The Octopus (standard:drama, 849 words)
Author: Lucia Verona	Added: May 02 2001	Views/Reads: 3538/2388	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
A man has a dream of an octopus stranling him. Everybody thinks he's nuts, but in the end...

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story

go to bed, he hated the sleep itself, he was terrified at the thought 
of feeling again the tentacles around his neck, of having again those 
symptoms of suffocation. Perhaps he had some coronary problem. 

- No way, said his doctor. Your heart is in perfectly good condition.
Maybe you should see a psychiatrist. 

- You a crazy, doc. I don’t need any damned shrink. 

He was going to bed late, awaking early, at dawn, and he took the habit
of snoozing an hour or too in the afternoon, trying against hope to 
chase the creature off his dreams. 

But the octopus was coming back almost every night. 

One day, he went abroad, on a business trip. On the first night, he
looked anxiously at the white, starched pillow in the hotel room. Would 
the octopus follow him here too? But no. Seven evenings, in three 
different hotel rooms from three European capital cities, not as much 
as a glimpse of the octopus, nor the grip of its cold, wet tentacles. 
“I am O.K. now”, he told himself happily. 

At home again, he went to bed thoughtlessly. The unexpected grip of the
tentacles made him cry out, but he could hear no sound. With great 
pains, he woke up, to get rid of the nightmare. At his side, Muriel was 
sound asleep, her long hair-locks around his neck. 

(c) Lucia Verona, 2000


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