Elise Thibodeaux’s left hand stopped obeying her at 06:18, eleven minutes after the tentacle wrapped around her wrist.
She was steering the airboat one-handed through the north channel, watching her fingers curl inward like a dead spider’s legs, watching the paralysis climb her forearm in waves of numbness and fire. The welt where the jellyfish had touched her looked like a chemical burn, raised and weeping, the skin around it mottled purple-black.
Her breath came shallow. Too shallow. Her diaphragm wasn’t responding right.
“Merde,” she whispered. The word came out slurred.
The lights in the water behind her had been beautiful. Too beautiful. She’d felt the pull, the irrational urge to stop the boat and lean over, just to look closer. Thank Christ she’d been stung before the urge became unbearable.
The resort lights appeared through the cypress trees, yellow squares floating in dawn’s first gray light. She aimed for the main dock and killed the engine too late. The airboat hit the pilings with a crack of fiberglass, momentum throwing her forward onto the deck.
She lay there for five seconds, maybe ten, feeling her left lung refuse to inflate properly. Then she crawled. Right arm dragging her body, left arm dead weight, across the dock toward the medical bay.
Someone was running. Footsteps on wood.
“Elise? Christ, what happened?”
Dr. Raymond Duplessis. The Tulane marine biologist who consulted for the resort, showing up two months a year to justify his retainer. Good man. Knew his science. Didn’t know shit about reading the bayou’s warnings, but he knew his science.
She grabbed his ankle with her working hand. Pulled.
He knelt, and she saw his face change when he looked at her arm, at the welt, at the paralysis spreading past her elbow now.
“Jellyfish.” Her tongue was thick, disobedient. “Hundreds. In the channels. Venom’s slow but it don’t stop. Fifteen minutes and I can’t breathe right.”
“Jesus. Okay.” He grabbed her under the arms, hauled her upright. “We need to get you inside.”
Her left leg buckled. Ray half-carried her toward the medical bay. The world tilted. Her vision grayed at the edges.
Inside, fluorescent lights too bright. The smell of antiseptic and mildew. Ray laid her on the cot, started checking vitals.
“Pulse 142. BP dropping. Respiratory rate 26 and climbing.” His hands moved fast, efficient. “This is textbook neurotoxic paralysis but the timeline’s wrong. You should be dead.”
“Not dead yet.” Each word took effort. Her throat muscles were tightening. “Got something to tell you first. They ain’t normal jellyfish. They’re smart. Coordinated. Moving in groups. Testing the pilings.”
“Testing the pilings?”
“Wrapped tentacles around the support posts. Like they were feeling how strong the wood was.”
Ray stared at her. “Jellyfish don’t have that kind of cognition. They’re nerve nets. Stimulus-response organisms.”
“Yeah?” Her working hand grabbed his shirt. Pulled him close. “Well these ones do. And there’s hundreds of them out there, Raymond. Maybe thousands. In every channel around this resort. You need to evacuate everyone. Now.”
Her throat closed. Just seized shut. She tried to inhale and got nothing.
Ray grabbed the bag-valve mask from the wall, fitted it over her face, squeezed air into her lungs. Once. Twice. Her throat relaxed enough to let the air through.
“I’m calling for medevac.”
She pushed the mask aside. “Hurricane Delphine. Making landfall tonight. No flights. I’m stuck here. So are those 62 people sleeping in the cabins. And when the sun comes up and they see those pretty lights in the water, those tentacles are gonna reach up and—”
The paralysis hit her diaphragm like a punch. Ray shoved the mask back over her face and squeezed. She sucked air and tasted rubber and tried not to think about Pierre.
Pierre, who’d drowned in these channels eight years ago when his shrimp boat went under in a storm. Pierre, whose body she’d found three days later, bloated and picked over by gar.
The bayou always told the truth if you listened.
And right now it was screaming.
The door banged open. Celia Boudreaux, head of kitchen staff, her face flushed from the morning heat. Fifty-eight years old, worked the resort since it opened six years ago. She’d been feeding Elise coffee and beignets every morning, trading gossip about guests, complaining about her arthritis.
“Elise, what—”
“Jellyfish,” Ray said. “In the water. Extremely venomous. We need to keep everyone away from—”
Celia’s hand went to her mouth. “Oh no. Oh no no no. Tyler Beaumont. Guest in cabin twelve. He called the kitchen twenty minutes ago. Said he dropped his phone off his deck into the water. Asked if maintenance could fish it out. I sent Danny down there with the boat hook.”
Elise tried to sit up. Failed. “When?”
“Maybe ten minutes ago? He should’ve been back by now.”
Ray and Celia ran. Elise heard their footsteps pounding down the walkway. She lay on the cot, lungs barely working, and counted seconds. Ninety. One hundred. One-fifty.
Celia’s scream cut through the dawn.
Elise rolled off the cot, hit the floor hard, crawled. Got her working arm under her, stood, stumbled toward the door. The world spun but she kept moving.
She found them at cabin twelve’s deck. Danny Tran, 23 years old, maintenance worker, Vietnamese kid who’d been saving money for college. He was on the deck, convulsing. His right hand was covered in welts. The boat hook lay beside him, tentacles still wrapped around it, glowing faintly.
Ray was trying to hold Danny still. The kid’s back arched, muscles locking, foam at his mouth. His eyes—fuck, his eyes were open and aware. Terrified. Watching his own body betray him.
“How long?” Elise asked.
Ray shook his head. “Minutes. Maybe less.”
They carried him. By the time they reached medical, Danny had stopped seizing. His breathing was shallow, irregular. Ray hooked him to the ventilator, started squeezing the bag.
Danny’s eyes followed the movement, conscious, trapped.
Elise knew that feeling. Had been living it for the last twenty minutes.
“I’ll keep him breathing,” Ray said. “Celia, get Garrett. Tell him we’re evacuating right fucking now.”
Celia ran.
Elise took the bag-valve mask with her working hand. Squeezed. Danny’s chest rose. “You go with her. I got this. You need to make Garrett understand.”
“Elise—”
“Go.”
Ray hesitated. Then ran.
Elise stood beside the cot, squeezing air into Danny’s lungs every fifteen seconds, watching his terrified eyes. Her working arm was already shaking. She’d been stung eighteen minutes ago. The paralysis was still spreading.
“He’s my nephew,” Celia said from the doorway. She’d come back. “My sister’s boy. I got him this job. I sent him out there.”
“Wasn’t your fault.”
“He was gonna start LSU in January. Engineering.” Her voice broke.
Elise squeezed the bag. Danny’s chest rose. Fell. She squeezed again.
Garrett Fontenot arrived at 06:47, looking like he’d been dragged from bed and thrown into a nightmare. Ray was with him, carrying sample containers.
“I need samples,” Ray said. “Proof of lethality. Then I can force a state evacuation order.”
Garrett looked at Danny on the ventilator. At Elise squeezing the bag every fifteen seconds, her working arm trembling.
“We don’t have time for samples.” Garrett’s face was gray. “We start evacuating now. I’ll take the heat from corporate.”
“You’ll need data to justify—”
“Fuck the data. Look at that kid. Look at Elise. You think corporate’s gonna care about paperwork when bodies start piling up?”
Ray blinked. Nodded. “Alright. But I’m taking Celia to get samples anyway. Need to understand what we’re fighting.”
Garrett keyed his radio. “All staff, this is management. Emergency evacuation order. Wake every guest. Everyone assembles at the main lodge in fifteen minutes. Minimal luggage. Move quickly and stay in the center of the walkways. This is not a drill. Hurricane Delphine has been upgraded to Category 4. Landfall in twelve hours. We are evacuating now.”
He clicked off. The lie was smooth. The hurricane was real—Cat 2, last she’d heard—but it made a good cover.
“What about Danny?” Ray asked.
Elise looked at the kid’s eyes. Saw the awareness there. The terror.
She’d seen that look before. On Pierre’s face, the last time she’d seen him alive, when he’d kissed her goodbye and headed out into the storm despite her warnings.
“We bring him,” she said. “Rig the ventilator to a portable tank. Someone keeps him breathing while we walk. It’s possible.”
Ray kept squeezing the bag. “Even if we get him to a hospital, the venom causes irreversible receptor binding. He might spend the rest of his life on a ventilator. Conscious. Aware. Locked inside a body that won’t respond.”
The room went silent. Celia sobbed. Danny’s eyes moved from face to face.
“We have to try,” Ray said.
Elise nodded. “Yeah. We do.”
But the weight in her chest told her the truth.
The announcement went out at 07:18. By 07:35, sixty-two people stood in the main lodge. Guests in resort bathrobes and pajamas, clutching phones and valuables. Staff in kitchen whites and maintenance uniforms. All of them terrified.
Garrett addressed them from the lodge’s center. “Hurricane Delphine has been upgraded to Category 4. We are evacuating to the mainland parking area, three miles west. Stay in single file. Stay in the center of the walkways. Do not touch the railings. Do not look down at the water. Move quickly. We will have vehicles waiting to transport you north, away from the storm path. You are safe as long as you follow instructions. Let’s go.”
The line formed. Ray had rigged a portable ventilator system using a hand pump and oxygen tank. Two staff members, both former EMTs, would trade off pumping while they walked.
Danny would be carried on a stretcher.
Elise would walk, or crawl, or die trying.
Elise handed the bag pump to one of the EMTs, a woman named Rosa Martinez. “Every fifteen seconds. Don’t stop. Don’t hesitate. He’s conscious. He can hear you. Talk to him.”
Rosa nodded. Started pumping. Danny’s chest rose. Fell.
They lifted his stretcher and joined the line.
Elise walked behind them, her dead left side dragging, her working right side barely functional. Garrett was beside her, ready to catch her if she fell.
“You should’ve stayed.”
“Wasn’t gonna die in that room. If I’m dying, I’m dying outside. On the water.”
Garrett was quiet for a moment. “You think we’re all dying today?”
“No. Some of us are getting out. Some of us are fertilizer. That’s how the bayou works.”
They reached the first junction at 07:47. The walkway crossed a wide channel, sixty feet of open water. Below, the jellyfish clustered thick as lily pads, their lights pulsing even in daylight.
The pattern was complex. Rhythmic. Beautiful.
Elise felt her gaze drawn to it. Felt her feet stop moving. Felt the lights pulling at something deep in her brain, that same irrational urge she’d felt in the boat, magnified now. Some ancient prey response that said come closer, come see, come touch.
“Don’t look.” Garrett pulled her arm. “Jesus, don’t look at them.”
She blinked. Shook her head. The trance broke. “They’re luring. Using the lights. Making you want to—”
Ahead, six people had stopped. Were staring at the water. Frozen.
Staff ran forward, shaking them, pulling them. Some woke. Some didn’t.
A young woman in a resort bathrobe leaned over the railing. Reached toward the water. Her boyfriend grabbed her, pulled her back. She fought him, eyes glazed, mouth slack.
“The lights,” she whispered. “They’re singing. Don’t you hear them singing?”
Then she broke free and jumped.
She hit the water twenty feet below. The jellyfish swarmed her instantly, tentacles wrapping, pulling her under. She didn’t scream. Just sank, still reaching toward the lights, still hypnotized.
Her boyfriend screamed enough for both of them.
Elise grabbed the nearest staff member. “Tell everyone to close their eyes. Right now. Close their eyes and hold onto the person in front of them. Do not look at the water. Do not open your eyes till I say. Go!”
The word spread. People closed their eyes. Formed a human chain. Sixty-one people now, one already dead, stumbling forward blindly, trusting, praying.
The jellyfish pulsed brighter. Faster. The pattern intensified, waves of blue-green light so brilliant they hurt to see.
Elise squeezed her eyes shut. Felt the pull even through closed lids.
She grabbed Garrett’s arm. “Keep walking. Don’t stop. Don’t open your eyes. Talk to me. Keep me here.”
“What do you want me to say?”
“Anything. Tell me about your family. You married?”
“Divorced. Two kids. Seven and nine. They live with their mom in Shreveport. I see them summers.”
“What’re their names?”
“Sophie and Michael. Sophie wants to be a veterinarian. Michael’s into dinosaurs. He’s got this poster in his room, all the different species, and he can name every one. Can tell you which period they lived in. He’s obsessed.”
Elise held onto his voice. Used it as an anchor. The lights pulled but she kept walking, eyes closed, feet shuffling forward on the walkway.
Behind them, someone else screamed. Fell. Hit the water.
The jellyfish took them in seconds.
Two dead.
The line kept moving.
Wind picked up. Elise felt it on her face, warm and humid, gusting. The hurricane’s outer bands.
“Storm’s early,” Garrett muttered.
At 500 feet, the jellyfish changed tactics.
Instead of just pulsing, they surfaced. Hundreds of them. Ascending together, their domes breaking the water, glowing so bright the entire bayou looked like it was on fire with cold light.
And they sang.
Not sound. Something else. A pressure that bypassed ears and went straight to the brain. Subsonic. Hypersonic. Something that human nervous systems hadn’t evolved to resist. It felt like fingers reaching into her skull, stroking pleasure centers, promising peace.
Elise’s eyes snapped open involuntarily. The lights filled her vision. The pressure filled her skull.
Beautiful. So beautiful. Like stars and music and home calling her name, calling her to come down, come into the water, come home.
She took a step toward the railing.
Garrett grabbed her. “Elise. ELISE. Look at me. Look at my face. Not the water. Me.”
She blinked. His face swam into focus. Brown eyes. Receding hairline. Sweat on his forehead.
“Sophie and Michael,” she whispered. “Tell me more. Keep talking.”
“Sophie, she’s got this hamster. Named him Professor Whiskers. He’s fat and lazy and she loves him. And Michael, he’s building this LEGO T-Rex, it’s got 3,000 pieces, and he’s been working on it for three months. Won’t let anyone help. Says he has to do it himself or it doesn’t count.”
Elise held onto the words. Closed her eyes again. Kept walking.
But the pressure was in her skull now. Pulsing. Pulling. Promising peace.
Behind her: screams. Three people walked off the walkway before the line reached 800 feet. Just stepped into empty air, drawn by the neurological assault, falling toward the singing water.
Five dead.
The jellyfish took them all.
Wind gusted harder now. Rain started. Light at first, then heavier. The walkway grew slick.
Ahead, a support piling cracked. The sound was sharp, distinct, wrong. The walkway sagged. People stumbled. Someone fell, hit the deck hard.
Elise opened her eyes. Saw the piling’s base. Saw the jellyfish wrapped around it, dozens of them, hundreds of tentacles secreting acid that ate through wood like cancer.
The piling was half-gone. Dissolving.
“Move!” Garrett shouted. “Everyone move! Now!”
The line broke into a run. Sixty people sprinting across a sagging walkway, wood groaning under their weight, pilings cracking behind them. Rain pelted down, wind howling.
Elise’s dead left leg gave out. She fell. Garrett grabbed her, hauled her up, half-carried her forward.
Ahead, Danny’s stretcher bearers stumbled on wet wood. The stretcher tilted. Rosa kept pumping the ventilator bag, fifteen seconds, pump, fifteen seconds, pump, even while running through rain.
The walkway section collapsed at 900 feet.
Ten people were still on it when it fell. They dropped into the water with the wood, screaming, thrashing. The jellyfish were waiting below. Had been corralling them. Herding them.
Tentacles wrapped around arms, legs, faces. Venom injected. Paralysis spread. The screams stopped within thirty seconds.
But the victims didn’t die fast. They floated, paralyzed, conscious, drowning slowly as their lungs forgot how to breathe. The jellyfish below swarmed them, focused entirely on the fresh prey, ignoring the people now standing exposed at the broken walkway edge.
Elise watched a man sink below the surface, eyes open, mouth working, trying to scream with no air left.
Fifteen dead.
The remaining forty-seven reached the parking area at 08:23. Rain hammering down now, wind bending the cypress trees. Hurricane Delphine’s outer bands had arrived early.
Elise collapsed on the pavement, her working arm finally giving out. Garrett knelt beside her, breathing hard, rain streaming down his face.
“We made it. We made it.”
Elise looked back at the resort. At the glowing water visible even through the rain. At the bodies floating in the channels, wrapped in tentacles, food for something that had learned to hunt humans with terrifying efficiency.
“Yeah. Some of us did.”
Rosa was still pumping Danny’s ventilator bag. Fifteen seconds. Pump. Fifteen seconds. Pump. Rain soaked the stretcher. The kid’s eyes were still open. Still aware. Still alive.
Celia ran to the stretcher, grabbed her nephew’s working hand, held it. “You’re gonna be okay, baby. You’re gonna be okay. We’re getting you to a hospital.”
Danny’s eyes moved to Elise. Held her gaze.
She saw the question there. Saw him asking if Celia was telling the truth.
For just a moment, Elise felt what Danny felt. The complete awareness. The body as prison. The consciousness intact while meat refused to obey. The terror of knowing you might be trapped like this forever, feeling everything, moving nothing, screaming inside a corpse that won’t respond.
The weight of that awareness—of being buried alive in your own flesh—was worse than drowning. Drowning ended.
This might not.
Elise looked away.
Ambulances arrived at 09:15, sirens cutting through the rain. Paramedics loaded Danny first, hooked him to a portable ventilator, rushed him toward Lafayette General through the storm. Celia rode with him, holding his hand, praying in Spanish.
Elise was loaded second. Ray climbed in beside her, his face exhausted.
“The state’s issuing an emergency closure. All waterways in the Atchafalaya Basin. Environmental response teams are mobilizing.”
The ambulance pulled out, heading north through wind and rain. Elise turned her head, looked out the rear windows.
In the ditch beside the highway, water had already risen from the storm surge. And there, illuminated by the ambulance’s taillights: a single jellyfish, dome pulsing with blue-green light, floating in the roadside water.
Then another.
Then three more.
Ray saw them too. His face went white.
Elise closed her eyes. “They’re spreading. Storm surge is pushing them inland. Into every drainage ditch, every canal, every tributary from here to Baton Rouge. We didn’t escape nothing, Raymond. We just been borrowing this water. And now something else is taking it back.”
The ambulance drove north. Behind them, Hurricane Delphine pushed the Gulf 12 feet inland. And in the warm shallow water spreading through a thousand miles of Louisiana waterways, thousands of jellyfish pulsed in synchronized patterns, learning, adapting, claiming territory.
Hunting.
Waiting.
Spreading.
Hey, you hung in there! Or perhaps you skipped 🤨
Ha. I don’t fucking care, it’s your life.