Young Writers Society

Devil In Disguise

By Jeremy Aversa

“Almost nobody dances sober, unless they happen to be insane.”

— H.P. Lovecraft

“Mark!” the young barista yelled, suddenly breaking him from his daze. He was tall. He was dressed in his day-off wear: blue jeans, a white collared shirt, and a navy blue blazer. He casually approached the counter, meeting the gaze of the young, pale face looking back at him, which possessed the perfect smile of a high school yearbook photo and the tired, staring eyes of someone twice her age. He took the drink from her hand.

Mark took his coffee to a table, feeling the warmth of the cup on the inside of his hand. As he brought the cup to his lips to take a sip, he stopped dead in his tracks. I never look in the cup, he thought. Does anybody?

He looked to his fellow customers, watching each of them accept their drinks one after the other, sipping them in sequence and slipping out the door. No one looks. No idea what horrors could be lurking just beyond this thin layer of plastic. He gripped the lip of the lid, lifting it from the mouth of the cup as a billow of steam floated up into his face.

Nothing. But it’s the pursuit that makes a man, he thought to himself with a smile.

As he began to bring the lid back down to the cup, his eye was caught by the sudden appearance of a floating black form, bullet-like in shape. The smile fell off of his face.

He poked it with his finger. It moved.

Jesus. Where are those spoons? He grabbed one and lifted the lump from his drink. He dumped it onto the lid, which he now had lying flat on the table.

Teeth clenched, he poked it again, this time with the back end of the spoon. The mass moved again and sprawled out before his eyes, revealing a black octopus, about one inch in length.

Its tentacles began swaying lazily as they met the air for the first time. Its glassy yellow eyes began opening and closing slowly, trying to adjust to the stale, warm air of the coffee shop. The channels it breathed through began pumping out black coffee as the octopus tried to gain its breath.

“Ho-lee shit.”

Mark’s palms began to sweat. He swallowed hard, suppressing a gag. He ran a hand through his dark, messily gelled-back hair. He popped the lid back on the cup, dropping the octopus back into the drink, and made for the door.

He walked quickly down the sidewalk, holding the cup at arm’s length. Jesus Christ. This is the grossest goddamn thing I’ve ever fucking seen.

He would’ve said something to the owner. He would’ve taken the no-good sonofabitch out back and asked him why he found a fucking octopus in his fucking coffee. Instead of that, he did nothing. Right now, what he wanted more than beating the owner of the coffee shop to a pulp, was a cigarette. He felt all out of sorts, a knot in his stomach. His head was starting to pound again. He looked up, squinting into the sun. That goddamn sun.

The sun was out in full force that day, on what would be called the hottest day in New York City. Until the following day, or the one after that, in what would be known, at the time, as Gotham’s hottest summer.

Mark was a lawyer, and, as he might tell you, a damn good one. Before he became the notorious rookie at his firm that put away Dr. Macabre, the serial killer named such by a frenzied newscaster, he worked as a public defender for the state of New York, and was far and away the most adept of his colleagues.

He was walking down sixth avenue that day with an animal in his coffee instead of doing the job he did so well because his boss, Mike McGill, insisted that he take a few days off to help focus on breaking his smoking habit, which he practiced like it was going out of style.

Mark’s wife, Sophie, was a nurse. She was helping him quit. She had long, black hair, which she got from her father, who was a Cuban immigrant that escaped Castro using only his wit, a plastic tarp, and the kindness of strangers.

Sophie was there for Mark through everything, and he for her. She was his person; the one he’d promised to love until they died in front of their parents and the Man Upstairs himself. They did everything together, save for weeks like this one, when he was working in the day and she at night.

I’m a professional, she said to him with a smile. I know all the twists and turns. She told him that headaches, among other things, were a common symptom of the nicotine withdrawal he’d face. She also said he might become depressed or irritable or insomniac, which Mark already had a pension for. If you start to get overwhelmed, she had said to him calmly as they lie in bed the night before, just take a few steps back and cool down. This is all gonna be temporary.

Right now he was more annoyed that she was right than he was at his aching head.

He continued quickly down the sidewalk.

Just down the street, Mark knew there was an exotic pet store, which was called Green River Reptiles.

He stepped into the store, the bell at the top of the doorframe jingling excitedly.

The small store was empty, save for the low-playing classic rock tunes that filled the dead air and the owner acting as cashier: a stocky, aging man by the name of Charles Finch. He was dressed how he was on any other day: white socks with work boots, a light blue short-sleeved collared shirt, and cargo shorts held up by a belt with a genuine Vietnam War veterans’ buckle.

Without looking up from his copy of The Times, Finch gave his signature unenthusiastic: “Welcome to the Green River. Anything I can help you with today?”

He didn’t get many buyers, especially not at noon on a Thursday. Something about snakes and lizards and fish seemed to repel the tourists and city-dwellers to which he was attempting to cater. Mark approached the counter, quickly stepping across the small store’s black tile floor.

“All right, look. This has been a pretty strange morning so I’ll cut right to it: I found… something in my coffee this morning. I was wondering if there’s anything you could tell me about it.” He extended the cup to Finch, who popped off the lid and looked inside. All he saw was a cup of black coffee.

“Yeah?”

“Give it a second,” Mark replied, not taking his eyes from the cup.

After a moment, the octopus lazily bobbed to the coffee’s surface, its black, bulbous head breaking the surface of the drink.

Finch took his readers from the breast pocket of his shirt and rested them on the tip of his nose to get a closer look. “What is it?”

“I was hoping you could tell me. I poked it before and…” Mark paused for just a moment, trying to carefully select the right words. “I can’t even describe it.”

“Huh,” Finch said, looking at Mark with a raised brow.

Finch picked up an empty fish tank from behind the register and carefully placed it on the counter, pouring the contents of the cup into it and standing from his chair.

“I’ve got a hose in the back.”

He shuffled to the back room, leaving Mark alone to stare into the coffee-filled tank.

Five bucks down the drain.

Finch returned with a full watering can in hand and poured it into the tank of coffee.

“It’s still pretty murky in there but it’ll be a bit easier to see.”

The two men stared at the tank in silence as Elton John’s “Crocodile Rock” played low over the store’s speakers. Mark wondered if Finch had it playing in the store on purpose.

Suddenly, the little octopus stuck all of its tentacles to the front of the tank, startling them both.

“Well, he sure is a playful little one!” Finch remarked. He began flipping through a book of sea creatures, saying that he’s never seen this breed of octopus before, and if it is real it’s definitely not from around here.

“How much for the tank?”

“Usually it’s fifty but I’ll knock ‘er down to forty since this is the aquatic equivalent of an unplanned pregnancy. You want to look around at some of the tank decorations I have knockin’ around back there? Might make for a good conversation piece.”

“Sounds great,” Mark said flatly.

After nearly fifteen minutes of careful deliberation, Mark settled on a small pirate ship, a fake piece of coral, a pack of fake seaweed, and some light blue gravel to create some contrast with his new eight-armed companion.

At the counter, Mark reached into his back pocket for his wallet. With it, he felt the sting of cold metal. His fingers ran across his Zippo lighter, which he meant to leave in his desk drawer.

He pulled it out and stared at it, his eyes wide as it lay flat in his hand. The lighter was all black with a simplistic gold design of the Eye of Providence.

“Smoker?” Finch asked.

Mark swallowed hard. “Trying to quit. Started today.”

“I quit when I got back from the army. Caught a bullet in my side in ‘Nam. New Year’s Day of nineteen-seventy. Hard to forget. Promised myself a cigarette if I survived. Promised God I’d quit after if he didn’t kill me yet. Kid, if I could quit, you can too.

“A good system for quittin’ cold-turkey is a distraction. And fish, I reckon, are the best distraction there is.”

Mark looked Finch in the eyes, thoughtfully.

“Thanks.”

Mark paid for his things.

“Good luck!” Finch said as Mark left his store.

Mark went back up the sidewalk the way he came, the supplies tucked under his arms.

Hopefully Soph will like it. He still hadn’t told his wife.

***

Arriving home with his latest purchases, Mark set everything down on the kitchen table in his apartment. All in all, the setup process took him about two hours: setting the tank on the dresser in the guest room, remembering that the tank needs water, filling it at the sink and realizing that he can’t pick up a full fish tank, and settling for walking back and forth between the bedroom and the kitchen, filling it one glassful at a time. After this, he poured in the gravel, carefully arranged the coral, seaweed, and pirate ship, and lastly, dumped in the octopus.

***

Ten twenty-seven p.m., according to the cable box, the world’s most accurate source of the time. Mark sat on the couch, watching the ballgame on T.V. as he bounced his foot nervously. The need for a smoke was like a burning itch in the center of his brain. After the third inning, he picked the remote up from the small table beside the couch and killed the T.V.

Mark decided that sleep was the only thing now that could keep him from temptation. It would still be around three hours until Sophie got home from the hospital.

He turned off the lights as he walked to the bedroom, taking one last look at the fish tank before heading to bed. The little octopus was hidden away, invisible under the white-blue light. Maybe she’ll like it.

Lights out.

He had no dreams.

***

Mark woke with a start from his three hours of fitful sleep. He heard… something. It was loud and grating. Almost… talking? Definitely not English. Or is it? He began sleepily stepping through the apartment, looking out the windows, into the hall, trying to find the source of that sound. That sound!

“What is that goddamn sound?” he shouted to himself over the noise.

The only way he could describe it was a scream in reverse, which simultaneously made you feel like you were standing next to a jet engine and left your ears ringing in silence. He shuffled past the guest room, noticing the sound growing louder and louder and louder.

Mark flipped the lights on, sweat beading up on his forehead as his palms grew clammy. He stared at the fish tank.

“Jesus.”

The octopus, which was only an inch long that morning, now filled the tank. Its tentacles stretched across the front of the glass, slowly swirling and convulsing, splashing water from the tank onto the hardwood floor.

What is that noise?

The sound grew excruciatingly loud, pounding on the sides of Mark’s brain like it was a marching drummer’s bass drum at the sidelines of The Big Game. The octopus continued its deliberate movement, slowly growing larger. Its body began to crack the glass — the only thing standing between it and its prey.

The sound stopped.

“Step closer.”

Mark stared at the tank dumbly.

“Step closer,” the voice echoed.

He took a step, and in this mass of pulsating, unfeeling tentacles, he could sense only rage. The octopus reared back, drawing Mark forward for a closer look. With all of its strength, it pushed off of the back of the tank, exploding through the glass, gripping Mark’s face with its feelers and knocking him hard onto his back.

The sound was gone, and Mark could only hear heavy, labored breathing. He didn’t know if the breathing was his own.

He saw nothing before him. He felt as if he was losing control, as if his body and its movements were no longer his own. Beneath his closed eyelids, he saw only deep, vivid colors bleeding into one another. His thoughts ran wild, only to dissolve into nothing. All he heard was the alien tongue of the octopus that gripped his mind, which was now pulling his strings as a master puppeteer. All Mark could feel was an orgasmic euphoria through his whole body. In this prison, the beast made him feel free.

As Mark writhed on the floor of the guest room, the octopus sucking on his young, pale face, his pajama pants soaking up the tank water, the door swung open. It was Sophie, back from the graveyard shift. She saw what used to be her husband heaving on the floor.

The octopus’ eyes locked onto her, scrambling to its newfound feet. Mark’s body staggered clumsily toward her, a child taking its first steps. The monster’s feet were stuck with glass as it made its way across the room, letting Mark’s blood onto the floor.

Sophie stood still, gaping at the creature in front of her.

It got closer, Mark’s face covered by the tentacles which sucked the blood up to his skin. The monster put a strong hand over Sophie’s mouth and pushed her hard onto the floor.

“Mark?” she asked weakly.

The monster picked up a shard of glass that broke from the tank, which shattered into a perfect blade. It knelt down beside her and put the shard of glass to her throat. Tears began streaming down her face as she tried to register what she was seeing, trying to break free from the hot, wet grip of terror.

She could not.

The octopus stared at her with wide eyes, wrapped tightly around her husband’s head. The thing that she once loved shoved raised the shard up over its head, bringing it down furiously into Sophie’s throat.

Her eyes sprung open.

The monster stabbed her over and over and over, spraying a jet of blood across the apartment floor.

She didn’t have the time to scream.

Sophie’s body lay on the floor bleeding as the bloodsoaked monster rose to its feet. It stood over her indifferently, slowly blinking its glossy, mucous-covered eyes.

The monster stumbled through the apartment to the kitchen, gaining its footing. It began sloppily rummaging through the drawers and cabinets, settling on its treasure: a five-inch vegetable knife, made in China. It moved from the kitchen and slipped out the door, leaving a smear of blood on the doorframe and disappearing into the night.

The End