The marathon stretched on, leading runners to the island’s edge. From there, they boarded a boat that continued down the Delta. On the ferry, the runners feasted on gelatinous seaweed bars. They ravaged the delicate jellies, cutting them into purple rectangles. They then convulsed violently, spewing a dark purple mass—so dark that it was darker than black. The race continued in their minds, knowing they must carry on once the ferry stopped.
I entered a dimly lit kitchen where my father was preparing noodle soup. He was in pain and blamed the metal box holding the noodles.
The box is no good, he snapped.
But we both knew it wasn’t about the box. There was something else.
Are you hurt? I asked.
He nodded. Three sharp thorns, hard as tempered steel yet unmistakably organic, jutted from his hand. Their surface gleamed faintly in the dim light, an eerie fusion of bone-like texture and unyielding resilience. We emptied the tweezers available between us, but only the precise instrument could offer a viable chance at completing the thornectomy.
Where did these come from? I pressed.
From the octopi, a woman in the room explained—her voice, clinical.
Two octopi slithered into our bar; one writhed with guilt. Attempting avoidance. The woman explained how these creatures shoot flying darts, ejecting their thorns from their most inner tissues. I’d never heard of such a thing. Watching the octopi slither across the corners of the room, I felt the impulse to kill. Just kill them already. But she kept speaking, demonstrating their abilities with detached fascination.
One of the octopi, sprawling over a bed corner, became central. She spoke of a man—an infamous man for his unrelenting sexual expansions. Girls were offered to him, disrobed. The priestesses who prepare the virgins would murmur, Be gentle; this is her first time.
But pleading was futile, for he did not hear. He is but endowed and only penetrates.
She described the grotesque details with an unsettling precision. As he entered, fingers probing, expanding, writhing, exposing the anus—the all-consuming rim.
There was nothing human left—it was the octopus. Its tentacles penetrated, and black ink erupted violently, staining everything with suffocating, inescapable darkness. The ink spread and exploded in the clinical room, onto the skin and the air.
Consumed by the viscous abyss, the weight of the obsidian mist pressed inward, leaving no escape.
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