A dozen nautical miles off shore, the sea—nearly barren now and several degrees too warm—begins to churn. Sporadic at first, then steady. Below the surface, the remaining octopuses move cautiously from dark to light, emerging from the deep. They are cramped and hungry, weary and stressed. Propelled by instinct, they abandon their burrows and caves and leave behind their dead. Cautiously, they plot their way through fields of shipwrecks, Coke bottles, and plastic bags. Toward land.
Billy sits on a bench carved from driftwood on a bluff high enough to offer a view of his entire world. To the south, the village over which he presides as mayor yawns and stretches toward the foothills. To the north, smoke pulses from the mill’s lone smokestack. Straight ahead, the sea extends like rippled glass to the ends of the Earth.
His ancestors lie in the cemetery at the edge of town, their headstones pitted with salt and darkened by soot. He is the last of his line. He married once, but too young. It had soured his taste for such things. And now, nearly an old man with flickers of gray in his beard and a stubborn paunch jutting out over his waistline.
But even after all these years, as his own body deteriorates into something unfamiliar, the view from the bluff stays the same. The slope of the grass on the dunes. The bite of the wind on his cheek. The cry of the gulls as they soar overhead. As a young man, he had taken comfort in the consistency. Now, it unsettles him. One more reminder that, when he’s gone, life will continue, largely unaffected.
He takes a drag off his cigarette, then stomps it beneath his boot and kicks it to the side. It lands in the sand next to a cluster of dead grass, between a discarded condom and a ketchup-stained food wrapper. Looking out at the water, he sighs and wonders if this is all it comes to. The first star of the summer night winks on the horizon. Though he is not a praying man, he closes his eyes and wishes, yet again, for something more, before there is nothing left.
The first of the octopuses swims ashore the next evening, onto sand that glistens soft pink.
“Look at that!” exclaims a young villager named Jenny, walking with her mother along the tideline.
“Well, I’ll be,” her mother replies, bending to investigate. The octopus is not much larger than her palm, and nearly the same color as the sand. It wriggles across the beach as though it knows where it is going, except it’s heading the wrong direction.
“Let’s help it,” says Jenny.
Her mother catches the tiny creature and carries it to the water’s edge. Jenny follows close behind.
“Careful. Don’t hurt it,” she says.
Her mother kicks off her sandals and wades into the ocean up to her knees. She sets the octopus into the water and watches it lurch forward, then disappear beneath a wave. Jenny cheers. Her mother steps back onto shore, and they continue on their way. If they had lingered a few minutes longer, they might have seen the octopus resurface, then fight its way back onto the beach.
And the two more that followed.
The next morning, an elderly woman named Bess sits on her front porch swing, rocking gently back and forth, watching the waves crash into the shore. As usual, her thoughts are of her son, lost at sea long ago. She likes to sit on her porch because, now and then, when the wind blows just right, she thinks she can hear his voice, and it comforts her.
That’s what she is doing—sitting there, listening for her boy—when something brushes against her leg. Impulsively, she smacks at it. But when she looks down and sees a stunned octopus at her feet, she immediately feels guilty for having done so.
“Oh my,” she says, picking up the octopus for closer inspection. As she brings it near, one of its arms wraps firmly around her wrist. Bess takes it as a sign of affection, and her heart swells with something like love.
“What are you doing here?” she asks. At that precise moment, the octopus adjusts its grip ever so slightly, making Bess believe it understands.
“Don’t you worry about a thing,” she says. “I’ll help you.”
With the octopus securely around her forearm, she slips on her shoes and walks to the beach. Ever so gently, she places the octopus into shallow water and pries it from her arm. She steps back to watch.
The octopus burrows its long arms into the sand, anchoring itself in place. Bess encourages it to swim away. “Get on now,” she says. But when the tide retreats, the octopus twists its way back to her feet. Its movements are desperate, stirring emotions Bess has not felt for many years.
Her instincts kick in. She picks up the squiggly little thing and lightly strokes its head. “It’s okay,” she whispers. “I’ve got you. You can stay with me.” She cradles the octopus against her chest and carries it back to the house.
Every evening around sunset, a new wave of octopuses comes ashore. “Look at them all!” the villagers exclaim as they walk along the beach. The
octopuses pay no attention. They flop and squirm their way into cracks and crevices, disappearing into sewage tunnels and drainage canals.
The villagers are more curious than anything. They find the sudden arrival of so many octopuses peculiar, but not necessarily alarming. Living for so long by the sea, they have gotten used to the occasional oddity. Once, a small herd of spiny sea creatures no one could identify washed onto the beach, then disappeared the next day. The sea has its mysteries. The villagers don’t worry much about such things.
Their feelings about the octopuses change one morning when a young woman named Mitsy runs out of her house onto her front lawn in hysterics, screaming for help. She is dripping wet in a bath towel. Expecting the worst, those who hear her cries run to her aid.
“Calm down and tell us what’s wrong,” says one of her neighbors.
Mitsy takes several deep breaths and tries to keep her voice level. “I was sh-sh-showering,” she says. “I was rinsing my hair and a-a-a . . . oh god, I can’t even.” She becomes hysterical again.
Her neighbor grabs her by the shoulders and looks her in the eye. “Well, what is it? For Pete’s sake, tell us what happened.”
Mitsy tries again. “The showerhead,” she finally manages, though her voice cracks. She has to whisper to get the next word out at all: “Octopus.”
She lifts her long, wet hair and her friends and neighbors see a track of tiny red marks on her shoulder. Clearly, the markings of an octopus. “It would have killed me,” she says, sobbing.
Mitsy’s neighbors shake their heads in disbelief. “This is getting out of control,” one of them says. “We should inform the mayor.”
In fact, the stray octopus had been as startled as Mitsy to find itself suddenly free-falling through the air and landing forcefully on a tangled mess of wet, stringy hair. It managed to fight off her pummeling fists just long enough to detangle itself and escape down the drain, where it quickly warned the others: these humans are vicious.
When he hears about the showerhead incident, Billy calls an emergency town meeting. The villagers tell the mayor and council all they have seen. There are tales of octopuses bathing in tubs and sinks, slinking around in parks and streets, even stealing from the market’s supply of frozen artificial shrimp.
“It’s worse than I feared,” Billy says, but he is already feeling a surge of adrenaline because, finally, something interesting, something important, something new. He wants to take action right away, but others disagree. Tempers flare. Tensions rise. Someone suggests consulting an expert.
Billy objects. “There’s no time,” he says. He wants a fight. But he is outvoted, so the council approves the necessary appropriations and conducts an online search, settling on a marine biologist who specializes in cephalopods.
Resigned, Billy calls and explains the situation.
“You have how many octopuses?” the biologist asks.
Billy says he does not know, but guesses it’s in the thousands. The biologist says he will come right away and, indeed, arrives that night. When he sees the octopuses scurrying about, he is so moved, he weeps. “I had no idea this was possible,” he says.
The tears make Billy uncomfortable, but he clears his throat and asks the biologist for his professional opinion.
The biologist speaks passionately. He says climate change has benefited the octopuses. Rising water temperatures have allowed their populations to surge, pushing them to migrate to new habitats in search of food. In recent weeks, they have started showing up more frequently on land. “They are problem solvers,” he says. “Highly intelligent. Shockingly adaptable. They can absorb the moisture around them—sea spray, rain, and the like. Remarkable, really.” But never has the marine biologist seen or heard of anything on this scale. “Quite unexpected,” he says. “Very unusual.”
“So what should we do?” asks Billy.
“Well,” says the biologist, looking from one council member to the next. “Why don’t you give it some time? Nature has a way of righting itself.”
Billy snorts. “That sounds like doing nothing,” he says. But the rest of the council thinks there is no point hiring an expert if they aren’t going to take his advice.
And so, over Billy’s objection, they wait.
The villagers follow the council’s instructions to hold tight. Although a little afraid, most still feel a certain amount of pride in being a part of something so strange. Everyone has a favorite theory as to why the octopuses have come and enjoys sharing it with anyone who will listen.
The showerhead incident was just the beginning. It becomes increasingly difficult to go anywhere without touching or seeing or even tasting octopus. Also, the octopuses camouflage their skin to fit their surroundings, and people tire of being startled all the time.
A handful of citizens wielding anti-octopus signs takes to marching in the village square while chanting, “It’s not too late! Exterminate!” When the roads become so overrun people can no longer bike or drive or bus, their ranks begin to swell. Angry chants sound through the streets. The octopuses have become a nuisance. The villagers want them gone.
Billy decides he can no longer wait for the rest of the council to come to their senses. Nature is taking too long. Something must be done. Without consulting anyone, he calls another town meeting. Standing in the great hall as a crowd assembles, he takes a moment to eye the portraits of mayors who preceded him—sea captains, commanders, business leaders, all the way back to the village’s founders. He knows their stories by heart, his own father’s among them—leader of the great shipyard strike, he served as mayor nearly fifteen years. It was name recognition that got Billy elected. He knows this. Yet he hasn’t been a bad mayor. Nor a great one. Until now.
When nearly everyone is accounted for, he addresses the room in his most mayoral tone. “I called you here today because something must be done about the octopuses,” he says.
“It’s not too late! Exterminate!”
Billy lifts his hands for silence and waits for the chant to die down. “Yes, I hear you. It’s true. We have been too amenable.” At this, he looks with disapproval at his fellow council members, who have gathered to the side. “The octopuses have taken advantage. What we need now is a show of force!”
The crowd erupts into applause.
“To make them afraid!”
More applause.
“Make them run!”
Chants and cheers. Billy feels more alive than he has ever felt and does not wait for the whistles and hoots to fade before loudly proclaiming: “We fight!”
The room explodes.
The other council members look surprised and the biologist shouts, “No!” But the mayor is done deferring to others. That’s not what great leaders do. The chants and cheers drown out the dissenters.
“Hunt! Hunt! Hunt! Hunt!”
***
That very day, the villagers (most of them anyway—Bess and her octopus take cover in a basement and the biologist hides in a school restroom with as many octopuses as he can gather) set out to kill the octopuses. It is a sparsely populated village, but the villagers make up for their small number with exuberance and stockpiles of weapons. Man and beast collide in furious bursts of flailing arms and legs and spears. The villagers track the octopuses, slamming their oversized heads against walls, rocks, and kitchen tables. They crush, electrocute, strangle, shoot, and chop octopuses to death. Often, in their final moments, the octopuses reach for their killers and cling to them. This disturbs some of the villagers. Still, they fight on. For the greater good, they tell themselves. It must be done.
Within a few hours, pieces of octopus, stained blue with ink and blood, litter the streets. Everything stinks of decaying fish. But the octopuses, on guard, are not so easily defeated. Although the villagers slaughter a great number of them, many more manage to hide in cracks and dens and pipes and holes. They have studied their opponents and know how to evade them. Silently, they warn one another, help one another, hide one another. Some of the villagers start to lose spirit.
In the midst of battle, Billy looks up from an octopus he has just slain and sees young Jenny huddled against a wall. She appears to be crying. Her mother is nowhere to be seen. As mayor, he feels he can’t just leave her there, so he approaches, out of breath and slightly annoyed.
“Are you all right?” he asks.
Jenny looks at him. Her hair is wet and smattered with octopus bits, her face streaked blue with blood and tears. In her hands, she holds a small limp octopus. “It didn’t fight back,” she says, stifling a sob.
“Stop crying. What do you mean? And where is your mother?”
“It didn’t fight back. They don’t fight back.” She rests her forehead against the motionless octopus. “This isn’t right.”
“You’re being overly dramatic. I—I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Billy says. “Don’t you want to help save the village?” He looks around again for the girl’s mother, or anyone who might be able to take his place as babysitter. A few octopuses skitter here and there, chased by tired villagers yielding weapons of various sorts.
One of the villagers, the librarian, runs down the street holding a spear above her head. From her lips comes a raspy, raw, guttural cry, like the call of a wild beast. The octopus she pursues moves clumsily, a plastic six-pack ring wrapped around some of its limbs, cutting into the flesh. Billy feels his adrenaline surge but stifles an urge to cheer, “Exterminate!” As the librarian closes in, a second octopus emerges from a sewage grate, grabs the first by the head and whisks it away. They disappear together a second before the spear crashes down. The librarian drops to her knees, clearly exhausted, clawing desperately at the grate’s dark opening, grunting with every pitiful swipe.
Billy turns away, embarrassed by the woman’s defeat and the crudeness of her gestures. He looks around for reassurance—surely some of the more capable villagers are having better luck—but everywhere it’s the same. Men, women, and children chasing half-heartedly after octopuses. Octopuses fleeing, clinging, hiding. The girl is right. The octopuses don’t fight back. And still, the villagers are losing.
Billy is still considering this when he sees his reflection in the display window of the hardware store across the street. Swollen, grotesque, and blood-splattered, his first thought is he must be looking at a demon octopus risen from the deep. Instinctively, he tightens his grip on his axe. When he realizes the truth, he gasps, breathing in the stench of rancid octopus. His stomach turns. Everywhere he looks, there are dead and wounded octopuses, rabid villagers, crying children. The village has been ripped apart, yet from the corner of his eye he sees movement in the gutters and shadows. Hears the subtle slaps and spins. Despite everything, the octopuses live.
Jenny’s mother suddenly appears.
“There you are,” she says, wrapping her arms protectively around her daughter. She glares at Billy. He sees the repulsion in her eyes. “No more of this,” she says, guiding her daughter away.
He wants to object, but can’t find the words. He staggers. For the first time in his life, the world is unrecognizable. Everything is confused and twisted and unknown. He is overcome by a sudden impulse to set it right.
“Stop!” he shouts at the villagers, struggling to keep his voice steady. “Stop!” The villagers turn to face him. Their expressions are hollow, their eyes mad. They look like savages. “This isn’t working,” Billy says, dropping his axe. It lands with a mushy splash. An octopus scoots across the wooden handle before scuttling away through the rotten mess. Billy watches it go and whispers, “What have we done?”
Once the hunting stops, it’s only a matter of time before the octopuses take over. They cling to every surface and invade every space. They have the fortitude and intelligence one would expect from an ancient species. They quickly master the formalities of civilization and begin to organize. A hierarchy emerges. Leaders and followers. Givers and takers. For the most part, they ignore the villagers, but they do not forget.
It is an uneasy truce, and the villagers soon spend their time at the beach, huddled together, seeking solace where the octopuses will not go. It’s difficult to imagine there could be any octopuses left in the sea, but every so often a straggler pops out of the water. The villagers step aside to let it pass, then watch, defeated, as it crawls beyond the tideline and disappears between the boardwalk slats. Even from the beach, the villagers can hear the octopuses moving about the city streets—the heavy slap of their arms on the sidewalks, the rustle of their bodies through the lawns, the occasional splash in a bucket or puddle.
The council disbands and the villagers try to take comfort in the fact of each other. The sophistication and skill with which the octopuses rebuild and the kindness the octopuses show one another fill the villagers with shame. Images of the massacre haunt them and it becomes difficult to make eye contact, even between friends. And so, one by one, the villagers stop going to the beach. Eventually, they abandon each other altogether, leave the village, and scatter like a fine mist, hoping only to forget and be forgotten.
Two refuse to join the exodus. Bess, the elderly woman who lost her son, discovers she prefers octopuses to people. They, in turn, take a liking to her. The marine biologist also stays. He spends his days following the octopuses around and scribbling in his notebook, wiping tears of joy from his eyes. They grow used to him and allow him to record some of their most important moments.
As for Billy, he, too, is haunted by memories of the hunt, but mostly it is his own image he sees, swinging his axe as he marches through streets of blood—a monster. His head is full of ghosts, and they will not relent. He struggles to come to terms with what it all means and how it came to be.
Late one afternoon, while wrestling with these thoughts, he wanders to the marina, now mostly deserted, and rigs up an old catamaran. He has no real plan, only an inclination. A gut feeling it is time to go. In that way, though he does not realize it, he is not so different from the octopuses. At high tide, without telling anyone goodbye or even visiting his father’s grave a final time, Billy sets sail.
Looking back at the village in the waning light, he can almost pretend the twinkling lights and rippling rooftops are optical illusions caused by the setting sun. He sees the bluff and the silhouette of the empty driftwood bench and thinks how small his boat must look from way up there. He is surprised to discover he will miss the view.
When the bluff finally sinks below the horizon and the village is little more than a dome of soft orange light, Billy turns his attention forward. He lights a cigarette and gazes at the starry sky. Absorbs the rhythm of waves slapping softly against the hull. He considers the biologist’s assertion that nature eventually rights itself. Sounds logical enough, but look at the state of things. The village belongs to the octopuses and he has taken to the sea.
Billy positions himself at the helm, flicks his cigarette overboard, and sighs into the vast emptiness. He sets a leeward course and cuts through the water at a steady clip, vanishing forever into the octopus-free deep.