The Blue Demon

THE BLUE DEMON: A novella in the tradition of Nineteenth Century literature. The crew of a Spanish merchant ship discovers they have a stranger among them: a Moor with an odd nickname and worse yet, debilitating agoraphobia. The ship is thrown far off course by a cyclone and stranded in a giant kelp field. Added to their misfortune, an invisible visitor snacks on the crew at night, using their half-rotted heads like puppets, beckoning to them from the water. The crew must make an effort to understand their odd crewmate before they can vanquish their assailant together. Classic horror in the style of Edgar Allan Poe, William Hope Hodgson and Jules Verne. For fans of classic sea tales, neo-Victorian, Steampunk and Horror. From The Blue Demon: V. NIGHT WATCH But the warm days and gelatinous waters had a way of wearing down our senses. We began to doubt our perceptions. At night, as I smoked, I could see the kelp slowly moving with the current. I remembered how Royas and Alejandro had pulled up some water one day, as there had been a debate about its viscosity. We had been mopping with seawater regularly but we passed a spot that could have been mistaken for aspic. It appeared sufficiently spiced, dark and quivering. They threw it out on deck. The water was full of kelp and fish eggs. These were rich hatcheries here. We would not go hungry, but at this rate, we would not go home soon either. Now, on deck by myself, I realized that I had been seeing defined shapes swirling in the water. Something of great size swept by us, creating odd ripples that forced my attention upon them. Wide bellies erupted from the spicy mass and spread across the surface. It couldn’t have been due to standing rocks. The wind, of course, was next to flat and the current only slightly nudging. But these eruptions, although subtle, were unmistakably focused about the ship. I imagined a tremendous thinking being; suckling and perceiving our presence, noting our solitude, our wayward direction. I imagined it was aware of our predicament and that it desired to be close to us, that it desired us to be within it. The eruptions subsided in a few minutes. I discounted the event as only one of several phenomena we had already encountered. After all, this was the sea: engenderer of all phenomena, including humanity.

About the Author

Youssef Alaoui Fdili is a Moroccan American Latino. His family and heritage are an endless source of inspiration for his varied, dark, spiritual and carnal writings. He has an MFA in Poetics from New College of California, Mission District, San Francisco. There, he studied classical Arabic, Spanish baroque and Moroccan contemporary poetry. He is extremely well versed in 19th Century literature of the fantastic. His writings have appeared in Exquisite Corpse, Big Bridge, Cherry Bleeds, 580 Split, Carcinogenic Poetry, Tsunami Books, Red Fez, and Full of Crow.

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