The Mystery of MAKSIM-2
Dhruv Sathishkumar
Thursday, November 19, 2020
No-no. It was not the jellyfish that inked us. It was the octopus that tried to eat the jellyfish. But, anyway, its ink had the intended effect, on us at least. We’d had enough underwater diving for a day. I motioned the others to signal thumbs up to the instructors. And we rose to the surface. We hurriedly jumped out of the water and told the instructors everything. All they could remark is, “Well, that’s a day gone horribly wrong.” But, then one instructor had an idea. “Kihineh!” To this, a person just kept on glaring. He said, “It’s hello in Naïve Dhivehi, the language of Maldives. When you’re in Rome, be a Roman. What if you all want to try shark diving? It’s safe, of course. You’ll be in a cage. Want to check it out?” Some people backed out, but the rest agreed. So, the next thing I knew, I was being shut in a cage and lowered down into the sea along with some other daring kids of remaining groups. I knew we had beginner’s luck when a White Tip shark came prancing to us into the next 5 minutes.
The shark suddenly became violent. It started pushing the cage here and there and I’m sure everyone else felt giddy along with me. It’s like the shark was scared of something. But the White Tip was one of the biggest sharks, in Maldives at least. What could be scarier? It suddenly went back and pushed the cage, left it upside down and ran away. “Help!”, the other kids were already shouting. But where had the sharks carried us to? I didn’t know. Suddenly, a blurred shadow of what seemed like the Great White shark, only bigger, blocked the sunlight and headed down to the cage. Was it the animal the White Tip was scared of? The huge shark hit the cage diagonally as casually as you’d flick a bug off your arm. It hit the cage with its tail and the cage went topsy-turvy with the metal bars of it smacking the corals. Just then I felt a hand rising and rescuing me from the cage. I glanced at the roof of the cage. Someone had opened it.
It was one of the instructors. “We saw your cage being hit and carried by a shark. Anyway, ok. Wait here, I’ll go check it out. The other kids are on the surface. Go check them out” “I saw the shark near the sunken boat. It was so huge; you could see it on Google Earth.” “Ok.” And he dived under the blue-green waters of the Maldives. I had no idea why, but my perfect life was getting turned into a horror movie. For the first time, I wished later on that I would not be such a great predictor. After about 2 minutes, we heard a scream that sounded like it came from a horror movie. “The instructor.” I realized. “He’s in danger.” I looked at my oxygen tank. Empty. Wished I had saved some instead of practically hyperventilating during the attack. Before I could go underwater to find the instructor, a force with great power suddenly pulled me down by my hands. I was dragged into the water, somewhat 20 feet. I looked at my hands. Ok, that was a deep cut. I saw at the creature. Was it THE MEG? I didn’t have time to find out. The last thing I saw was the Meg heading towards me, its lips dabbed with blue blood. And then, the world become dizzy and turned Black…
s