The Tentacle Wars

Chapter One

It's been nearly fifty years since it started. We barely noticed when it began. When the octopi began to group together, the scientists said 'evolution' and thought nothing of it. When they began showing up in the rivers, streams and lakes, the people cried 'global warming' and campaigned harder for recycling. And when finally they made their way into our reservoirs, sewers, water pipes and into our homes, we cried out 'invasion' but by then it was too late.

The octopi started small, sending in the tiny mercatoris first. They were about the size of the palm of your hand, sometimes even smaller and they came up through the toilets and drains. Before we knew it, they were 'attaching'. Attaching is when the octopus inserts their 9th leg (who knew right?) into the neck of a person and directly into the spinal cord. These parasitic little buggers could then control the host body. In the beginning they were small enough to be almost unnoticeable. And while they don't physically harm the host body, the person inside is gone. They had no say, no control and no way to fight back. We never stood a chance.

Why not just cut them off I hear you ask? One slice and that octopus is sushi. But it's not that simple. Octopi release a deadly toxin in their ink when they are forcibly removed, killing the host. While the host is gone once the parasite is in place, we're not sure yet if they can be recovered. So we try not to kill them, otherwise we're aiding in our own extinction. Hank, the scientist at our base, says they must have been cultivating it for millennia, as it's designed specifically to kill humans by attacking our nervous system. First it paralyses us, and then slowly shuts down our organs one by one. It leaves the heart until last, to prolong the torture of dying. It's a horrible way to go and in the beginning that was how we lost so many lives. We acted without thinking, a fatal flaw of the human race. The octopi don't appear to be a threat to any other living creature; they can even gain sustenance from their host bodies. So they no longer eat fish or crabs, other creatures which are rapidly evolving to exist on land. Monster crabs, sounds like a nightmare doesn't it?

That's exactly what this world is now, a nightmare, with people that walk around like empty shells and others fighting to stay unclaimed. A world filled with towns and cities that are damp, slick and overgrow with algae. Our civilisation hadn't crumbled like everyone thought it would, instead it had drowned. The ocean floors were coming up to claim the land, and there was nothing we could do as it churned out more creatures, more water until nothing looked like it once did.

After the tiny octopi had taken over the senior members of the government, heads of states and anyone else they could get their suckers on, in came the Enteroctopus Dofleini. The Dofleini are like the royal family of octopi. In the beginning they could be as big as 165lbs and were the largest species that we knew of. Now however, years later, they are bigger and we're not so sure anymore that they are the ones in charge. All royal families have a head, a king. Either way, these octopi mean business. The Dofleini commanded the mercatoris and all the other ranks that began to rise from the depths. We have no idea what else is down there. We had already lost and we never even saw it coming.

That is how I ended up here, in the Sahara, trying to escape those tentacle suckers and their world domination. You see, although they've evolved beyond anything scientists ever expected, there is still one small flaw in their development. They need water, and lots of it. They cannot go more than an hour at a time away from it. It needs to be washed over their bodies to keep them from drying out and shrivelling. This again would kill the host, as the octopus would release poisonous toxins as it died. Otherwise we'd have dehydrated them a long time ago, dried the bloody molluscs out like fresh laundry. As a result, places like the desert have yet to come under octopi dominion. Meaning that for now, I'm safe. In the last fifty years they never considered the desert a threat, too much effort, too much heat and not enough water but now it boasts one of the largest human colonies left. I know that it won't be much longer before they claim this dusty wasteland as their own. We grow in numbers as people all across the world come out of hiding, struggling to survive and find us, which is why I have a plan.

My name is Tiggy, or Antigone if you want to be pedantic about it. My parents, who are long gone, had peculiar tastes. But that's another story, and this, well this is the story of how our world ended. Not with guns, nuclear bombs, or chemical warfare, but by slimy tentacle, ink spurting, mind-controlling octopi. No one ever predicted that one.