Beneath the Manor

“A person starts hearing their pet’s thoughts and discovers a dark secret…“

That was the writing prompt I got a few weeks ago at a writers’ group. I didn’t like this story when I first wrote it, but quite like the rewrite. (But then, I am an awful first-drafter, and maybe tomorrow I’ll hate it.) In any case, I am posting it in hopes that someone out there will like it!

Also, I PROMISE The Proud Princess is percolating! The next part might be the finale!!! Then I plan to edit it, redo the beiginning (AWFUL BEGINNING, bad beginning!) and publish the print version.

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Sss, sss.

Simone roused from her dream… no, she burrowed deeper into the parsimonious earth, its closeness womb-like around her as she slithered through tunnels of compacted dirt, sleek and winding and dislodging clods as she squirmed—no, as she slid sinuously through her favored warren.

She had lain eggs here once, babies hatched and grown, some of them forlornly fodder for raptors, but most had grown slick and fat out there in the wide world, winning mates to nest their own hatchlings.

Simone’s heavy eyelids fluttered open. On her bedroom ceiling, moonlight and shadows drew charcoal blots, vying for pied nocturnal shades of artistry.

Mussed, with her yawn muffled by her bedsheets, she clambered from bed… no, her scaly form was emerging aesthetically from the earth. Grass scratched, softly dewy under her smooth belly as she zigzagged through the garden, like an apple down a throat.

So vivid, Simone thought, this dream. As if she were her pet snake.

Well, technically it wasn’t her pet. Her strict, severe-lipped guardian Blathe would never allow that. He didn’t allow much—didn’t allow her to leave. But every night, Simone woke like clockwork at midnight and wandered his estate, and Slith (as she’d dubbed the snake), always seemed to moonbathe on the terrace.

Sss, sss.

A feeling of fingers stroking her back pervaded Simone’s senses, not the sensation of her own fingertips stroking a snake’s scales, but of her scaled back being stroked.

Simone didn’t have scales. But with her eyelids half shut, she was immersed once more in the phantasmagoria of the dream, slithering from dewdrops and grass and up onto the stone ledge of the terrace (its corner getting in a nice little scratch on her belly), and she snaked toward the place where the human girl always drifted in from the night to pet her with magical fingers.

Simone marveled. Was she dreaming Slith’s thoughts?

She padded barefoot out onto the terrace, and there, in its white stone center, curled Slith’s black coil. Waiting.

Simone crouched indolently down and traced the snake’s expectant length.

A shiver of pleasure rippled through her scales… again?

To test her theory, Simone stopped petting Slith, and, indeed: No stop, hissed dissatisfaction through Slith’s serpentine tongue of a mind.

Simone was hearing, or inside, Slith’s thoughts, as well as in her own.

Drowsily, not questioning it, she ran her fingertips along Slith’s body once again.

Sss, came the hiss of euphoria.

In her two bodies, Simone tilted her gaze to the moon.

Idly, her human-girl mind pondered how long she would have to remain on Blathe’s estate. Once she reached her majority, her eighteenth year, her parents’ inheritance should fall to her.

How far away was that?

Her years here flowed like molten silver, and at some point, she had stopped paying attention to her age.

She had stopped paying attention to doing anything more than reading, eating, and spending evenings in the parlor with Blathe.

Peculiar how his face morphed and changed, smiling, sharp-toothed, his hands like claws handing her a goblet…

Peculiar how time drifted.

Sss. Time to hunt.

Slith unwound from under Simone’s fingers, for Simone had stopped paying attention to that, too, and her fingers had stilled as her thoughts had shifted.

Again, in two bodies, she felt the snake slip out from under touch and watched it wend its way toward the balustrade while simultaneously feeling its smoothness twining across the gravelly terrace stones.

The snake tail vanished over the side of the terrace, and Simone fell into the greedy grass, glided unenergetically over pebbles and grass blades and—

Gulp! A mouse was caught and swallowed, becoming a weighty, slowing squirm in her middle.

Sluggish as she digested, Slith rolled lazily onward.

To the bars of the window to the cellar.

There, her master lifted his palms, chains rattling from his wrists (chains bolted to the wall).

Slith slipped down into his invitingly cupped hands.

Who was this? Simone pondered in a detached way from the terrace. Had Blathe imprisoned a man beneath his manor?

The prisoner’s green eyes glittered at her—at Slith—eyes shining like freshly-hatched snakes. And he asked, “Is her guardian still poisoning her?”

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Thanks for reading! Did you like it? If not, probably DON’T tell me since I am not very confident as it is 😀

In any case, all the best things your way! Thrice the Shadow. (Nope, I still have not decided what that means)

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