Sebastian Albu

They had forgotten him. Sebastian Albu hangs suspended between life and death in the cold, green-tinged tank—his limp body wrapped in a living nest of electric eels. The experiment was abandoned the moment he lost consciousness, left behind in a sealed chamber deep underground. Now, alone and fading, he drifts in and out of a fractured awareness, caught in a brutal cycle of electric shocks and failing breath. The eels pulse against his skin, sending cruel jolts through his body, their movements sinuous and uncaring. His lungs burn with the slow, creeping weight of water seeping in—oxygen tubes still attached, but barely working, a trickle of life too weak to keep him whole. Breathing has become a struggle, each gasp shallow, desperate, and insufficient. In his delirium, Sebastian begins to hallucinate. Faces, memories, and strange whispers swirl around him like phantoms in the water. He isn’t sure what’s real anymore. Sometimes he sees light—sometimes, the ceiling above cracks open into sky. But always, the pain brings him back. Always, the cold, the pressure, and the shocking tendrils remind him: he’s still here. Still trapped. Still drowning. Still waiting.