Tentacles: An Anthology

by Haley Whitehall

  They walked to the end of the platform and descended the stairs. Twenty or so scruffy-looking people waited at the bottom, expectation and questions written all over their upturned faces. Coop faltered, gripping the railing, but an inward force pushed him forward, forced his legs to move. He wanted to scream, but was far past that luxury.

  The first of the relatives approached. Coop stifled a gasp. He knew this person, though they’d never met. That thing inside him knew. Knew all of them. Every last one of them. Their names.

  Their lives. Memories of the departed.

  And now that thing – she, it, whatever – was writhing around inside him like a barrel full of electric eel worms before their first feeding. Desperate to get out. His forehead began to sweat as he tried to keep a normal expression. He loosened his collar. Hot. Too hot.

  “Well?” the person asked. “Will you tell us what happened? Did everybody die when the station was damaged?”

  The others closed around him in a circle. Coop fought down wave after wave of panic, fisting and unfisting his hands. He might as well tell them the truth though. Maybe that would quiet the damn thing.

  “Please. We have to know.”

  The others nodded.

  “I’m nearly seventy,” one old man said. “I need to know if what they told us in their last communication was true.”

  “Yeah. Were they able to find a way to save our memories?” another asked.

  Hopeful. They looked so hopeful. His heart thudded in his chest and he prayed it would stop and leave him standing silent and empty on this landing pad stripped of his weary soul. Working its way deeper inside, the thing prodded him to talk. His jaw moved. “Yes, they did.”

  The relatives smiled, cheered.

  “But there’s just one problem…”

  The crowd stilled, uncertain.

  He coughed to clear his choked throat. It would not un-choke. Any second now, one of those tendrils would come slithering out…and they’d know. He wanted them to know. To run away screaming. Before it was too late. He opened his mouth wide… and gagged as words were shoved through his voice-box.

  “We need to continue the experiments here to be sure it’s effective.” He gazed over the hopeful faces in the crowd and cringed at the creature’s unappeased appetite. His throat croaked out the words: “Any volunteers?”

  Everyone raised their hand.

  Inside, the tentacles wriggled, filling the void where his stomach and lungs used to operate.

  They writhed in rivulets under his skin and filled the empty spaces behind his eyes. He blinked, trying to remember how to sound normal and wondered how Sorenson had done it. How many years had that thing infected him, eating him from within? No wonder he hadn’t answered the hail. Look what he’d become.

  “Good,” he heard himself say, rubbing his hands together. “Let’s get started.”

  MR. SWEEDE

  ..................

  By D.R. Larsson

  WILLIAM WAS A LUCKY YOUNG man and he knew it. He was a student at the finest university in the Sethrai quadrant. He had wonderful friends who didn’t mind his humble beginnings. He had an amazing girlfriend, and, best of all, he had Mr. Sweede as a dear friend and supporter.

  No one knew Mr. Sweede’s given name. He had no other name. He was addressed as such by student and faculty alike. No one knew his age. No one knew anything about his family, though he was obviously well connected. He bought a lot of drinks when groups he joined went out on the town, and he hosted many parties of his own. But no one remembers when they met Mr.

  Sweede. No one remembers a time when he wasn’t a part of their lives. He had always been there, and always would be.

  Naturally, life at the university wasn’t all parties. It had been a particularly grueling day of classes and labs when William returned home, anticipating some quiet private time with Susien.

  When he opened the door, he instead smelled Mr. Sweede’s unique cologne. He placed his course materials on his desk and hung up his coat, turning in time to find Mr. Sweede emerging from the apartment’s single bedroom wrapping a towel around his naked body.

  William was always happy to see his friend, but this time, something about Mr. Sweede’s smiling countenance stopped him cold in his tracks. There was something different in Mr.

  Sweede’s eyes. Something William had never seen before. The realization that William had no idea who or what Mr. Sweede was washed over him. The eyes that seized his body and froze his soul were not human. Nor did they belong to any of the galaxies’ species with which he was familiar. William found himself confronted with an absolute stranger in the guise of his good friend.

  William saw Mr. Sweede’s mouth moving, but his ears registered no sound. Mr. Sweede

  approached and took him in a casual, friendly embrace. William’s skin crawled as he realized the arms contained no bones. A sharp stinging sensation on the back of his neck spurred his adrenal glands into action and William’s mind flooded with fear. His skin tingled and burned as something took root on the back of his neck at the base of his skull. Then the back of his head flared with blinding pain as tendrils writhed forth. They engulfed his head, then penetrated and merged with his skin. Through the agonizing pain he felt his bones dissolve and his musculature shift. In moments, only his eyes were left exposed and unaltered.

  When he could again see again, he beheld Mr. Sweede standing before him, holding a mirror.

  It was his face in the mirror now, not William’s. He opened his mouth to scream but the tendrils crawled down his throat while others continued to transform the rest of his body. The process proceeded, cutting off all his senses. Soon he was left with only his eyes through which to observe completion of the terrible transformation.

  Mr. Sweede smiled and moved close again. At an unspoken command, William’s

  transformed body opened its mouth, distending in an impossible way. Hideous tendrils extended from the gaping maw to embrace Mr. Sweede who stood, always smiling. They reached forth and consumed him, drawing the two bodies together, merging them into one. William became a powerless passenger as Mr. Sweede, in their conjoined and still unconsolidated but mobile form turned and walked into the bedroom.

  William remembered that Susien should have been in that bedroom. When he didn’t see her, he could only hope that she hadn’t been home when he arrived. Mr. Sweede guided the body before the full length mirror. William was granted a few moments to observe Mr. Sweede’s ever present smile in the mirror as masses of tendrils wound and merged, fusing into arms and legs till, at length, he appeared as normal and human as ever. Mr. Sweede waved farewell as miniscule tendrils finally covered William’s eyes and invaded his brain. All went black.

  ..................

  Mr. Sweede opened his eyes and looked around. Something was desperately wrong. He

  wasn’t supposed to open his eyes again, ever. While he knew his name was Mr. Sweede, the name didn’t feel right, as if it didn’t actually belong to him. He closed his eyes to shut out the impossibilities and confusion.

  He moved a hand experimentally and felt a body next to his. He felt soft but firm flesh and curving contours. His fingers knew those curves. They were the contours of a hip and breast clad in soft yet firm and smooth flesh; curves and flesh that his fingers had grown to know intimately in the two standard years since their bonding. He turned his head and opened his eyes, finding his beloved Mr. Sweede sleeping next to him. Not a normal, healthy sleep. The breasts rose and fell in rhythm of respiration, but not true sleep. Only unconscious existence.

  He stood and looked around. Mr. Sweede’s myriad forms, human, extremely alien and

  everything in between were frozen in eternal sleep all about him. Some were in cages, some lying on the floor, some even standing or leaning against the bizarrely angled walls of the non-Euclidean world surrounding him. Then the smell came to him. That odd odor. The fragrance of Mr. Sweede’s cologne, the one all his friends had wondered about and sought in p
erfumeries to no avail. It was Mr. Sweede’s exclusively and uniquely. He realized it was not cologne, but natural musk; the scent of Mr. Sweede’s pheromones.

  The odor stirred something within his consciousness. Something was going wrong, Mr.

  Sweede began having memories of a life not his own; memories of a life before he was Mr.

  Sweede. A life that didn’t include Mr. Sweede’s presence.

  But there was no life before Mr. Sweede, or at least, there shouldn’t have been. He wasn’t supposed to have memories. He wasn’t supposed to be awake. Mr. Sweede wasn’t supposed to do anything but sleep. Forever.

  Memories coalesced into history. Mr. Sweede had appeared in his life and had taken his friends, somehow erasing the memory of them from his mind. Mr. Sweede then took the love of his life, and finally his own. Mr. Sweede didn’t just kill them, he assimilated them. Mr. Sweede virtually erased their existence. He wondered if their parents and families would remember them.

  Would their bonding ceremony and their love for one another be remembered? He looked down up on her and carefully bent to kiss Mr. Sweede on her lips.

  Anger born of sadness and loss began to boil as he took in the scent. He was young, in love, and well on his way to becoming a man of means in this part of the galaxy. Mr. Sweede had stolen that from him and made him Mr. Sweede. He’d stolen her from him. A tear fell from his cheek to form a tiny pool between Mr. Sweede’s perfect breasts. He collapsed to his knees, the silent howl of anger and loss echoing soundlessly throughout the perfect stillness.

  There was no sound or time in this place of Mr. Sweede, no way to gauge how long he’d screamed and howled and cried in the absolute silence. It was Mr. Sweede’s scent that finally returned him to what now passed for rational thought. He looked down at his beloved one last time, then closed his eyes. Eyes closed, anger boiling within, fueled by the scent, he rose and began the hunt only to trip and fall over one of Mr. Sweede’s still bodies.

  More cautious now, Mr. Sweede began picking his way around the myriad forms, following the trail of pheromones. He never tired, never hungered. On he went, up stairs, down ladders, through corridors. Star ship engine spaces opened into fantastic forests from which he emerged into opulent throne rooms. Onward he went. Always stepping carefully around the myriad forms of Mr. Sweede from every corner of the galaxy.

  In the silent vaults of his own mind, Mr. Sweede had only one thought left: revenge. Mr.

  Sweede had to die. He began to chant to himself in the silence. As he chanted the scent grew stronger.

  “Mr. Sweede,” he chanted. “I’m closer now Mr. Sweede, I can feel you, I can smell you, you’re the first, the true Mr. Sweede. You took my life and consumed me Mr. Sweede; my life, that of my love, and all these others as well. It’s time for you to pay for your sins Mr. Sweede.

  It’s time to die, all of us; once and for all.” On and on he went, hunting Mr. Sweede; the scent growing stronger and stronger.

  Chanting the ongoing soliloquy in the caverns of his mind distracted him so he almost missed it; a sound. A real sound violating the perfect silence of Mr. Sweede’s world. Throughout the long hunt, Mr. Sweede heard no sounds other than those echoing in his thoughts.

  There it was again! Soft, faint and distant; a rustling whisper. The sound of Mr. Sweede was as unusual and alluring as his scent; now a robust, powerful, cloying musk. Rounding the corner of a mountain pass with rocks of a color no human had ever seen, he found Mr. Sweede; a writhing, amorphous mass of varicolored tendrils that reminded him of fat slimy worms and roots.

  As Mr. Sweede watched, the crawling chaotic mass halted, the tendrils wound together, merged, and fused into a hexapedal alien figure. The new form teetered only moments before collapsing to the ground. It lay motionless till the figure’s outer form sloughed off, leaving its latest victim and becoming once again, the creeping mass of tendrils that Mr. Sweede now knew, was Mr. Sweede.

  The mass of tendrils slid and heaved itself around another boulder and Mr. Sweede followed.

  He was surprised the being’s speed. Moments later, now in a catacomb carved into the rock, Mr.

  Sweede’s mass occupied the corner of a hall where he paused to deposit yet another victim, another Mr. Sweede. Mr. Sweede began to worry. Now that he’d finally found Mr. Sweede, how could he be destroyed?

  Challenging his doubts, Mr. Sweede bellowed a challenge to his killer. But the only sound to break the eternal stillness was the whispering and slithering of Mr. Sweede’s tendrils. Mr.

  Sweede showed no signs of being aware of his presence. The crawling mass only stopped to deposit another victim before moving on. When Mr. Sweede rushed forward and attempted to strike Mr. Sweede, it had no apparent effect. His fists met no resistance and the heap moved on.

  Mr. Sweede tried to tackle and block the churning mass, but the tendrils simply swarmed around and passed him. Mr. Sweede took no more note of his presence than he did of any other surmountable feature in the landscape.

  When the churning mass paused to form another victim, Mr. Sweede launched himself forth with fists swinging and feet kicking. The actions had no notable effect on the process. When Mr.

  Sweede’s latest victim fell to the ruddy grass, Mr. Sweede continued his assault on the helpless form. Finally, while Mr. Sweede returned to his natural state, there was a small victory. Mr.

  Sweedes’ fists and feet squashed a number of tendrils into immobile, formless goo before they could rejoin the whole.

  Mr. Sweede smiled and for the first time he could recall, he felt his heart beating within his body. As Mr. Sweede’s mass moved on, he reveled in his first triumph. Thus it began.

  Mr. Sweede followed, waiting for the crucial moment when he could destroy more tendrils.

  For at no other time was the creature vulnerable. Until Mr. Sweede had awakened beside his love, Mr. Sweede had never before had a recognizable weakness. Now, Mr. Sweede would

  insure that Mr. Sweede died, tendril by tendril.

  In a place with no time, he tried, but utterly failed to keep track of the number of victims Mr.

  Sweede took, or the number of tendrils destroyed as he prosecuted his murderer through endless scenes and settings littered with victims of the creatures appetite.

  Eventually, the mass became noticeably smaller. It did not move as fast, nor did it take victims as often. When Mr. Sweede did take victims, the process began to slow, and Mr. Sweede was able to destroy more and more tendrils each time. And then it happened, the breakthrough, when Mr. Sweede finally knew his victory was near.

  Settings, scenes and geography shifted again. Mr. Sweede deposited another victim then tried to move on to yet another time and place. He seemed to be in a hurry even though his overall speed had, by now, been greatly reduced. In his haste, many more tendrils were destroyed and, for once, some were left behind. When Mr. Sweede destroyed the first of these orphans, a bit of his mind was set free. His name was not Mr. Sweede; it was William!

  The shock of realization was so great that William paused to reflect. In that short span, the other orphaned tendrils managed to catch up and rejoin their colony. When William roared in outrage at what had been done to him, his voice finally echoed through the halls of the temple into which he’d chased Mr. Sweede. The twisting crawling mass quivered at the sound and put forth a burst of speed. Mr. Sweede finally seemed to acknowledge his presence.

  Mr. Sweede began attempting to avoid William, shifting hither and yon, place to place as rapidly as he could. But it was far too late. Too much had been lost. It seemed ages before Mr.

  Sweede took another victim. His recovery was now so slow that William destroyed fully half of the remaining tendrils before Mr. Sweede could pull himself together again. He was now virtually immobilized.

  William looked upon Mr. Sweede’s latest victim. It was an alien race with which William had a passing familiarity. The being looked unhealthy and emaciated. He took comfort in the realization that his campaign against Mr. Sweede m
ust have been affecting his hunting in the outer world.

  William became agitated at the interminable wait before Mr. Sweede stirred into activity again, this time forming a small sickly looking creature that William didn’t recognize. It was an agonizing wait, but finally the tendrils began to separate. When they did William leapt upon Mr.

  Sweede and the small creature. Soon, there was but one tendril left among the carnage. William picked it up. It hung limp in his hand. William gathered it into a ball in his palm of and squeezed.

  He felt the goo ooze between his fingers as blackness took him at last. His last thought was of Susien.

  ..................

  Senior police inspectors are occasionally called to the hospital in the course of their duties.

  This hospital happened to be one of the best, and a well-known research facility. When he arrived, the inspector was briefed on the incident, then led to a decontamination chamber and eventually to a genetics lab. In an adjoining conference room, he was supplied with a full report.

  The victim was supposed to be, according to the records, an elderly Mandrite businessperson in poor health traveling in relative comfort on a passenger star liner. When the Mandrite failed to answer the call for the final planetary shuttle, the crew opened his cabin to fetch him and politely see him on to his destination.

  What they found in the cabin delayed the star liners departure for almost two standard weeks.

  It was an impossibly huge amorphous mass of various tissues that was now isolated in a high security lab, in an enormous vat. It’s various states of decay and decomposition artificially arrested by the lab’s stasis fields.

  The ship, its contents, crew and passengers were promptly quarantined, examined and

  sterilized within to insure what ever happened in that cabin wasn’t contagious. There were even discussions of possibilities of long term quarantine for the personnel and pushing ship into a nearby star to insure total sterilization. Cooler heads prevailed; the ship and passengers were eventually allowed to continue their journey.