Sarah couldn't help herself. She had settled at the computer, having raised herself from a sleepless night in her bed, and it was like the story was writing itself. She'd make no money off this; she wasn't even sure she could place it. The last magazine editor she'd tried had returned her Ungeheurer story with the gentle suggestion that she see someone professionally, that this genre she occasionally was submitting was getting more and more scary for the editor. But she was encouraged to continue submitting her erotic Romances. They sold very well.
Sarah wasn't writing this of her own accord. She was writing it to get past this story. It was a block to the erotic Romance she'd already started and hadn't been able to continue withâbecause this one kept intruding. And it kept her awake at night.
She looked over to the large fish tank on the credenza by the window, its waters burbling and gurgling and emitting an eerie light into the darkened study. The octopus languishing in the bottom of the tank, two suction-cupped tentacles rising up the inside walls of the tank and the glob of a head seen between them, was staring at her.
She shuddered. She needed to get rid of the little monster. But how would she do that now? Rick had put it there. As a joke, she'd originally thought. But in view of the way he'd left her, she now recognized it as a subliminal mocking and nasty attack on her, on her sexualityâher lack of it, Rick claimed, and how she compensated for that. She was buried in her writing, he said, and not giving him enough attention. He had read parts of one of her Ungeheurer stories over her shoulder while she was typing it. And he had laughed at her and said she was going loony. And then he had put that octopus in the tank. Two weeks later he was gone.
The story was calling to herâseveral paragraphs ahead of her typing. She had to hunker down and type furiously to try to keep up to where the story was taking her. She had no time to read and absorb the storyline herself or to build any background on the protagonistâthe female victim. She was being compelled to type, as if her fingers were all the monster needed, all the Ungeheurer needed to bring his monstrous story to the light.
She did think of the Ungeheurer as a male. And strangely enough she thought of him as a sensual male. Far more sensual than Rick had been. Rick had been a disappointment in that department. He'd blamed her. He'd always gotten off, though. It was Sarah who couldn't achieve an orgasm with him.
After his last fumbling attempts with her, he'd risen off her body in anger, tossed out a "I think you get off more on those monster stories you write than on any man who would touch you," and flounced into the bathroom and slammed the door shut.
Sarah stopped typing and looked up, without even knowing why. The Ungeheurer called to her again from inside the computer, and she returned her attention there, once again several paragraphs behind where he was taking her.
That, though. That right there was a sound she didn't expect in the night. A shuffling, snuffling sound from the corridor beyond the doorway next to her computer table.
She felt the pressure on her leg and looked down, in horror. The tentacle appendage was wrapped around her ankle; then her calf. Another one wrapping around her thigh. Her waist. Her neck. Pulling her into the center of the room, suspending her in air. Tentacles encasing her everywhere. She had no idea how many.
Sarah looked wildly at the fish tank. The octopus was still there, staring at her. She screamed as two tentacles pushed their way under the hem of her pajama top, wrapped themselves around her breasts, and squeezed. Another tentacle was inside her top, pulling, and ripping away the material. The tip of a tentacle was penetrating her vagina, flicking at her sensitive inner walls. A tentacle had sunk itself in her ass too. She was being totally taken.