Flash Fiction: Octopus
My companion had grown weak in the journey of darkness. Captive in boxes that were unpleasant at best to try and grab or slink across, we’d journeyed together with only one another in tepid water that made us both so exhausted we’d had a hard time of communicating much. We couldn’t see. We couldn’t breathe.
Last I’d known, I was munching on fish, free as could be until being ripped from the waters into horrid, still barrels with an unfathomable concentration of beasts from the same depths as I. Crabs and fish and mollusks of all sorts were tossed into these boxes with little regard. Struggling against one another for what must have been hours was something we must have quickly become accustomed to. Some were understandably lashing out against the rest of us, and sometimes even the corpses of their brethren. I do not know if they were fighting their demise then or if they were even aware. It did not matter.
At least, from that perspective, I could appreciate the tepid, shaking and vibrating box of darkness.
Stillness again. I wondered how far we’d traveled from the ocean as only a footnote to my determination to return to it. I had tried with all of my might to push the box open as soon as I’d been placed in it, and now that we’d stopped, I reserved my energy. For certain it would open on its own soon enough, though for what reason I had yet to discern. There were only two things I knew: our lives held meager value and our senses even less.
I heard chirps, sound all seemed so loud when not filtered through the murk of water. It echoed in the pull of the lid open to reveal us once more to the outside world. We would not be contained here forever. Biding my time, I watched as the octopus opposite me was chosen first. The thickest part of his tentacle draped over the side of the box as an attempt limited by weakness and the naivety to think he could leisurely wander free.
He was chosen by a much smaller grouping of tentacles than he, snatched from the back of the head in talons that struggled to pull him from the box that had proven so unpleasant to grab onto before. This sacrifice of his had my own daring in full force, an opportunity for a quick strike. Either we, together, could manage to escape or we, separately, would be conquered.
The stark reality of our separation unfolding before my very eyes was jarring as I too tried to climb free from the box’s high walls. I watched as the companion’s limbs were straightened by the claw of the creature, his struggle a meager one by now. A silver plate was then driven into him, separating those limbs from his body before hacking them into little hunks, rendering them hardly recognizable. It swept them up onto a dish, pouring black liquid onto them to make them dance as if some sort of mockery of how effortless it was to destroy him.
The slam, and subsequent jingle of various jars and items on the counter, rang louder than anything I’d experienced so far since being out of the ocean. Watching once again the swift and cavalier way the thing committed such gruesome acts, as I pushed forward to make my escape, it paused only to rip my feelers from every smooth surface I’d latched onto and slam me back into the box.
Now, there are two types of mindsets in this world: the fight and the flight. Equipped with the tools I was given since birth, they are not useful here, outside of the water. Should I camouflage to prevent being seen within a confined space? It seems useless. Running is much harder than swimming, too. Ink will suffocate me in this tiny puddle with nowhere to flee. Despite all of my instinct, despite all of my defenses, and despite all I’d survived thus far, I am unprepared to “fly” here. I do what I know I must. I vault myself out of the box, tipping it over and spilling the small amount of water we had traveled in.
It splashes across the same cutting board where I now see the companion flayed, his insides bared to the world. In my desperation and disgust that can hardly be addressed in the situation, I push his corpse onto the floor, hoping to use it as a distraction enough to flee.
Instead, my body is grabbed reactively, another slam and its associated jingle this time slicing through my own limbs in an instant. The pain is unbearable but it separates me from the grip of the metal plate, and I crawl up its operator with what limbs I have left. Fight.
Against my struggle, two of my tentacles lie there writhing all their own on the cutting board just where my now lifeless travel companion’s had. I do the only thing I can. I latch on with the tightest grip I can muster into its eyes and mouth, pushing slick tendrils between its lips so that if it may cut me down it should lose its face for my life.
It tried. The muffle of its screams vibrating against my beak and paws was just as endless and numbing as the ones from within the dark box in which we’d been transported.
Latched on and enduring its beating and pulling, I cited the thoughts of the companion’s writhing and the writhing of my own tentacles, the remainders of which seared with pain and crippling as I continued to work my way down the man’s throat. With those thoughts I mustered ink and vomit, expelling all that was left from my weakened system so long as it would see my victory.
I wondered if I was able to win, gnashing and pummeling not as effective against my smooth and malleable body as the metal plate had been, pinched off against the equally unforgiving wood board to lose me two limbs. Every time it managed to knock free a few points of suction, I found miraculous strength to replace them with vengeance. Fight.
It fell to its knees, and then, to its back. Silence filled the room first. I looked around, the half-emptied carapace of the companion unceremoniously draped onto the floor alongside the result of the struggle. His sacrifice had been realized. Fight.
I waited a few more moments in caution. It took a moment to pull away, realizing that the tentacle I’d snaked down its throat had been nearly bitten free, so gnawed and mashed that my pulling stretched and strung it until it was severed entirely, no matter how carefully I tried to remove it. Five left. I could survive with five. Five limbs gave me enough movement to have agency.
I slid against the floor, made from the same material against which I’d been deformed. It gave me good traction to make my escape.
Weak and now crippled, my body heaved without the buoyancy of the water. I begged the celestial for a wave to consume this place, a storm, a flood. I had made my escape, but I had nowhere to go. I wandered the edges of the walls until finding an exit, but it was of no use. I was doing little but dragging myself around blindly.
At least, my thought as my mind started to flicker, I had died with dignity. Like my succumbing to exhaustion in death, a candle in a cool hallway in a late evening, I had fought. I had won.
