The first time he saw them, it was on the wallpaper.

Late at night, awake for no reason, the moonlight through the window and the way the patterns curved and merged—floral spirals, peeling at the edges—that made him think of tentacles. He laughed at himself, because it was stupid. Tentacles aren’t real, not outside of comic books and sailor’s lies.

He kept thinking about them. Kept noticing the curves in strange places—the way a garden hose curled on the lawn, the way a lock of her hair twisted under her backpack

Once you notice them?

They notice you back.

By the third week, he’d catch glimpses in the corner of his eye. A flexed motion, a coiling retreat. Gone when he turned, but not gone away. Hiding from him, perhaps. It was the kind of not-gone that made him sweat.

Everyone told him it was stress. “You just need some rest”, “you’re studying too hard”, “It’s almost the end of semester”. He almost believed them. Almost.

Until the night he made the mistake of saying it aloud.

“I think there’s something here. Something with… tentacles.”

The silence in the room changed. It wasn’t just that no one answered. It was that the air seemed to still, like it was listening.

That was when he realized belief was the doorway.

The moment you gave it words—when you admitted it could be true—it stopped being imagination.

Because he’d said it, and because he’d meant it, the tentacles were real now.

They were his. Not in the sense of ownership, oh no.

They were his, the way a shadow belongs to the body that casts it.

They were his, and they were hungry.