Page 17 of Darkest Dredge

This is not the time to be thirsty for tentacles, Beatrice! Pull yourself together, for Noah!

Despite my internal pep talk, my eyes roved down the creature's naked body. He still had all of his tattoos. The band of eldritch symbols around his throat were just as illuminant as his eyes, gold and burning. His nautical tattoos, while not glowing, seemed to ripple and move as if they were alive. The ship on his chest and stomach sailed on malevolent tides, against a night sky of twinkling eldritch runes. He wriggled his fingers, as if testing out his new body, which drew my attention to his knuckle tattoos reading HOLD FAST.

My attention dipped lower.

Washboard abdominal muscles and corded hips flowed down to a chiseled adonis belt. Unlike the book Noah had been reading to me moments ago, there were no tentacles in place of legs. By the familiar patchwork sleeve of ink covering his right leg, it was still very much his body. It was just warped by the mask.

The only thing—other than his face—that had been intensely altered was his cock.

Unholy.

Fucking.

Cthulhu.

Where his thick dick had been seconds ago was now a tapered green appendage. It wasn’t until the creature noticed where my gaze had wandered, that the flesh quivered and began to peel back.

It split in four sections, reminiscent of a banana peel. Ropes of clear fluid oozed between each portion, stretching and snapping as they opened up like a blooming flower to reveal the bud at the center.

No, not a bud. A beak. Like that of an octopus. It was the largest one I’d ever seen in person. Big enough to—

The beak opened and yet another appendage slowly emerged. This one I recognized. A human cock, pink at the tip and dribbling copious amounts of pre-cum. The chain tattoo wrapping his shaft confirmed my original suspicions. It was Noah’s cock alright, just swollen by the mutation, with more pronounced veins. My heart twisted into tight sailor knots. Was he literally trapped inside this symbiote-esque creature?

“Noah!” I tried to call him again, hoping he was somewhere in there listening. “Can you hear me?”

Tentacles undulated in response, and the voice that came forth was nothing I could have prepared for. I was less certain he had a mouth under the green feelers. His voice didn't seem to come from any part of his body for that matter. It echoed in my skull, in my chest, and from beneath the boat like a whale's song.

The words were ancient and nonsensical to me. Unlike Noah, I only knew a few key phrases. Just enough to understand it was indeed ancient Eldritch, or more recently coined, Aklo.

"I don't understand," I cried weakly as I tugged at the ziptie keeping me anchored to Noah's headboard. "Please, just let me go. I can help you get that mask off."

The monster moved closer, until its shins knocked against the bunk, and it hissed in frustration. Bile scorched the back of my throat seeing the monster fumble, unfamiliar with this space. The way those tendrils under his flesh moved was unnatural, like it didn’t understand human anatomy. If Noah was in there, he didn't appear to be in control.

My pulse accelerated as the beast's attention moved to me. Its voice turned to a guttural hum that sunk straight to my core.

It crawled up onto the bed, moving its body so that it was on its hands and knees on Noah's mattress, with my body caged beneath it.

I was so much smaller in comparison. Noah's cock had emerged from the tentacle sheath, making it clear that it was aroused.

This couldn’t be happening.

A dream. A weird, horny, fucked up dream. That's what this was. The spicy-sweet rum had gone straight to my head. I'd probably passed out and was not having a freaky little dream about the man I'd been in love with for years turning into a tentacle monster. I probably fell asleep while Noah was reading to me. Wasn’t the book about this, too? A fun notion in theory, but literal practice? Intimidating and frightening as hell.

I squeezed my eyes shut. "Wake up, wake up. Wake up!"

Its breath fanned my face, and my eyes shot open when tentacles prodded my lips, threaded through my hair and poked at my nipples.

It murmured something incomprehensible as it watched my nipples harden from the stimulation.

Nope. This wasn't a dream. Who was I fooling? Not me. This was too real to be fiction.

"Noah..." My voice came out as a rasp, barely recognizable as my own. "Please. I'm scared."

The creature's head canted, it's five eyeballs peering at me, though each one seemed to be focused on a different part of my body. Then, another sound rattled all around.

This time, I understood.

It was laughing at me. Like it found my predicament amusing. Maybe Noah was in there after all.