Excerpt: Awfully Familiar

You ever have one of those bad days?

I don’t mean those days where you trip over the curb or a gnat flies into your mouth or you step on a nail That’s all mild stuff compared to my first bad day. And unfortunately for me, my first bad day was my very FIRST day. The first I can remember anyway.

I don’t remember when I came to sentience, exactly—the details are foggy, but that’s to be expected in a time of crisis. What I do remember is one, overwhelming emotion: fear, with a capital GAAAAAH!

All around me was a roaring sound, but it was blurred and muffled, drowned out by the THUMP-THUMP of blood rushing through my veins.

All I could do was focus on the fangs.

Those fangs! I’ll never forget them: big, white, long, like scimitars or elephant tusks. And they were unnaturally clean.

I had a moment of insane clarity where I wondered how the heck a snake got its teeth so clean.

Then it hit me: from eating people. People like me.

All the muscles in my body sprang into action, almost without me telling them to do it.

The snake’s head was moving so fast it was a blur, even with my hyperactive senses. The teeth snapped forward, the unnaturally extended jaw yawning at me, the eyes disappearing for a moment as the snake became nothing but a big mouth.

It hit the corner of the cage with a thud.

As I dove to the side, wall after wall of undulating scales roll towards me.

Oh that’s just great, I realized, I’m fighting a python.

It was trying to crush me to death with its coils. I dove through one of the loops, just barely avoiding the snake’s grip as it closed the gap. Between the coils and the head, it was like fighting two snakes at once.

I looked around, my heart beating so fast that I thought it might explode.

I didn’t have any weapons handy, like a sword or an axe or a wizard with a bad attitude.

A twisted piece of wood, like a broken bone, jutted at odd angles in the center of the room. On end branched, looking uncomfortably like a snake’s forked tongue. Other than that, it was just four walls and the snake.

Four walls…that was it! The walls weren’t walls at all; I was in a very large cage. There were shadows on the other side, jerking beyond my vision. It also seemed to be the source of the roaring, but I was too preoccupied to investigate further.

I dove to the side as the snake snapped again at the space where my body had just been.

The thing moved fast, but somehow I was moving even faster. It was like time had slowed down. Only I knew it hadn’t, because blood was pounding in my ears like a thunderstorm.

The python coiled again, its cold, dead eyes tracking me as I darted to the far corner of the cage.

Wait for it…

The head swiveled.

I had stood still, unusual for prey.

He was thinking it over.

Wait for it…

The snake unfurled, rising backwards. Its eyes wedged shut as the fangs snapped outwards.

By the Light of Sikkar it was the scariest thing I’ve ever seen!

I ducked, just moving low enough to duck the trajectory of the snake’s strike.

It smashed into the cage, its fangs caught in the corner.

The thing was held fast.

The wall of coils struck a second later.

I dodged and weaved, twisting and contorting my body before each one of the serpentine loops smashed me to a pulp.

And then suddenly I was on the other side of the snake.

It yanked and the entire cage shuddered. The thing was that powerful.

An “ooooh” resonated from beyond the cage.

Those shadows were a crowd…a crowd of giants. As if I didn’t have enough problems. But there was no time to think about that.

Every fiber of my being told me to run for my life. But I was in a cage with a big, angry snake. There was no escape. I had to go for the jugular.

I didn’t even know if snakes had jugulars.

I ran up its coils instead, right to the flattened head. Its eyes were still shut, its fangs tangled in the cage.

If it jerked its head up, the python would be free and I’d be snake food.

The snake undulated effortlessly, flinging me off its back and onto the twisted piece of wood at the center of the room. The y-shaped branch groaned backwards from the impact—the thing was heavy, just as I hoped.

Then it came rocking back as gravity took over. The y-shaped piece of wood stabbed downwards, pinning the snake’s head into the corner.

The long sinuous body shuddered once and was still.

The reaction from the giants beyond the cage was one of momentary shock, followed by a roar of outrage or excitement, depending on which side of the cage they were on.

“Cor!” shouted one of them.

“Did that rat just beat Big Bertha?”

“Aye,” shouted another.

There was the clink of a coin purse, out of my sight. “He’s a scrapper, innit he?”

And that was the first day of my life as a rat.