STORY: f/snake, non-consens, spitting up... WEIRD :)

[anne2snakie]

It's a departure for me. I hope you read it, and even more than that I hope you ENJOY it!!

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Listra struggled through the heavy undergrowth. The path, if it could be called one, was hard to follow. Only the occasional rut aimed toward a colored stone demarcated a path at all.Mosquitoes buzzed at her ears and face, eager to feast on her. She'd been struggling through the woods for what seemed like hours now and her resolve was fading quickly. What had seemed a pressing concern for weeks now was only an exertion that seemed more foolish the longer she pressed at it. Madness.

The twigs and branches caught in her ruined the normal elegance of her shoulder length blonde hair, and the scratches on her face belied the normal pale perfection of her complexion. Her cotton dress covered her arms and down to below her knees, leaving her shins and calves to be torn before her legs were covered with thick socks and actual hiking boots.

-Ilessa didn't know how long she had been enduring torture- whether it had been five minutes, five years, or five centuries. She still struggled for breath but the acid in her lungs denied her even as it created it's own misery. Her skin burned, her eyes on fire and her ears burning inside her head but still the pain roiled on. She wasn't used to it, it was still agony, but it was agony she knew and could claim as her own because there was nothing else.

But then the pain started to ease. Her skin burnt less, and the agony of her eyes became easier to bear and then easier still. Her tight prison started to move against her and she felt herself pushed forward slightly. What? Could it be? She had given up hope! But she remembered then she had always given up hope and then she was freed for a while. Free from the pain.

-Passage became easier through the bushes just as Listra decided to cut her losses and go back. A nasty branch had thwacked her across the face with a final bruising blow and she suddenly found herself actually standing in a clearing of sorts. Instead of bug filled shrubbery with an attitude, the weeds came only to her waist and she could see what appeared to be a shack behind some nasty looking trees a hundred feet away.

Stomping her feet to knocks hopefully most of the bugs and plants scraps from her, Listra then started toward the shack. That had to be it. What the hell else would be around here? This was like abandoned wasteland heaven, just like she'd been told.

-Her skin no longer burned and the rhythmic motion was moving her forward again. Her eyes no longer burned and between her legs she felt normal again, not acid burned and destroyed like it had been. Her arms were ahead of her, her hands traveling through the slick tunnel easily. Oh blessed hope! To be free again! To be out!

When her hands suddenly felt free, no longer held tightly in the warm, wet grip of muscle she suddenly stopped moving. For a long terrifying moment she thought that it was over- she was be pulled back into the acidic hell, to burn again. But no, she was held there. She didn't move, forward or back. And when she remembered, she would have laughed if her lungs, although rebuilt but still fluid filled and begging for air, had been able. She remembered now. Oh Gods, she remembered now.

-Listra stepped through the broken door frame of the shack, the late afternoon sun streaming in between gnarled tree branches and twisted roof boards. The sunbeams illuminated little- the air was dusty and pollen-filled, humid and thick. Almost painful to breathe. But she had to be in here. That's what she'd been told, she had to be in here. Everything else had been true so far, the rest had to be true.

She stood still in the doorway, surrounded by her own dusty sun aura as she stared, looking desperately. But she could see no woman, she could see no witch. All the could see was an old cabin, in the middle of nowhere. Abandoned, broken, falling apart. And at the far end of the room, almost the same color as the wood it lay upon, the snake. Oh my God. A gigantic snake. Not just a big wood snake, but a monster, against the far wall. Thick as a person from side to side. Coiled and piled upon itself it was hard to tell how long the beast was, but it was huge. Listra felt the scream building inside of her, like a pulsating bomb getting closer to explosion.

The snake head lifted, black as coal eyes staring at her. Still the snake didn't move, it just stared, and Listra wanted to run but she couldn't move. She felt trapped, her mind at a forty five degree angle inside her skull, unable to do anything but stare, not breathe, and get closer and closer to screaming.

When the snake's mouth opened and the worms appeared the scream almost exploded out of her but she held on, afraid that if she did scream she would never stop. In the dim light she could see, with suddenly clarity, that they weren't worms in the snake's mouth and suddenly it was almost worse. They were fingers. Moving fingers, from a person inside the snake.

-Ilessa clamped her fingers against the outer jaws of the snake and pulled. She had to pull herself out of the snake, she had remembered. This was the only way out, the snake wouldn't help her any more. Maybe it was angry that it had to give up it's meal at all. Ilessa couldn't remember. It was hard to remember so many things. She felt her slick body slide outward, toward the freedom beyond the snake mouth as she pulled. The harsh digestive acids were now little more than thick, slick mucus that slicked her body, gummed her hair, and still filled her lungs. She wanted out, out of this damnable snake prison she'd been trapped inside for so long. Out of the snake stomach and back into the world.

"Come on, Ilessa," she heard Toma say and she smiled in her dark prison, pulling harder. Now her arms were free to the elbow. She braced with them, as she had done so many times before, pulling again. The pressure lessened on her chest and she would have laughed if she could have. Soon she would be able to cough the slime out of her, she would see the world, she would be free again! I'm coming, Toma, she thought and pulled harder.

When her head emerged from the snake mouth, the pressure on her chest was light enough she was able to cough and loosen, spit then cough again. Air. Another cough. And after a few repetitions, she was actually breathing again. Air! Breathing!

"You're doing so well, Ilessa," said Toma. She opened her eyes, held herself up on an elbow and ran fingers across her eyes. She could almost see.

"I can hear you," she said and would have laughed with joy. It had been so long since she had seen Toma. So long. "I know you are here."

"I can hear you too," said Toma and she could see him standing in the doorway. His hair was as long as it had always been. Toma. "But I'm not really here. You have a visitor. A guest. Someone who wants something."

And as Ilessa blinked, Toma became a woman standing in the doorway and she could have screamed.

-Listra watched the woman pull herself from inside the snake, coughing and spitting up slime. She was slick, wet, naked. Gasping and lightheaded, Listra watched as the woman pulled herself up onto her elbows, looked at her, and said, "I can hear you. I know you are here."

"I am here," she said in a small voice to the witch. She was real. Oh my God, she was real although Listra could never have imaged the horror of what she saw. Still covered in wet snake juice, the witch pulled herself forward, out of the mouth and throat of the snake, using her arms and elbows.

The witch stopped pulling forward only when the nose of the snake rested on the split between her two rounded buttocks. The rest of her remained inside the snake's throat. The witches dark red hair was slicked to her body with snake stomach fluid. She held herself upward on her arms, hands flat on the wooden floor of the shack. This position, with the arch of her back, thrust forward her two glistening breasts, aggressive and large. The face of the witch was heart shaped, the lips bowed, her green eyes daubed still with slime.

"What can I do for you?" asked the witch and with those simple words, in her husky alto voice, suddenly calmed Listra. Reminded her of why she was here. Why she had hunted this witch down.

-Toma stood to the side of the shack, his face drawn and sad. Ilessa wanted to hold him to her but the snake never let her any further away from him than this. She forgot so much, but this she remembered.

"Atum is here too," said Toma and with that Ilessa look to the other side of the doorway. Atum was there, Atum the bat faced woman. Atum the thief. Atum was why she was here in the first place.

"What can I do for you?" she asked Atum. She didn't want Atum here, she hated Atum, but she always came. It seemed like she always came.

"It is not my fault," said Atum. She did have the face of a bat, and Ilessa couldn't remember why. Surely she didn't always have a bat face. Toma wouldn't have had anything to do with her if she'd always had a bat face. When did this happen? It seemed like she'd always seen Atum with a bat face but this couldn't be true, that didn't make sense.

But she didn't dignify Atum with a reply.

"I didn't ask for you to fall in love with Toma," said Atum, and it was amazing that her bat face could speak language so clearly- the bat jaws didn't seem like they could form words at all but they did.

"I loved Atum," said Toma, sheepishly. Ilessa remembered that now. He had loved Atum, not her. So she couldn't have had a bat face. Why did she have the face of a bat now? Why was everything still so foggy?

"I didn't ask you to go see the witch," said Atum. "You did that after you couldn't get Toma for yourself."

"Did you want to kill him?" asked Ilessa and that's when she remembered- Toma was dead. Dead a long time. Ilessa had gone to find the witch herself when she realised that Toma loved Atum and not her. Tears flowed from her eyes at the memory and she wanted to forget. Forget like she had before. Oh Gods, why did she always remember that Toma was dead because of her? That she was trapped inside this snake only because of herself, herself and her jealousy? She wanted to scream.

-The words came easily. She spoke of Joanne, and she spoke of Ben. Her words dripped venom when she spoke of Joanne- and her voice was soft was sleep when she spoke of Ben. The hatred, the love. The twisting inside her. And how she'd gone to see Ben last night. And then, while she was sleeping, something in her sleep had told her about the witch. And she must have been crazy, because she followed the words of the voice in her sleep and actually found her, the witch, where she'd been told.

And when the witch spoke, the words cut her.

"Did you want to kill him?" And the witch started to cry, thick tears that cut through the drying snake stomach slime on her face. Oh God. She knew. She knew already.

"I didn't mean to kill him," whispered Listra and it seemed her mind was tilting forty five degrees in the other direction inside her skull. The air in the cabin was tight, confining, hot. It stank of snake and snake digestive fluids. "He wouldn't listen. He wouldn't listen to me. I told him that Joanne didn't love him like I loved him. But he said he loved her and he wouldn't listen to me and I don't know what happened next but there was a knife in his chest."

Listra really couldn't remember what had happened in it's entirety. She remembered screams, she remembered blood. What happened, she wasn't sure, but when she could open her eyes she was on the floor and Ben was laying half on top of her. The knife had torn him up badly, he was a mess. She was covered in blood and she hurt like she'd been running forever but none of the blood was hers.

"I didn't want to kill him," said Listra, again.

"I know," whispered the witch.

"What am I going to do?" asked Listra, running her hands down her face. What was sanity anymore? She had killed the man she had professed her love to. She had followed a voice in a dream. And now she was talking to a witch in a snake. Where was her mind? Her head was spinning, she felt like she was going to pass out.

"There is no going back," said the witch woman, easing herself down onto her elbows in the darkness of the shack.

"I have to do something!" said Listra. "You have to help me! I came here for you!" What had happened to the day? The sunbeams that had been shining into the shack were almost gone and it was harder to see the nude woman half inside the snake before her.

The witch woman was quiet for a few moments, then her eyes snapped back up to Listra's.

-If only she could just finally die herself, escape the eventual remembering of what she had done. Even staying inside the stomach of the snake, being digested forever, was better than remembering what she had done to Toma.

Toma just stared at her for a long time, shimmering gently in the dark air of the shack. Atum, on the other side of the door, stood silently as well, while the woman that had called Ilessa forth stood babbling and unnoticed before her.

"I wish you hadn't killed me," said Toma finally.

"I know," whispered Ilessa. She wished she hadn't killed him either. And while she had slept that night, in Toma's shack, with Toma's body, she had dreamt of the witch.

"It wasn't your fault," said Atum. She didn't have the face of a bat, Ilessa knew. That was just her mind. Just her mind falling apart inside of her brain, falling apart inside the snake. How long had she been inside this time? Oh Gods, did it matter? "The witch was calling to you."

"It might have been her that made you kill me," said Toma. Still graceful after all this time, even he was just a hallucination. Just her brain torturing herself. What she even outside the snake at all? Had she been inside at all? Was she still inside Toma's shack, sleeping with his corpse, totally mad?

"There is no going back," said Ilessa as she relaxed her tense posture, coming to rest on her elbows. Whether or not she she was completely mad or if this was happening, didn't matter. She knew Toma was dead. She knew that she had killed Toma. There was no winding back time. No undoing the done.

"Do you now seek freedom at her expense?" asked Atum, her voice sharp. She didn't have the face of a bat at all, Ilessa realised. She was rather pretty after all and Ilessa couldn't imagine even for a moment why she had thought Atum had had the face of a bat. "Are you going to seek freedom and set her in your place here? Is this fair? Is this right? Did you call her here?"

Ilessa snapped her eyes to the young woman who had been yammering at her all this time, unnoticed and ignored while she talked with her specters. What did she want, why was she here? Had Ilessa called her? Had she made the young woman do something horrible? Oh Gods. Was there no end to this?

"There is no hope for you here," said Ilessa to the young blonde woman. She was pretty too. How long had she been here? How long had Ilessa been out of the snake now? If only she could just think clearly, could just stop forgetting some things and remembering others.

"Is telling her that enough?" asked Toma. His face was shrouded in darkness.

"Or does she need more?" asked Atum. She too was dim in the darkness of the shack.

"Do you want to be like me?" said Ilessa at the young woman. What had she even done that was so horrible that Ilessa had called out to her, even from the torture inside the snake stomach? "Run from here!" She realised she was crying and couldn't remember when she had started.

Gods, Gods forgive her. Toma forgive her. Even Atum- had Atum been able to forgive her? And why would she? Ilessa had killed her Toma.

"Go back," she yelled to Toma, sobbing and gasping for breath. "Go back where you came from," she gasped.

"Ilessa," whispered Atum.

"There is no escaping what you do," screamed Ilessa, then shrieked as she felt the snake take a deep swallow. then swallow at her again. Back she would go, back to the hell of being digested forever. "It lasts forever," she gasped. But better that, better that than remembering what she had done. Better that than any other should have to suffer what she did.

-Crouching down so her eyes were level with the naked witch's eye, Listra asked, "What am I going to do now? How are you going to help me?" Oh God, she had to help. Ben was dead. The cops were probably at the apartment by this time. Hell, they might be following her even now. "Come on, you're my only hope!"

"There is no hope for you here," said the witch, quietly. The shock set Listra's heart beating double time.

"No hope?" she asked, standing suddenly. "What do you mean no hope? There has to be hope! I killed my boyfriend!" Oh God. This was all wrong. All wrong. What the hell had happened? It had made so much sense last night. It had made so much sense.

Sense. The stifling air in the shack was choking her. What was she doing here? The sun was almost down. "What do I do?" she whispered. The stink in the shack was making her sick but she was lost. Dizzy.

"Do you want to be like me?" came the voice of the witch woman from the floor of the shack. What? What did she mean? Cold panic flushed Listra as she realised what the witch woman was implying, was threatening her with. Oh God.

"Don't- don't let the snake-" she stammered as she backed away from the witch woman. She wasn't moving from her position on the floor, but she was coiled with menace, she and the snake that had half-swallowed her. The wall of the shack behind her scraped against her back. "Please," said whispered and she couldn't find the door. "Don't let it eat me too."

"Run from here!" commanded the witch with a sob and Listra screamed, mind flailing wildly inside her skull. She had to get out of here, had to get away before the witch grabbed her and the snake- and the snake ate them both. Her face exploded with pain and she fell to her knees, realizing with suddenly clarity she had run into the wall. She scrabbled at the wall, listening to snake coils slithering against plank flooring. The door. The door!

"Go back," grunted the witch behind her and she stumbled from the shack into the weeded clearing. The sun was still up, there was still light, there was still hope if the sun was shining, there had to be. "Go back where you came from," cried the witch in the shack and Listra stumbled away, tears streaming down her face, mixing with the blood draining from her nose. Oh God, there had to be hope if the sun was still shining.

The bushes. She could follow the trail back. She could make it back before the sun went down.

"There is no escaping what you do!" shrieked the witch woman in the darkness behind her and Listra screamed and ran harder. She fell and hit her head on a root, but staggered back to her feet, bleeding and crying and staggering as she fell into the bushes. Her heart hammered in her chest hard enough it hurt and she barely knew her name but she knew, she knew she had to escape and get back or she was lost. Lost forever.

-Ilessa didn't know how long she had been enduring torture- whether it had been five minutes, five years, or five centuries. She still struggled for breath but the acid in her lungs denied her even as it created it's own misery. Her skin burned, her eyes on fire and her ears burning inside her head but still the pain roiled on. She wasn't used to it, it was still agony, but it was agony she knew and could claim as her own because there was nothing else.

It was better than remembering.

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Hope you liked it!

Anne

[blackrain]

A very interesting story. Yes not one of your normal sexy large breasted snake swallowing, but I like it. It's different, but good. the forever torter idea, was interesting. it would be interesting to know how the snake was choosen, but I liked it. I also liked how the two women are talking, but are having two different comversations. Its good to see you writing again!!

[Junogray]

Wow, i don't know if you meant for this but, it almost felt like a sort of nightmare while I read this, very good story although I sometimes lose track as I read stories with similar names (Ilessa, listra) but very cool none the less, the jumping back and forth between prospectives was hard but neat. some parts seemed to run on and on but I'm sure you meant for that

[KavenBach]

Wow, that's dark... a kind of "justice served" thing... or "self-served" perhaps. Did Ilessa herself (as a witch) cast the spells to punish herself? And now she couldn't break the curse even if she wanted to?

I liked it. It's a departure from your usual, but very attention-gripping... and the "endless snake digestion torture" is not a new concept for me...