SWNOVELS Mandy and the Tentacle Monster: Chapter 11
I’m coloring in the ocean scene that I had outlined. After I cooled off in my room for half an hour, I came back to find the corridor empty, so decided to get back to work. I’ll admit that I felt a twinge of disappointment that Shawn had left. He is a human I can talk to after all. But his attitude irked me. Where did he get off criticizing me? Did I abduct myself? Did I sell myself off as a pet? No. I’m trying to make the best of this situation. I guess we both have the same idea, thinking that the other is being victimized.
I guess we may both be right.
I try to clear my head and focus on my mural. There is some tentacle stuff in this one, as a joke to see what the guys think. Or at least to see what colors they turn. There’s a sailboat towards the horizon being attacked by a Kraken. It’s giant tentacles reaching out from the water and winding around the whole boat. And there’s a bikinied pinup girl with scuba gear on. She’s scampering from the water as octopus tentacles grope her from the waves. I’m going to add a lot more, a volleyball game, some starfish and crabs, palm trees. I’m humming “Under the Sea” as I paint and shimmy my hips to make a clinking rhythm with my skirt. Something touches my shoulder.
I let out a loud “Eeep!” and jump. Turning around, I find Ken with one of his tentacles extended where he had been tapping me on the shoulder.
“Hi, Ken. You startled me!” He lifts both of his clawed hands in a gesture of peace. He has some kind of device in his left hand though. He holds it out to me. It looks like… I don’t know what it looks like. Some kind of metal clip?
“That’s for me?”He nods his head and I take it from his claws, making sure not to touch him. He points to the side of my head. “What? You want me to put this in my hair?”He shakes his head and reaches for me, but I duck away from him. Ken has never tried to harm me, but I know that Seven keeps him away from me whenever possible. I don’t know why and it makes me apprehensive to be left alone with him. I look up and down the hallway where I’m painting and I don’t see Seven. Looks like I’m alone with Ken.
He waves his claws at me making a kind of humming chirp and reaches for the side of his own head. He touches the outer edge of his furled ear. Then he points to the thing he gave me and then to my ear.
“Oh. This goes on my ear?” He nods and hums another chirp.
I hold the thing out examining it to figure out how to clip it to my ear. I find a springy clasp that fits over the thick middle part of my outer ear. I adjust it so it sits comfortably and wonder what it means that Ken is giving me jewelry. I don’t think Seven is going to approve of this and maybe I should remove it before he sees it. I’m distracted from my worries when the ear cuff does something. It seems to squeeze down on my ear and then do a pulse/vibration thing. What the heck?
Ken is bloop-chirping in their language this whole time and now he starts to make sense “-now. Is it working? Can you-“
“Holy crap!” I yell. He jerks away from me, startled by my volume. “I can understand you!”
He grins, showing his pointy fangs. “Yes! It is a translation device.”
“Thank you so much!” I’m jumping in place a little bit with my excitement.
“No thanks required, small one. I am glad to communicate with you.” For a couple moments, we look at each other. Now that I can be understood by him, I’ve forgotten what all I wanted to say.
He glances behind me and immediately starts to shimmer pink. He reaches a tentacle out to point at the besieged boat. “What is this you are depicting?”
“It’s a boat being attacked by a kraken. A kraken is a sea monster.” I wonder if “boat” translates or if I should explain that too.
“You have said this word to me many times. Is this your designation for me, sea monster?” He seems to wilt a little bit, pulling his tentacles in.
I grin at him, “Yep. It’s an awesome mythical beast, feared and respected by the pirates of earth. There are a few movies made about the kraken. With all your tentacles and everything, I thought it fit.”
He stands up a little straighter, his tentacles flexing, “I suppose I may come across as fearsome to one such as you. Does your home planet have tentacled species as well then? Are there more sentients than just your kind?”
“Humans are the only sentients on Earth. There are tentacled animals, ocean creatures, but they don’t look anything like you guys. They have the tentacles, but no upper torso.” I turn to the opposite wall with a crayon from my kit. I sketch out an octopus and a squid, then a jellyfish. “See, they don’t have any bones or anything. And they live their whole lives in the ocean. Earth is covered in great oceans; there’s more water than land and all different kinds of sea life. The Kraken is a myth, made up by ancient sailors, but it was based on the octopus.” I’m rambling now as I sketch out a whole underwater scene with a sunken submarine, a coral reef, then a deep, black trench. “I listened to a podcast about octopuses once. There are a lot of different kinds and they are hella smart. They can solve puzzles and make predictions…”
Ken has turned a bright pink all over, shimmery and sparkly. He’s making a quiet noise, like a trilling purr. The colors and the pretty sound make me grin at him, “What’s all this mean?” I gesture at his coloring.
“Oh, this color is, well in this instance, it conveys delight. I enjoy hearing about your Earth and about your art. Your ocean depictions are entrancing.” He is studying the jellyfish. I’m flush with pleasure at his compliment. I’ve been having a lot of fun making all of these murals for my own enjoyment. But it’s nice to hear positive feedback like this.
I turn back to my beach scene and start on pinup girl’s red polka-dot bikini. I’m giving this little lady lots of curves. Not just a gorgeously full rack, but thick thighs and arms, apple cheeks, and of course, ass for days. Exaggerating her sexiness in the cute way that only pin-up girls can pull off. These paints in my alien art kit dry instantly. At first, it freaked me out because usually, it’s easier to correct wet paint. But this stuff comes with a wipe and bottle of grainy liquid that removes this dry paint instantly. It seems to dissolve and the wipe never keeps the paint on it, it disappears. Anyway, the point is that the paint dries instantly. So I can do layers very quickly. In minutes I’m done with the bikini and all its polka dots. Now I’m moving on to all the tentacles attacking her and then shading all her lush curves.
“This is you.” I jump, startled when Ken speaks because I had forgotten he was there.
“What?”
He waves a tentacle toward the pinup girl, “This is a depiction of you? At an earth beach?”
“What? No! Not even…” I look at her and she does have dark, curly hair, and brown eyes. And her figure is kind of an idealized version of mine, “I guess I can see a resemblance.”
“You depicted yourself frolicking in an ocean. Being caressed by a tentacled sea creature, an octopus?”
“What? No! She’s not me. She just looks a little like me.” I feel my cheeks heating up with a blush. “And she’s not being caressed, she’s being attacked. See how she’s running away?”
“No, if she was being attacked, she would look frightened. Look at her eyes and her lips. That expression is not frightened.” He tilts his head holding up a tentacle arm to the picture, comparing his to the ones attacking our pinup girl. “She looks playful.”
“Yeah, that’s because she’s a pinup girl. The style is to look playful and flirty, no matter what is going on.” I huff, realizing my joke has been turned around on me. “She is not me and she is not playing with the octopus. She’s being attacked by an octopus and fleeing. I know because I am the artist.”
He trills a hum, and while the sound isn’t translated, I get a distinct “If you say so.” feeling from it.
He stays standing near me for what must be at least an hour chatting with me while I paint. In my pre-abduction life, I never would have worked well with someone observing me like this. Interrupting my flow to ask questions and make conversation. Now I find it soothing. I guess after going more than a month without any real conversation at all, it’s nice to have someone talking to me. I tell him about how humans like to swim even though they can’t breathe water or hold their breath for long. I talk about the summer, beaches, vacations, and volleyball. He tells me about his species and their origins. They are semi-aquatic and evolved on a planet that was mostly ocean but with millions of tiny volcano islands. When that planet was unlivable, a few hundred Spans (years?) ago, the whole surviving sentient population was removed. They settled on another planet that has no natural bodies of water. He tells me all this with detachment like it doesn’t affect him personally.
Silence settled in as I thought about what had happened to his planet. Could it happen to Earth? It kinda seems to be headed that way with global warming, pollution, and what-not.
“It is meal time. Would you like to accompany me to the dining area?” Ken asks me, gesturing down the corridor. I noticed that he gestures with his tentacles. He holds his upper arms with their clawed hands at his sides or crossed over his naked chest.
I pack up my supplies and, playing off his formal way of talking, I curtsy then hook my hand through his elbow. I say “Lead the way, sir.”
His whole arm starts to swirl with a lilac purple mixing with the pink in a frozen, startled reaction. This is the first time I’ve touched Ken. Seven is the only alien I had touched before now and he never made a big deal out of it. But he thought I was a pet. Touching his elbow may be some kind of alien taboo. I decide to play it off. “This is the proper way to escort a human woman to dinner.” I intone with an air of expertise.
“Oh?” He lifts a brow at me, “So I should not lift you up and cart you around as my crew mate always has?”
“You’re so bad.” I slap his arm, “He doesn’t know any better.”
“He does now.”