Other than that, nothing in the story surprised me. The title itself refers to a big sea beastie, which was presented. The setting had to be the water, which it was. Most confrontations with sea monsters end with shipwreck which it did. To be able to tell the story, the narrator must survive it, which he did.

The only event which happened that wasn’t foretold by the title itself was the moment with the captain, which was just one sentence buried in the middle of the story about the big serpent.

Also, I agree with Nathaniel that I don’t understand why none of them could talk about the beast. Perhaps that is intended to be a commentary, again, on homosexuality, but to me a story has to make sense first in its presented form, and then can have extra meanings beyond that.

Let me clarify; I’d rather see the relationship be the focus of the story instead of one odd sentence in the middle. I can see the symbolism if I squint, but it feels more like an afterthought than a central thesis. That is, rather than Changwa Steve’s approach, I feel like the story reads more like, “I want a story about a sea monster! Oh, wait, I need a Deep Meaning. Uh… repressed homosexuality! typetypetype.”

I’d also rather have seen a much more personal touch to the whole thing. Basically, the story spent a lot of time on the monster and not so much on the character, which left me feeling blandly uninterested.

BTW, thanks for being hard core enough to grab the file soon after it goes live. Folks like you are the only ones who keep me honest (i.e., on schedule). :)

I think the big issue is that the characters have no real reason to be as shattered as they are by the experience, any more than by any bad wreck. Yes, the monster is very big, but storms have killed far more sailors and ships than sea monsters (and are arguably at least as if not more impressive visually). There are flashes of deeper characterization - the odd “moment” the narrator and the captain share just before the attack, or the disruption of the “twin-sense” of the two brothers - but they don’t really amount to anything or get explored further. I just couldn’t see WHY the experience had so utterly shattered everyone involved. Why couldn’t anyone else speak of the monster? Why did it crush their souls? Was this some sort of supernatural effect, or was it an attempt at the Lovecraftian “It was just so big and incomprehensible!”?

I dunno. I just didn’t feel it. “Doors etc.” has buckets of subtext and complicated interpersonal relationships (not to mention a much more tense and personal encounter with the titular leviathan); “Foghorn” had a bittersweet melancholia to it; “Leviathan” just seemed to have a very large fish that attacked a stockpile of food in order to eat it, just as predators have done when interacting with humans for eons, and this somehow drove everyone mad. I’d honestly have liked it a lot more as a story about the awkward, confused romance between the narrator and the captain, with the big fish as sort of background flavor.