Embalmed.

That’s what they told her. Her offspring would be primped up like a fat criglet in full display on this ugly planet in front of its debased population. It wasn’t enough for her to die in their 4-wheeled death contraption, she had to have a state mourning. A gaudy spectacle of what should have been a dignified private ceremony. She swatted a fly away with her burnt pink tentacle. She didn’t feel comfortable in the octopod armor, she yearned for the freedom of the ocean. 

Pests, that’s what they all are!

She looked around. The humans were all dressed in black, fidgeting uncomfortably as they tried to stay dignified for the occasion. But the heat of the sun directly overhead was making them sweat profusely, scratching all over – in all, making utter fools of themselves.

Nobody met her eyes, not even the President of United Countries of Earth – they were too embarrassed. Her daughter, in her drunken stupor, had rammed the car into the road divider. What could be more banal or undignified?

She looked at the white shroud covering her daughter’s crematorium. Her bulbous lips quivered slightly before she muttered, “Fool”.

Xtere, why would you do such a thing?

“Ahem.”

She turned her gaze from her daughter to the tiny lady in front of her. 

“I am sorry for your loss, Kamila Brrrinkett,” said the President’s wife. “Xtere was a good girl, an eager advocate for human-trilstar relations. Her loss would be dearly felt by all of us.”

Her eight massive tentacles twitched in irritation. How she wished she could wrap them around her and squish her tiny little body. 

“Kra’s ocean keeps on churning. My daughter will join the Old Sailor and keep the water turbulent. She would be part of the whole, till Kra releases her for rebirth.”

There was a look of thorough confusion on Madame President’s face. Uncertainly, she mumbled, “May God bless her soul.”

Kamila offered her most pungent & moist tentacle for her to shake hands with. 

Looking at the oozing puss from her suckers, Madame President almost recoiled her hands. But then, she was the companion of their leader, and etiquette dictated that she shook her hand with her tentacle. She gingerly offered her palm.

Kamila brought out another tentacle and grabbed her tiny hand between two of them – completely dousing it with the lubricating oil. 

Madam President gasped and took her hand back. She still managed to plaster a polite smile on her face as she walked away. Kamila laughed within, knowing that her skin would burn for the next few days. It was petty but satisfying. 

This would discourage these fools from coming near in her time of embarrassment. She had not taught her daughter well – Xtere had recklessly spilled her life force on an alien planet, risking mongrelizing of her blood – who knew what contaminants lurked on this planet!

She signaled her companion to pull off the shroud from over her daughter. Her companion, all whiskers, tip-toed on each of her 8 tentacles towards the center, her armor-head bobbing under the awful gravity, and softly pulled off the shroud.

Everyone gasped, including her. The humans gasped because a thousand pinpricks of light greeted them, as it reflected off the crystal cage that housed her daughter. She gasped because her daughter appeared, with her octopod armor almost intact – these humans certainly possessed skill and dexterity in embalming their dead. Because she knew for certain that Xtere’s octopod armor was damaged beyond repair during the accident– still it appeared almost life-like in the crystal encasement. 

Before her eyes, Xtere’s red skin turned brown and then black. 

Then with a sudden burst, her body turned to ash. The humans watched this, slack-jawed. None of them had ever witnessed the sublimation of a trilstar’s body.

After the ceremony was over, she went to fetch Xtere’s life force from the collection reservoir beneath the crystal casing. It was empty. It should have been there, once her body was sublimated, the sac within had to burst and deposit the greenish liquid in the reservoir. For a moment, she was befuddled looking at the empty tank. Then she turned furious when she realized that somebody had drained her daughter of her life force. 

Kamila’s armor shook with uncontrollable rage. The bi-pedal assholes took away her daughter…

She felt sickened just to think to what use these primates would be putting her daughter’s life force. 

They would pay for this impunity! They don’t know what they are dealing with!

Had Xtere known what she was dealing with a week ago, she might not have been dead. But such was fate… 

“Just a bit left, perfect. You are such a sweet couple,” the guide exclaimed as he clicked Raia and Xtere’s picture against the backdrop of Humayun’s Tomb.

It was their first time in India, and already the place overwhelmed Xtere. The colors, the sound & the smell – it was a bit too much to take in. She looked at one of his human attendants and nodded. The attendant fished out a sack and kept it over Xtere’s visible ass.

She sighed and shat deeply. The expelled liquid was collected in the sack. The attendant looked inside once it was done and smiled, there was quite enough quantity of the putrid liquid.

“Thank you, Miss Xtere for your kindness and bountiful nature,” the gratified attendant remarked, he can sell the liquid at a very high price – his payback for the services rendered to the couple. He could see that the other attendants were a bit jealous. 

Xtere didn’t mind – it wasn’t her life force, just the daily discharge of waste. The humans found use even for that. Good for her, she could roam around at almost no cost. 

Xtere casually flicked one of her tentacles in acknowledgment and moved on to admire the Mughal architecture of the tomb. It was a source of constant wonder how humans could create such mega-structures above ground of such remarkable complexity and genius. Her kind had lived in water so long, and it was only in their recent evolutionary history, with the use of bio-armors – they could live on land for quite a spell. They, of course, had much more intricate and larger structures within their oceans, a metropolis that lighted the waters!

“It was commissioned by his first wife Bega Begum after Humayun’s death,” remarked the guide.

“Oooooo,” crooned Raia. Since she came on Earth, she had been behaving like an easily excitable kid. Xtere could tell that she was having a good time. She called the attendants and motioned that they wanted to sit.

One of them brought out a large portable, plastic pool and inflated it. Another connected a thick pipe to the sump (Humayun’s Tomb boasted of facilities for the outworlders) and filled the pool. A third checked the temperature of the water, satisfied, he asked the couple to sit inside. 

Tiptoeing on her tentacles, Raia sank gently in the pool. Xtere followed soon. The water was no more than a foot deep, but it offered immeasurable comfort.

“Smile please, the view of the tomb is lovely from here,” the guide said. Raia wrapped two of her tentacles around Xtere as if snuggling her in a very human fashion. She still hadn’t got used to the picture-taking tendency of this lowly intelligence, but it was catching on with her kind – it was a need that they never knew existed. 

The tree overhead offered shade from the horridly bright sun. The interplay of the red sandstone and marble on the structure created a pleasing aesthetic effect. She could see why Humayun’s Tomb was the inspiration for Taj Mahal – it was a remarkable wonder of geometry. The continuous stream of water flowing from one fountain to another, taking a large circuit around the structure – had a cooling effect.

“Your civilization appears to be quite modern,” the guide began tentatively.

“Why do you say so?” Raia asked him.

“I have been offering my services to a few of the trilstar couples, don’t get me wrong – I am quite open-minded,” he bared his crooked yellow teeth as he cackled, “but all the couples I interacted with are females, I am yet to meet a male of your kind.”

“Oh, we are a species with a single gender.”

“Single? You mean to say there are no men in your world. How do you procreate?”

“We make do,” Xtere tried smiling. Trilstars had designed this armor keeping the humans in mind – so they had a face that the humans could relate to. And before coming to Earth, they had been taught to smile with this mouth aperture…

Feeling slightly drowsy, she sank further into the pool – luxuriating in its pleasant coolness.

Xtere took out a hollow needle from one of the many nooks on her body, and without preamble, dug it into the fleshy part of Raia’s base just above her drooping tentacles. Then Xtere dropped down to the nib’s level as she began to suck.

“Oh, honey…” Raia muttered softly.

The guide’s companions raised their eyebrows at the spectacle, it was their first time with trilstars. But the guide himself wasn’t amazed – he had seen it too often on his tours with them.

He signaled the others to give the couple some privacy.

“Dear, what would your mother say – when she finds out that you are sharing fluids with one of the rim-dwellers?” Raia asked as she took out her pin and stuck it to the drooping shoulders of Xtere, moaning softly as she sucked on her life force.

“My mom can learn to be a bit open-minded if she expects me to birth an offspring of remarkable diversity.”

“The trilstars of the deep are too banal for your taste?” Raia asked, laughing. The humans kept their distance, but even if they were closer – they wouldn’t be able to hear their private conversations. It was telepathic, after all.

“They are dense and ceremonious. You, on the other hand, dear – are quite exotic!”

“Xtereeeee…”

“I think I am ready to mingle.”

Raia looked at her curiously, “We would be one consciousness…”

“I want that, don’t you?!” 

“Of course I do. It’s just that you are so independent and headstrong, and I am just so plain…”

“You aren’t…I want to spend the rest of my life with you, as one!”

“Till the next birthing cycle.”

“You would be part of me for all the birthing cycles. You would be my first!”

“You would be my first as well,” Raia said coyly.

They enveloped all their tentacles together as they partook each other’s life force.

They stayed there for quite a while. Then afterward, holding two of their tentacles together, they made their way back to the Limousine waiting for them. Their trip to Earth had been quite satisfying and enriching. A freshness had been induced in their romance, the romance of adventure giving way to the romance of spirits. It would be with rekindled souls that they would return to Kra’s ocean.

She looked outside the shaded window of the car, bewildered by the sheer population and the lack of private space on the planet. They were stuck in a traffic jam and she was boggled by the number of different vehicles that surrounded them. 

In Kra’s ocean, there was limitless space and food for every Trilstar. There was a space for brooding, for lovemaking, for public exhibition, and for gathering. But here on Earth, there hardly seemed to be space for breathing. 

She looked at Raia sitting beside her, she had fallen asleep.  The metropolis had given way to farmlands – the spaceport was at a distance from the city. They were headed out to see Jupiter, the gas giant that resembled their home-planet though the chemical constitution was quite different. It had been a whirlwind of a trip.

Ruminating thus, over the gentle music of gurgling water emanating softly from the speakers, Xtere too fell asleep. 

She woke up to the sound of whirring machinery and a putrid stench. Immediately, she could sense that something was wrong. For one, her connection to Raia was broken. She wasn’t there.

As soon as she opened her vision contraption, she realized why. Raia was lying in a pool of her life force, spilled and defiled, exposed to the toxic environment. She felt like coiling herself in knots, she was shocked beyond comprehension.

There were Trilstar armors everywhere – cut up and cataloged. It looked like a slaughterhouse. She was shocked to be surrounded by the death of so many kindred spirits.  

“Watch and learn rookie…it’s the cream-filled inside that matters, what you see outside – it is just like an armor or a space suit – but once you break this hermetic seal – out pours their life essence, the one that will make us rich.”

Few men were hunched over the dead Raia, she had been placed in a tub. Xtere could make out the tour guide and his companions. Two of them were different, they wore white overalls. They were the ones who were cutting up her beloved while the guide and his companions observed.

They had killed Raia. Xtere felt cold fury wash over her body. She flailed her tentacles, tiptoeing surreptitiously outside the tub in which she was kept. They had snatched away her life partner, the one strong bond that she had cultivated in her life. 

She walked behind the men who were still remarking on their good fortune.

“So they are amoebas inside?” The younger man in the white overalls asked the older one.

But before he could respond, Xtere had coiled her tentacles around the guide and his friends & wound them tightly as they choked.

“Quick, get the tranquilizer!” 

The men were turning blue in their faces. They were making weird gagging sounds, but even killing them was not giving her the satisfaction she sorely sought. It was as if a part of her had been hived off, she missed Raia’s shy intrusion into her thoughts, their frequent comingling, and her soothing voice. Its absence was driving her crazy.

So much so that she didn’t notice the young ‘intern’ injecting her…

She felt her mind getting numb. Her tentacles loosened their grip from their necks, and she fell into a deep sleep, thinking before she lost her consciousness that she might never wake up again.  

The guide and the others coughed as Dr. Asthana peered at the prone figure of Xtere and smirked, “This one is spunky.”

“Spunky? That bitch almost killed me,” the guide said with feeling.

“And what are we doing to her and her girlfriend?” He didn’t wait for an answer.

With a razor blade, he made a small incision just at the base of the tentacles, exposing the hard bones underneath.

“Get me the drill,” he barked to the ‘intern’.

The young doctor plugged the drill and handed it to Asthana. He switched it on and pierced the shell to the sac till the green life force started slowly seeping out into the tub.

“Now she won’t wake up.”

“Shall we cut her up?” the ‘intern’ asked eagerly.

Dr. Asthana hit him in the head, “Idiot, this one here is a diplomat’s daughter. We can’t cut her up, we would just drain her and make it look like she had an accident.”

“So you won’t pay us for her exoskeleton?” The guide asked sharply.

“Of course, I won’t. And my advice to you – don’t sell it to your other contacts. Otherwise, this side operation of yours will be caught by the authority, and you would take me down along with you,” Dr. Asthana said. 

They were in his clinic. It was nothing but a small hovel that presumably treated the poor in the neighborhood slum, nobody would have figured out that it was the regional center of the xeno-organ distribution. Dead bodies of Trilstars from all over the north of India, found their way here.

“And what about the other one?”

“I don’t think the diplomats would mind if we take that one. Look at her shoddy armor – rubber-like skin, she would have resided near the top of their oceans, it is so cheap that even humans could almost 3-D print it. We would cut her up proper.”

The guide and his mates waited while Dr. Asthana went to work on Raia. He drained her life force, the green jelly, with the help of a vacuum cleaner and poured it in a special container which he placed in the lower half of the refrigerator. Then he cut up Raia’s armor into various pieces.

“What will this be used for?” The ‘intern’ asked.

“Medical research. Various labs around the world will study the organic matter within so that they can viably print human body parts as well. Others would go to the tissue banks.”

“And their shit which these guys have collected?”

“Building blocks for prosthetics.”

“So nothing is wasted?”

He sighed as he looked at the slowly dying body of Xtere, “Almost nothing.”

He was soon done with Raia. Then he pulled Xtere out of the tub and on the operating table. He hooked up the pump again and drained out her life essence. When he was done, he handed over the body to the tour guide’s men – one of whom carried it over his shoulder.

“You would also have to pay me for the car that I would damage while staging an accident,” the guide said gingerly, rubbing his neck – it was burning.

Dr. Asthana slapped his unwashed hand on the guide’s back, leaving an imprint of green on his shirt. 

“Pah, that’s a paltry cost, compared to what we are going to earn, mate!”

As he went out along with the guide, he signaled the ‘intern’ to clean off the operation theatre. When the ‘intern’ looked at the dead, baleful, angry eyes of the sagging Xtere, he felt frisson rushing up his body. He was shaking for a moment before he went about clearing the leftovers from the table, which coated the floor with another layer of food for rodents, microbes, and flies. 

He placed the sealed container with Xtere’s life force on the top shelf of the refrigerator. It was a special delivery for the treatment of the mother of one of the richest industrialists in the country.

Raj Singhania had everything that money could buy. Or would have, once his mom put her signature on the revised will. Her body paralyzed, her memory fading (she didn’t recognize her son), & very fragile health– put his plan in jeopardy.

Raj had tried all kinds of treatment. But to the glee of his relatives, on whom Sarita devi had bestowed a bountiful largesse in the original will, she refused to show any kind of improvement. While Sarita devi was frothing with incoherence, her son was frothing with frustration and anger.

It was then somebody recommended a very expensive and illegal treatment – xenotransplantation. To his credit, he frowned and recoiled with horror when he heard the idea first. But then he pondered on it, as he realized that his silver spoon was slipping from his fingers if he didn’t take any drastic actions. 

As a dutiful and loving son, he told the media, “I am not accepting defeat. My mother deserves better treatment. Allopathy has proved useless so far, hence we would be trying homeopathy to revitalize her.”

Then he packed her off to the center of excellence of Homeopathy in the middle of nowhere which was engaged in clandestine transplantation operations. Some bits of a freshly punctured trilstar were grafted in her brain. Till he received a cheery thumbs-up from the doctor, Raj Singhania waited outside the operation theatre. After that, he flew back to work to push off the bottom-feeders that were his relatives from getting management control of the company that was his birthright.

He kept on receiving encouraging reports from the hospital – how his mother was recovering, her motor skills improving, she was able to talk cogently, her memory was coming back, she was stronger than ever before – till one day, the reports stopped coming.  His calls were not returned, nobody replied to his emails. With righteous anger, he flew down to the hospital.

“WHERE IS MY MOM?” He thundered at the already quaking receptionist. 

“Sir, if you please wait for…”

“I am not waiting. I want to meet my mom. GET THE GODDAMN DOCTOR.”

“He quit, sir.”

“What, why?” he asked, a bit mellowed down.

The receptionist looked guiltily at her computer.

“Ahemm…,” a beautiful executive, whose job involved handling difficult situations, interrupted. 

“Yes?”

“If you would come with me, I would take you to your mother.”

His eyes and feet followed the dilating ass of the executive, not realizing that they were going in a very different part of the hospital than when he had dropped his mother before.

“Where are we going?”

The lady looked back and told him, “You need to understand what had happened before you meet your mother.”

They went into the room where a lot of screens decorated one entire wall. Two security personnel were monitoring the live feed. Raj felt that they were in the control room of prison because the video feeds focused on dank rooms with iron bars. The guards were on high alert, observing the monitors cautiously.

“Focus the feed on cell 47,” the executive ordered.

“You are keeping my mom in a cell? I had paid for the premium suite – this is not it. Do you treat all your patients like this?”

The executive didn’t answer. Instead, she pointed at the screen. There was just a feeble bulb lit in the room, which didn’t reach all the corners. He had difficulty seeing inside.

“Where is she?”

A rat was scurrying on the floor in the feed. A piece of butter was lying some distance away. Raj’s eyes were glued on the rat, instinctually he felt that something was about to happen.

And something did. A hand shot out and grabbed the rat so swiftly that it took Raj’s breath away. His mother had set a bait for a rat! What was she going to do with it?

“What have you done to her?” He grabbed the executive by her lapels. The security guys perked up at this and rose from their chairs. But the executive motioned them to not interfere.

She shouted, “Let go of me!”

He dropped his hands. The top button of her blouse had come undone, and he could see the fleshy white of her cleavage. 

“I am going to sue your hospital for malfeasance! If anything happened…?”

“If you sue us, you would find your situation very precarious. You very well know that this is an illegal procedure, you would be damaging your reputation along with causing us harm.”

That shut him up. But he still looked at her with naked hostility.

“Let me start at the beginning, shall I?” She asked tentatively.

He nodded.

“Trilstars are sexual amoebas, we were quite surprised when they told us that. They are ocean-borne sentient creatures and have telepathic connections with each other. As they grew aware, they became more curious. And they wanted to explore the world beyond the waters. You know how they did that?”

“They 3-D print bodies to suit the environment and put their life force – their amoeba structure, in a sac at the center. That’s elementary school stuff,” he was irritated with the line of conversation.

“Printing bodies came much later. They jumped into live hosts on land who came to shore to drink the water.”

“What?!”

“Do you know how Trilstars mate?”

“No, and how is that relevant to what we are discussing now?”

The two guards mutely followed their conversation as if they were playing a tennis match.

“It is, humor me. Two trilstars who identify each other as mates partake of each other’s fluids to check their compatibility. It is their courtship period that goes on for quite a while. When they are ready, they merge in ambient conditions, for all intents and purpose – they become one. After that – they bud offspring just like an amoeba. They can repeat this cycle as long as they want – the same trilstars who had become one can mate with a third trilstar for a new batch of kids, and this process can go on for a very long time.”

“I am still unable to see where this conversation is heading!”

“When they jumped into live hosts for the first time according to their historical texts – docile terrestrial herbivores – they inadvertently seized control of what would resemble the herbivore’s brain. The internal wiring changed; the herbivores suddenly exhibited the need to partake of each other’s fluids.”

The realization hit Raj like a physical blow.

“She is a…no, she can’t be!”

“When we injected a bit of the life force in her brain, it revitalized it completely. She started remembering things, she showed remarkable mental acuity. In that sense the operation is a success…but there is a side-effect!”

There was a silence in the room for a while. For a guy who had just seen her mother turn into a beast, Raj Singhania took it pretty well. 

“Fuck this shit, I just need her signatures on few documents. She would recognize me – I am her son. She won’t harm me!”

“It’s extremely dangerous for you to go inside now. Don’t you see – we are trying to contain a pandemic here.” 

“Look miss, I need her signature on this piece of paper in presence of two witnesses. I originally intended to take her back home, but due to circumstances beyond my control – can one of these fine gentlemen accompany you? I will get her to sign it with you two as the witness, and then keep my mouth shut about this place. This way I can safeguard my empire and you can protect your weird little hospital. Otherwise, I talk, and your operations will be shut down forever.”

The executive nodded to the guard, who took out a gun and handed it to Raj.

Raj looked at the executive with mocking eyes, “I need a gun to protect myself from my mother?”

She turned back towards the door.

“Follow me, sir!”

Raj and the guard followed the executive to yet another part of the hospital. Raj hadn’t realized how big it was when he came here the first time! 

They reached the section which was shown on the video feed of the control room. There were numerous iron doors within the compound. Raj felt that this security wasn’t to keep out the visitors, rather keep the inmates within.

They stopped at cell 47. There was a scraping sound coming from within.

“Your mother is inside,” the executive said.

She flicked her badge, and the gate opened. 

As he stepped inside, the first thing he realized was that the sound had stopped. It was a large room with exposed brickwork, reeking with the smell of dead animals. The room was devoid of any furniture – it infuriated him that they treated her like an animal.

He heard a click behind him. The executive had locked him in with his mom. He eyed her angrily, “I would deal with you later, bitch.” 

He showed her the finger, then removed the safety latch from the gun.

“Mom?!”

There was no response. He couldn’t see her anywhere. There were scratch marks on the wall. And a very dead headless rat in the center of the room. Blood was gushing copiously out of its neck.

It was then that fear took hold of him. He wasn’t dealing with a gentle, pliable mom whose only act of resistance had been giving him 5% less than the controlling shares in the company. 

Where was she? 

It was unnaturally quiet. Almost deliberate.

He scanned the room once again. He could feel her presence in the room, his instincts screamed at him to flee. 

“Mom, I just came for a signature. Just like the last time we discussed. I don’t want to disturb you, during your, during your f..feeding time. Where are you? Ahhhhhhhh……”

Somebody flicked past his vision and slashed at his neck. He felt an acute prick of pain. He put his hand at the gash, warm blood started oozing out. He stumbled.

He saw her then. She had a cat-like quality to her. The texture and the color of her skin had changed – she wasn’t the fair wheat of yonder, she was mottled brown just like the bricks – as if she had camouflaged while hunting prey.

He pointed a gun at her. “T..this will hurt you, mother. I am not here to cause you undue stress, I just want your signature,” his voice spluttered in anguish. That was a lie, if he ever got out of this place alive, he would order the hospital to gas her. 

It felt extremely unreal. The woman in front of him wasn’t his mom. She licked her tongue in anticipation, “Rajjjjjj…..Singhaniaaaaaaa,” she uttered, languorously.

A small pool of blood had gathered at his feet. Sarita Devi changed her colors, instantaneously, in front of his eyes – from the brick brown to her original human skin. She appeared younger, the lines had vanished, her skin taut, and she was utterly naked.

He masked his eyes in horror and embarrassment. That was his mistake.

She pounced on him and slashed at his arms. Before his eyes, he saw his left palm fly away from his body along with the gun. He screamed as blood spurted from the stump. 

With her powerful nails, she punctured his eyes. Piteous, heart-rending cries echoed from the wall chambers – but nobody was there to help him. The executive and the guard had run away.

He flopped to the ground, spasmodic movement rocking his body.

Then like a loving mother, she cradled him in her lap. The cries became weak as life slowly sapped out of him. Then she sank her teeth in his neck.