Once more, summer had rolled around, sunning the landscape and drawing people of all ages outdoors.  A season for pools, beaches, games, and as much ice cream as it took to keep cool.  For most people, anyway.  For the growing youth, June meant a break in college courses, which meant it was time to work.  Students raced for the simplest decent-paying jobs they could find, while trying to squeeze in some fun during their summer break so they didn't go completely insane.
	All, it seemed, except for Oliver.  Yes, the feline boy had found himself a job, but everything to do with ease and pay had come secondary to what the job entailed.  Something intriguing had reached his ears; a rumor that'd trickled carelessly down the grapevine, that spoke of a new sideshow at the yearly carnival.  Normally he'd count himself foolish to even consider finding interest.  The looming threat of lawsuits would dissuade most carnies from sticking any rare species on display in a hot, cramped enclosure for drunken patrons to gawk at for ten dollars a head.  But the carnival was held at the edge of a small town a half-hour's drive from his already quiet college town, limiting legal oversight; and the scant details provided had been more than enough to pique his interest.
	So, despite the indignity of having to mop up god-knows-what and sweep ridiculous amounts of trash at the carnival, Oliver had grabbed the one job opening they'd advertised and resigned himself to janitorial work, just so he could be closer to the thing that had haunted his dreams for nearly a year.  Assuming the rumors were accurate, and he wasn't being led to another dead end.
	Even with that possibility stewing in the back of his mind, Oliver found himself excited to get to work.  The mere act of stepping away from the campus and into the excited hum of the carnival was enough to elevate his mood, in spite of how he'd be spending his time there.  The drive there felt excruciatingly long, and he only became more jittery as the first couple hours of the job dragged by.  Once on the carnival grounds, the cat boy had immediately snatched up a schedule of events, and learned that the "Deep Sea Surprise" was to be shown off after nightfall--in the tent set aside for more mature showings.
	Oliver's heart jumped up to his throat.  If it wasn't her, then what else could it be?  Sundown could not come quickly enough!  He'd already negotiated with his boss and gotten some overtime hours, something the old man thought endearing, ignorant of the feline's intentions.  Sure, he could have just gone to the carnival as a customer, waited until the after dark shows and confirmed that the object of his obsession was here.  But then what?  Sneak in at night, risk being caught, roughed up, and possibly even arrested?  Or worse?  These were carnies, after all.  Some of them hardly passed for sapient, never mind lawful.
	The job was his only hope, and it'd either pay off in a big way, or just be another disappointing summer gig.  Damn, he should have picked a later shift.  If the heat didn't kill him, the anticipation sure would.
	Eventually, though, the hours managed to slip away.  Oliver focused on the job, avoided glancing at the rearmost tents where the adult shows would be held, and guzzled nearly enough water to become aquatic, himself.  The sun dipped over the horizon.  A different sort of crowd began to replace the hordes of children and teenagers, and the vibrant lights seemed to grow duller, more muted and mysterious.
	Oliver casually slipped into the tent where the "Deep Sea Surprise" would be shown and hid himself in a corner.  If he was lucky, no one would notice him sweeping the same spot for a half-hour.  The lights dimmed, and the head honcho carnie waltzed out and began to play up the mystery behind the creature hidden beneath an enormous tarp behind him.
	"Never before seen by man," the aging man proclaimed with wide, sweeping gestures, "Beautiful, terrible, and alien!  A one of a kind specimen, from depths untouched by us land dwellers!  I give you..."
	Unseen hands gave a dramatic tug, stealing away the tarp covering a huge glass tank filled to the top with sea water.  The word echoed in Oliver's ears: "scylla".  The sound of awed, horrified, and mystified gasps came muted to him, but the sound of his broom's handle clattering to the floor seemed so loud.
	There she was.  Dark and beautiful and alien, just as she was on that one summer day.  Even the dimmed, ghostly lights of the tent were reminiscent of the glowing cave to which Maera had stolen him away for a romp.  It all seemed so surreal, but there she floated, squinting in what must have been harsh, sudden light in her eyes, her tentacles flashing yellow and blue rings in what could have only signified frustration.
	The old carnie kept talking, but his words meant nothing.  Something of an awkward joy came over the feline, and he couldn't stop gawking from his spot at the back of the tent.  For the last year, he'd been haunted by dreams, by memories of his aquatic captor.  He'd stared across the ocean in the waning days of summer, wondering if it had all just been a particularly vivid dream.  The dark pink circles on his skin could have been explained away if he'd tried hard enough, and there had been no lingering evidence that he'd been kidnapped by a mythical octo-lady with a singleminded desire to milk cum from sensitive land boys.
	Oliver shifted in place to conceal the firmness threatening to pitch a tent of its own.  No sense getting this far only to be reprimanded for getting hard on the job.  The carnies spouted some nonsense about scyllas and how she'd been captured on a fishing boat.  Apparently she'd been discreetly sold by the ship's captain, who often encountered minor cryptid creatures at sea.  All manner of monsters were thrown into the mix--merfolk, kelpies, sea nymphs!  Any number of them could have been true or a flat-out lie, but the crowd ate it up all the same.  If this octo-legged beauty was possible, then so was anything else!
	The shuffling mass of bodies all lined up for pictures with the aquatic oddity.  Five bucks a shot.  Oliver swept absentmindedly, perplexed as to how the scylla had allowed herself to be captured in the first place.  He'd experienced her strength firsthand, and there was no way these braindead carnies could resist the hypnotic light show she'd shown the catboy during their encounter.  So why wasn't she using it?
	One by one, each patron got their photographic souvenier of sapient exploitation, then listened to more hogwash before moving on to the next exhibit.  Another couple hours passed, and the carnival began to shut down for the night.  Oliver, being the considerate worker that he was, volunteered to sweep up after hours with the small handful of others who clearly needed the money.  Disappearing back into the cryptid tent was almost distressingly easy; he half-expected someone to be guarding the oversized fish tank where his seafaring mate had been kept for god knows how long.
	Alas, he found no such sentry.  Oliver breathed a sigh of relief and quietly approached the covered tank.  The tent lights had been shut off, the lights outside casting ghostly shadows along the canvas walls. "Please don't drown me." he whispered as he gave a cautious tug to the tarp covering the tank.  The dim outline of the scylla greeted his eyes, followed quickly by an otherworldly rainbow kaleidoscope.
	And like that, the fog rolled in over his mind.  The cascading colors fell over her shoulders and down her breasts, over her shapely tummy and hips.  The patterns really bloomed to life in those tentacles, forming rainbow spirals and circles that pulsed and shifted and throbbed pure prismatic pleasure into his mind.  His eyes followed as she rose to the top of the tank and bumped against the lid.  A sliding latch kept it shut tight, but some insistent pointing and a continuous burst of colors was enough to coax Oliver into motion, his fingers fumbling with the lock, so dizzy and clumsy while he stared into the hypnotic glow.  Eventually he managed, sliding open the lock and allowing the top of the tank to rise.
	"You people are going to pay for peddling me around like a freak." The deep, seductive tones he remembered were absent from Maera's voice.  In her words he found only malice, even as the tentacles which had filled him with such endless pleasure effortlessly lifted him from the ground and brought him eye to eye with the scylla. "I'd enact my revenge right here and now if I didn't need you to..." Her knitted brows scrunched further, as if in confusion, and her narrowed eyes began to widen.  Soon her whole face lit up in a mix of perplexed, but unmistakable recognition. "You..?"
	"Muh... me..?" Oliver, now so close to her face and freed from the immediate glow of her supernatural body, found a hole in the haze and clawed at it with all his mental fortitude.  "Me... Me!  Yes, it's me!" Clarity gripped his senses and frantically urged him to confirm that he was not one of her captors. "You remember me?  Oh god, please remember me."
	The enthralling lights dimmed to a low glow, enough to simply illuminate the pair as Maera gazed upon him.  She studied him for several uncomfortable moments, then quietly conceded, "Yes, I do.  The last victim of my love cave."
	"Love cave".  Oliver couldn't help but snort a laugh at that, but it was short lived; Maera coiled a tentacle around his neck and cut off his breath, causing the feline to squeak out a meek little, "Wait..!"
	"So did you lead them to me?  Tell them where to find me?" the scylla's voice dipped low again, that challenging glare returning to her features. "Was it so gross for you that you had to sell me out, you legged scum?"
	"No..!" the catboy wheezed, shaking his head and waving his arms frantically.  His chest burned, and the edges of his vision began to darken when she squeezed tighter. "I came to ghh--gllk...!"
	"Came to what?" Maera growled, loosening the tentacle and allowing him to take several long, precious breaths.
	"Get you... out..." Oliver panted, clasping his hands together in a pleading display. "Everyone but the late shift cleaning crew is gone.  I can stick the tank in my car and we can drive you back to the ocean!"
	Another long, tense moment passed.  The tentacle around Oliver's throat gradually loosened and fell away, and Maera posed a simple question: "The hell's a car?"
	"I... Oh, I'll explain on the way." Oliver twisted and wiggled, but Maera's tentacles held him firmly aloft. "Uh.  This is the part where you put me down and I save you."
	"Our children are so beautiful." In an instant, that familiar seductive murmur returned, and she leaned in to whisper into Oliver's big, sensitive feline ear. "Safe and sound in the nursery gardens, of course."
	"Cool..?" Oliver tried to pry himself away, cheeks turning a bright shade of pink. "You can tell me all about it on th--"
	"I want another clutch."
	"Clutch?"
	"Of eggs.  With you."
	Oliver suppressed a yelp as she started to pull him into the tank.  He grabbed onto the sides and pushed hard, but another pair of tentacles restrained his arms and pried them away from the glass. "Hang on!  Can't you wait to fuck me?  What if we get caught?"
	"I'll just hypnotize anyone else who comes in!"
	"Why couldn't you do that before, then?"
	"It was too bright in the room." Maera offered up a rushed explanation while she lifted the struggling catboy into the tank. "Now stop squirming and make me a mama again!"
	"No, wai--!" SPLASH!  The muffled sound of water rushing around his ears drowned out the rest of his plea.  It would be a wonder if no one had heard them.  He scrambled for the surface, only for Maera's face to come into view, her lips sealing firmly around his.  A breath forced its way into his mouth, and he instinctively inhaled.  Fresh oxygen rejuvenated his panicked lungs, and he exhaled bubbles through his nose.  For several long moments they floated there, him tangled in her tentacles, her feeding him air through her mouth.  Even in the cold water, Oliver felt his cheeks flush.
	Then he felt his shirt tear.  He thrashed around in protest, but the fuck-frenzied scylla paid it no mind.  His shredded top was tossed out of the tank, and her tentacles immediately descended upon him, kissing and caressing and tugging at his sensitive skin.  The catboy pinched his nose so he wouldn't instinctively breathe in through it, silently enduring Maera's suckered assault on his bare chest, tummy, and back.  Everything started to grow hazy, and he realized that he needed a true fresh breath.  Mammalian dive reflex had kept him from burning too much oxygen, but now with her tentacles groping him all over, his heart was picking right back up.
	He reached for the top of the cage, and Maera finally seemed to take a hint, her rubbery tendrils loosening just enough for him to get his head above water.  Oliver panted and coughed, eyes flicking frantically around the tent.  Thankfully no one else seemed to be around.  He glared at Maera when she poked her head up, smirking at him. "You're gonna get us caught, and then we'll both be in trouble."
	"All I want is a quickie." the scylla crooned, pressing him up against the glass, tentacles surrounding him on all sides. "And I'm gonna have it whether you want it or not."
	"I just want to get you home!  What's so hard to... unders... understand ab... abuh..." Oliver's mind clouded over in a haze of rainbow colors.  The entire tank glowed in a prismatic maelstrom, and only intensified when she pulled herself higher, her breasts shimmering with hypnotic patterns. "Just stare at my tits.  It'll feel good, I promise."
	"Nnh... nnooo, I need'a... need... tuh..." Oliver turned his head left, then right, but the lights... her breasts... Round, full, perky breasts... "No... fair."
	"All's fair in love, war, and fucking." Maera purred, busying her lips with Oliver's neck while her tentacles relieved him of his pants.  The rational part of the catboy's mind simply appreciated that any kisses she gave would keep her quiet, while the rest of him went into needy slut-boy overdrive.  His head leaned to one side, exposing his neck for her, and his back arched to press his chest against the caressing tentacles slithering over his now naked body.
	However, with her body firmly pressed to his, the hypnotic glow was out of sight, and rational thought began to creep its way back in, though at a snail's pace.  The familiar feeling of her hot, squishy sex clenching around his cock threatened to draw a cry of pleasure from his lips, but Maera silenced it in her own naughty way; one tentacle stuck in the mouth, another wrapped around his head, suckers pulsing, glowing, throbbing with hypnotic patterns.  Oliver's posture slumped, supported only by Maera's firm grip against the side of the tank, moaning through his nose while the scylla friskily mated with him.