Nepenthe Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Front Matter

  I Hypatia

  II Yesmín

  III Kiral

  About the Author

  Tentacle Press

  By Octavia Hyde

  NEPENTHE

  Copyright © 2019 Octavia Hyde

  Published with Tentacle Press

  http:// www.thetentaclepress.com/

  All Rights Reserved

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The quarantines had failed.

  Even on the remotest islands, the least likely vectors. Hypatia lay limp on the last clean bed, her freak immunity to the rejection virus worth nothing since the food had run out. There was nothing left of her colleagues solid enough to consider eating.

  It took people, live ones, to keep the power stations up and functional, and now there were … how many? Any but her? Contact between islands, between lab facilities had been down for over a week. The food had lasted four more days than that.

  And now she was here. Listening to her own weak breath under the dim light through the high, narrow windows. The patter of the first summer rains tinked metallic on the roof and the gutters outside. They had come here to save themselves.

  She didn’t have the energy to end it.

  Nothing.

  Hypatia lay on her side, but only just. Her right leg bent at the knee, and her belly and shoulders had drooped toward the mattress. The side of her face met rumpled sheets where a pillow should be. She’d stumbled there after a shower, a last draw on luxury before the hot water was gone. That had been … sometime last night?

  I am nothing.

  This planet should have been the one. It had reasonable temperatures. Breathable atmosphere. No advanced species and no fauna large enough to murder them.

  All of us, gone.

  There was no point in debating whether they could have discovered the virus ahead of time. It had caught hold and spread, and that was all that mattered now. Bodies rejected their organs. Solids broke down into liquids. Only a fraction of a fraction of a percent of them were somehow immune. Hypatia had put no less than four of her colleagues out of their misery before the virus could rob them of all humanity they had left.

  And now there was nobody.

  Mankind would not go out with a bang. No one would care.

  We are nothing now. No one cares.

  No one.

  There was a burbling noise, and she thought it might be her stomach. Curious, as it hadn’t been able to protest in at least a day. But the sound came again, near the door to the room, and Hypatia let her eyes roll in that direction.

  A man stood there in the shadows. A nude man, impossibly handsome. No one she knew.

  And now I’m hallucinating.

  The mirage cocked its head and wore a patient smile.

  There was a swelling feel to her inner ears. Hypatia blinked hard to clear it. A near-intangible pop followed, and then … bitter? Ears didn’t taste. She was going to die insane.

  And no one will care. No one, no one, no one.

  The thoughts swam, singsong in her head.

  “Do you know my words now, little one?”

  Hypatia swallowed, almost no saliva left, and some noise vibrated her throat where she might have once made words. The man had stepped in her direction. She had no drive left to protect herself, even if it was a phantom of an unraveling mind.

  “Yes.” He approached the bedside. “I see that you do. You are not insane,” he went on. “And I care about you. Very much.”

  Something was different about his eyes. Even in the dim light, it was … the sockets. They were darker than most. And his movements were too smooth.

  And then he was not a man.

  The flesh of his legs went dark, and they bifurcated. Again, and again. Two became four. Eight. More.

  Insane. Insaaaaane.

  Any structure like knees or bones dissolved, and purple-black flesh curled the wrong way in all directions. A number of the limbs rolled up and over the edge of the mattress, and their owner came with them. When the first of the arms looped her extended calf, Hypatia’s muscles spent some last pitiful effort to raise her on her elbows. It wasn’t enough, and her palm slipped out from under her, wrist limp.

  “There is no need,” he said, and another of the many arms drew her bent leg out by the ankle. In what was left of the light, she could make out rows of suckers along the lavender undersides of his limbs as they boiled over her legs.

  “I see you are malnourished.” The beautiful face was still calm, the voice smooth like a dream above the rippling mass of limbs. Above where she lay mostly prone, energy or will to do anything else but watch this … being in morbid fascination. “You will have everything you need, as soon as we are done here.”

  Done here?

  The limbs were cool and heavy, climbing her thighs. They felt very real, and her chest jerked. Her body was trying to sob.

  There were no advanced species here. They’d orbited for years making sure.

  “Oh no, you were correct.” The still very human-appearing torso lowered him closer to her bare back, and a hand came up to brush her hair away from her face. “We landed here as you did, and perhaps not too late. For either of our peoples.”

  Hypatia made a helpless noise when the first of the fine-tipped arms curled between her legs. She rolled her eye upward to see something like soft delight on the exquisite face. The eye sockets were definitely too dark. Purplish. A set of translucent lids blinked from the inner corners.

  “Oh my,” he murmured with a look down between them where she couldn’t turn her head. “Your kind do have a number of openings, don’t they?” There was a sort of percussive hum in his chest, and something squirmed, slippery and indecent, along the cleft where he split her. “No matter. I will prepare them all.”

  “Nnn?” She managed a croak of a question before agile flesh pushed into her pussy. Hypatia’s eyes went wide.

  “And very warm,” he said. “Splendid.”

  The thing worked its way inside, expanding and contracting for movement like some deep-sea creature. More fluid than her body could make on its own began seeping along her crack. There was too much of it. Too viscous to be hers. The hum came again from the creature, and she felt like she’d sat in a vat of the stuff. The mattress was growing damp.

  A second exploring tip endeavored between her cheeks, cool slime on her pucker letting it try without obstruction.

  “Mm, this one will be more difficult.”

  Her heart fluttered behind her ribs, beats erratic with the last of her energy. This … this thing was invading her body!

  “No, no, little one.” A hand stroked down her back. “We will prepare. It will not hurt.”

  And the first of it was so small. A delicate streamer amid gobs of fluid that could only be coming from him. Threading itself in while she lay there. Tapering wider while the suckers oozed past the tight ring of flesh, two at a time. He drew himself back at intervals, only to usher more of the copious liquid into her body. To pack her rectum deeper by turns until she could only leave her mouth open in horror as he moved in her insides, utterly alien, the fat limb stretching her while not a muscle strained to resist.

  “There we are. Do you see?”

  Even drained as she was, heat came roilin
g to life between her thighs. Her neck ached, turned to one side, and Hypatia twitched. Her knees jerked and she couldn’t take her eyes off the impossible being pinning her to the bed.

  “Shh, we are almost done with this part.”

  This part?

  More of the limbs settled in, circling her calves, her thighs. Parting her further. “Here we go.” His tones were like a nurse giving medicine. Patient. Soothing. The pair of arms inside her began to move.

  A breath rattled out from her lungs and her mouth hung open. The creature leaned low over her back and began with squishy and industrious limbs to ream out her defenseless holes.

  Plunging in tandem, oozing through fluid, suckers rumbled in and out of one permissive entrance and the other more stubborn one. Her clit had swollen, and Hypatia didn’t understand how she had blood pressure left for the little bastard.

  “You are doing well,” he said, while busy parts squelched between them. “I should have liked to best you in combat first, to prove my worth, but there is no time. Perhaps once you recover.”

  The words fell on her back, meaningless. Her guts were alive with continual movement. The idea of recovery felt as foreign as the body meshing with hers.

  “I believe you are ready.”

  In a smooth motion, Hypatia was empty.

  Ready?

  He rose upright, and one of his hands tested the quality of the work he’d done between her legs. Fingers explored buzzing holes, slipped into the mess of her pussy. “Is it this one you use to carry your young?”

  Hypatia let out a ragged chirp, the most noise she’d made so far, and her arms tried to swish among the sheets.

  “Yes, it makes sense.” His body was changing shape again. She could see the purple-black flesh reforming from the corner of her eye. “I will anchor in both, all the same. It will be easier.”

  Easier. What …

  Where the familiar lines of his torso blended at the hip with alien limbs, a pair of new slick appendages sprouted, deep purple and twitching in the dim light. They stood upright, one jutting just above the other, stubby compared to the suckered arms, but still large enough to menace. If he’d been human, Hypatia would have called them …

  No.

  But when he crawled back over her, the traitor cunt and its asshole friend were not saying ‘no.’ The last of her pulse ratcheted up to a frantic level. He was setting the twin phalluses into alignment, her pussy all but swallowing the lower one down on contact, and the upper nocking in the relaxed dimple of her anus.

  Hypatia looked back at him and hovered in some state she couldn’t describe.

  “We are saving each other, little one. I promise.”

  He pushed home, plugging both her sloppy openings at once. A groan rose up from her gut.

  “Yesss, very good. Very good.”

  The body sank atop hers until her cheeks and thighs pillowed against him. Until the alien cocks impaled her as far as they could. They were far less yielding than the arms had been, and her channels quivered around them.

  Limbs began to snake under her body. To circle her ribs, to come up under her useless arms and grip her by the shoulders. He was rising up. Leaning back and taking Hypatia with him.

  “Come now,” he said. “Like this.”

  Her weight balanced on the fulcrum of her hips, thighs splitting around the mass of his many legs. Her knees bent as he angled her back, more than upright, to fall against the still-human chest. She might have knelt on the bed, but there was no need; suckered limbs wrapped her calves against the backs of her thighs, and more coiled under her breasts to suspend her over the dripping dovetail their bodies formed. Below, the size of the dark, wet spot on the mattress appalled.

  The cocks began to milk in and out.

  There was no other way to describe it. He didn’t need to buck his hips like a man. Hypatia couldn’t even say he had hips, in this form. The firm organs kneaded and surged on their own, churning into her body in a way that made her convulse.

  “Easy. Easy,” he said. “I have you.” His face nuzzled at her ear where her head lolled back on his shoulder. The arms banding her legs snugged down, parting her further and squeezing the soles of her feet against her ass. The rhythmic plunging continued, a feeling of determination to it, now, and she swallowed, working to get spit going in her dry mouth. Trying not to choke on the moan he dragged out of her.

  “Mm, do your kind take pleasure in the mating act?”

  Slick limbs rose to circle her dangling wrists.

  The mating act.

  Hypatia refused to process the thought. A cluster of suckers on either side attached themselves to her palms and finger pads. Dozens of wet little mouths latched and pulled, one after another, rippling row by row. Why this made her breath come harder, she couldn’t say. And her groin nodded against the dual penetration, weak but encouraging.

  “It seems you can.” More suckers found the soles of her feet, her toes. Her clit throbbed, unnoticed, and she rode on the slow plumbing of her ass and pussy, helpless to achieve more than this being knew how to give.

  “How, little one?” The human hands were smoothing over her belly. Palming handfuls of her breasts. “Tell me and I will make it so.”

  She’d spoken no words thus far, and still the creature had answered over and over the questions forming in her head. Horrified by the direction of her own thoughts, Hypatia imagined one of the slippery arms descending to where he split her. The tiny eager mouths attaching.

  The idea had no sooner taken shape, than there was movement at her waist. Slithering and purposeful. Seeking.

  “Like this, my treasure?” A series of suckers abraded wetly past the swollen nub of her clit. Hypatia shuddered. Groaned.

  “Oh yes.” His tone was low. Satisfied and more human, as though he was improving with practice. Or she was. “I can make this pleasant for you, can’t I?”

  The fleshy little cups scrubbed over her this way and that, raking her toward delirium. She’d worked up enough spit at last, and cried out, helpless against the fucking. Against sensation she’d asked for in her head, and he’d somehow heard her.

  “Perfect,” he said. “But let us keep quiet, hm? We don’t wish to attract attention.”

  One of the arms beneath her breasts climbed past her collarbone. Up her throat and over her chin. Her mouth was already open, and the appendage curled past her lower teeth, dragging more of that fluid over her chin. Onto her tongue. It was sour-sweet, and her salivary glands sang in alarm. Enough of the limb spiraled into a ball to stuff the entire inside of her mouth full.

  For the first time, she was scared.

  “Nnh?” Hypatia whined against a gag that squirmed as much as her own tongue.

  “No, no.” He brushed palms down her shoulders. “Relax. Let me.”

  A large sucker nestled over clit. Took hold and drew at her, rhythmic in its suction. Others latched to her swollen lips. Her thighs. The phalluses worked, one-two, one-two, and Hypatia’s eyes rolled back. The coil of flesh filling her mouth dulled her wail to a muffled warble.

  “Lovely,” he said. “Our females would kill us for this. There are many who lose limbs, or worse.”

  Cocks stuffed her. Suckers rippled everywhere. Acidic citrus flooded her mouth, and Hypatia wondered if the sticky webs of slime between her thighs tasted the same. She let her tongue move against the tip of the arm he’d balled between her teeth, to sip from the tiny cups, even as they secreted more of the addictive stuff.

  “Oh, you—!” The knot in her mouth curled tighter, and the organs thrust deep in her holes. “Where did you—filthy, my little one, I had no idea!”

  Hypatia made another inquisitive pass of her tongue, ruffling the suckers it could reach. Another of those deep, percussive hums purred against her spine from the creature’s chest, and every limb holding her tightened its grip. He fucked into her with a new vigor, and the restrained human, far, far down the rabbit hole now, committed to alien debauchery.

  She scru
bbed at the circular carpet of tiny mouths, her throat gulping citric lubrication while he tried to fit still more of himself between her parted jaws. The pumping organs positively violated her now, the draw on her clit from the most active sucker fierce.

  Hypatia squealed against living flesh and bucked in the creature’s hold. Energy was seeping back into her system somehow, and her hips began the work of writhing on the twin cocks. A relay was forming, sensation bouncing between her asshole and clit, her pussy in the middle, buffeted from all sides.

  “Yes. Yes!”

  He pushed in deep, roiling inside her. Expanding. She tongued the larger suckers lodged just behind her lower teeth. The alien let loose something akin to a growl, and the vacuum draw on her clit fluttered wild. Hypatia screamed against the gagging limb and her parted knees butterflied in his hold. Bloodflow sang between her legs, and she came on him, every nerve wide open with current, pupils dilating so the room became bright.

  Something new popped into her, where the lower phallus stoppered her pussy. It traveled the length of the organ, and his hands seized her upper arms in a tight grip. A final grunt and thrust made the new shape spurt, jelly-like and not liquid at all, against the entrance to her cervix. Hypatia shuddered in his hold, refusing to comprehend, and the alien’s limbs relaxed, though he did not release her in any way.

  He inhaled near her ear, and the suckered arm slid out of her mouth. She swallowed, getting her jaw to work again. “You amaze, little one,” he said. The cocks took up their original slow rhythm again. “The first is always the greatest challenge. The rest will take time.”

  “The … rest?” She rasped out the first words she’d been able to make since he’d appeared in the room.

  “Yes, treasure.” The squishy thing he’d pushed out into her body began to nudge, of its own accord, at the tight canal that led to her womb. “My eggs only come one at a time. We will be here into the night before I implant them all.”

  Implant?

  With an obscene internal pop, the thing—the egg—moved into the next chamber of her body. It should have been more uncomfortable, and the purpose of all the fluid sloshing inside her came into question.