The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

BACKWATERS

Ella was annoyed. This wasn’t her bag. How had this happened? A mix up at the airport; the depressing anonymity of luggage.

Damn. She was always so careful. Yet there it was; the bag was full of strange stuff, categorically not hers. She sighed. There were things in her bag she needed, and she needed them urgently. Tomorrow wouldn’t do at all. She felt the beginnings of panic rising. Her assignation was tonight, and he wouldn’t accept any excuses.

Ella eyed the strange contents of the case.

This definitely wasn’t her bag, and what’s more she had no idea what she was looking at. Who the hell would put a live octopus in their luggage? At least she thought it was an octopus; it certainly looked like it from the tentacles and their little suckers. She would have been sure it was an octopus, except for the fact it had three eyes, and she was absolutely certain octopi only had two eyes. And a beak. She looked closely. There was no beak, only a little smiley mouth.

* * *

Cthona was dumbfounded. This wasn’t hyr bag. How had this happened? How had hy let them talk hyr into working here, in yet another stupid backwater!

Hy examined the bag carefully. Cthona couldn’t find any hint of who the bag might belong to. Hy wondered what the protocol for such situations was. At hyme, it would be simple. Hy would use hyr spyglot to contact the other pyrson, directly, though the mynd, and that would be that. Here, things were not so simple; these ‘people’ were not pyple in the strict sense of the word, and hy didn’t even know if they had mynds, per se.

Cthona picked up a few of the items in the bag carefully, and extended hys third eye-pod the better to examine them.

The clothes were weirdly and distinctly human. Hy shivered, vaguely disgusted, and instinctively relaxed into hyr natural shape, all pseudopodia present and correct. Physical sexual dichotomies were very strange to hyr, although seemingly the natural condition round here. Hy extruded an extra tentacle and pawed through the contents. Strange lacy garments, flimsy. What were they for?

Hy shook hyr head. The primitive alien strangeness of this place never failed to amaze hyr.

* * *

Ella could find no identifying marks at all on the luggage; no name, no phone number, no nothing. She’d have to go back to the airport. Time was ticking.

She needed her stuff back. She needed to look her absolute best tonight.

From the case, the octopus-thing smiled at her and waved a tiny tentacle in ‘hello’.

Ella knew with some instinct that she should be alarmed, but the mysterious creature didn’t seem dangerous at all. It looked rather sweet, like a child’s cuddle toy. It calmed her, in some indefinable way.

She picked up the octopus-like thing. It gazed back at her steadily with two of its eyes; the other scanned the room. It didn’t feel how she expected it to. It wasn’t slimy; its skin was dry and warm, fleshy, as smooth and pleasantly downy as a peach.

It smiled, squeaked softly, and reached out with its tentacles to touch her face.

* * *

Cthona wondered how to find the chyld. If hy couldn’t get to yt within a few hours, hy suspected hy’d never find yt at all. Freshly hatched yt may be, but there were very good safety reasons for checking yt in.

Hy foresaw a world of pain ahead, endless investigations, labyrinthine recriminations. There had already been that incident last year, when yt’d crawled out the overhead locker mid-flight. Of course, yt had only wanted to play, but all hell had broken loose, and nobody had got off the plane looking, thinking, or behaving remotely the way they had when they’d got on it. In most cases, reasoned Cthona, that had been an improvement, so surely it was not such a big deal in the great scheme of things…? And hy’d retrieved the hatchling, had hy not...? And as for the passengers, did they not say round here that beauty was in the eye of the beholder…?

Hyr boss had begged to differ.

No, there was nothing hy could do. It was hopeless, too late; hy’d blown the whole assignment. Chthona steeled hyrself to report the loss, already imagining the reaction. You did what, Chthona? You mislaid a chyld? They’d probably send hyr to somewhere even worse, now.

Distractedly, hy found hyrself wondering what the relevant human would make of the precious cargo in hyr bag.

And more pertinently, what might it make of them?