Shepard, Lucius - Novella by Kalimantan

Author:Kalimantan [Kalimantan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

The mouth was large enough to swallow ten of me, the head wider than I was tall. I would have expected, had I been able to articulate my fear, that the impact alone would have killed me, but something, some elastic resistance, broke my fall, and, though I landed heavily, I did not lose consciousness. I squeezed my eyes shut, steeling myself against the pain of being torn apart. Dust covered my face, clotted my mouth, and I could still hear the breathing noise. After a few seconds I cautiously opened my eyes. The sourceless white light filled the chamber, and at first I could not understand what I was seeing. Frays of poisonous green leathery stuff hung down around me, like rips of a decayed garment, and beyond, curious white circles of ivory or stone receded into a dim curving tunnel filled with swirling dust. It was only after managing to clear my head that I understood that I was inside the snake -1 had crashed through the dried leather of its skin and was lying within the coiled tube of its dead body, staring at the circuit of its ribs. The patina of dust caked with the sweat on my face was likely a residue of desiccated skin destroyed by my fall. For some reason this realization panicked me as much as had the prospect of a living snake. I jumped up and went floundering away, in the process destroying more of the body, adding another layer of dust to that already adhering to my skin. I beat at the dead husk, the frail bones, grabbing handfuls of dust and screaming, throwing myself this way and that, as disgusted as I might have been had I fallen into a river of maggots. At length I gave up this useless flailing and stood gazing out into the chamber between the brittle circlets of exposed rib. The snake's head was propped against the wall and not, as I had thought, lifted in fury. Its plume was a ruffle of skin erected from the top of the head; its eyes were lidded puckers and its tongue a shrivelled black ribbon forked at the end. The smallest of the scales - some the green of tarnished brass, others a riper shade -was larger than my head, and, judging by the width of the body, I estimated that stretched out it must attain several hundred feet in length. I could not escape the feeling that were I to turn my back, the thing would come to life and rip me apart.

But my real enemy was the chamber itself, not the snake. The stones had eroded sufficiently so as to leave handholds on the walls, and I would have no great difficulty in climbing up; but the stone that had swung down to drop me into the chamber was situated at the mid-point of the ceiling, and I had no way of reaching that gap, unless I were to walk upside-down like a fly. I decided to climb up in any case and learn if any of the other stones could be shifted.

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