Even if two Pacific octopuses succeed in copulating without a scratch, they both enter a stage called senescence. It’s a “dementia-like” state that begins soon after mating and only ends with death.
Lulled by the warm seabed currents I did sleep and have a dream. I was swimming across our vast dark, scarcely a blade of grass in sight, as always. As always, I was in a fever looking for my death mate, that fatal beauty who would embrace me and give me sweet release. But alas! I saw no female. Instead I came to realize I was watched upon by not one but multiple males. Even in sleep I could feel my suckers pucker. How I did not awaken.
Perhaps, though I spasmed my tentacles and changed the hues of my hide frantically, I knew already that these suitors posed no threat. They undulated calmly against the currents. I was being beckoned, and could not resist.
Thereupon I was led to a great black mound. Strange shapes unfurled across its surface, and around it–there were the maidens! They danced, danced around the great black mound.
What happens next boggles the mind and defies reason. For as the maidens, whose elastic allure swiftly gave way to a frightful intensity, spun ever faster around themselves and around the mound till the waters were a maelstrom. And I saw the pallid, sickly light slice through our blessed night, and sensed the predator approach large as sharks and in possession of eldritch and unnatural instruments, and I awoke.
And in my panic I knew the dwellers of deepest abyss had at long last embraced their blissful, longed-for, unending release.
the Budafoki amended 