>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKnVbC_Mc7kThe first two things are quick enough. The snake hisses when you dislodge it from its pillow nest, but doesn't strike. You make sure to position it with its little pointy head facing away, so when the clothes come off it doesn't see. Just in case. (You don't know how it works.) Your beat-up old nightclothes are still old and beat-up, but you've been in the same thing for days, so they're a relief all the same. You pull your hair out of your collar and go and lay down, then think better of it, and grab your ribbon, and tie up a makeshift blindfold. It's dimming outside, but not dark.
Then: sleep.
Then: ...sleep.
Then: sleep? Hello? Sleep?
God-dammit. You rock and roll and scratch at the blindfold and curse Richard, who surely did this on purpose to make you appreciate him. Can the snake drug you in his stead? You swing over the side of the cot to check, but its snakey eyes are shut. <span class="mu-i">It's</span> sleeping. God-damnit!
It's not like you can just get up and do something else, though. That'd be declaring defeat, and Charlotte Fawkins does not simply declare defeat. She is undefeated! There has to be something you can do. Didn't you purchase some pills from the general store? Were they... no, they were painkillers. If you took twenty of them, maybe that'd put you to sleep then. Ha-ha. (You shouldn't think things like that. They aren't actually funny.) If you... hm.
You have the idea in your head for maybe five or six seconds before you're sitting upright, palpating your wrist with your thumb. Why haven't you tried out your venom yet? It doesn't make any sense. You've had plenty of chances to bite people. You don't even know what it does, exactly, except the lizard-thing said it'd make you woozy. Which sounds great right now, which is why you're opening your mouth really wide— the fangs sort of pop forward when you do that, like they're on hinges— and sinking your teeth into your wrist's juicy flesh.
It didn't hurt as much as you expected, and you already didn't expect it to hurt very much. If anything, the mild pain is far less distracting than the sensation of new organs lurching into gear. Lodged in the top-back-sides of your mouth, like weird tonsils, your venom glands are rhythmically throbbing. Pumping? Whatever. It's sort of like sucking the spit out from under your tongue, only there's little spit-sucking engines doing it for you instead, and the spit's actually coming out of your teeth... so, uh, emphasis on the 'sort of.' You're sure Richard would have a better simile if he wasn't off in dumb snake rehab.
(1/4?)
