"...ma'am? Ma'am?"
Mary startled at the tapping noise on her table, the waiter evidently growing impatient. She looked up with a start, cheeks flushed.
"O-oh- uh- um- y...yes?"
"Have you decided what you'd like to order?"
Mary looked down at the menu in her hands, having been staring at the laminated paper without actually reading it.
"Oh um...s-sorry, not yet. Just a couple more minutes."
"Well, when you're ready just call me over."
"Got it."
She nodded while the waiter turned to leave, and she could swear she heard a mumble that sounded like 'tourists' as he walked away. She looked back to her menu, chewing on her lip while she tried to concentrate.
 
Mary had a problem today. A big problem. She was on the third day of her vacation at the beachside resort her parents had sent her to in an effort to get her out of the house. Her first day had been...unique, to say the least. Her butt still ached slightly from the event. Her second day was more normal; she had a map of all the choicest spots in the area -courtesy of a kindly old woman on the plane ride over- and she had used that to its fullest extent, taking an old trail through the nearby woods to an old bridge, trying the best restaurants in the city, even directions to the only hardware store in town. This cafe was actually one of the old lady's recommendations-- she was supposed to order...something called the 'calamari slugger,' which she couldn't seem to find on the menu.
 
The problem was, on the third day of her vacation, Mary had woken up with her loins on fire. She had grown familiar with, but still not used to, that odd tingling sensation in her nether regions that had periodically popped up since nearly a week before (after the polymer ball incident, she noted), but it had never come with this much of a vengeance. Mary's face had been flushed since she woke up this morning and while she discovered a cold bath temporarily helped, no amount of rubbing or prodding at her backside was giving her any reprieve. Usually it would have disappeared after an hour, but it felt like her body was constantly screaming at her to do...something, and had been for the last half a day. She grunted as another wave of heat rippled through her, distracting her from her surroundings. This wasn't fair, she had plans today!
 
Attempting to power through it in a desperate hope that the feeling would eventually disappear like it usually did, Mary called over the waiter again, putting the menu down and hesitantly ordering a 'calamari slugger' despite not finding it on the menu.
"We don't...serve that, ma'am," the waiter informed to Mary's disappointment.
"O-oh, um, sorry, I just- it was recommended, and I- uh, and I thought-" she was having trouble placing words. The waiter exhaled through his nose.
"I'll ask the chef."
"R-right. Sorry."
 
Mary cradled her head in her hand as the man left, sipping on ice water in an attempt to cool herself off. She decided she hated this feeling. This wasn't the light, fluffy haze of good-feels that had followed a few of her latest...mistakes. This was what came before that, this was hungry, this was loud, it made her ache and writhe and most frustratingly of all, it didn't tell her what it wanted. It wasn't fair, she'd never agreed to all of these weird new feelings. Some were nice, and most were just confusing, but this...this was unfair. She wanted off this wild ride.
 
She blinked out of her daze as the clatter of silverware reached her table, and Mary looked at the enormous sandwich that had been set in front of her. Like the name implied, it looked almost ready to fall over with all the fried calamari stacked inside, with various greens and sauce already dripping off the sides. The smell was intoxicating, and her stomach rumbled in hunger, though she doubted she could finish it all.
"You're lucky; the chef said it's on the house. Something about his wife? Enjoy your meal, ma'am."
Mary hardly had the time to answer before the waiter was already on his way back to the kitchens, leaving her alone with what she guessed must have been an entire octopus worth of calamari. She tried squishing the sandwich down as flat as possible to fit in a bite, and closed her eyes as the taste was enough to overwhelm even the infuriating feeling in her nethers.
 
Meeting that nice old lady was definitely the best thing that had happened to her on this trip, she decided.
 
---
 
Mary forced herself to focus on her map while she walked down the sidewalk, dotted with red notes and arrows detailing the best spots to visit. Her nethers had calmed down to a dull ache after stopping at that cafe, and she was determined to enjoy herself in spite of her own body. A new plastic baggie swung at her side as she walked, holding the half of the sandwich she couldn't hope to finish. Ooh, she could check out the hardware store? The old woman had made a note of it on her map after she asked, but she didn't have much to say about it. Mary knew she probably wouldn't get much else done that day after she let herself fall into the grip of her personal version of Disney Land, so she shook her head. Maybe on one of her last days she'd visit the hardware store, but the directions on her map had led her to nothing but beautiful treasures so far, and she wasn't going to get another chance to visit them.
 
Usually she hated getting wet, but a dip in the cold ocean would do her body good. Maybe it would help with her ache. Mary ran her finger down the outline of the ocean, looking for red notes, before finally arriving at one a little further down than the place she'd visited on her first day. 'Tide pools,' the notes claimed, 'visit at low tide.' Made sense. Though it was farther down than the cave from two days ago, which meant the walk was going to be a pain.
 
Mary twitched as the memory of that day sent her loins aflame again, and she picked up the pace to a brisk walk. The distance would be good for her, maybe tiring herself out would help with the ache.
 
---
 
"...hah...hhah...hh..."
 
Whoever invented hiking was inhuman. Mary had told herself every time she was exhausted from walking, but this time she meant it. She clambered over another jagged rock, this time wearing her usual hoodie and cargo pants to make climbing easier. On the bright side she couldn't care less about the burning in her nether regions anymore, since her body was now screaming at her for an entirely different reason. Another few weeks of this and she'd probably get fit, but Mary would sooner murder a man in cold blood than put herself through this again.
"...hh...tide...hh...pool...come on..."
Every time she slowed to catch her breath she could feel the infuriating tingle of longing start to spark up again in her nethers, which pushed her to keep moving to quench that flame.
 
Mary nearly stumbled into the very pools she was looking for, so focused on pushing her body forward that she could hardly tell what was in front of her. Her head pounded with her heartbeat, her face and hands dripped with sweat, her hoodie felt soaked from the inside. She finally let herself sit down, or more accurately her legs decided they were done with all of this nonsense and gave out from under her. Her breaths came in deep gasps, the uncomfortable craggy rocks below her hardly even registering. She'd slipped into some special layer of hell, she knew it.
 
Mary forced herself to peel off her hoodie, revealing the green bikini top beneath it. Her small boobs just barely filled out the piece, a fact she would usually lament, but right now she was just relieved to feel her sweaty skin exposed to air. Tipping over, she did the same with her pants and shoes, bundling up the clothes into a messy pile next to her while she laid near the edge of one of the tide pools and waited for death to take her.
 
When after a few minutes the grim reaper didn't magically appear to whisk her away to the giant Home Depot in the sky where exercise was a myth, Mary finally felt sensation starting to return to her limbs. And with it, that annoying tingle. She pushed herself back into a sitting position, realizing that the rocks had been painfully digging into her side the entire time, and stared down at the tide pool she had nearly tripped into earlier.
 
It was roughly the size and shape of a jacuzzi tub, and once her lightheadedness was gone, she leaned closer to see the life underneath.
"...cool..."
No fish to be seen, but the bottom was littered with the colors of life. Little red and green anemones dotted the rocks underneath the water, and she could make out a tiny crab skitter between hiding spots every so often. A single jellyfish, the size of the palm of her hand, floated lazily near the center, peacefully undulating to get around. She was staring into a little ecosystem, closed off from the rest of the world until the tide would come to sweep it all away in a few hours. She mentally thanked the one who had given her directions to this place yet again, promising herself she'd try to find that old lady and thank her in person before her flight left in two days.
 
Mary considered dipping a foot in, but was wary of the single jellyfish, and so settled for watching the life under the surface for now. When her legs stopped feeling weighed down by lead she shakily stood up, looking around with a higher point of view. It seemed like the area was littered with tide pools, some larger than the one she stood in front of, some roughly the size of a bathtub, and others only barely bigger than a kitchen sink. She wandered the area with wonder, sometimes crouching down to look at a new color or shape she spied on her journey for one that looked right enough to hop into. And this time her bikini would be staying on, thank-you-very-much.
 
It took a few minutes of searching the area before her feet began to hurt from the jagged rocks she walked on, and her nethers were starting to burn and ache again.
"Urg, just leave be alone..." she whined, clenching her eyes shut in an attempt to shut out the sensation, "There's nothing for you here! Go away! Why won't you go away...?"
Her attempts to reason with her loins proved for naught, but thankfully she'd just discovered one of the deeper tide pools that looked relatively empty, only a few tiny anenomes dotting the edges and a comfortable-looking (in comparison to rocks) sandy floor at the bottom.
"Fine, if you're not going to cool off on your own," she crouched down at the edge of the pool, aiming not to accidentally land on any anemones on her way down, "Then how about...this!"
Mary hopped into the center of the tide pool, clenching her jaw to brace against the incoming cold water.
 
What greeted her was instead a very surprising warmth, the tide pools having sat beneath the shining sun all day.
"Oh! That's..." Mary commented in surprise, having expected to inhale from the shock of the sudden cold, "That's nice."
Once again that old lady had surprised her; this was like a lukewarm hot tub. However, while she appreciated the warm bath after exhausting herself with the hike here, the temperature only served to stir her nethers into a fury. She groaned with the sudden rush, her cheeks flushing red.
"Oh come on, don't do this... I wanna relaa-ha-haaxe..." she complained, resting her torso on her clothes outside of the pool while her burning lower half was still submerged in the warm water.
 
Unbeknownst to Mary, there was a movement from beneath the water of the tide pool. One tiny tendril peeked out from a small crevice in the rocks, then another, and another. The octopus hiding within smelled sweetness...and fish. Having cleaned out this pool of the crabs and minnows within, it had grown quite hungry, and the sudden chance of food overcame its instinct to hide. Slowly it crept out of its hiding place, seeing the green triangle of Mary's bikini-bottom loosely tied to her behind, and curiously made its way forward to inspect the new object.
 
Mary huffed, the longing in her nethers thoroughly ruining any attempt to enjoy the water. She wished she could ask her best friend Kalie about this feeling, she knew all kinds of things, but Mary was still technically grounded from seeing Kalie and more importantly...she wasn't sure if this was a problem she wanted to talk to her friend about. What if she thought Mary was weird? What if she laughed? She didn't want to lose her only friend over dumb body problems, but...agh, this was unfair...
 
She was snapped out of her thoughts as something touched one of the cheeks of her behind, eliciting a yelp of surprise at the sensitive skin there being prodded. All at once she felt something wrap around both her legs and she instinctively pulled them apart to stop them from being bound together. Mary twisted herself around to look at her underwater assailant: a brown, bulbous head the size of her small torso looked back up at her, firmly attached to her backside with its many tendrils sticking to her skin. She froze in fear for a moment, terrified if it was dangerous, before reaching back in the hopes of pulling it off. She felt one of its tentacles shift under her bikini bottom.
 
"W-wait-ah!"
Mary clenched her fists as the octopus prodded at where it smelled food, her entrance dilating slightly without her permission and sending a jolt of heat into her cheeks. She'd gone the whole day rejecting her body's signals, and now all of it was crashing down on her at once. The octopus smelled fish and cherries in this hiding place, and began to slip its tendrils inside in search of treasure, easily bypassing the cloth covering the entrance.
"Nn. Nng!" Mary felt the ridges of the tendrils, thin as they were, rubbing at her entrance as they moved inside. Her legs twitched at the intensity of the feeling as two had slipped past her defenses. She tried to clench her hindquarters shut, but her body refused, and she felt a third begin to worm its way inside. The aching in her nethers had turned to a pleasant warmth, sated with the feeling, but the girl herself cried out in terror, her voice hoarse and tired from exhausting herself just to get here.
 
Mary felt her bikini pulling tight on her skin, and she looked back behind her. The creature had begun slipping underneath the cloth, piling up its head near her entrance. She feared for what was to come next.
"Nono that's too big it's too-nnngGGAH!"
She felt the octopus push, and her entrance ached in pain as it widened slightly more. The creature pulled with the tentacles already in her, and a portion of its squishy head poured inside. She hadn't opened very wide, but the gelatinous properties of the octopus let it fit through the tiniest of spaces, and it already tasted delicious food within her.
 
She was breathing hard by the time it stopped, having encountered an obstacle once the octopus had filled her rectum with only a fraction of its head. Mary took the opportunity to quickly climb out of the tide pool despite the twenty pounds of weight attached, hoping being out of the water would make it easier to pull the animal out of her. The rocks were painful on her hands and knees, but she needed to get this thing out of her as soon as possible. She could feel it...feeling around in there, its tendrils rubbing against her walls as it searched for a way further inside with terrifying intelligence. She crouched down and opened her legs, reaching at the creature to get a grip on it.
 
The octopus could feel that most of itself was out of the water now. Its new surroundings tasted delicious, and it could sense the source of the fishy smell coming from somewhere inside, but it had encountered a block in the path. Some sort of closed door, clenched tightly shut. It used its two available tendrils to curiously prod at it, pulling and pushing at the opening with its suction cups. Then, it could feel something grabbing at the part of its head that was outside, and it prodded and pushed at the door in a frenzied panic.
 
"Nng! No, don't- ah, nng-no I-"
Mary sputtered, her body jerking and twitching as she felt the tendrils violently prod at her insides, the warmth in her nether regions shooting up by the second. Mary began to tug weakly on the octopus, sending it into even more of a frenzy. If she let it get too far, then she couldn't-
"NNGH! AH! AAAHN~"
Mary cried out as the feeling in her nethers peaked, electrifying her head with pleasure. The valve inside her dilated out of reflex, and she could feel the thin tendrils suddenly pushing further inside.
 
She felt the blob attached to her rear shift as more of it poured inside, and she felt a pressure starting to form in her colon. She pushed, hard, but the effort only managed to open her internal valve and let more of the octopus inside, adding to the pressure. She could feel its head starting to work its way past her rectum, while the blob outside of her slowly shrank. She could see the shape of a bulge start to push out of her midsection as the octopus pushed its surroundings apart to make room for itself. She wasn't used to all of this pressure in only one part of her guts, and the stretching sensation as only one section of her insides was forced to bend and reshape to fit its new intruder was almost too much to bear.
 
Her stomach churned as the unfamiliar shape pushed the rest of her organs out of the way, her belly beginning to form a rounded shape as the slimy octopus pulled its way farther inside.
"GAH!"
With what felt like a pop, the last of the octopus's head slipped inside of her, disappearing behind the cloth bikini. Her midsection bulged forward like a woman nearly ready to give birth, and she fell to her haunches as she breathed in deep gasps at all the effort she'd expended trying to push it out. She put a hand to her belly, the distended shape pulling down with its new weight.
 
But it wasn't done yet.
 
Mary inhaled sharply as her guts churned and her stomach moved, the octopus inside searching for food to eat within. It pulled itself along her pipes, looking to reach food deeper inside, and she shuddered as the tentacles that still hung out of her were pulled past her entrance, the feeling of their bumpy suction cups sending her into spasms as they rubbed against her. Her stomach lurched and pulled and jerked from side to side, forcing a grunt as more of her guts were forced to expand to hold the new shape.
"Nn! Gh! P-please s-NG! Stop!"
She felt it take a sharp turn in her guts. A few moments later, she felt a second, her belly rippling with the movement. Her stomach churned in defiance as the rest of her organs were pushed uncomfortably to the side, until the rounded shape of her belly reached her lower midsection, resting on her pelvis.
 
And then, it stopped. The octopus had found a tiny, tiny fish to gulp down, having been left behind from the event two days prior, and more importantly had encountered a sharp shrinkage in the long pipe it traveled through. It doubted it could move any further, and more importantly it doubted it could get back if it did. So it rested, shifting once in its elastic hiding spot to get comfortable.
 
When her breathing finally calmed, Mary looked down. The pressure was intense and concentrated in a single spot of her guts, pushing her belly out in a shape she had never seen before, like she'd inflated a large balloon beneath her skin. It looked more like one giant lump than a pregnancy, but it still bulged forward, nearly touching the rocky ground in its size where she sat. The opening to her backside gaped slightly beneath her bikini, air filling the regions of her bowels the octopus had left behind. She needed to find a way to get this thing out of her.
 
Mary looked back towards the tide pool, and with shaking hands undid the knots of her bikini bottom, leaving her buttocks exposed to the air. She knew told herself she wouldn't take it off, but...this was a different circumstance. She slowly clambered back into the water, flinching as her bulging belly scraped against rocks on the way down, and she unintentionally sighed as the water of the tide pool flowed into her slightly-gaping backside, warming her guts and making her nethers burn with longing again.
"No, nuh-uh," she objected to the sensation in her loins, "You've done enough trouble."
She spread her legs underneath the water, trying to make the exit seem as tempting as possible, and rubbed at her belly with one hand.
"C-come on, big guy... I... I really need you out of there..."
She couldn't believe how crazy she sounded. She couldn't even believe that this had happened in the first place. The only thing she could believe was that all of her rubbing and prodding at her midsection was for naught, as the octopus sat stubbornly in place.
 
A few minutes of failure passed before she got an idea. The sandwich! She didn't know if it would go for octopus, but baiting it out was a better idea than anything else she'd thought of before. She fumbled through the plastic baggie at the edge of the pool, her lower half still submerged, and pulled off a small piece of calamari. She dunked it under the water, holding it in front of her rear entrance as she prayed to the heavens above this would work.
"...come on...it's delicious...nngh..." she fought with the feeling of pressure on her insides to stay lucid as the minutes passed, waving the piece of food seductively in front of her rear.
 
---
 
Mary had nearly given up on the bait plan, having held it in the same place for nearly a half hour, before the feeling of a tentacle touched her hand and yanked the piece of calamari free.
"Yes! Yesyesyes!" she cried in victory, not bothering to look as she rifled through the plastic bag for another piece. She found it odd that she didn't feel her belly shift around for the octopus to grab at it, but she wasn't about to look a gift mollusk in the mouth. She could already feel the tentacles rubbing against her entrance as they moved to get inside.
...wait, inside?
 
Mary jerked her head back to see her worst fear, just as she felt her legs pin together with a strength she hadn't expected. A huge orange tentacled blob, larger than the last, stuck stubbornly to her backside. Mary's heart froze, and she felt a haunting fear grasp at her mind.
"NonopleasenonnNNGH!"
 
The second one wasted no time, pushing itself headfirst into her entrance which had to stretch more to take in the new mass.
"NNGH! AH!" she cried at the pain in her backside, her guts already stretched from their previous intruder and now more yielding to the second. She could feel a second pressure as the octopus fought its way inside, pushing against the first. The huge lump in her belly pushed forward, bulging her stomach unnaturally as a second larger one formed behind it. The octopus still outside of her shrunk by the second, finding the smell of cherries and fish too intoxicating to pass up, and it pushed stubbornly despite the cramped space around it.
 
Mary gasped as her guts suddenly shifted as the pressure became too much to bear, the lump from the first octopus suddenly being shunted upwards to make room for the second. It pressed against her rib cage, pushing her small breasts upwards, while the second bulge grew ever greater by the second, putting immense pressure on the rest of her organs and making her spasm with pleasure as the feeling in her loins neared their peak.
"NN. AH! AAHNNNGH!"
The last of the octopus pulled in at once, tentacles and all, her distended torso rippling with the movement, and she cried into the air as another bolt of pleasure shot into her mind, her legs and arms twitching and spasming at the sensation.
 
Mary panted as the movement finally came to a stop, her every breath making the gigantic bulges under her skin rise and fall. Her stomach looked enormous and unnaturally shaped, the two different creatures in her guts pushing out her belly in two directions as they pressed against each other in a stack. She could barely fit her arms around her midsection, and her belly occasionally shrugged and jostled as the octopi underneath shifted around in their now-uncomfortably-cramped hiding spots, making her cry out at the sensation. She rested her back against the rocks, rubbing her stretched skin as she simultaneously prayed to be saved and for this feeling to never end.
 
---
 
She didn't know how much time had passed. It was difficult to pay attention to the passing minutes, focused as Mary was on her distended stomach. She rubbed at the two giant lumps and was rewarded with another shift of movement underneath, physically seeing the bulges jerk every now and then. She couldn't remember how many times she'd peaked, but her head felt in a haze, drunk on the afterfeeling.
 
Then, she felt a weight in her guts drop. Mary gasped at the sudden sensation of her lower guts having to stretch open again, the octopi evidently having decided there was no food to be found and the water outside to be more hospitable.
"...nng..." she could hardly muster a wimper as she felt them push further down, the bulges pushing her stomach out visibly dropping. The larger one squirmed back into her rectum, eliciting a wine at the pressure there, and she felt its tendrils slipping past her now-closed entrance, prying it apart again. She felt no pain, too drunk on hormones to tell that her backside didn't appreciate the girth, and only picked up her breathing as she stretched wider to fit its tentacles, all eight of them now wrapping around her legs.
 
She felt them all pull at once.
"Nn- AAH! AH! MMGH!"
Her distended belly shrunk instantly as the octopus mercilessly wrenched itself out of her, pulling its entire weight in one fell swoop. The sensation made her spasm, sending another jolt to her already-foggy head, and her guts shifted violently to make due with all of the new room. The remaining bulge, tiny in comparison, jerked from side to side as the remaining octopus pulled its way through her internal piping, its shape rising higher on her stomach and then back down.
 
Her heart picked up as she felt its comparatively tiny tentacles start to worm their way out of her backside, now expecting what was coming next. She grit her teeth, a pleasure-drunken smile on her face, as they wrapped around her legs, and all at once her belly flattened entirely as the creature spat itself out of her guts.
"GAH! AHHH! Ah...hgh...hah..."
Mary breathed hard, her lungs burning with oxygen, and she put a hand to press on her stomach as she felt warm water rush into her guts to take the place of all the missing space, her belly bloating ever-so-slightly to take it all in. Slowly her guts contracted back to their original size, pushing the water back out as Mary's breaths turned into tired sighs.
 
As the octopi rushed to find other hiding spots in the tide pool, Mary let unconsciousness take her as she leaned with her back against the rocks.
 
---
 
"Gk!" Mary opened her eyes as she inhaled cold water, causing her to cough and sputter as the wave retreated again. The sky had gotten considerably darker, and she realized she'd slept until high tide. Sobered by the splash of cold water and the sensation of drowning, she clambered out of the rocky tide pool and-
"Clothes."
Mary spat the word out as the single thought occurred to her, her heart skipping a beat in its panic.
"Clothes, clothes-where-are-they," she looked around, and back towards the sea. She needed those clothes, they had her wallet, they had her map, they had her--
Mary looked down and realized she wasn't wearing her bikini bottom, having taken it off earlier. She covered herself instinctively, scanning the surroundings for people, but she was thankfully alone in such a remote location.
 
Mary spent twenty minutes searching up and down the painfully craggy rocks before finally finding her cargo pants floating in one of the tide pools.
"Aw man, my wallet...and the map..." she whined, pulling the soaked pants out of the water with a grimace. It had already gotten dark enough to barely see, so there was no hope of finding anything else but she had her wallet and wasn't going to have to walk back without anything to cover herself, at least. She groaned at the thought of having to walk back barefoot, and her stomach groaned in sync as she realized that delicious sandwich had been washed out to sea as well. She'd been saving that for dinner...
 
---
 
"...ow. Ow," Mary complained the whole trip back, her poor feet still hurting from having to endure walking across jagged rocks. Worse than that, she only had soaked cargo pants and a bikini top to cover herself with, attracting several odd looks her way as she made her way through the streets of town.
Worst of all, the front half of her skin was pink as strawberry ice cream while the back half formed the vanilla portion, her pale skin having sat in the blazing beach sun all the way until dark.
 
"Welcome...back?" Mary recognized the cleaning lady from before, who'd evidently noticed her expression, "Did you enjoy your outing?"
Every word she spoke created vibrations and air currents that cut across Mary's skin like a thousand tiny knives.
"...mhm..." Mary could barely muster an answer, her limbs shaking from the walk back and the rest of her body shivering from the cold night air. The woman took the hint and left without another word, and Mary dragged herself all the way back into her room, lamenting every step but at least being thankful she'd found her pants that held her key card. And wallet, and map, and phone.
 
Mary checked her phone for water damage when she was back inside, but given that she'd inherited her mother's old NOKIA phone from when she was a child, it would probably live to see the heat-death of the universe. She then unpacked a small box she'd bought with dripping-wet dollar bills on the way home: teabags. This wasn't her first rodeo with crippling sunburns, and the queen of Do-It-Yourself wasn't going to buy expensive burn cream when black tea would do the trick just fine.
 
Filling her bathroom's tub with cool water and soaking the entire box's worth of tea in it until the water was opaque, Mary carefully slipped herself into the water between gasps of pain and let the medicine do its work, soaking her face with the stuff before letting herself pass out from exhaustion. She dreamed of hundreds of octopus tentacles wrapping around her, and drowning.
 
Two days to go.