Veteran writer Louisa Swann proves in this amazing story that it is possible to write from an octopus point of view. And make me buy it. Louisa often has a strange way of looking at the world. Perfect for Pulphouse Magazine.

You can find out a lot more about Louisa Swann’s fantastic writing and career at louisaswann.com/ If you want to find out more about octopus living habits, just like last month’s story about penguins, you are on your own.

Shoehorned, squeezed, stuffed, and wedged, Octopolis had a problem that had nothing to do with over-ovulation.

Yes, the consortium, colony, tangle—whatever you want to call a bunch of octopuses living in one space—was overrun with residents but there was still plenty of room on the warm Pacific sands off the coast of Australia.

The reassuring snip-snap of snapping shrimp echoed through the coral underlaid with whale song and dolphin clicks and sealion groans.

And the smells—if you’ve never had a chance to bask in the smell of growing coral and dancing archer fish, you just haven’t lived.

Most of the prime dens in the coral and rock outcroppings were taken by the time I came along, but plenty of octos built their own dens, some carrying shells and rocks all the way from The Reef.

Take my den, for example. My name is Harvey Sharpbeak and I’m a coconut octopus (an amphioctopus marginatus, if you’re the technical type).

I don’t need to live up on the Coral Cliffs to claim status. I’m perfectly happy living down here in the sands. I carried a piece of debris—what humans call a sewer pipe—across the sea floor for more than a day, scooped a hole, and stuck the pipe in.

That pipe forms the main room of my home. Not even the Shark Queen herself, Thelma Sharptooth (who just happens to be my best friend), knows where I found that precious pipe.

Inside, my den is dark and quiet, the perfect place to recuperate after a day of hunting crab and rock lobster. I bring in fresh coral fans to keep my den smelling sweet and the pipe is made of a material that muffles sound.

Some seafolk love the hustle and bustle noise of other sea creatures going about their lives. Not me. In my den, I shut away all that hustle, bustle, and noise. No more snapping shrimp, moaning whales, or groaning fish.

Peace reigns in my octo domain.

Outside, my den is barely visible to predators perusing the sand. What the casual passerby sees—and smells—is a garden of coral, shells, and miscellaneous junk. Pink coral fan, white brain coral, and ruby-red staghorn interspersed with conch shells and clam shells and…coconut shells—oh my!

The junk comes from all over the sea floor. Bottles and cans and whatever else my suckers find that helps camouflage my den.

And hide it from the human eye.

My creativity won the Octopod award for most colorful garden, but my neighbors—Jerry Tanglearms and Barb Doublesucker—give me some stiff competition.

Last night, Jerry and Barb challenged me to a War of Changing Skins. Once and for all we would determine who could change their skin color the quickest.

Of course, I accepted.

Quicker than an eyelid blink, I changed my skin color, turning black and gray to blend with a section of volcanic rock that abuts the Coral Cliffs.

Barb hadn’t even uncurled her suckers by the time I finished.

My disguise must’ve been authentic. A soldierfish bumped me with its nose, evidently checking my crevices for baby shrimp.

Jerry finally managed to shift his mantle to a nice sandy pink.

While he was basking in a false sense of glory, I switched out of camouflage mode and flashed my mantle, a coral fan red so brilliant even the cuttlefish hid their eyes. Each of my eight arms bore their own color from deep ocean blue to sunfish yellow to sea urchin purple—with muted shades of variegated seahorse greens in between.

I’m proud to say I stood out like a killer whale in a pod of archer fish.

Needless to say, I won that war, suckers down.

All that skin changing pales when compared to my garden. Harvey’s Garden is the bloodred rose growing among Octopolis weeds.

There’s another element to my garden no one but Thelma knows about. You see, I added to the end of my pipe before burying it, creating a tunnel that leads to a grotto.

At first glance, the grotto seems filled with starfish—one on every stone—and there are a lot of stones.

Take another look. Those starfish aren’t stars at all. Or fish.

They are young, translucent, sea-urchin scented…

Octobabies.

With a purpose.

As I said before, my best friend is Thelma, the biggest, baddest tiger shark that ever rolled with the tide. Thelma and I met when I was just a tiny octopod no bigger than one of her teeth. (She always said I was too small to eat and too big for my mantle.)

We hooked up down Sydney way. Being the bold—and desperate—octopod I am, I snagged hold of one of her fins and rode north until I found my space.

Here in Octopolis.

The great thing about this colony/tentacle/consortium is its tenacity. Octos in Octopolis have a rep—they cling to everything. Octopolians never give up and never let go.

I chose Octopolis for more than its tenacity, though.

You see, I wasn’t hatched in the sea like a normal octopus. I was incubated in a tank with a jillion other octopod eggs.

When I hatched, I had one purpose.

Grow arms for humans to eat.

How I got free and found Thelma is a story for another day.

Suffice to say, I learned things while in captivity. Horrors that turned my beak and shriveled my suckers.

I learned creatures that crawl, swim, or fly are special while those who walk on two feet live to take advantage of or destroy any being they don’t like or understand.

And those greedy, grabby, grotesque beings that walk on land with weird, bent flippers and claim both sea and air (though they have no right to either)…

Had found Octopolis.

That’s right. Humans had invaded that gentle octopus colony.

And though they didn’t rape and pillage, those humans were bound and determined to destroy it.

One octopus at a time.

I learned that my mother came from Octopolis. She mated with—and ate—my father over ten human years ago.

I learned about the concept of time along with the art of abstinence. (Amazing what humans yak about when they think no one’s listening.) I wasn’t old enough to procreate before I lopped off my “male” arm, the arm I would’ve used to impregnate a female. The chances of my getting eaten by that female were greater than I thought wise.

So the arm had to go.

And ever since that first lopping, I’ve removed that same arm as soon as it started growing. No use adding sex to the brainwork I was already engaged in.

Needless to say (but I’m going to say it anyway), I’ve been in this great sea far longer than the average octo.

During my internment I also learned that Octopolis had been providing humans with a constant supply of octopods—including my mother, my siblings, and me.

I plan on putting an end to their live-octopus eating habits. (Don’t agree with my planning? What if it was your arms they were eating?)

Even though her shark brain is tiny, Thelma provided a wide variety of suggestions. We worked together—shark and octopod, tooth and tentacle, red blood and blue—for three spring tides with full alignment of the sun and moon.

To put it in perspective, we worked the span of a coral reef fish’s life to figure out how to save the octopods of Octopolis.

And you can bet your flipper our plan is going to work.

We both agree—it isn’t the octopuses that end up in what humans call an aquarium, living in rocks that have no business being called “rock,” swimming with fish that have no hope of ever being free, stared at by buggy human eyes until those human eyes get all red and watery and uglier than a flounder’s bum.

Humans who actually—gasp!—eat my fellow octopods and once ate parts of me.

Alive.

Now, we won’t go into the moral complications of eating one’s prey alive. Most predators consume their prey while it’s still—sort of—alive and kicking, so to speak.

But humans aren’t happy gulping down their prey. Noooo, they have to drag out the process, ruthlessly chopping off the poor victim’s tentacle arms and serving them to their fellow humans.

They even eat octobabies. Whole, alive, and squirming.

Every time I think of it, I nearly ink out.

So, Thelma stuck her shark nose into my octo-mantle and together we came up with a plan.

Now you might not know much about octopuses (not octopi as so many claim). What is most remarkable about our cute, slimy octobodies isn’t the fact that we’re flexible and can slip through a crack as thin as a dime, it’s our brain…s.

Nine of them.

It isn’t enough that octopuses are amazing creatures who can change colors and blend in with any surrounding.

It isn’t enough we have three hearts and can see, hear, and smell with our skins.

It isn’t enough we have a brain almost as smart as a human’s. (A three-year-old, but who’s counting?)

We—octopods, that is—have a brain for each of our arms.

Yes, that’s right. We multitask.

Believe it or not, I can search out prey with one arm while sorting shells, picking my beak, and scratching my mantle with the others.

And all while smelling the local flora and fauna and listening to the latest gossip.

It near turns Thelma’s gray shark skin green.

You might wonder why Thelma agreed to help. Yes, she’s a rather vicious predator, but she has a moral code humans should take lessons from. Part of that code is: when your bestie’s hearts are hurting, a shark must always help.

She made a simple suggestion. Shark-style. “What if each of those squirmy, disembodied octopus arms—arms still fully aware, armed with fully functioning brains—turned the tides and killed the humans who were eating them?”

My skin got bumps worse than a sea cucumber’s (though I didn’t empty my stomach) the moment I heard those words.

We hashed out methodologies, including going straight into the human’s mouth.

Well—into the human’s boat, but one thing would lead to another and another.

Only one thing wrong with that scenario—the impact I could make on a boat was limited to the humans on that boat.

And I wanted more.

Much, much more.

Besides, the surface is a dangerous place, with its ocean of air, burning sun, and human boats. Of all the dangers, the boats are the worst.

Motor blades slash and chop whales and dolphins and make hash of our other sea brethren doing damage worse than any shark’s tooth ever could.

Oil gets in our waters, suffocating the krill and plankton other species need to feed on.

Then there are the fishing boats. Nets and hooks and traps make the lives of sea creatures miserable.

And end a lot of those lives.

No, infiltrating a human boat wouldn’t work. Not the way I wanted.

I wanted to inflict the most damage on the human race I could. (That’s the kind of octopod I am—always thinking of others.)

Every creature—with the exception of humans who, despite their supposedly superior brains, refuse to understand the basic tenants of life—knows that the predator/prey relationship requires a balance.

Predators who overhunt an area deserve to die.

Therefore, the humans “harvesting” (their term) Octopolis had to be stopped.

Eliminated.

Annihilated.

Time humans got a whiff of their own stench, baited their own waters with the mouth-watering stink of death.

Which brings us back to my garden—not the flamboyant, anyone-can-see-it sandfield of vibrant color.

My secret grotto.

Filled with octobabies. There are more octobabies in my grotto than Octopolis has suckers.

Now, octobabies aren’t like the young of most other species. Our babies are perfectly capable of caring for themselves. They understand what life’s all about.

I said they had a purpose. Perhaps by now you can guess what that purpose is.

Each and every octobaby has been read into my plan.

My octobabies will be acting with profound octonomy. I’ve coached each tentacle’s brain; primed all the grasping, grabbing—choking—suckers.

When a human shoves an octopart between its greedy red lips—be it wriggling tentacles or the entire slithering octobaby—that human will find itself at war.

Just imagine octosuckers snatching at faces, tearing skin and ripping lips. Tentacles slithering down windpipes instead of throats, turning their octodelicacy into gagging, knotted tangles instead of yummy snacks.

That’s right, humans will choke on their own gluttony.

Each and every octobaby has pledged themselves to my—no, our—purpose even though they were given a chance to decline.

Each and every octobaby is a hero.

And the next time humans come harvesting our colony/consortium/tangle…

They’ll think they are leaving with their baskets filled with octopods…

In reality, they’ll be carrying baskets filled with wriggling, giggling death.