The Misery Island Bureau of Spirit Affairs - Tentacle Torment

Chapter One

‘Gimme the meatballs!’ the masked man yelled at me.

I stood at the counter, my trusty spatula in one hand, the other hovering over the register. I was confused — I would have expected a masked man with a gun to demand the money. And where did he even get a gun? Those were illegal to own, weren’t they? And … was he high? Probably. And as it turned out he was also impatient and he didn’t take my hesitation well. He pulled the trigger.

I heard the screams of the patrons as I fell. I briefly saw the horrified expression on the face of one of the waitresses before hitting the ground. I should have stayed in the kitchen. What was I thinking covering for Bert just so he could go have a smoke? A minute — just a minute more, and he would have been the one on the ground, looking up at the ceiling and that old bug zapper on the wall. Instead, it was me.

I barely felt anything. Was this really happening? Was I going to die? Or maybe I was alright? I tried to move. I couldn’t. Then breathing became a lot harder than it should have been, and a burning pain began to manifest itself in my chest. Oh. That was not a good sign, was it? I kept blinking, the ceiling and the bug zapper blurring and darkening each time I blinked.

A beautiful, blonde woman in a red dress stood over me. She looked down at me, smiling, and for a moment I forgot I was dying. The next time I closed my eyes, I couldn’t open them again. I was dead.

***

If this was the afterlife, then it was weird. This wasn’t how I’d imagined heaven, or in my case, probably hell. There was no choir of angels welcoming me, which was fine, and to my relief there was a distinct absence of demons with pitchforks and cauldrons filled with boiling lava.

I felt dizzy. Disoriented. I tried to blink, I tried to move, but nothing happened. I couldn’t feel my arms or my legs, I couldn’t even feel the air I was breathing … hold on! I wasn’t breathing. The rising and falling of my chest that should have been there, wasn’t, the feeling of the air flowing through my nostrils completely absent. I wanted to turn my head to look around. Not only I couldn’t, I didn’t need to.

I saw everything, I saw in all directions, all at once. No wonder I felt so light-headed as if I’d been spinning around for minutes, or even hours.

What was this place? A cave? A tunnel? Definitely a tunnel. Had they buried me already? Rough, earthen walls left, right, up and down, the tunnel running probably for miles in front and behind, giant roots protruding from everywhere, only occasional patches of light seeping through the top.

The afterlife was weird for sure, and I had a feeling that my life-long plan of opening my own restaurant wasn’t going to happen, not in a place like this. Well, at least the eternal, torturous fires most churches promised weren’t in view, so I decided it was a win for me. A win. A win my ass — I was dead, wasn’t I? Thirty odd years of living and failing to fulfil my dreams and now this?

The word purgatory came to mind. I recalled hearing about some in-between place when I was a kid. Maybe this was it. And here I was, dead but not quite, my prospects not looking all that good. Yeah. Purgatory.

I wondered what happened after I got shot. Had someone called the police? An ambulance? Was the masked gunman caught, or did he flee, looking for someone else to kill? How would my parents take the news?

I tried to move again. I couldn’t. I really was dead, wasn’t I?

All I could do was … see. And maybe hear. I had no other sensations: I didn’t smell anything, I didn’t feel temperature, and I certainly couldn’t move. Hell, I didn’t even feel like I had a body. What was I then? A floating consciousness, a soul, stuck in this … tunnel for all eternity? I was sure there were people who’d be happy to discuss the philosophical implications of my current state of existence. “I think, therefore I am.” Or something like that, just as a starting point for the discussion, and then they’d move onto whether people in fact had souls or not. But I doubted I’d bump into a philosopher here — wherever or whatever here was — or more accurately, I doubted a philosopher would bump into me since I couldn’t move.

I wondered when despair would set in. I was sure it would, eventually, but for the moment I felt … fine, strangely. I wasn’t panicking or anything of the sort, I wasn’t in any pain and I couldn’t see or hear any threats to my … life? This was confusing. Was I dead or not? My memories were clear: I got shot. But the old “I think therefore I am” argument was also clear. I existed. Somehow.

A thin line appeared out of nowhere, right in front of me. Or behind me — it was all the same to me with my new, three-sixty vision. It was thin, like a spider’s thread, translucent, almost as if it wasn’t there, as if it was just the ghost of a thread. This gossamer-like thing seemed to be attached to something in the place I recognised as my location, or my centre, from which my all-round vision spanned out from. It was a hard thing to wrap my mind around, even harder to put it into words. The thread hung in the air, running along the tunnel, disappearing into a wall.

The thread trembled slightly, and as if from nowhere, a person appeared.

I would have gasped had it been possible: the same blonde woman from the moment of my death, wearing the same red dress, looked at me with a smile on her face. The ghost-thread, seemingly endless before, was now as short as the distance between me and her, and she held the other end of it in her hand.

‘Good morning, stupid!’ she said with a smile.

Her voice was sweet, but to call someone stupid right off the bat was just rude. Maybe I was in hell after all, and she was a demon.

‘Uhm, yes, hello?’ I tried to speak.

I heard my own voice, if I could call it a voice. It was weak and hollow, almost as if I was hearing myself whispering from a box in another room.

‘Okay, so let’s get to the point,’ she said, still smiling, looking in my general direction. ‘You got yourself killed, but congratulations, a few days and some serious soul-surgery later, you’re here and you’re ready to begin work.’

‘I’m … sorry, what? Who the hell are you, lady? And what do you mean work?’ I demanded immediately.

‘Questions, questions! Listen, stupid, just be grateful you’re still you,’ she said, sneering.

I’d been raised better than to even think about hitting a woman, but she was begging for it. I was never one to participate in fights, let alone to start one, but whatever it was that was happening here, it was a lot to take in. I managed to quell the urge, but ... I wanted to do something. I had to do something. Anything. For a moment I forgot that all the evidence pointed to the fact I that did not own a body, and I reached out to grab her. Maybe I wanted to shake her, shake some answers out of her, I wasn’t sure. As expected, nothing happened, and the woman kept grinning into my non-existent face.

‘Aw, how cute. Whatcha gonna do? Wrap your little tentacles around my neck?’

‘What? Tentacles?’

I was taken aback. What tentacles? Then I saw the tentacles. Actually, I’d been seeing them all along, but I’d been so focused on the woman that it just hadn't registered until now. But there they were: two blueish, translucent tentacles, reaching for the woman. I instinctively drew my arms back, as if I still had them, and the two tentacles retracted. I stared at them, as shocked as I had ever been.

‘Are… are those… mine?’ I stuttered.

‘Ohohoho! Not bad, huh?’ the woman laughed.

‘What have you done to me? Who are you?’ I cried out in a panic, throwing and flailing my arms and my legs around.

And as I did, the tentacles moved, and it wasn’t just the two. There were five of them. Five! Five small, otherworldly phantom tentacles writhing and coiling as I willed my limbs to move.

‘Are you done with your little tantrum? Just settle down and accept that you are what you are now!’ the woman said, shaking her head, her hands on her hips.

‘What! Am! I!’ I growled at her, or I tried to growl.

I sounded more like a cat purring the words.

‘Ah. If you really must know, you are a Spiritual Tentacle Horror,’ she said, then she spread her arms. ‘What was I supposed to do? Those things rarely pop up, so when you find one, you can’t just let it go to waste.’

‘What? How? What have you done?’ I demanded, and this time I wanted to punch and kick in her direction.

The tentacles shot out, responding to my intention, but they were too short to ever reach her, and I still couldn’t move in any direction.

‘Calm down!’ she said, frowning, looking at me the way I remembered teachers looking at me when I was making mischief during class.

‘Then tell me what the hell is going on! What have you done to me?’

I was furious. I was scared. I desperately needed answers. So I did the only thing I could in my current circumstance and I swung my tentacles at her as wildly as I could. Not that it did any good, but ... I was beginning to feel the appendages, all five of them. But I was too angry to stop to ponder how strange it felt, or to properly explore it further.

‘Alright, alright,’ she said, rolling her eyes. ‘Will you stop this if I tell you a bit more?’

I withdrew my tentacles. My! Tentacles! I forced myself to calm down and decided I’d think about this tentacle business after the blonde woman told me more about what was going on.

‘Better,’ she said. ‘Now. Listen carefully, because I’m only telling you this once.’

I nodded. Or at least that was my intention, but nothing seemed to happen. She continued.

‘Alright,’ she said. ‘So I was wandering around and I found a small, Spiritual Tentacle Horror. Any sensible Grand Spirit would kill those on sight, but in my opinion, it’s a waste to do that. Those things are very efficient in collecting Essence. Unfortunately they tend to grow out of control if left unchecked. So, I popped over to your world, found a man with one of those gun-things and followed him to see if he’d kill someone. Lucky for me, you were stupid and hesitated to give him what he wanted. He killed you, I plucked your soul, and at a considerable cost to me I brought it over and worked it into the little critter. It’s body is your body now, and you are ready to start collecting Essence for me. End of story.’

‘Hold on, hold on! End of story?’ I yelled at her. ‘I don’t even understand!’

‘Well, that’s your problem,’ she shrugged.

‘So … I really died?’

‘You did.’

‘And you put my soul into this … Spiritual Tentacle Horror?’

‘I did a good job, didn’t I?’ she said, smiling.

‘Why?’ I cried.

‘Because these little critters are animalistic and predatory. They eat and eat and eat and grow. With your soul in control of it, it’s as harmless as it gets, and I get a steady stream of Essence coming my way. It’s a win-win.’

None of what she said so far made sense. I understood some of it, but it just didn’t make sense. My world? Over here? Spirits? Essence?’

‘Essence? What’s Essence? You said something about work. Is that it? Collecting Essence?’

‘Oh? Maybe you’re not that stupid,’ she grinned at me. ‘Yes. You’ll collect Essence, and a portion of it will come my way.’

‘I see,’ I said and I focused on the ghost-thread leading from my new, spiritually tentacled body to her hand. ‘Is it … is this what the thread is for?’

‘Oh, you can see it? Sorry!’ she said, then snapped her fingers.

The thread vanished. I was sure it was still there, but I couldn’t see it any more.

Ah. This was neither a great ending to my life, nor a great start to my afterlife. Getting shot and dying was one thing — I wasn’t happy about it, far from it, but there didn’t seem to be much I could do about it. And now I was about to be forced into … what? Slave labor of the dead? Spiritual gopher? Working holiday in the afterlife? Didn’t I have rights, or something? Of course I didn’t. I was dead and this grand blonde spirit woman had just snatched up my soul, hadn’t she? Under any other circumstances, I wouldn’t have believed a word she said. But looking at my own tentacles was … convincing enough. Damn! It seemed I was stuck in a weird new body, collecting Essence for this … I wasn’t sure. Grand Spirit? More like Bitch of all Bitches.

‘How do I even collect this Essence-stuff?’ I asked.

‘Don’t worry about it,’ she waved a hand. ‘You’re doing it already.’

‘But … I can’t move!’ I argued.

I wanted to move. I really did.

‘What do you think you are? A familiar?’ she asked, leaning in closer, raising her eyebrows ‘You’re an unsanctioned, unattached spirit. Of course you can’t move.’

‘But … but, I need to move around. To collect stuff. No?’ I blurted out my immediate thoughts in a panic.

‘Not really,’ she said, shrugging. ‘Just wiggle your tentacles, or something. As I said, you’re collecting Essence even now.’

‘But …’ I wanted to protest and ask more questions, but she shut me down.

‘Alright, listen! I’m done answering questions. I already told you more than you need to know.’

‘But I have questions. A lot of questions.’

‘And I don’t care,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘I don’t expect much from you. Maybe you’ll grow a little, but there isn’t a lot around here for you to feed on. Even just collecting the ambient Essence, I’m getting more from you than from a low-rank familiar, and that’s good enough for me. So, I bid you farewell, and good luck.’

She … began to fade. She was leaving. I had so many questions — questions I desperately needed answers for. How was I supposed to move? What else could I do? Was I really a slave now? More and more questions sprung up, some only half formed, some nothing but inklings with question marks. And she was leaving.

‘Wait!’ I screamed at her.

‘What now?’ she growled at me, irritated.

‘Questions!’ I growled back.

‘Fine. I’ll give you one more. Just one more,’ she sighed, staring at me, half gone already, as translucent as my tentacles.

One question. What should I ask? I had too many to choose from. In the end, getting one more answer didn’t even matter, not if I couldn’t get all my questions answered. So I asked,

‘Who are you? What’s your name?’

‘Oh? Is that what you want to know? Plotting revenge already?’

‘Maybe,’ I said.

‘Fine,’ she laughed. ‘I am Wensah.’