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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/twitchtrentham on 2025-01-31 04:14:32+00:00.

I've spent more time alone with my thoughts than most people, but ever since the accident, I don’t feel alone in my head anymore.

I used to be a deep-water welder. My usual assignments were between 500 and 800 feet below the surface of the ocean. Darkness and the deep never bothered me. That changed the last time I was on the ship.

It was a routine job. We were pressurizing in the bell before our dive. There were five of us, all attached to the diving bell by an umbilical—our lifeline. It pumped warm water into our suits, supplied electricity for our headlamps, fed oxygen into our helmets, and powered our welding equipment. We’d been on the job for two weeks at this point.

I was in the middle of cleaning a section of pipe when a voice crackled through my headset, urgent:

"Get back to the bell! Now!"

Then, the ground disappeared beneath me.

Nothing but deep, dark blue.

Something yanked me—hard. I wasn’t swimming. I wasn’t falling. I was being dragged. Water rushed past me like a silent scream, pressure tightening around my skull. My stomach lurched. My head spun. And then—BAM!

I hit something solid. One of the subsea structures. Pain exploded through my shoulder. My arm—something had my arm.

The pressure built impossibly fast. It felt like teeth, like a vice, like something was biting down with slow, deliberate force.

Then, a pop.

A hot, wet explosion of red filled the water.

Silence.

My headlamp flickered, then died.

Utter, perfect darkness swallowed me whole.

I was floating. My body numb, my mind scrambling to understand. My right arm was gone. Just… gone.

Then—THUD.

I hit the seafloor. My helmet clanked against my skull. Everything was wrong.

I didn’t know if I was alive or dead.

The silence was overwhelming. Not just quiet—absence. No bubbles, no distant creaks of the ship above, no hum of my suit’s systems. It was like the ocean had stopped existing.

And the cold—God, the cold. It wasn’t just seeping into my bones. It was pulling at me, like fingers pressing into my skin, searching for a way in.

I had maybe five minutes. Maybe less.

I reached for my umbilical cord, fingers numb, movements sluggish. I had to tie myself off. If I floated away, they’d never find me.

That’s when I felt it.

Something brushed against me.

Not the current. Not debris. Something else.

My body locked up. It was behind me. Close. Watching.

The pressure in my ears changed, like something enormous had entered the water. The darkness wasn’t empty anymore. It was full.

Then—a voice.

"Let’s make a deal."

The words weren’t spoken. They were inside my skull, crawling like insects through my thoughts.

I couldn’t breathe. There was no oxygen left. My vision tunneled. My heartbeat was slowing.

I was already dead.

So I said, "Okay."

And then—

Nothing.

I woke up in the diving bell, gasping.

The others were around me, shouting. Someone grabbed my shoulders. My suit was soaked in seawater, my helmet askew. The oxygen mask pressed against my face, forcing air into my lungs.

My arm—

My right arm.

It was there.

No pain. No scar. No sign that it had ever been missing.

But it felt wrong.

Like it didn’t belong to me. Like something was inside it.

I caught my reflection in my helmet’s visor.

For just a second—

My lips moved.

But I didn’t make a sound.