**Note from the author:
This is a side story set in the Earth: Tentacle Breeding Ground universe, and I recommend reading it as supplementary to the main narrative.
As of 2/24/23, I have also made some adjustments to character names:
Jean > Vincent
Annette > Marie
Genevieve > Pauline
Chanel > Celestine
Marc > Anthony
As always, thanks for reading and feedback :)
***
Vincent slowly cracked his eyes open for the first time in months, though to him it merely felt like a pleasant nap. The first thing he noticed was an unfamiliar, cloying taste in his mouth, and that his heart rate was oddly elevated despite his body being at rest. Disoriented, he shifted his eyes around the dark chamber he found himself in, his stiff body unable to move from his strangely moist but comfortable bed. His scattered thoughts slowly knitted themselves together as he began to make out the shapes around the room. It was all coming back to him now.
He was in the coma ward of one of Paris's oldest and finest hospitals. The rare neurological disease that had plagued him for all forty-three years of his life had finally progressed enough to force him to enter a medically induced coma in order to prevent more permanent damage to his body. He wasn't sure how long he had been out, but surely this was a sign that his research assistants had finally proven themselves competent and successfully completed the cure he had devoted his life to developing.
This flash of hope only lasted for a moment. Something was clearly wrong. The room was unusually dark. Either it was nighttime or something thick was covering the windows, but regardless, no lights were on, and missing were the expected sounds of beeping equipment and bustling hospital staff. What he heard instead was a strange combination of grotesque, wet squelching sounds, erotic moaning, and... a woman's giggling? Surely some whore nurse hadn't turned off the lights to have her way with one of the other comatose patients?
Feeling some strength finally returning to his muscles, Vincent weakly turned his head to get a better view of his surroundings. A slowly blinking red light on the wall, assumedly some sort of emergency power system, periodically illuminated the room... no, the hellscape. Each flash painted the interior a bloody crimson and cast long, black shadows that wiggled and danced as if alive. Vincent's eyes widened and he attempted to gasp, but he suddenly noticed that his mouth was covered in some sort of organic oxygen mask that was hanging from the writhing ceiling.
A man of a lesser mind might have immediately panicked, but Vincent remained motionless, analyzing the situation and attempting to draw clues from the nightmarish environment. Clearly, some sort of biological warfare had occurred since he had fallen unconscious, or possibly a new, invasive species had been discovered. A virus, perhaps? The unearthly sight of squirming tentacles weaving along the slime-covered tumorous growths emerging from the walls pointed towards an extraterrestrial origin. Not something too hard to believe possible. The fact that he could still breath unhindered through the obstruction in his esophagus certainly indicated something beyond human understanding.
Streams of mucus-like fluid oozed and dripped from every fleshy surface, with slimy strands webbing around each piece of furniture as if spun by a drunken spider. All around the room, several occupied beds divided by curtains could be seen barely peeking out from the pulsating organic masses around them.
All of the other people in the ward appeared to be sleeping - or more likely, in comas - and they all had the same tentacle covering their mouths as Vincent. For the first time, he realized that everyone was nude, including himself. He could see a few pairs of naked breasts gently rising and falling with steady, sleeping breaths, and semi-erect penises whose shadows mingled with those of the swaying tentacles. It was an oddly hypnotic sight, and not one that Vincent necessarily found unpleasant.
Suddenly, the man in the bed across the room from Vincent violently bolted upright, a look of confusion and panic contorting his face as he desperately screamed into the tentacle covering his face. He frantically clawed at the tendril in an effort to remove it from his mouth, but the more he tugged at it, the tighter it appeared to grasp his sweating cheeks.
Vincent was surprised that the man had such energy despite having no doubt been in a long coma just as he had been. Were his muscles not atrophied? Come to think of it, Vincent's own body felt rather healthy as well. He attempted to twitch his toes and found that his body responded. He couldn't imagine therapists and doctors still visiting in a clearly derelict place like this in order to exercise comatose patients while they slumbered. Just what was going on here?
Vincent was about to reach up and investigate the tendril in his own mouth, but froze as his eyes spotted a change in the scenery around the other, flailing man. Unseen by the man, several tentacles had grown out from the wall behind him. Suddenly, they clasped around his arms and neck, yanking him back down onto the mattress and binding his limbs. He struggled pathetically, but it was clear that these creatures were far more powerful than a fully-grown male human.
The slightly deranged female giggling Vincent had heard earlier suddenly bubbled out again from behind the curtain next to his bed, followed by the sound of footsteps moving across the squishy floor towards the bound, shaking man. An attractive woman entered Vincent's view. Her long black hair and pale skin were caked with a viscous slime, which glistened in the eerie red lighting. Something was very off about her - not the least of which was her clothing.
To Vincent's amusement, she was completely nude from the waist up. Her large, plump breasts jiggled softly as she stepped over a growth on the floor, before one of her hands reached up to begin eagerly fondling herself. The masturbating woman was most likely either a nurse or a doctor, as evidenced by the tattered scrubs barely covering her legs, but she was clearly not in the state of mind required for administering proper medical care.
Several slippery tentacles appeared to be twining up from under the waistband of her pants, gently caressing her toned stomach while visibly writhing around between her legs as well - no doubt causing considerable sexual stimulation. Vincent watched in fascination as the seemingly possessed nurse stopped next to the terrified man's bed.
"Finally... another one of our patients is back with us..." the woman said in a slurred, giddy voice. "It was starting to get lonely with just the two of us. Isn't that right, Mademoiselle Laurent?" Vincent could hear another woman's muffled, desperate groaning coming from the other side of the curtain next to him. "Now that you're awake, Monsieur Guay, we can proceed with the next steps of your... rehabilitation... so you can begin to offer your body in service to our loving Queen."
Queen? Was England responsible for this? No, that was absurd to think. France and the UK had been allies for years. There were certainly other monarchies, but it was hard to think of any that could topple an entire country like this, unless this phenomenon was simply centered on the hospital? That was unlikely as well, given how the power grid was apparently failing. The more Vincent observed, the more bewildered and curious he became.
He stared in wonderment as the nurse pushed her slender arm nearly elbow-deep into the squirming walls above the other man's bed. When she withdrew her limb, grasped in her hand was a thick, wiggling tentacle that extended out from the wall like a living firehouse. The man began to whimper and scream as best he could, his eyes wide with terror, as the woman guided the tendril towards his helpless naked body. As the light flashed again, Vincent could briefly see a devious, hungry grin splitting the nurse's face under her lust-filled eyes.