Zebza Gladglo stroked his scraggly beard thoughtfully. His companion, a rather portly fellow who was always puffing like he had just run to tell you something from across town, sat in his usual breathless silence. Well, wordless silence. Actually, it wasn’t really silent, considering the rhythmic heaving wheeze maintained by the person across from him. He sipped his beer thoughtfully. “Well, now I can’t rightly say I’ve ever heard tell of an octopus monster in these parts before, so your story is a new one on me.”

The drinking partner shook his head earnestly, each of his chins rippling in agreement. “I tell ya, Zeb, it’s true! I heard the whole thing from my cousin Alvin, and you know Alvin’s not ever lied to me.”

Zeb raised his prodigious eyebrow. “Well…now there was that one time about the tractor heist that old Sheriff Bailey seemed to think differently. But Bailey was always an old sourpuss anyhow. Either way, I believe you, Carl. I mean, we’ve got a lot might strange critters around here, what with the local sasquatch population, and then the recent shift in the mothman migrations. Sooo…yeah, my guess is that this is just something that’s immigrated inland. Global warming is driving habitat changes all over, you know.”

Carl clutched his can of beer in both hands. “Geez, Zeb, you sure do know a lot. That’s why I came to you, I was sure you’d know what to do about it.”

Zeb straightened himself up in his seat, slapping down his drink on the table. “Hell yeah I know what to do about it. You just leave this to Zebza Gladglo, my friend. You’ve come to the right man to fix your problems.”

With that, Zeb leapt to his feet and raced out the door. After running headfirst into the wall instead, he decided that walking would be better until his drinks wore off, and casually stepped outside. He knew the area Carl said the creature was living well, even in his current state. Piles of puffy psychedelic glowing cubes popped out of his eyebrows as his whipped out his Handy-Dandy Task-Force Super-Duty Office Plus Maximum Capacity stapler. Bending down, he stapled the lube-covered objects into something resembling a phonebooth, with a single slot on the front. He stepped inside before stapling it shut, and turned the pixels to a nice shade of royal blue as his booth rose into the air and spun off, flying towards the town of Gillisford.

After landing in the eerily silent town, he changed clothes first -- no need to ruin his best undershirt. Instead, he slipped into a custom made light blue leotard with a big crimson “Z” emblazoned on the front. He slipped into a pair of fire-truck red rubber boots before dispelling his pixels, allowing him to walk free. The place looked deserted. Massive holes dotted the landscape where he could have sworn there used to be buildings.

He stepped in something wet, and lifted his foot. Oil…everywhere. Somebody must have had a pretty bad leak to lose this much oil. He snorted. “Fucking Chevy lovers. Can’t take an obvious hint like this.” He tried to step forward.

The oil wrapped around his ankles.

Zeb pummeled the oil with pixels until it shattered, then stapled a pixel to the back of his leotard so he could hover safely in the air. He couldn’t see anything, and the only sound was a faint rumbling sound, like a really loud bowel movement after eating clearance sushi from a truck stop. He sprouted several Frasier Fir trees to activate his telepathy. He could sense…something. It definitely wasn’t human. As he dwelt upon it, something kind of like the vague smell of stale calamari rings drifted through his mind, and he realized that he must be in contact with the octopus monster.

A pair of long black tentacles emerged from the ground, shoving dirt out of their way as they waved upwards towards him. Zeb flew backwards, instinctively waggling his bushy eyebrows to fling pixels at them. Upon being hit, the tentacles began to swing wildly, swatting away the slippery marshmallowy cubes. After a few minutes of this useless exchange, Zeb stopped attacking, realizing that this monster must be living underground. He flew over to the nearest sinkhole and dove into it. At the bottom was the opening of a tunnel large enough to fly through, so he zipped into it, sending a couple cubes in front of him to light the way.

As their multicolored light danced off the glimmering walls, he could sense a presence approaching him. As a massive black object roared and flung itself towards he, Zeb spawned pixels as fast as he could. They filled the space, marshmallow and lube colliding with the writhing mass of tentacles and oil that was rushing towards him. The two forces met, and he strained his mind and eyebrows as hard as he could to keep pace with the furious force that was trying to attack him. Gradually the forces of his psychedelic light won against the dark beast that threatened him, pushing it backwards through the tunnel. As his pixels accelerated, he was able to push it backwards faster and faster…until they reached an intersection in the tunnels. His pixels flew off in various directions, sliding and tumbling over one another as the sailed into the now-empty tunnel he had been following.

Before he could react the monster was on him from one of the other dark recesses. Zeb stapled the tentacles valiantly, but it was no good. As it pulled him towards its clacking beak, he suddenly remembered his Frasiers, and activated his Frasier Affliction. The monster jerked, and then began slapping its head furiously. Relieved that he had bought himself a moment of time, he began launching his pixels straight into the monster’s open beak. It tried to clamp shut, but its beak shut sproinged right back open again as Zeb filled it with more and more of his slippery glowing cubes. He watched with glee as its mantel began to swell as he filled it with pixels, trying to fill it faster and faster. In desperation it flung him away from itself and back into the tunnels where he landed with a splat. The oil around him rippled, but then collapsed as the poor beast’s mind was filled with incessant hideous sounds and sensations, ruining its attempts at using telepathy.

Zeb picked himself up slowly, rubbing his back. He stared at the octopus, which was now glowing from hundreds of pixels compressed into its body, and grinned. A giant Frasier Fir erupted from the ground under the monster, punching it upwards into the open air. Zeb adjusted the pixel on his back and flew up to it, careful to dodge the flailing tentacles as it tried to flee, spitting out pixels as it when.

Then he got an idea.

With its body full of pixels, Zeb merely willed it to fly over and smack into a building. The pixels jerked inside of it, and the monster did just that. Zeb rubbed his hands gleefully, then willed the pixels straight up at top speed. The beast sailed screeching off into the blue sky. After about forty-five minutes, Zeb figured that it should be in near-earth orbit, so he stopped thinking about the pixels.

As the sun began to set, frightened residents came out of their homes to swap stories about the ugly but brave man in blue with the Z on his chest that saved them all.

A few hours later, an astronaut from the ISS reported seeing a giant black octopus spewing out oil and psychedelic marshmallows.

The bus hissed to a stop, its rusted folding doors creaking open to let the passengers off before it loaded more on. Bumping and jostling about, a gangly man toppled out of the vehicle, stumbling on the back of people’s shoes and shoved forward by the impatient few behind him. He wasn’t used to being in such close vicinity as people usually gave the man with a bushy unibrow a wide berth as he only had the chance to wash his clothing once a month. But they caught him on a good day, his only set of clothing pristine and his eyebrow was immaculate. Apparently this town needed a hero and lucky for them, he was in a hero mood. He grinned and the way how it parted his pale oval head made anyone who had the misfortune glancing in his direction cringe.

The scarecrow of a man walked into town and made his way to the police station. He kicked the glass doors for a grand entrance but they simply shook. Annoyed, Zebza shoved at the doors to throw them open, but they simply strained. Breathing heavily, he glared at the doors and saw under the handles a sign that said, “PULL.” Snorting, he pulled open the doors and marched in. The officers and receptionist simply stared at the idiot walk in and the receptionist pulled a polite face as she asked, “What can I help you with sir?”

Zebza leaned on the desk. “I’m here for the job sweetie.”

The woman’s smile faltered and she coughed, “The missing persons case sir? We were expecting a gladiator to take the job.”

“I’m better than a gladiator baby, I’m a hero.” Zebza got up and puffed out his chest. “Just tell me where I got to go and I’ll get it done.”

The woman passed him a file and then quickly became absolutely riveted to her computer so that she could ignore the buffoon. Zebza took the folder and flipping through it, threw it back onto her desk and walked out. He smirked, he must’ve looked so impressive, just breezing through the file as if he read all of it. In all actuality, the folder was only a page long and didn’t have much writing as there wasn’t much detail about the problem. He laughed to himself and made his way to where the folder said people had gone missing. The job was going to be easy, he would find the missing people and become a hero. He always wanted to be hero; they get power, money, and more importantly, women.

It was nearing night as he walked into the forest. As he walked into the woods, he let a fir tree sprout ahead of him and felt around for something but couldn’t sense anything, neither humans nor birds and squirrels, the forest was quiet. The man scratched his head, he never went hunting but it was common knowledge that forests would be filled with squirrels and birds. He let the fir tree disappear and decided to go deeper in.

Zebza panted heavily, he wasn’t used to such exercise, like walking over roots and around trees. His feet hurt and his throat was dry. He erected another fir tree and once again couldn’t sense anything. However, before the fir tree shrank away, he felt a ping. Underground, approaching him, was something. Curious, he reached into its mind and found it to be one that belonged to a creature.

It was thinking what a typical hungry thing would be thinking, Food. Hungry. Prey. Eat. The only issue was that the only lifeform Zebza could sense besides it, was himself. He probed deeper and was horrified by what else was going on.

Though something as rudimentary as moving could be seen as an automatic action, it still requires the mind to play out the necessary motion. So he could feel the size of the beast coming towards him, and it was massive. Suddenly the idea of becoming a hero didn’t sound worth it as he realized how the people went missing. He had to get out of here and turned tail and ran.

His breathing came out in ragged gasps, tearing at this throat as he pathetically ran, tree branches scratching at his face and bramble tearing at his clothing. He could feel the cold air burn at his raw skin as he dragged against the trees. To keep track of the monster he had to grow fir trees ahead of him, but they just became obstacles in his path. He released his entire arsenal of mental hallucinations at the monster but the overload of information seemed to simply be shunned aside as it barreled forward, too focused on the hunt to allow itself to get distracted by Barney the Purple Dinosaur.

He could feel the ground rumble then in an explosion of dirt and rocks, a pillar of black liquid spewed into the air. More holes blew open, some releasing more oil while tentacles came out of others. Zebza wrinkled his brow and he could see his iridescent cube materialize and he sent it zipping at the tentacle. When the two hit, he watched the cube ripple at the impact and the tentacle seem to freeze, confused by what it had just hit. However the confusion didn’t last a long time as it simply whipped about and began crushing anything in its path, smashing the cube out of the way.

His running became more sluggish and he looked down to see that he was having to power through the oil that had began carpeting the floor. It sucked at his shoes and he could feel it pulling at him. He needed to get off the ground. Running to a tree, he began climbing it, his nails cracking and splitting as he clawed up the tree. However the beast seemed to know he was up there as a tentacle wrapped around the pine’s thick trunk and snapped it like a twig. Flailing in the air, he materialized another cube and grasped onto it to try to stay out of the oil, but it was slippery and he could feel his weight pulling at his grip but dug his nails in resiliently, pulling the cube close to him as he urged it to go upwards. Branches and leaves lashed at his face and body but he didn’t care, he didn’t want to die.

Suddenly he felt something wrap around his waist and looked down in horror to see a black tentacle anchoring him to the ground. It began pulling him down but he hung gamely on, trying to pull himself up with the cube’s speed. Summoning another cube, he had it push itself into the oily tentacle, and cut off from its supply, the oil around his waist splashed back onto the ground. However, the sudden release of pressure sent the marshmallow pixel slinging upward and not ready for the sudden acceleration, his grip slipped and he fell. Zebza screamed as he dropped and crying desperately, more pixels grew out of his unibrow and swooped under him to create a cushion for him to land on. But the lube made the mattress extremely slippery and he found himself hitting the safety net, bouncing off then sliding off. Now all he could digest was that he smelled like pomegranates as he fell.

He smashed through the canopy and could feel his arm and leg twist in a funny direction in his descent and splashed onto the ground whimpering. He tried to sit up but the oil held him down and he could only look up to see the ground split open, exposing a bone-white beak, breaching through like the hull of a ship, shining in the moon’s light. His mouth grew dry as he watched it open and stared down the whirlpool of teeth. He couldn’t do anything as a large, armored tentacle wrapped itself around him and hoisted him out of the oil. He could only watch as it dragged him closer to its gaping maw, and was only able to release a single word, “Please…” Before it bit down and tore him in half.

The rest of the body soon followed and the monster sank back underground, the oil draining away. Hungry… It pushed its way back through its tunnel, its mind forever probing for its next meal.