#best source for HP fests for 2025

[tenebris-metallum]

The bad news is I didn't make the cut in the HP Lovecraft Film Fest's flash fiction contest. The good news is now I'm comfortable sharing it!

There's always next year, and a new story.

EXPEDITION - 498 words

No explicit warnings apply

On March 1st, 2025, the crew of an oceanic exploration mission experienced critical equipment failure and lost contact with both ROV submersibles being used to survey the ocean floor in the open ocean southwest of Hawai'i.  The expedition had been studying hitherto-undiscovered geothermal vents when the first, the Hera, went down – marveling at the volcanic formations that billowed superheated, chemical-rich water into the normally pitch-black ocean.  Before the connection was lost, Hera’s cameras panned to the side, revealing a strangely smooth rock formation.  It was devoid of the expected sediment and microbial mats, and its angles seemed almost too perfect to be a naturally occurring feature.

Dr Hess, one of the geologists, began to speculate on its origin – proposing first that it was part of a ship that had been lost during the Second World War, and then making a joke about Atlantis.  The team laughed, and she was about to posit a third, serious, hypothesis as to its origin when something moved in the water behind the object.  It would've gone unnoticed except for one, crucial fact: Hera's laser sights – two dots marking ten centimeters – were still on.  For the briefest of moments, something passed through the beams of light and caused them to appear as if they jumped closer to them before it retreated.

Hera's cameras went out less than a minute later.  Peacock, the other ROV, fared slightly better.  Its cameras captured a yawning gulf opening beneath Hera, with shifting tendrils of black within blackness consuming the submersible before the connection between the surface and the ROVs was fully severed.  Silence fell over the ship for a moment before the scientists on board, being rational people, began making plans to rescue the vehicles.  Peacock would float, so its recovery was made the mission priority.  By a small miracle, the ROV was found just as the sun began to dip below the horizon.

Hess was brought to the Peacock when it was found that clutched in one of the ROV’s claws was a fragment of stone unlike anything that she had seen before.  She held the greenish stone in gloved hands, studying its makeup as best she could with the naked eye while diagnostics were run on the ROV behind her.

Ultimately, the Peacock had to be partially disassembled for maintenance, its cabling and circuitry laid bare on the deck much like the entrails of a sperm whale back when the industry was at its height.  Its cameras were fractured, seawater dripping from ruined, delicate electronics.  The source of the damage and error was unknown, though many speculated it looked to be from a collision with something.  It was the only way for the damage to have occurred, wasn’t it?

Hess wasn’t sure.  Not when she was able to run a proper assessment on the stone back on shore and found that it was not of any known mineral makeup.  Something was out there, sleeping underneath the ocean, and Hess feared it was beginning to stir.