Brutal Octopus

By Km Ra

The story surrounds a mutant octopus and the incidents of its violent attacks on human beings. The animals history and behaviour become intricately involved with one particular family and leads to tragic results.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 17, 2004
• ISBN: 9781469115207

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Copyright © 2003 by Km! Ra.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or

transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,

including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage

and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the

copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents

either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used

fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or

dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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Mammee Bay is a lovely and beautiful place any time of the year.

But during the last summers, it was a resort town beautiful beyond belief.

The pristine waters rippled a thousand varying turquoise colors.

The skies were most of the time a pale, peaceful blue.

The rolling hills surrounded and framed the seaside town like a beautiful postcard taken by a fashion photographer with an eye for color.

The place was a tourist magnet, a tourist trap.

It was absolutely breathtaking.

But Mammee Bay had a terrifying but public secret.

And no one spoke about it much, especially to the tourists or any visiting foreign media.

Living beneath its dazzling tropical waters was a horror of mythical proportions,

a creature conceived from a psychopath’s nightmare.

The first warning came five years ago when it strangled Dr. Urchmann.

Urchmann was a tall, wiry man in his late forties. He was a college professor who kept a villa at the beach.

He spent his free time engaged in amateur underwater photography.

His secret dream was one day to have one of his photographic efforts published in an international magazine.

For now he had to settle with the occasional interest from the local press.

But one day . . .

That fateful Saturday morning he made the terrible mistake of disturbing the massive octopus from its cave while it was sleeping.

It awoke into his nightmare.

The creature did not attempt to flee.

Instead it turned and attacked.

Spreading itself to envelope him, the octopus appeared incredibly angry.

Urchmann’s feeble struggling was useless against eight tentacles of choking death.

Shock and fear made it almost impossible for him to resist.

Urchmann’s swollen body washed ashore the next day, grotesquely bloated and half-eaten by fish.

His eyes bulged from his head and he seemed to be trying to say something.

The tragedy earned prominent mention in the local tabloid at the bottom of the front-page.

They included a few of Urchmann’s underwater photographs from their files.

The reporter wrote wearily about the dangers of diving alone, a common local habit.

He reminded his few readers about a similar drowning by a tourist who chose to dive alone a few months back.

The old, half-drunken coroner declared that Urchmann’s death was an entirely preventable freak accident.

Entirely preventable.

He was entangled in seaweed and had no one to assist him.

It is very unsafe to dive alone.

The visitors to Mammee Bay flocked to the sun, sea and sand.

Half-naked, tanned bodies glistened against the white sands.

Then others died, and deadly seaweed became a pathetic excuse and joke.

Swimmers and divers died.

Professionals and amateurs.

Locals and tourists.

Even the jaded local media began asking questions.

What was really going on?

The new coroner was young and couldn’t care less about any economic damage.

Also he was more sober and meticulous than his predecessor.

The cause of death was discovered.

The coroner told the local power brokers first.

After all, they paid his salary.

The authorities tried to hide the truth to protect the tourist dollar and prevent massive economic fall out.

The new coroner could be wrong.

And he was so young.

But few people in Mammee Bay are good at keeping secrets.

So the truth leaked out.

A killer octopus.

A monster.

A freak.

The beach was deserted.

The tourists stopped coming.

The cute little shops were empty.

The money dried up.

And the locals suffered.

Mammee Bay plunged to economic ruin.

Its life blood had stopped flowing.

The locals called the creature a monster and a nightmare.

The coroner was forced to resign and leave the resort town.

The media called him hotheaded and inexperienced, and incapable of understanding the creed of collective responsibility.

It was his fault.

After all, who ever heard of a killer octopus?

A killer shark maybe, but not an octopus.

Carlos fastened the single scuba tank to his body.

He tightened the straps and made sure he had a snug fit.

His biceps flexed as he strapped the knife to his waist and picked up his spear gun.

He stood nearly six feet and barely made two hundred pounds.

But it was all muscle.

Solid hard muscle that came from years of being a gym freak.

It was a fine day for diving as the sun was high in the sky and the sea was calm and placid.

The wind blew crisply and clean.

Carlos took a deep breath.

He was the only one on the wide expanse of sand known as The Beach at Mammee Bay.

There were no tourists or locals.

The place exuded a deserted but welcoming atmosphere.

Carlos stared at the rippling blue water without seeing its seductive dance.

His mind lost in reverie.