The Thing That Washed Ashore

[cyberghostface]

Here's another story from Junji Ito. Eight pages out twenty-four. Wouldn't call it NSFW in the traditional sense but it could be considered graphic or disturbing by certain people. It's a bit gooey.

As always, remember to read from right to left.

As the story opens the corpse of a gigantic creature has crashed onto a shore in the Pacific Ocean and has attracted a large crowd.



The narrator, a young girl, hates the ocean because of her fear of creatures like this. It started from a visit to the aquarium where she saw grotesque fish from the deepest corners of the sea. Ever since then her dreams have been populated by such images.

The scientists note that the creature appears to be transparent and has numerous protuberances covering its body.

The protagonist meets another girl who also hates the ocean. She came here because her fiance seven years ago who was shipwrecked at sea and was never found. She has strange dreams about him:



The onlookers realize that they can see something inside the creature's skin.



The scientists note that the people haven't been digested. They begin to cut open the creature.









The people begin moving en masse.


 

Comments

[q99]

Yea, I think 7 years living like a parasite inside a giant fish would leave anyone a bit nutty!

[silverzeo]

Or large amount of their braincells may been destroyed by the lack of oxygen. Seriously, how can SO many people be still be alive being crowded wall to wall inside a fish with a decent amount of oxygen?

[q99]

The fish must extract oxygen from the water and it must provide enough for them.

If there wasn't enough (even mildly not enough, akin to high altitude in the edge of the death zone), they'd all be dead.

[glprime]

And does the fish live at a pressure low enough to be tolerable to people? Not like we have the mechanisms to go from one depth to another very quickly like some species.

[baihu]

I read that fish at the abyssal depths have a certain DNA strand which allows them to hold shape at that depth. Assuming this fish can somehow perform gene therapy on the digested people (which, honestly wouldn't be the most farfetched thing Ito has written), then...meh, maybe.

This is a bit meh on the Junji Ito scale though. At least, I was hoping the people would have transformed into something else; instead they're just mad.

[deleonjh]

I don't see any tennis courts inside that fish's intestines so those people presumably weren't getting any exercise, and seeing as how the vast majority of coma patients die after 2 years - in an environment specifically designed to keep them alive, by the way - then there should be only like two survivors left from living under the sea.

But hey, Junji Ito found the realistic endpoint of the tale of Jonah and the whale, so props for that.

[q99]

They can wiggle and move around and such. That's... well, it's activity, even if it's not precisely exercise.

One could also blame weird chemicals or such produced by the critter. Medically, I'm sure it must be fascinating.

Okay...

[silverzeo]

Well... this story was interesting... thought it explains things, but then doesn't explain enough... all things conceived... in the Scary Door.

I mean, I know Torchwood: Miracle Day is mixed... but at least it explain.... sort of...

Re: Okay...

[q99]

It's not the author's strongest story. It doesn't get enough dread from the mystery of the deeps.

He has some shorts where things are mysterious that work much better.

[thosefew]

Nope, after reading Lisa this doesn't bother me at all.

[espanolbot]

Kind of why I prefer horror stories with a fantastical element to them as opposed to ones wholey based in the real world (with some exceptions, Silence of the Lambs for example).

Horror should be fun, not an unrelenting parade of human misery, a la A Serbian Film, Hostel, Cabin Fever etc.

[deleonjh]

See, I think horror should be terrifying: as long as it scares the living shit out of me, then I can call something a true piece of horror. Fun would merely be incidental to the mission of making me scream in mortal terror or at least too creeped out to turn the lights off at night without steeling myself to do so.

[jeyl]

......Phew.

Even though it's creepy to a degree, this is the least disturbing Junji piece I've seen.

[cainofdreaming]

Yes, his cats are far more terrifying.

[cypherfdp]

My problem with this is that the main thing I find scary about Junji Ito is his horrifying art, here the horror is more of an implied Lovecraft-esque thing, and while he's pretty good at suspense, he's much better at the seen horror than the unseen one.

[deleonjh]

You're right, he's not the Hitchcock kind of "empty door" horror, he's more the "grotesque misshapen creature that was once human is oozing across the floor at you begging for death" kind of horror.

[silicone_soul]

But there's no light in the deep sea, so they could not really have seen anything.

Then again, spending seven years with someone's ass in your face is probably bad enough as it is.

[md84]

There's nothing particularly Lovecraftian about this story. The "sea monster" is just a really big dead fish, nothing that eldritch. Though I guess for people who have primal fear of the dark, cramped spaces, and of being eaten alive, this would be a pretty creepy story.

[cleome45]

To me, it's the "fate worse than death" part that provides most of the creepy factor.

Terrible as it would be to have your loved one die, to imagine them coming back to you like this...? Gah.

[maseiken]

Is this from the same series as the Fault-line? Where there's a cliff with Human shaped holes along the side? *shudder*

[espanolbot]

Same author/artist I think. :)

[q99]

Yes :)

By the way, I found a hole made for you!

[maseiken]

aaaaaaaaaAAAAAARARRRRGH!

[q99]

It looks like this.

[maseiken]

^_^

[q99]

Or wait, was it this hole?

[biod]

I second that "AAAAAAAaaaaa~"

[q99]

I love making holes for people!

[blackruzsa]

Indeed! You should check out Uzumaki, by the same author :) It's horrifying. And long, and systematically traumatizing.

[deleonjh]

I like how it starts out as somewhat ridiculous (a town obsessed with spirals?) but it keeps getting weirder and weirder and by the end it's all kinds of nuts.

[blackruzsa]

I'd describe it as, no pun intended, a slow spiral down. I loooove horror stories that are like Uzumaki.

[deleonjh]

Oh yeah, that's the one where individual people are inexplicably drawn to specific holes that they feel belong to them and they squeeze into it and it gets tighter and tighter and, gah. Words fail.

[mrstatham]

"It has a grotesque head."

NO FUCKING SHIT, SHERLOCK!

[blackruzsa]

This is definitely less scary than the usual Ito, but he is DAMN good at what he does.

I keep remembering his Uzumaki title. All the horror I took from that manga is blotted out as I giggle at the distinct memory of snail sex.

Listen as I giggle hysterically and try not to remember the babies trying to get back into their mothers' wombs, or the main character's mom trying to dig out her own cochlea.

Jeeeeeeeeeeeeeezes.