Chapter 10

At sea, the sailors would cry, Sea serpent! Andy and Gary shrugged; this whale didn’t even have scales.

The sailors would cry, Kraken! Andy and Gary shrugged; giant squids came gianter.

The sailors would cry, Mermaid! Andy and Gary shrugged; manatees were not particularly attractive to them.

The sailors would cry, Scylla! Lo and behold, there was indeed a woman, hair shrouding all of her skin, with a belt of roaring, snapping dogs at her waist. Andy signaled for them to turn the boat, but the sailors could not be persuaded.

The sailors would cry, Leviathan! What, another whale? Andy and Gary cried, irritated, and made their way to the deck. Then they thought, It’s eleven in the morning, why is it suddenly so dark?

Indeed, they were standing beneath the roof of an immense sea serpent’s mouth. That was no sun; that was the creature’s tonsils; those were not clouds; that was the creature’s palate; that was no trade wind; that was the void of the creature’s throat. The sailors prayed for dear life; Andy and Gary tried to calculate the implications of such a large creature, and hoped they still had WiFi in the belly of the beast.

To their fortune, because of the creature’s poor chewing habits, they found themselves lodged between two teeth; unfortunately, the creature never brushed, and so the resulting cavity reeked.

The sailors felt they would die in this lightless, airless, God-forsaken place. Homer, slightly more optimistic, remarked how this would make a good story in a poem. Andy, panicking, remarked how common it was, actually, to be inside a sea serpent; he did it four or five times in college. Is that so? Homer asked. Yeah, I do it so much, I don’t even think about it anymore, Andy replied, nonchalantly. In fact, I think it shows how out-of-touch a writer is, if they even mentioned it. Homer took this to heart.

In light of the machines’ clear familiarity with sea serpent mouths, the crew lit a fire and sat together in the dark, singing songs that Gary had asked his Greek contractor to write. They collected fish and seaweed, and Andy, having found a good recipe, made sushi. Even the grouch seemed to be having a slightly-less-than-good time.

They were so pleased by this lull in activity that they even used the ship’s anchor to scale the creature’s teeth. This was good as the creature was heading toward a date, and, to his misfortune, no woman was forward enough to tell him his teeth was the cause of their breakups.

The men took to sleeping as their primary hobby. During one of their naps, they perceived a faint light in the corner of their eyes. In their drowse they rubbed their eyes, for surely it was a sunbeam come from a dream. And yet the sound of rushing water beneath them, and the sensation of flowing air, confirmed the truth to them: the creature had opened his mouth, and they were sailing out of it.

The sailors rejoiced, held onto the other, and clapped Andy and Gary on the back. It really was a short sojourn, and they were now prepared to return back to Ithaca, plus or minus some mishaps and deaths Andy and Gary would have to cause. They got to their oars and rowed like there was no tomorrow. Soon they reached shore, thankful to be on green grass again.

In the distance they saw men approaching. They were happy to see other men, so they did not feel like killing and plundering them.

The men, brown in skin color, and with feathers in their hair, bore a silver platter to them; a cooked turkey was on this platter.

“Greetings, newfound friends. Let us sit down and eat, giving thanks to one another.”

Andy and Gary could not believe that they were in the Americas.

They immediately shooed them back onto the boat, barking orders to head back to Greece, pronto.