Zombie Octopus Island II

It wrapped its coils around the struggling man, drawing him to its beak.  It tore into the man's belly, sucking in great loops of delicious flesh.  The sea was perfumed by the feast's spreading plume.  The bubbles from the man's head ceased in seconds.

For so many years it had lurked in the depths, gazing at the hulls of boats above, motes in the brilliance of the overlight.  What were these beings that touched God's face and splashed in the shallows?  What great flagella drove their vessels, lashing the surface of the deep?  For so many years it had hidden from them, mottling its surface to match its surroundings, spreading flat or clenching tight into a knot of silent fear, moving ever deeper.  For so many years it had worshipped them.

Then it had drunk the new ink.  The gods themselves had spilled it from the shine-shell in the cold trench.  And, having drunk this irresistible fluid, a new awareness dawned, even as its tentacles started to rot from the workings of the ink.

Men were not gods.  They were prey.

--Steve Kilian

When Charm Fails

Mark Twain, Karl Marx, and Socrates: At It Again