Free Made to Love by DL Kopp

I fell.
    The ceiling of my family’s
manor rushed toward me.
    Another jerk, and my hip
popped as though it was going to get ripped from the socket. 
My ankle screamed.
    I threw my hands in front
of my face the instant before I hit the roof—but something kept me
from hitting it.
    That same something
slithered up my leg and wrapped around my waist, beginning to drag
me down the house’s roof even as I tried to grab the tiles with my
slipping fingers.  I finally looked down, and what I saw
nearly made me pass out again.
    A black mass of tentacles,
endless and vast, was emerging from the ocean.  And it was
dragging me toward it.
    I shrieked, but no matter
how hard I tried, I couldn’t seem to find a handhold.  The
tentacle jerked again, and it ripped me free from the roof
entirely.
    Freefall.
    Another tentacle caught me,
wrapped around my chest.  A third enveloped my knees and
traced up my back to cover my mouth even as I tried to keep
screaming.
    The tentacles wrenched me
down the cliff face to the beach, smacking me against the
sand.
    Water streamed into my
eyes, and the thunder roared its fury above.  A thick, slimy
covered in squid-like suckers fastened to my cheek, and white fluid
slapped across my face.  Digestive fluid?
    I tried to kick the
tentacles off of me, but I had no space to get leverage.  And
when I saw the gaping, yawning black mouth – filled with thousands
of rows of razor-sharp teeth – I lost the will to fight
entirely.
    A purple tongue thrashed in
its mouth, stretching for me like its hundreds of other
tentacles.  Now that it had me on the beach, it was receding
back into the water, and my legs were pulled into the ocean
first.  The water was freezing in contrast to the hot
tentacles.
    I was about to be
eaten.  It seemed appropriate, in a way.
    Please, God… make it
quick .
    “ Get your slimy suckers
off of her!”
    I knew that
voice.
    Twisting in the monster’s
grip, I saw what looked like a giant bird come swooping off the
cliff.  But it wasn’t an eagle—it was a man with broad wings,
inky black like a raven’s.  His body was lean and
muscular.  I vaguely remembered that body pressing against
me.
    Octavius ?
    His battle cry as he
plummeted toward the beast was a vicious song, brutal and
piercing.  He wielded a mighty blade as long as he was tall,
and as he turned and dove, he slashed at one of the tentacles with
it.
    The tentacle tore from its
body, splattering to the beach with gushing white fluid.  The
appendage wrapped around my chest went slack.
    He flapped hard, gaining
altitude, and then came back down with a dark scream of
glory.
    Another slash.  A
spurt.
    The beast shrieked and
wailed, thrashing in the water.  Huge waves swept up on the
beach, engulfing me in water.  I came up sputtering, salt
water streaming from my nose and mouth—but the tentacle was
gone.
    “ Die!” Octavius howled,
and then he plunged into the writhing mass of tentacles… and
disappeared.
    “ Octavius!” I cried,
struggling to stand in the surf.
    The monster began thrashing
even harder, sending the water rising into the air in thick
plumes.
    And then it
exploded.
    I shielded my head,
dropping to my knees as black pieces of the tentacles rained around
me.  Thick white discharge, like whipping cream, splattered on
the sand and onto me.
    With a final groan, the
monster sank into the water, and the ocean swallowed it
whole.
    I stared, my hands
trembling.  “Octavius?” I whispered to the sky, but there was
no sign of him.
    Had he died saving
me?
    The waves swept up on the
beach around me, and I began to cry.  I was so cold in my
night gown, out on the lonely beach, and the one man I knew I loved
– for all that our relationship was confusing, the feeling in my
heart had to be love – might have just died.
    Another wave crashed around
me, and a form washed onto the beach not ten feet away.
    I scrambled to it on my
knees, and found Octavius curled into a ball, his wings wrapped
around him