#squick

Does that octo hair twink have a tentacle thingy???👀👀

octo hair twink😭

yes, here's a very quick sketch to show his tentacles

Squick is a noble word. It recognizes and honors your own personal taste while recognizing and honoring that your personal taste does not dictate morality.

Quite some time ago now in a server for one of my fandoms, there was someone sharing clips of a WIP they were working on. Said WIP was about one of my F/Os. The fic was all about violent noncon leading to character death. The author, who is someone I really like, was chatting about it with some of the other people in the server. They were all teeheeing playfully and talking about it like it was fun, silly, and sexy.

I looked away as soon as I realized what the fic and the discussion were about, but it still made me nauseous and I went to go cry in the shower for a long time. I tried to put it out of my mind, but as you can see it still comes back to mind and makes me upset sometimes.

Casey pulled herself out of the smoking wreck of her Corsair. Everything ached.

Her harness had stopped her taking too much damage beyond the cut she felt on her forehead, but her entire chest throbbed with dull aching sensation. Her quads spasmed with the pain of a dozen dozen knives dipped in lactic acid, and her tailbone felt like it had a grudge against her personally.

 Sliding out of the cockpit and down to the ground outside, she slid to the dirt and took stock of her surroundings. Inside, the cockpit window had been obscured by smoke and dirt, she had to get out. Her back resting against the ship, its nose buried in earth, she looked around.

 She was at the mouth of a cave, set into a small mound poking up out of the ground, because as far as she could tell, the land around her was mostly flat tree-less scrub. She propped herself up and unfastened her flight jacket, releasing pressure on her chest and letting her breathe easier. Poking her head back into the cockpit, she confirmed her distress signal was activated. The pulsing mauve light on the lower dash gave her peace and stilled her unsteady breathing.

 Either the Base or the Mothership would be detecting the signal and be scrambling a rescue; if not immediately, then soon. Casey had been on a simple run from the Mothership to deliver - The Cargo!

 She stumbled around her ship, to one of the storage-holds located within the fuselage of the fighter. The hold seemed intact. More was the miracle, inside the container was undamaged, safe in its cradle. Casey dusted her hands off and carefully removed the container out of the hold.

 Constructed of lightweight plasteel, it looked, for all intents and purposes, like a slightly larger civilian cooler, or icebox. However, it was not cool refreshing beverages contained within, but a rare prize indeed.

 An intact, living, Enthra egg.

 The hive minded aliens had been discovered on the frontier world GTC-997, and through their hive minds and mutagenic secretions, had begun to infest and infiltrate the Federation. Finally, though, an egg had been located and secured, and Casey had been the one chosen to take it to the SciMil base. Then, that malfunction had hit the Corsair and she'd crashed nose first into this flat, almost featureless plain. She looked away from the plasteel container to examine the landscape again.

 The land spread out in all directions, level but for irregularly laid mounds that looked like the cave she'd crashed in front of. There were no trees in sight, just bushes and native grass that clung low to the ground; patches of green amidst a desert of red-brown dirt. The sky overhead hung heavy with cloud. The humidity wasn't high enough to indicate that rain was due, but it felt dense and uncomfortable; enough that Casey stripped off her flight jacket, taking time to inspect her arms for bruises.

 Back to the container. She unlocked the 5 different locks and checked the contents. The egg seemed intact. Slightly larger than a human head, the egg was dark purple in colour, with a pair of ridges along the top of it where the experts on the Mothership THOUGHT it opened. It exuded a slime that smelled spicy and acrid, and it shuddered in a way that looked like it was breathing. Casey shivered and closed the container, placing it on the ground next to her jacket. Leaning deeper into the hold space, she opened the survival kit and took out some supplies to treat her head wound.  She also ate one of the energy bars and pondered her next move. Her belly stirred, she'd skipped lunch, thinking it was going to be a short flight. Hopefully, rescue wasn't far off.

 The distress beacon was active, so all that was left to do was wait. She closed the survival kit, and carrying it in one hand, picked up the container containing the egg, before walking over to the cave. The cave was mostly shallow, but had a smaller tunnel that led deeper into the ground. Placing the container on the cave floor, she pulled out a flashlight and shone it down the tunnel, it curved away quickly, but didn't look like a burrow. She wondered if it was an old magma tube from when the area had been seismically active. Either way, she was grateful for the shelter from the warm, humid afternoon. The cave was cool and still. She closed her eyes and relaxed her shoulders, breathing out. Short of lighting a fire, there was not much more to do. She took a step and tumbled forward, landing firmly on the dirt floor of the cave.

 She looked at her feet and saw she'd somehow tripped over the container. Worse still, the container was open. The egg was rolled over against the cave wall and panic flooded through her. Surely, she'd locked the container. She had to have. She remembered her hands making the movements. But now, she'd knocked it over and the container was empty. She tried to jump to her feet, but her boot slid against a puddle of slime and she fell back to the cave floor. Twice in a row, the shock of her impact sent shocks through her wrists. She instead rolled over, and felt stiffness in her ankle that felt like a sprain. Hopping to her feet, she picked up the container and limped over to the egg. She went to place the container over the loose egg, but paused.

 The egg moved.

 The ridges atop the egg, now lying on its side, quivered like a pair of lips. She stopped immediately in her place, terrified of what might emerge, paralysed from panic and her accumulated injuries. The lips pushed apart slowly, with a small pale round head emerging. To Casey, it looked like an insect larva, a large grub. Smaller in width than her clenched fist, it nudged and pushed out of the egg, millimetre by millimetre. It took what felt like an eternity to fully come out. At its full length about 6 or 7 inches long, it had a dark-cream coloured segmented body with filaments on its underside that she suspected obscured tiny legs. Once it had escaped, she placed the container down over it and sat on top of the container, staring at the egg in case other larva escaped.

 The egg remained still. No breeze was crossing the plains to stir it and Casey was barely mobile from the pain and her own stupidity from leaving the container open. She looked at the lips of the egg, dripping with noxious slime and felt dryness in her mouth. She reached for her canteen and took a swig of water. It would be fine. The beacon was sending. Help would arrive soon. As long as the larva didn't escape.

 A thought crossed her mind. Could Enthra... burrow?

 She imagined the larva digging into the floor of the cave, escaping possibly to breed, to spawn, to form a nascent hive cluster. The pool of slime on the floor of the cave could become a spore pool, slowly infesting the landscape. Cursing her foolishness, she pushed herself to stand and limped back to the Corsair, buried into the earth at the foot of the cave. She pulled open the hold on the other side of the craft and pulled out some emergency PPE. A set of lead shielded gloves and a matching hood. She didn't need the suit, just the helmet. Putting on the gloves, she limped quickly back to the container. Each footfall was like a spike piercing through her heel up to her knee, but pain was temporary. Infestation could be permanent.

 Flipping over the container, she quickly picked up the larva and dropped it in the padded helmet, closing the folds over and placing it back down.  Looking at the dirt where it had been, she saw only the small tracks of the alien. No sign of burrowing. Casey sighed with relief and collapsed to the cave floor, landing on her tailbone which sent further agony up her spine.

 She looked over at the larva, which she could see through the window of the rad helmet. It didn't seem injured. It twitched and squirmed, but looked just like a longer and thicker version of an ordinary Earth insect. She would not have thought it was a virulently infectious hive minded insect from the depths of space had she not seen it emerge, covered in spicy smelling slime, from that alien egg.

 She closed her eyes and started some breathing exercises. Breathing in fresh air, breathing out stale air, breathing in the still of the cave, breathing out the stress and worry. She was trained for this. She had water, she had set up the beacon, she had a fire kit if needed. She had shelter and the immediate threat had passed. She needed to contain the risk. There was a shovel in one of the holds. She could dig up the slime, put it in the container, place the egg back and finally the larva.

 She looked over at it again. It was crawling up the window of the visor, a pair of tiny mandibles twitched, before it slowly shuffled back down. She wondered how the hive mind worked with no other Enthra nearby. Was it afraid? Probably not. From what she understood, they resonated off of each other to create higher thought processes, occasionally resulting in hive clusters that were opposed. That's what had happened on 997-M1. A greenish brood and a pinkish brood had spored on opposite sides of the moon, developed independently, and along with evolving different colours, had seemingly stopped recognising each other as Enthra, trying to infest each other. This one larva was probably no smarter than a baby. Just as vulnerable too. If it hadn't been for her orders, she might have squashed it then and there. One single heel, pressing down on a dumb innocent insect.

 Innocent, she laughed, as she limped back for the shovel. Yes, it might be innocent, but the threat it posed to them all was gargantuan. She pulled out the shovel and locked it into its full unfolded form, before turning back. The smell of the opened egg was starting to fill the still air of the cave. Acrid, like the smell of ants, but with notes of something foreign and spicy. The humidity outside was starting to make Casey sweat, but she dared not touch herself with the gloves that had handled the larva.

 She stood up the container and carefully scooped the slime into it. The dirt it had spilled onto had a mirror sheen across it, which, when it caught the light, dazzled across her eyes like rainbows. Her mouth felt dry again, so she had to put everything down, to remove her PPE to drink. She could not risk contamination. One slip-up could be the end of everything.

 Collecting field goggles and a face mask from the survival kit and putting them on, she made her way to the egg, lying motionless on the floor. She hefted it in her hands and looked at it. Nothing jumped out and grabbed onto her face. That was good. Holding it over the container, she tipped it over and looked at what came out from between the folds of alien flesh. A lot of that scented slime, forming a translucent pool at the bottom of the container. Surprisingly, however, was also what looked like partial larva bodies.

 Looking closer, they looked considerably smaller than the 6-inch behemoth in her rad helmet, and almost as if they were eaten. That... could explain its size and girth. If it had eaten its broodmates in the egg, then it would logically be bigger and stronger. An "alpha" larva, she pondered, thinking of the idiot macho posturing types at the barracks. Or perhaps its confinement, had forced it to survive by eating its brothers and sisters. Had their capture of the egg prevented it hatching at the right time and it had needed to eat them to survive?

 The thought made her stomach rumble.

 She didn't know how much time had passed since her last meal. Hours at least. Energy sticks weren't real food. And, she thought, it’s not as if she had any brothers or sisters to eat. A dark giggle escaped her lips, and she wondered if she had suffered a concussion. She could check using her rad helmet, but that would mean either risking contact with the larva's trails and slime, or the larva itself.

 That seemed less than optimal.

 She gently placed the egg in amidst the pool of slime and, with a gentle touch of her gloved fingers, closed its ridged lips together. Now, all that was left was the larva. The baby. The insect. The enemy. She lifted her helmet to face level and looked at it through the window. It wiggled its tiny feet and twitched its mandibles, shuffling back and forth inside the helmet.

 Casey coughed, suddenly aware of an itch on her nose from the mask that nearly had her drop the helmet. She held on tight, and then, not breaking eye contact from the creature, took it to the plasteel container and tried to tip it out. The larva was unco-operative. It seemed perfectly happy in its safe little windowed hat, where it could keep an eye on the big pink human who was, Casey assumed, acting so odd. By larva comparison, that is. It poked its head out of the hat and brushed her glove with one of its tiny mandibles, which was enough to make her flinch, flinging the larva out of the hat and into the container.

 She immediately knelt down to look closer to ensure the specimen was unharmed. It didn't move for a moment, but then skittered across the slime to one of the dead larva corpses and began to nibble.

 Casey closed the container and sat on it again, removing first the heavy gloves, then her mask and goggles. Free from the mask, she noticed the stink of the slime was filling the cave even more. Oddly fragrant, for such a disgusting substance, she thought.

 Her stomach rumbled. Why was she so hungry? Was it the thought of the larva cannibalising its egg mates? That idea of the most brutal consumption she could imagine? Why would that make her hungry? She drank more water and checked the survival kit. Nothing in there that she could eat. Her legs ached, her neck ached, her butt was sore, her mouth was dry, her stomach felt empty, her chest throbbed with pain from the crash and her head pulsed with dull stabs of pain. She got the mirror from the survival kit; two cuts, some blood, now dried.

 She limped back to the craft and leant against it. The skies were slowly darkening and there was no sign of rescue. The cockpit was all shut down, but for the blinking mauve distress light. It was clearly working. So where was everyone?

Where was anyone?

 Humidity clung to her brow and her chest and her pits. She ran her arm across her forehead and returned to the cool of the cave. As much as the cave was really starting to reek of the Enthra slime, it was at least more comfortable than the dense wet air outside. She sat herself down on the floor of the cave and tried to relax. To wait. They were coming. They had to be. They would come and they would collect that helpless little thing in the container over there. She could see it in her mind, there in its slime, nibbling on the defenceless larvae bodies, filling its belly. Lucky bastard, she thought. How dare it get to eat when her stomach felt so needy.

 She looked out the mouth of the cave. It was getting dark now, so she could at least start a fire. Maybe that might help distract her. Pushing herself up with her aching hands, acid swirled within her, needing food to digest. She grabbed herself and keeled over, half wanting to retch, but not having anything to throw up. She eyed the plasteel container. It looked just like a cooler you'd take to a barbecue.

 The room stank of spices. Her mouth watered.

 She couldn't.

 No.

 Could she?

 It was clearly edible. She'd seen the larva eating its own kind. And it was fat and gorged on its dead siblings. Dead. Dead Enthra. Yes, they were a threat to the Federation, weren't they? Casey realised she could kill two birds with one stone. If she ate it, she could get rid of an enemy to the Federation, reducing any risk of infestation, and solve her hunger pangs in one go. That bloated, thick, sausage like larva, swollen with the corpses of her enemies. It only made sense.

 She took the lid off the cooler and looked at it. The larva looked up at her with eyes she couldn't see. It knew. Of course it knew. It was hive minded. It would have sensed her hunger and known what she intended. It knew its fate, and like it had eaten its egg mates, she would eat it. It didn't even move. It knew. She knew it knew.

 She reached into the cooler and grabbed the larva. Her fingers drenched in cinnamon scented slime, she held it in front of her face. It stiffened, as if it was actually a sausage, and she grinned. The smell of the slime ran up her nostrils and her lips moistened with anticipation. This was, without a doubt, the best idea she had had all day. She opened her mouth and brought the 6-inch alien to her mouth.

 As soon as its skin touched her lips, she knew she'd made a terrible mistake.

 The fog cleared.

 She was TOUCHING an Enthra larva without protection and it was in HER MOUTH. She tried to pull it away, but its tiny mandibles dug on her lips. Slime dripped in her mouth and she understood.

 It was hive minded. And it had bonded with her.

 From the moment she opened the container, she'd been claimed. Images ran in front of her eyes as she recalled her hands not actually locking the container. Placing the container down where she would trip over it. She tried to scream, but her mouth instead kissed the slick skin of the creature now entering her mouth.

 It made her hungry, it fed her thoughts of hunger, and now it was crawling into her. Tiny pinpricks edged, millimetre by millimetre across the pink flesh of her tongue and her only thought was to push it in further. Her empty belly wasn't empty at all; it was just messages sent by a larva that feared for its life. A larva that was now safe in her mouth, and going deeper. She gagged, but it fought past it and dug deeper into her, before she felt the tearing in the back of her mouth, as it moved deeper into her body.

 And why shouldn't it?

 This made sense.

 The humans on the Mothership had told her to carry the child to the base. The ship had crashed, but it would be safe within her. She would carry the child to the base, and then they would think what to do next. She looked in the plasteel container. The egg looked unblemished, the researchers would never know it had been emptied. She scooped up some of the slime and poured it into her mouth, tasting the aromatic spice of home.

---

The carrier touched down next to the crashed Corsair, and the medteam ran out to the fire inside the cave, where Lt. Casey Stark was curled up in her survival blanket. They turned her over and she roused quickly, clinging the medic with panic and shock. They secured the biohazard container, confirming with the pilot that it had not been opened.

 Locking her on a stretcher, they brought her aboard and flew her back to the base. They told her about the thermal vents from the cave systems that threw off her instruments and caused the crash. But she didn't care. She was now safe amongst the Federation forces.

 As she looked out the window at the SciMil base as they landed, she thought of all the good strong soldiers to protect her there.

 She licked her lips, tasting her cinnamon-scented lip gloss, and smiled.