Within Tentacle's Reach

Mild Lovecraftian horror | Tentacles | Captivity scenes | Nonhuman

The biggest mistake Shen Ruoning ever made was picking up a man on a rainy night.

He was pale, gloomy, and cold to the touch. He said he had nowhere to go. She took him in, and he wrapped her in tenderness, making breakfast, telling her stories, and whispering, “I’m here,” whenever she had a nightmare.

She thought she had finally found love.

Until she discovered that he never appeared in mirrors, that raw meat kept vanishing from the fridge, and that when he came home late at night, he reeked of seawater.

Until she saw with her own eyes his legs melt and split in the moonlight, turning into abyssal tentacles.

She ran, fleeing to the arms of another man.

Every night, he stood outside her window like a damp shadow she couldn’t shake. She thought he would give up, until he lured her out one night. The moment a tentacle coiled around her ankle, she finally understood: he had never been a stray dog she’d brought home. He was a monster from the deep sea, who had woven a net of tenderness and waited for her to walk right into it.

“Do you think I wanted this?” He looked down at her, his eyes like a split-open abyss. “But you made me choose: lose you, or become the thing you fear. What do you think I’d choose?”

He imprisoned her in a lighthouse, wrapping his tentacles around her wrists and ankles.

He said, “Hate me if you like. At least hating me is one way to remember me.”

…

“I just want you to look at me. Not in fear, not with hatred. Just look at me. Because no one has ever truly seen me.”