Alien Massage (Comedy Short Story. I am posting this story on Royal Road as “Galaxy Tourist Tim”)

I suddenly felt very cold. The small room felt like it had an AC unit on the fritz. Massages always made me slightly uncomfortable. Just something about being mostly naked with a stranger touching me gave me the heebies. But admittedly, I could barely walk, feeling like an old man with too much back pain. Just waiting there face down with nothing but a towel covering my butt felt awkward as hell.

I heard the door slide open followed by a bunch of noises emanating from that direction. Noises, I can only parse as kissing smooches followed by a cartoon rendition of a bubble popping.

That's not what I wanted to hear nearly naked on an alien massage table. The sound came closer and became more frequent. It was freaking me out. I hazarded a glance up from the face hole to see a creature the size of a gorilla filling up the room with tentacles like a damn Cthulhu monster. Each tentacle was brimming with saucer-like suckers, way too many to count. It's face was like someone enlarged a catfish, painted it saturated purple, stretched it's lips a foot out from it's eyes, then gave it way too much lip enlargement plastic surgery. It was the perfect cross between a duck face selfie and that look you get when you have way too much sour candy.

It's comically long mouth smacked making the kissing sounds which I could only imagine it was trying to speak to me about how I was about to be it's lunch.

It came closer, it's lower tentacles squashing and popping as it snaked forward.

I shrieked and tried to launch myself off the bed, jostling the small wheels across the tile like floor with a squeak. But immediately, to my horror, two tentacles shot out from its mass and stuck to my upper back. It expertly slammed me back down into place. I just barely had time to tuck my chin to avoid jamming my nose in on the edge of the bed's face gap.

"Holy shit... I'm going to get eaten by this horror fest."

A few of it's tentacles pressed on my back so hard I thought it was going to crack a rib. It felt like enormous slimy spaghetti noodles and mini toilet plungers squirming around my back and upper arms. My body shuddered in disgust.

It smelled like fish that had been rotting in the garbage bin for a week. A light ooze dribbled down my sides.

The kissing sounds stopped.

I cocked my head up as much as I could to try to reason with it.

"Look I can't understand you, I don't know what you..."

One big kissing sound rang around the room.

More tentacles dropped down on different parts of my back, suckers sticking to me like super glue, and they began undulating. The up and down motion caused more pressure with each motion. It felt like it was trying to exercise my soul out through my spine. I wheezed. The air was forced from my lungs over and over like I was a damn human bagpipe.

My hands scrambled for anything I could use as a weapon. I had to get this thing off me and escape. My vision blurred washed with waves of darkness.

Crack! Crack! Crack!

"Oh..."

My back and shoulders popped as loud as fireworks during the finale of the fourth of July.

The alien thing took the pressure off me. I looked up too stunned to move still. It pushed in a panel on the wall and rolled out a large towel from a hidden compartment. Then laid it on the foot of the bed. It looked at me for a moment through it's beady fish eyes and paused.

"Uh, thank you I guess."

I sat up slowly and turned to facing it, making sure to keep my butt towel covering me. The ooze snailed down to my lower back.

I quickly grabbed the big towel, and started drying myself off. It was heated and immediately warmed me up from the chilled room.

The creature blinked, and made two more kissing sounds. It then slithered backwards until the sliding door opened with a hiss behind it, and it disappeared down a bustling hallway. I reared my arms to my hips and flexed my back with no pain.

"Oh, hell ya. Despite the near-death fright of my life, I'd totally give this place a solid four stars."