unironically, one of my favourite pieces of horror writing is victor hugo’s description of an octopus
[ID: photo of a book. Some of the text has been highlighted. It says “It is a pneumatic machine that attacks you. You are dealing with a footed void. Neither claw thrusts nor tooth bites, but an unspeakable scarification. A bit is formidable, but less so than such suction. The claw is nothing compared to the sucker. The claw, that’s the beast that enters your flesh; the sucker, that’s you yourself who enters into the beast. Your muscles swell, your fibres twist, your skin bursts beneath this unworldly force, your blood spurts and frightfully mixes with the mollusks’ lymph. The beast is superimposed upon you by its thousand vile mouths; the hydra is incorporated in the man; the man is amalgamated with the hydra. The two make one. This dream is upon you. The tiger can only devour you; the octopus, what horror, breathes you in! It draws you toward itself and into itself, and, bound, stuck, powerless, you slowly feel yourself emptied out within that horrendous sack, that monster. Beyond the terror of being eaten alive is the ineffability of being drunk alive.” End ID]
and don’t forget his drawing of one.
Octopus bearing the Initials V. H., Victor Hugo circa 1866:
#this fully rules #like victor my dude octopi absolutely dont do this but this rules supremely
I’ve reblogged this before but I forgot I wanted to add THE REST because what OP posted is only the very end!!!
To believe in the octopus, one must have seen it. Compared with it, the hydras of old are laughable.
Orpheus, Homer, and Hesiod were only able to make the Chimaera; God made the octopus. When God wills it, he excels in the execrable. And all ideals being admitted, if terror be the object, the octopus is a masterpiece.
Its most terrible quality is its softness. A glutinous mass possessed of a will — what more frightful? Glue filled with hatred.
At night and in its breeding season, it is phosphorescent. This terror has its passions. It awaits the nuptial hour. It adorns itself, it lights up, it illuminates itself; and from the summit of a rock one can see it beneath, in the shadowy depths, spread out in a pallid irradiation, — a spectre sun.
It has no bones, it has no blood, it has no flesh. It is flabby. There is nothing in it. It is a skin. One can turn the eight tentacles wrong side out, like the fingers of a glove.
Victor would nod along to this with a single tear rolling down his cheek
