The octopus that subsisted entirely on bad vibes was having an absolutely excellent day. It had, while sitting in its tank and doing absolutely nothing, had what was essentially the most glorious feast an octopus that entirely subsisted on bad vibes could have, if not better! In fact, in all of its wild dreams of fanciful cornucopiae of misery and sorrow, the octopus had never once expected a series of events so wild as what had just happened to take place, and by effect give it entrance to a sublime experience where every moment was wave after wave of torment and sorrow.
First, there had of course been the manner of business with the restaurant customer who wanted to eat it. Yes, the customer who wanted to eat the octopus. Of course, as the restaurant owners had elucidated over and over again, the octopus was not on the menu. This had served to infuriate and frustrate the patron to no end, and of course, as a result, the octopus that would be feasted upon had the patron had his foul way was instead the one feasting - on his vibes!
Oh, how scrumptious those vibes were. They were the vibes of bitterness, they were the vibes of a sore, dulled conscious that was deeply corrupted by mercurial prowess to the point where the assertion that a request, no matter how banal, could be denied was tantamount to heresy. And with that, on did the octopus feast. It tasted bitter, it tasted sour, it tasted kind of like a lemony rock candy mixed with a turducken, and the octopus was all for it. It was living its best vibe-consuming life. It was, in that moment, like when word had reached the Pit of Despair of a cheating scandal between characters on a popular surface-dweller 'surreality' serial, published in small segments to be displayed on vision-orbs across Nomachiato, and especially across Gifflenberg. Oh, how the octopus remembered that mess of a time. It was delicious when news of infidelity first hit, and it was even more scrumptious when the details went out, the lies and the rumors and all the endless gossip and hatred spread towards the offenders, caught on vision-orb proclaiming their love for their partners in one moment, all the while dropping subtle little hints that they were actually in love with one another... Or, more aptly, in lust... And for the octopus, that was of course all the more delicious, as were the final reveals took place and all associated parties finally became aware. Oh, how lucky the octopus had been to find an old vision-orb tossed to the bottom of the Pit of Despair... Endless food, that little orb granted it. And endless joy, endless elation, and endless sedation.
"Stop looking at me," said the grumpy, frustrated restaurant patron to the octopus as he sat at the worst table in the restaurant. "I feel like you're mocking me for not getting to eat you."
In truth, the octopus had no real propensity to mock, but instead it had of course the propensity to feed, and feed it did on this nasty little exchange. It was like a delicious chocolate eclaire of an interaction. Short, sweet, and absolutely delectable.
For a while it was but the slow, dripping feed of the patron's frustration that the octopus snacked upon. But, soon enough, some weirdo burst in and started yelling about doom, end of the world, apocalyptic scenarios. And the feasting was back on in spades. There were so many ways in which this lovely freak was feeding the octopus. Sure, shouting 'DOOOOM' at the top of his lungs was a nice start, but the strange garb, and the reactions of everyone else in the bar being terribly uncomfortable, were what really kept the octopus feasting away. The octopus felt as if this veritable endless buffet of deliciousness would never end, and at once the octopus wondered why it had never before considered how profitable and wondrous moving to the surface would be. Then again, there was the whole fact of its confinement... The octopus, for a moment, stopped to remember its past life in the Pit of Despair.
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The Pit of Despair was, despite its name, not always the cesspit of gloom and doom that it looked to be, and despite the fact that there was alway a bit of a base layer of awfulness what with all the creepy creatures and death and decay surrounding it, in a way many of the entities in the Pit were used to and even comforted by the Pit of Despair's particular brand of awfulness. The octopus that fed entirely on bad vibes was no exception in this, and it was because of this very concept that, from time to time, the octopus found itself going a little hungry despite its dreary abode.
Worse still, was the sea cucumber.
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There was a sea cucumber that laid on the side of an anemone at the bottom of the Pit of Despair, and that sea cucumber... well, let's just say that the sea cucumber had a thing for the octopus that fed entirely off of bad vibes. And, worse still, the octopus sometimes found that it, too, had a thing for the sea cucumber.
It had all started one fine, pitch black day full of death and decay when the sea cucumber was barfing up some detritous from a dead corpse it had been consuming far too hastily to be reasonable. Some of the detritous got in the octopus' face, which of course confused the octopus, and made it stumble on its way to go over and consume some paltry bad vibes from a death fish that had accidentally caught a glimpse of a reflection of sunlight and was absolutely repulsed. This made the octopus mad, which generated bad vibes, which then the octopus ate, which made it quite happy.
And so it was that, every time the octopus was on its way to eat some bad vibes and it passed by that sea cucumber, the octopus would invariably end up frustrated by something else, usually detritous scattering over its face. This would of course generate some more bad vibes, which then the octopus would scarf down with glee. This of course made a positive association between the octopus and the sea cucumber that just wouldn't quit.
Sometimes, the octopus would dream about the sea cucumber. The octopus would dream about laying next to the sea cucumber and just letting it barf all over the place, regardless of how disgusting it was, and the octopus would dream of popping its suction cups over the weird little creature over and over again, pop pop popping away all those gross little specks of strangeness that the octopus indeed felt it knew so well at this point... And then it would dream of just... Being there, in the moment, together with that sea cucumber, in the murky, dreary depths of the Pit of Despair.
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The octopus realized that it missed that sea cucumber terribly. Then, the octopus quickly ate the bad vibes that it had generated from remembering that sad fact, that old lost... something that the octopus had almost had with the sea cucumber. So close, and yet so very far away, it all was...
And that thought, of course, just made more bad vibes for the octopus to eat.
But the octopus couldn't dwell in its own loneliness for all that much longer, because the feast of vibes had truly just begun. As the meteor streaked through the sky, presently unbeknownst to the octopus, people in the restaurant were getting antsy and looking out the window. Everyone was nervous, and nervousness was of course absolutely delicious. It tasted kind of like popcorn.
When the meteor hit, it was like eating twenty plates of fudge brownies all at once. The octopus had found itself almost groaning, if it could even make a sound, with fullness as it did its best to consume and absord everything. See, its vibe-stomach was considerably smaller than it ought to be on account of having been in such a low-vibe state of being for so long. These vibes were indeed so rich that, for a moment, the octopus became concerned that it might catch a bad case of vibe-gout, though that fear soon passed away, for the meteor hitting gave way to buildings leveling in the distance. Everyone was terrified.
Even the octopus was a little terrified. Terrified, that is, that it might not be able to eat all of the available bad vibes, it was terrified of missing a golden opportunity such as this.
And then, a while later, after a crazy amount of even more extreme vibe-eating opportunities - an observed fight with some sort of sinister alien (from what the octopus could gather), multiple limbs being lopped off, an ancient disease being all but resurrected, what tasted like the vibes of an undead skeleton being disapointed he couldn't come out to the surface, and now the faraway vibes of the death of a leader all left the octopus feeling absolutely so teeming with consumed vibes that it could barely move - the octopus became terrified for an entirely different reason.
See, most everyone in the restaurant had been altogether distracted. Distracted by a number of things, though of course all those things were generating bad vibes, and most of those things had to do with that ancient disease called Curr.
Well, they were in fact so distracted by this that they hadn't noticed what the octopus had noticed, and indeed the octopus had only noticed this truly out of necessity. But, well, one of the glass bowls that fire-armed fellow had set to contain a severed limb had not been entirely flush with the floor. And it was all too clear to the octopus that Curr had been climbing, almost like a sinister mold, or indeed an evil ant colony, up the shelf and into the octopus' water tank. It was floating through the water now, only small, black specks, but it was there.
And the octopus realized it was at a turning point in its life. It would either be consumed by the Curr now and die a horrible, mathematical death, all while feasting on the wretched vibes of such an event, or it would try to run - run while it was full of bad vibes, running away from something that would give it at once an awful yet blissful death full of terrible vibes.
Why would the octopus even consider running from such a fate? It had sometimes considered such a strange circumstance an ideal way to die.
It had one thought driving this - the sea cucumber.