After a long walk in the jungle, you’ve finally found the spot. You sit against a tree and look at the landscape around you, practically sparkling from the burbling stream nearby. A perfect spot to sit and sketch a landscape.

You’d wanted to get a guide from the nearby village—if it’s even that nearby after how long you’ve walked—but they all wanted to stay in the standard trails. They warned about mythical creatures in the dark corners of the jungle, but they all sounded like superstition. You didn’t want to sketch the tourist parts of the jungle. You wanted to go deep and sketch what few have seen.

You have a compass, you can find your way back.

As you get to sketching, you feel a tickle under your legs. It’s probably just bugs, probably harmless if you don’t bother them too much.

When the feeling crawls around your hips and over your butt you start to stand—that’s too many bugs!—but something long squeezes your hips and lifts you off the ground like a seat. You look from your sketchbook to realize a blue and white tail has grabbed you. The scaly tail lifts you into the tree, and after you enter the leaf zone you see a snake watching you with piercing yellow eyes.

“Sssay now, it ssseems I’ve found a human in my neck of the jungle.”

“A talking snake?” you say. The warnings from the village flash in your head. A dangerous talking snake, spirit or demon or otherwise, with magic powers, who preys on humans. You didn’t believe it, thought it superstition.

You’re wondering if you should have thought twice now.

“It’sss always ssso . . .” The snake brushes part of her body under her chin as if contemplating her next word. “—nice, to meet a . . .” Another contemplation. “—human out here.”

Your gaze travels down her body to where she’s curled around branches with wider than you’d care to imagine moving close to you, though the snake might have another idea as her tail curls further around your hips. You pull the end off from around your legs.

“Sorry, I’m, er, too busy to visit. Maybe another time.” You slide off the seat of her tail and stand on the branch, though you wave your arms to balance on the thin platform. How are you even going to get down?

“Going so sssoon? I wanted to get to know you, firssst.” The snake moves in front of you. Your eyes open wide when you realize her eyes are pulsing. “Just let me look at you.”

Her yellow eyes have changed to a blue as endless as the sky, white and black rings like dual emptiness pulsing through them. Even seeing those eyes for a second muffles your thoughts, slides your mind towards the snake. The world feels blurry. You don’t want to move. You just want to stare.

The warnings from the village flash in your mind. The snake they spoke of could hypnotize with its eyes.

You blink the colors from your vision and pull your gaze away, blocking your view to the sides with your hands so you won’t see her. That moment you looked into her eyes lingers, and your thoughts struggle like through a swamp to return to a smooth stream of consciousness.

“You don’t want me to look at you?” the snake says behind you. She sounds hurt, but you imagine it’s just a trick. You hold your gaze to the side in case the snake tries to circle around to look into your eyes.

“Then . . .” You flinch as the snake speaks in front of you, as if she teleported, and she lowers herself from above into your vision, eyes pulsing. “Let me look at you.”

You find yourself staring again, nothing but her eyes visible as your hands block your view of anything else. A buzzing starts in your mind as you stare, the world blurring even more as a blue tinge starts to form. You need to look away, or—or—not—but then—

You pull your gaze away once more, swaying on the branch. If you’re not careful, you’ll drop.

“You don’t want me to look at you?” “Well then . . .”

You blink. Is your mind spinning, or is she speaking from two places at once? A scaly tail slides over your head, another under your chin, and you turn in the direction they pull like a figure on a spinning table. The snake’s head appears in your vision, and then appears again.

“You look at us.”

You stare at the snake twice, two of her watching you with eyes pulsing. In a moment the world grows dark as blue rings ripple through your vision. The warnings about the danger slip from your mind as your mind is coated in pulsing blue, thoughts melting in blinding black and burning away in blinding white.

For some reason your mind just loops back to a desire to stare at this—these—snakes. That reason feels like it’s due to bliss, pleasure, safety, comfort, but something bubbles underneath it, as if your mind is trying to warn you, but that warning cools the longer you stare, quiet, senseless.

The snakes’ tails curl further around you, growing heavy on your head as the one under your chin curls over your shoulders. Your eyes droop as your arms hang to your sides. The weight would crumple your ability to stand, but your feet leave the branch as the growing coils lift you by your shoulders.

“You’ll be sssuch a ssscrumptious meal.” “The prey I have to hypnotize twice is always worth it.”

Alarm bells ring in your mind. Meal? Prey? That’s right, this—these—snakes mean to eat you. You can’t just fall victim to them. Your legs dangle in the air, you can’t pull away—unless you can push away.

You rally your will and shove your arms up, pushing against the coils growing over your upper body. The weight pushes you down and you slip from the scaly grasp, landing on the branch. Your feet slip.

Your head spins too far under a weight to understand what’s happening beyond a downward pull of gravity, air rushing around you. Only a few cognizant specks of falling is aware, but you’re too deep to realize the fate of—

With a whump you land on something soft and scaly, another snake body but thicker, lumpier, something solid inside. More coils curl around you to hold you to your new thick, soft, lumpy seat.

“Now, now, you’re much less appetizing after falling to the ground.”

Your dazed eyes open wide as the snake’s head returns to your gaze in triplicate, three of her staring into your eyes.

“You need to ssstay still to ssstay delicious.” Her coils grip tight around your legs and bind your arms down, squishing you into a messy scaly cocoon of random thickness, leg coils thin but thick and heavy around your shoulders.

“You . . . but . . .” Somehow through the deluge of hypnotic colors dissolving your mind you speak an observation. Your lumpy seat isn’t just the snake’s body—there’s something in it, something fresh. “You’ve just eaten something . . .” It seems greedy to eat again right after eating, but the thought disintegrates when two pairs of coils squeeze around your neck and force you to gulp.

“Oh, you’re right, I have just eaten sssomeone,” one of the snakes says, flicking her tongue to your face.

“But it will be sssome time before I get to tassste it,” another says, flicking her tongue to your face. The third snake leans closer than the others.

“But I am going to eat.” She grins, closing in until her pulsing eyes fill your vision, wiping your mind under smiling bliss. “Right. Now.”