A little note: When I was 17 I entered a scary story competition for teens only. The rule was everyone had to start their story with the same few sentences. This was my entry:
It was a dark and stormy night. The crew didn’t know it, but the ship was surrounded by sharks, electric eels, octopuses, and other sea creatures. The wind howled and started blowing the ship toward Pirate’s Island when suddenly, the mate in the crow’s nest hopped out from his perch, yelled something desperate in his native Turkish that, even if in English, I wouldn’t have heard over the wind and rain, and plunged into the churning black ocean. The leviathans just under the water were eager for the repast he offered, and no sooner had he made the plummet than a mass of hunger incarnate pounced upon him, and as quickly as it came, descended to the obscurity of the sea. At this hideous sight, the crew began blindly harpooning the sea. I didn’t think we would get out alive. “Glad I’m not the Turk,” I thought to myself. The churning of the waters that the beasts roiled up with their relentless fervency stopped before I finished my thought. The wind and rain, though noisy, were not nearly so much as I’d thought, and without the sounds of the animals below, there was an unnatural quiet. The crew, madly harpooning only moments before, had completely disengaged and was, to a man, peering over the edge. Not a fin, not a tentacle emerged from the comparatively peaceful waters. The beasts had vanished, and in a hurry. We didn’t hesitate in the least to celebrate our fending off of the threat, but before we could get too comfortable, a deafening cry brought us to attention. The sound was like that of a whale’s song, but much too deep, and much too loud. Before we even had time to gulp, our ship was nearly capsized, pushed with a force I never thought could be to the side as a colossus emerged from the ocean where our vessel once was. As if I wanted to, I couldn’t make out the being’s shape, nor its features, since it had tossed us too far away to see in the night’s gloom. The ship’s topsails were pulled away like a leaf from its stem by some extremity of the thing; I say extremity because it could only have been a tentacle, but was more akin to an elongated biological steam engine. The severed mast crashed through the deck, and as the ship started to sink, and I could clearly see our attacker approach. “I wish I were the Turk,” I thought to myself.
My entry didn't win. This story, by Kristen Yellis of Cherry Hill, NJ, did:
It was a dark and stormy night. The crew didn't know it, but the ship was surrounded by sharks, electric eels, octopuses, and other sea creatures. The wind howled and started blowing the ship toward Pirate's Island when suddenly an astronomical wave went tumbling over the ship with all sorts of fish, sharks and other sea creatures. Everyone dashed downstairs to see if anybody was missing. Captain Jon counted the number of people to see if anybody was missing.
"We're one short!" Captain John said uptightly.
"Help! Help!" someone screamed from long distance.
"Carl!" the crew screeched.
"Get the rope!" the captain ordered.
The crew threw out the rope as far as they could to reach Carl. It was too short.
"Again!" the Captain ordered.
Once again, the crew threw out the rope and Carl grabbed the rope and got pulled in. Everyone is back to normal again, and they don't have to worry if anyone is missing.