Page 37 - Demo

37to how much oxygen they could supply. The carbon dioxide waste product from her lungs operated a valve and it was expired into the water.She was excited. An octopus wasn%u2019t on her list of irrational-fear creature revulsions. Spiders, worms, rats, mice, silverfish, maggots, snakes, eels%u2014yes. But not octopi. Or in fact, squid. She had watched documentaries about them. David had told her while they were both stripping off, that he had an assignment to be here and write about their experience and the research going on. His head had a small camera attached to record video and sound. He%u2019d reassured her that no images of her body would be published or shared with others, nor other sections or stills from the film, without him giving authority for it. They could communicate in a bubbly kind of speech through ear plugs and a microphone buried in the breather.%u201cReady?%u201d He asked her.She nodded. He jumped in, and she followed.They had been weighted with heavy, lead, foot slip-ons; like beach sandals, two lead soles covered their feet like Dutch clogs. To surface without effort, all they needed to do was to kick them off. She was a good swimmer anyway and the pool was what? Twelve feet deep. Nothing. Just a few feet above to reach the surface. She landed on a tiled surface and waited for the bubbles to lift away. David should have been to the right of her. She looked, and he was. He smiled, pointed, and she heard his bubbly speech in her ears, %u201cBe-blub-hold-blub-a creat-blub-ure from blub another blub world.%u201dShe looked to where he pointed. At the other end of the pool, floated an octopus. And it was looking straight at her.Spider