I have a collection of octopuses. There’s probably an octopus in every room of my house, a tentacle waving at me from every doorway. I haven’t always collected them—I didn’t know anything about the animal as a kid. I’m mildly concerned about what a large collection of anything suggests about the collector. But there was no checking the accumulation of tentacles once it began in college.
I got my undergraduate degree at the University of Georgia, and in the town of Athens, there was an old man who sold sterling silver pendants on the sidewalk. My favorite one was the octopus.
I couldn’t tell you why it was my favorite, it just was. I didn’t yet know how intelligent they were, how they used tools, how they were aquarium escape artists. I was just drawn to this specific pendant. It grabbed me. Tentacles are for grasping, after all.
Every day, I would take the city bus into town, and walk by this old man on my way to campus. He had exactly one silver octopus, and I made sure it was still there, every day, for three months. I was very poor. I had a scholarship, but it only covered tuition. I was living off pancakes and ramen. Buying this octopus was out of the question, but I told everyone I knew that as soon as I could afford it, I was going to get it.
I didn’t buy it though. On my birthday that year, my partner at the time—clueless in many ways, but right about this—gifted it to me. And ever since then, the octopuses started to arrive.
I have octopuses of glass and bone, thread and metal, wood and walrus tusk. When I was in the Navy, and all of my friends were getting tattoos, I arrived with that original pendant, and they carved it into my skin. My most recently acquired octopus is leather, made by the artisans Lisa and Loren Skyhorse of Skyhorse Saddles. And you better believe I got the original of our cover art for this month, custom designed for FFO by Kirsty Greenwood (whose art was previously featured on December 2024’s cover).
The octopuses have followed me—packed and unpacked at each move, rearranged, set upon one shelf, then another. Do I love them? Or are they just so inevitable that I can’t deny them space?
Sometimes, I think water itself follows me, summoned by their silent song. I suspect this is true every time I’ve had to call a plumber. And yes, I know homeowners have to call a plumber every now and then, but we are on a first name basis with ours. Yesterday, we had a leak in the basement. Today, we are getting a window replaced only to find the plywood around it rotted by seeping water.
It feels like water is all around us, coming in on us, trying to make a connection with the many cephalopods in the house.
And lest we forget, water is in us as well. Jiggly with organs. Reaching out with every scratch. Vibrating with every emotion. The body is sixty-ish percent water, and I love how Chuck Wendig elaborates on this statistic in this social media post:
“You’re more water than anything else. Even your bones contain it. Which means: you contain oceans. You contain low tide, high tide, great depths and peculiar shallows. You also contain one hidden octopus and two vengeful sharks so that’s nice.”
This month, we explore those peculiar shallows. We have a bog in “Lizzie Williams’ Swampy Head” by Joshua Jones Lofflin, and a flooded shrine in “Drown-Haunted” by Corey Farrenkopf. We have an aquarium in “The Chaperone” by Kimberly Crow.
We have menacing sea creatures, both in “The Qalupalik” by Shantell Powell, as well as in “Borrowed Breath and Starlit Scales” by Erin L. Swann.
But to start us off, we have a not-so-hidden octopus in “Henrietta Armitage Doesn’t Read Anymore” by Damon Young. It peeks out at the world, sometimes controlling Henrietta, sometimes defending her.
I still wear my octopus pendant when I want to feel safe, when I need to be crafty or cunning, when I need eight arms to handle all the leaks. I’ll go put it on right now and maybe the water molecules in me and around me will help connect me to all of you.
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Ⓒ Rebecca Halsey