Rescued
You moan helplessly as the giant octopus squeezes you; you gasp for breath, practically feeling your ribs start to creak.
The octopus brings you closer to it, holding you up, close to its tiny it: it stares at you for a moment, and you can almost feel it considering you. Then it lowers you down, down among its tentacle; you look up and see a giant snapping beak between the roots of the octopus' tentacles; it threshes the water as the tentacles bring you closer and closer to it: the octopus means to eat you!
"Help!" you scream, struggling uselessly against the octopus' hold; it draws you inexorably closer to its beak, until the sharp point is inches from your staring eyes.
You close your eyes, afraid to see the end, then the octopus shudders; something smelling terribly floats through the water, and its grip on you suddenly loosens.
You fight your way free from the limp tentacles, and look up to see a merman swimming over you, a long trident held clutched in his right long-fingered hand. He has bronzed skin stretched tight over a sculpted heavily-muscled torso, broad shoulders and long arms bulging with muscle, a short gray beard trimmed sloce covers his chin, and his long hair of the same color floats about his shoulders in long plaits with sea shells and bits of sea glass bound up in his hair. His lower half is a long and sinuous finned tail, covered in red scales that shimmer in the dim light.
Below him, the octopus is slowly sinking to the sea bed, its tentacle hanging limply beneath it, almost translucent blood pouring out through a gaping wound in its side.
"These deuced octopodes!" he curses. Perhaps it is only the sudden release of pressure from the loosening of the octopus' tentacles, but his voice seems oddly tinny to your ear, as if he were speaking through a cardboard tube. He grins at you. "Not any danger to you when Harmakles is about, eh, sea maiden?" he asks, grinning broadly, revealing a mouth full of shining white teeth. "What is your name?"
"Well, it's-" you begin.
"Never mind!" he interrupts you. "No time to lose!" He holds his hand out to you. "Come with me, sea maiden! We have a place to be!"
You stare at him, confused by the swift turn of events, uncertain; on the one hand, he did just save your life, and he is a very handsome merman, you feel a little shiver, staring at his muscled chest, remembering your earlier thought about finding a merman. On the other hand, there is a certain look in his eyes that- maybe it is only your imagination, but it looks somehow unwholesome to you.
Will you go with him, or not?
Written by J-B-Hickock on 04 December 2014