Shimmer in the Dark Chapter 2 and Weirdest Thing to Ever Happen To You? · 8:20pm Aug 18th, 2016
Shimmer in the Dark has been updated with the next chapter. I would like to caution that this story is going to be a bit darker than Bridge and has a touch more gore and grimness to it. So if you choose to avoid it for that reason, I completely understand. As for any Shimmerverse readers curious about the chapter's ending, yes Evo and I have both worked on the plot so this is canon with both past and future events for the series. This isn't a nifty little one-shot that'll be non-canon by the end of it.
With that out of the way, as I work on Chapter 33 I had an off thought to ask. I've met plenty of great folks on this website, and plenty besides me who've had some odd experiences. There are things I've seen in life I myself would think were crazy or inexplicable had I not seen them myself in clear view multiple times. I might talk about the scariest one day, but for now I'd like to ask about the weirdest. What is the most eyebrow raising, strange thing you've ever had happen to you?
For me, it was about 2 years ago. I live on a barrier island on the Atlantic coast of Florida. Between us and the mainland is a five kilometer wide stretch of river that's tied to the greater Saint John's River System. The St. Johns is already weird in itself. It's enormous, stretching over most of the state's Atlantic side. It's also one of only a few major rivers in the world that flow south to north (another being the Nile) and it is incredibly diverse. You'll find everything from ice cold, crystal clear spring waters, to hot, silt riddled saltwater estuaries, lagoons, mangrove swamps, marshes, and everything in between. I do not kid when I say you could travel through a good chunk of the coast and middle of the state by following this system. In my case, this chunk of the St. Johns is a brackish, incredibly murky river called the Indian river. If ya'll want an image, here is one-
It goes without saying this water is DARK. There is so much tannic acid (trees), silt, and mixing of sea and river water that when it was first seen by explorers they called it the "Black Tea River". Something as big as a 1,000lb manatee can be eight centimeters from the surface and you wouldn't even notice it. The river in many places is shallow enough to stand up in if you're a reasonably tall guy like me, but if you do you won't be able to see your own waist line it's that dark. So when I'm out in my kayak, near the waterline and in some of the river waves, I can't see a thing and have been taken by surprise many times by a curious manatee or bull shark bumping into me.
Enough setting, time for story. It was later in the evening and I was staying with my family but was the only one home at the time. Bored, I decided on a day trip on my kayak to the various bird nesting island in the river and a meet up with some of the manatee herds I knew. Managed to do both but because of the chop on the river waves I got winded after paddling for an hour on my way back. It was dark and I was tired, so I decided to rest a bit. So, I pulled into a sheltered lagoon, dropped my set anchor, set my watch alarm, reapplied bugspray, pulled my hat down and took a nap.
My alarm woke me up, about an hour later and not where I was supposed to be. I could tell the boat had been pulled along by something but it suddenly stopped and I got my bearings. Somehow I had managed to get out of the lagoon (which has a narrow opening so I somehow dodged a sandbar) and traveled a full three kilometers away from where I was. I check my anchor line and the snap ring was there, but no anchor. The rope hadn't been cut or damaged in any way and was still connected fully to the snap ring. There wasn't anyone else around either, not a single boat in sight except a police water patrol on the other side of the river.
I managed to get back home and day after I paddled back out with a powerful magnet on a rope, eventually finding my anchor on the lagoon bottom. It was undamaged and exactly where I left it, but the snap ring had come off.
What it couldn't have been
- Manatee chewing on my anchor line (they have been known to do that, it's like flossing). Anchor was in the same place and a sea cow couldn't undo my snap ring because of the screw lock mechanism and opening method are purposefully made to be hard. Dolphin would have same problem and I would have seen or heard it coming up for breath; plus no teeth marks on my rope.
-Drifting off. If a manatee couldn't undo my line, water currents couldn't. And the current should have taken me north, not south. Besides if a current got me in the lagoon I should have been pushed into a sandbar multiple times.
-Prankster on a boat. I'd have heard them coming or seen them when I woke up because the boat was still moving when I came too. Besides with as dark the water is and it being at night, no way in hell they'd be able to find my anchor and snap ring's locks. Hells with my low profile and the darkness, I would have been very hard to even notice.
I have honestly not a clue what the heck happened that night.
I think the weirdest things that happened to me was when I was asleep once, for some reason I heard an actual tiger roar and just woke up with a jolt
My weirdest experience was on a trip to a summer camp I shared a cabin with 7 other poeple.
It was bedtime and I rolled onto my stomach to go to sleep, not 5 minutes after that I feel a heavy pressure on my back and faint whispering in my ear
It was hard to breath and I couldn't move.
I kept my composer and toughed it out and eventually I heard the camps resident male peacock calling to the morning and the pressure lifted off my
Back. To this day I'm not sure what it was, a spirit on my back or sleep paralysis.
The only logical explanation, Tarb… ninjas.
When I was a kid, my father took me jet skiing, but we capsized. At the time, I didn't know how to swim, but I had a life jacket. The weird thing was, whenever I wasn't holding on to anything, the life jacket forced me to go on my stomach and I wasn't strong enough to overpower it. It was pretty much useless because I couldn't keep my face out of the water unless I was holding on to my dad or the jet ski so I could stay vertical. We couldn't turn the jet ski upright because it was full of water, so it fell back on its side every time we tried. We had to wait for several minutes before someone towed us back to shore. The lifeguards didn't know what to make of my life jacket.
By the way, I did two more chapters of The Lost Hero since the last time you reviewed.
I can't really remember the weirdest thing that happened to me. But, I do know the weirdest thing that ever happened to a certain voice actor you said would be the voice of Junior:
Having grow up in a city built on both sides of yet another river that flows from south to north (though not as large of one) in Central New York (the Oswego River, which my home town shares the name of), the first thing to come to mind in the weirdest thing category would be a fish story. From when I was four.
I'm the youngest of five, and one of my father's favorite family activates was to go fishing in the local harbor's west break wall; never mind the fact that this was likely among the least favorite activities of his three daughters. Several times each summer, we would get in the car, bring the boat to Wright's Landing, pile in, and take a quick trip over to the wall. Never mind the fact that that wall reached the shore on it's west end.
The first time I was given a rod, while Dad was busy putting worms in the Twin's hooks, I walked a bit down the wall and dropped the bare hook into the water.
I had caught an 8-inch Yellow Perch by the time Dad got around to giving me bait.
I know, this probably sounds about as weird as mid day traffic. Despite so many people doubting the very existence of a New York State more then 30 miles from the Big Apple, Central New York is, if not dull, not exactly weird. I mean, there's nothing weird about 1 minute thunderstorms on otherwise sunny days, right? Nothing strange about an Alfred Hitchcock movie being re-enacted every time some idiot feeds the damn seagulls at Rudy's, right? And of course, having out of town visitors looking for west fifth street ask how far north or south they would have to drive to connect with East fifth (they don't connect; they are both 5 blocks from the river) is perfectly normal, right?
Weird is relative.
Dark Story, Dark River, Dark Waters....is there a theme going on there?
As a Medical Student myself, I'm exposed to a lot of weird things on a DAILY basis, whether it's patients or other medical conditions. However, I cannot speak of such things directly of my patients because then I would be in violation of the HIPPA act, but there was one incident that will forever leave a stain on my psyche for a long time.
A couple of years ago, I took a course in "Cadaver Dissection" for college. Now, a word of warning for those who read this who get squeamish, cause this can get pretty gross. I mean, this was a class where you could hold a human BRAIN in your hands, the former essence of a human consciousness!
Anyways, during the latter half of the semester, when we were starting to get into the chest cavity, we finally got to the heart to see it in it's fullest view. Now, when we actually got to remove the heart from the cadaver, it did NOT feel squishy or collapsible, like it's supposed to. It felt full, and hard.
When we removed the heart and actually opened it up, inside each of the chambers where GIANT PIECES OF PLAGUE that looked like they were growing from the center of the chambers, growing OUTWARDS. :P PLAGUE ISN'T SUPPOSED TO DO THAT! BUT, what was even MORE disturbing is what we found in the Aorta, going DOWN. Inside this giant artery, was a piece of PLAGUE that looked like a GIANT RAT TAIL, pink and all, that was as LONG as my ARM! Going all the way down from the heart to the ABDOMINAL end of the Aorta.
I tell ya, that sight ALONE put me on a diet for a year. ......NEVER AGAIN......
This happened when I lived out west in Vegas; I'm not sure what I saw, but the object was just floating above the Vegas strip and it vanished, like, 30 seconds after I saw it. I was only 12 at the time.
4156893 No, pirates!
4161124 Vampire cyborg ninja pirates.
4161145 In a bear suit.
4161177 Colonel Mustard in the parlor with the candlestick.
4161202 I...... can't think of anything to top that.
4161289
Do what I do:
LEMON CURRY?