Limitless Evolution As a Snake

There are footsteps.

Light, fast, almost tripping. Not a threat, well, not in the way the Captain was; this is something else.

I try to focus. The world sharpens for a second; it’s a girl.

Not just any girl. She’s short, soaked, half her hair matted to her face.

Her coat is two sizes too big, a sleeve held together with duct tape. Her horns are small and curved, but they’re snapped off at the tips like someone took a hacksaw to them.

One leg is wrapped in gauze, leaking red. She’s limping, but with the energy of someone running for their life.

She’s a succubus girl.

I’d know the smell anywhere: sweet and sharp and desperate, like me; she smells like me just without the snake bite.

She doesn’t see me at first. She’s too busy looking behind her, eyes wide and wild. She slams the side door shut behind her, double-checks the lock, then just stands there, shivering and panting and hugging herself like she’s trying to squeeze her bones back into place.

She leans against the wall and slides down until she’s sitting on the ground, six inches from my face.

I try to say "hi," but nothing comes out.

She doesn’t notice. Not until her hand lands on my tail.

She freezes, then looks down and looks at me.

Her eyes go wider, if that’s possible. Her breath hitches. "Ohshit. Oh shit, ohshitohshit-"

She lets go of my tail as it bit her, scoots backward, then immediately regrets it because her bad leg gives out and she faceplants into my tail. She comes up, and does not, for a second, try to play it cool.

She’s breathing so hard I think she might pass out.

I’m not in any shape to eat her.

But she doesn’t know that. She doesn’t know what I am. She just keeps staring, waiting for me to strike.

I try a slow blink, like a cat attempting to look harmless.

Her head cocks to the side, processing the gesture. The question is a breath of air. "Are you... alive?"

I do the slow blink again. Maybe she understands cat, maybe it’s Morse code. It’s all I’ve got.

She takes that as a yes. "Oh, fuck me, no, wait, don’t. I mean? Don’t eat me. I’m just- I was."

She’s too tired to even finish the sentence. She slides back down to the concrete and just sits there, cross-legged, arms wrapped around her knees. "Her voice is muffled against her knees. "Please don’t kill me. I’m already having the worst day."

I want to laugh, but it hurts too much.

She keeps glancing at my tail, like it might leap up and strangle her on its own.

I close my eyes; I don’t even care, hell she can eat me if she wants to and if she wants to kill me, be my guest.

The next time I wake up, she’s still there. She’s gotten closer, maybe a foot away now. She’s watching me with a weird mix of terror and something that looks like sympathy.

She reaches out, slow, like she’s trying to pet a landmine; she brushes a finger over one of my broken scales. She flinches, but I don’t move.

She lets out a breath.

"Her voice is a tiny thread of sound. "You’re really hurt. You shouldn’t even be alive."

I want to tell her: same, honestly.

[SYSTEM: Oi-]

She sits next to me for a long time. She just sits there. Not touching, not talking, just being there.

At some point, she rests her head on my tail.

"I’m sorry," she says, barely audible. "I didn’t mean to get you in trouble."

What?

But then she’s asleep. Curled up, clutching my tail like a security blanket.

The rain slows. The world goes quiet. I fade out again, into something soft. When I wake, she’s gone.

But there’s a blanket over me and a hot pack against my broken ribs she even wrote a note, written in shaky handwriting and stuck to my hood with a piece of chewed gum:

"Don’t die, you owe me."

I look from the note, to the empty street, to the sunrise just starting to break through the clouds.

Maybe dying in a gutter isn’t so bad, after all. If I survive this, I’m finding that girl. I have to know who the hell she is.

The distant sounds of Old Mate swearing crackle in the back of my head, but I can’t make them out. I can barely hear myself think.

The world comes back in pieces: gravel in my mouth, coppery slime on my tongue, the rib-cracking weight of my own body pressing down against the pavement. There’s a whine in my head like a power tool left running. I’m lying on my side in an alley, face mashed so deep into the gutter I can feel the city’s entire bacterial history crawling up my nostrils.

Alive? Unclear.

[SYSTEM: BLOODY HELL ARE YOU ALIVE? OI? MATE?]

I try to move. Nothing, and i try to scream, but it comes out as a hiss and a cough, which is all the same to a snake, really. It’s like i got that sleep paralysis demon back from my old life, but I can’t move at all, and it’s not sleep; it’s real life.

Rain hits my scales, cold as my old landlord’s heart. Every drop stings and inside my chest, something is gurgling. It might be my actual heart.

A shadow comes over me, blocking the rain; it’s small, fast, nervous. A shape I don’t recognise until it gets close enough to squint at my face.

Succubus girl. The one from the alley, maybe I’m not hallucinating after all.

She’s smaller than I remember. Her hair’s blonde and red, horns barely longer than my thumb poking out of the mess, stunted wings twitching under a jacket with more duct tape than fabric. She’s wearing ripped jeans, combat boots, and the frantic energy of someone who’s been awake for three days and has two more to go.

I think I’m in love.