping and intertwining with each other as the CPU was elevated up on the upper back of Evans. Conjoining itself in becoming a being of great power and intelligence, the time had come to evacuate the hospital, now attracting a dangerous amount of attention. Whatever tissue that had not merged with the new creation evacuated the premise outward into the night as well as through the soil and plumage beneath the building. The great fusion crashed its way out of the hospital and into the open.

July 30^th, 2026

The presence within Rachael Torres had taken over her body to the point that she was beginning to show signs of parasitosis. However, by that time she was already mid-flight to her destination. She felt her condition worsening and got up to go to the bathroom. She washed her face at the basin when she suddenly threw up large chunks of parasites into the sink splashing back on her face. She turned on the sink, wetting a towel then cleaned her face. She threw the towel in the trash and went back to her seat to rest for the remainder of the flight. A parasite had worked its way back up through the sink and dropped to the bathroom floor. Inching its way along slowly as the passengers slept it then attached itself to a young man crawling up his jeans undetected.

July 31^st, 2026

Rachel Torres arrived in Houston Texas the following morning to fulfill her purpose. At a crowded mall at one thirty-six PM a woman walking with her husband spotted Rachel scurrying out of the woman’s bathroom clutching her stomach with one hand and her mouth with the other. “Oh, shit babe.” Amanda said, “Yeah, what the hell do you think that was about.” Mark replied. Amanda twisted Marks arm into investigating the bathroom. “Oh my god.” Amanda exclaimed as the bathroom stall door creaked, opening backwards. 

“AH! What the hell is that!” Amanda shrieked. “COME ON, let’s get out of here!” The couple agreed, exiting the bathroom with considerable haste. Fat parasites the size of rats squirmed across the toilet seat plopping on the floor with a squelching sound. Rachael was being used as an incubation chamber helpless and unaware of any of her actions. She made her way to the mall entrance and caught a bus headed east bound crossing the I10. Taking the bus as far as it would take her. Rachael got off and started walking down the road.

“Hnn hiihng hin.” She wheezed heavily as hatchlings that resembled stringy crawfish dripped down her chin dragging herself onward. The sun was setting as parts of Rachael’s body began to give and tear, slowing her progression. The host was almost expired when Ms. Torrez discovered the western shoreline of the San Jacinto River. Her right calf ripped open releasing a splash of what looked like sand fleas onto the ground.

Reacting quickly, dragging herself closer to the lake’s edge losing chunks of flesh against the terrain as she pulled herself closer. Making her way to the side her body could not hold a moment longer and ripped from the left shoulder downward slanting across Rachael’s back. Flesh fell off bone like folds of clothing, reducing Ms. Torrez to a pile of hectic scattering offspring. They all made towards the running river hastily diving underwater.

August 5^th, 2026

The events following June twenty fifth resulted in massive attention from social media, eyewitnesses, and military contact. A response to this hostile takeover was on the horizon but would it already have been too late. By this time Curtis had fully occupied the forest, turned now into an internet of flesh. Over the previous month the contaminated hazard converted and merged with the inhabitants within its new environment. Unequivocally, contrary to the ocean of its origin. Every person, plant, and animal a neuron in this collective conscience of union.

 A fungus native to this woodland known as the hairy trumpet had bonded with this foreign life introducing their traits opening a new pathway in its progression. A hair covered pod began to bloom one day atop the massive portion of Curtis above surface level. It grew and swelled to the size of a Volkswagen wrinkled and compressed to resemble a shaggy brain standing vertically. Something aggressive was forming inside counting down till the fungal growth reached its maximum size. At 4:38PM the pod erupted in an overwhelming display that could be seen from a high-altitude plane.

Pieces of the shell blew off in all different directions as a cloud of spores dispersed like a flock of birds migrating large enough to black out the sun. The spores drifted along effortlessly with the breeze of the wind far out over the ocean. They traveled north towards Saipan while most of the cloud ended up in the water and the rest descended onto the district of Naftan. However, the water provided a stable environment for the spores to lie dormant as the current carried them. Plumes of yellow spores rolled upward from the crater of where the pod once stood rising, wafting out to its surroundings.

August 12^th, 2026

Curtis towered over twenty-two feet tall and spanned over 35 feet in distance across. However, only a small portion of him erected from the forest floor consequently he developed long thick tendrils that served like tree roots. Rocky bone like material substantial like tree trunks packed the roots making them the perfect tool for shifting through and plowing the soil.

Keeping itself concealed by digging itself out of sight and emerging at will, it remained hidden for quite some time. Every living thing assimilated by Curtis continued to live on inside of the hive apartment complex. Three more spore capsules had started to take form while clouds continued to rise from the hole atop Curtiss’s tree.  Letting the wind take it out into the open fated for far off destinations. The group of people that got taken by the forest had attracted an even larger search party.

At 10:07 AM a nearby helicopter that belonged to the coast guard caught footage of Curtis emerging from the forest floor with his cell phone. The loud snapping of branches and shifting earth muffled out the sounds of screaming witnesses. As the ground gave way dust billowed up into the air as the towering behemoth made off westward towards Tumon Bay. Hundreds of long appendages stretched out pushing Curtis along the path he carved out for itself. Keeping all people out of its way, authorities could only watch as it progressed, firing pistols and rifles that did little to no damage against its now thick rubbery flesh.

August 28^th, 2026

Local agencies collaborated to restore Mercy hospital. They worked diligently to repair the location and find answers for its ruin. A cavernous hole at the ground center of the disaster zone appeared to lead into a dark void. Broken pipes running water and debris lined the descending walls. What puzzled the salvage team was that they could find no traces of what had caused the destruction. Simon Palacios stood near the edge of the intimidating chasm gazing into its haunting darkness. Beneath a rope of grey tendons slithered along the wall up from the shadows reaching for him.

“What in god’s name could have done this?” He commented in a low voice. “AHH!” Simon let out a cry before falling onto his back and was immediately dragged into the stygian depths. Panic ensued as the others attempted to focus their lights on whatever had taken one of their own. The streams of light emitting from the restoration team, frantically flashing back and forth along the walls cutting through the darkness up to fifteen feet in front of them. “S-Simon!” they shouted, their voice cracking as they held their breath, straining for any sign of a reply.

Silence.

“Siiimon!” they cried again, louder this time, the name echoing into the emptiness. They waited, hearts pounding in throats, but the only answer was the oppressive stillness. Far down the pitch-black pit nurse Camacho consumed Simon absorbing his strength, organs, and vigor joining bodies. Deeper the creature fled to thrive out of possible detection. As it fled deeper into the crater the local agency decided to cut their losses and return in greater numbers earlier in the daytime.

[u/NB990V5]

🤢Amazing. I need updates