Its drift had brought it to the scarp of an extinct volcano, which rose like a needle for the ocean canyons. It was most comfortable in a range between 40 and 55 degrees Fahrenheit, and as it drifted with the current and encountered thermoclines and upwellings that warmed or cooled the water, it moved up or down. The only element of the sea that the animal's sensory system monitored constantly was temperature. When aroused, it would change color again and again. Had it been observable to the human eye, the animal would have been seen as purplish maroon, but that was now, at rest. It hung more than half a mile below the surface, far beyond the reach of any sunlight, yet its enormous eyes registered faint glimmers, generated, in terror or excitement, by other, smaller hunters. It had no sense of itself, of its great size or of the fact that its capacity for violence was unknown in other creatures of the deep. It had but one enemy: all the other creatures in its world were prey.

When it was threatened or in the frenzy of a kill, the tentacles would spring forward, like tooth-studded whips. Its eight sinuous arms floated on the current its two long tentacles were coiled tightly against its body. It rested, nourishing itself with oxygen absorbed from the water it pumped through its bullet-shaped body. It was not asleep, for it did not know sleep, sleep was not among its natural rhythms. It was not a mammal, did not breathe air, so it felt no implies to move to the surface. It was not a fish, had no air bladder to give it buoyancy, but because of the special chemistry of its flesh, it did not sink into the abyss. It hovered in the ink-dark water, waiting.

Beast by Peter Benchley