It was cold and I fell asleep, and then I had weird dreams all night.
Drums, saws, some kind of whispering voices speaking in a language I didn't know. The world took on a sort of
green color, and I felt numb all over. I dreamed my arms had turned into octopus tentacles, and my legs had
multiplied into dozens of bug-legs, like a centipede.
I felt something that woke me up, and I was sliding out into daylight again.
Hector's face was about two inches from mine when I managed to open my eyes. It was not the best sight - not
that he was ugly or anything, really. He looked like any other kid, maybe a bit younger than his age. We were
all supposed to be sixteen in this cabin - at least I would be in a week. He was just a bit under-developed,
as if he managed not to have to do any PE classes. Probably went to a private school and paid someone else to
do his gym classes for him.
I was still groggy from the cold. Hector saw my eyes open, and seemed a bit relieved. "I was afraid you had
gotten too cold in the night," he said quietly. "There aren't enough power outlets in this place, so I
couldn't plug in the heat lamps."
He somehow managed to drag the blue plastic tarp out onto the porch of the cabin, where the weak, feeble
sunlight of the early morning could shine on me. It wasn't much, but I started feeling better slowly, even
though I still couldn't move or feel.
"So," Hector said, "while the other campers are all off eating the swill they call food here, I managed to get
an early breakfast. I now have time to explain to you what your, transformation, will encompass."
When he said "transformation" it was in a creepy mad-scientist sort of way. I would have rolled my eyes or
made a face, but, I still felt numb all over, and I couldn't move, at least not at will. I was still
breathing, my eyes were trying to follow his movements. But he didn't notice my eyes trying to roll, or react
if they did. I couldn't really see unless he was up close anyway.
"So, the process of genetic recomposition is much more complicated than these fools realize. My preliminary
injections were preparatory - I actually WAS planning to ask you if you would volunteer, but you were so busy
scorning us weak, nerdish science types to pay attention to the fact that I had placed my equipment on your
bunk for safety. I would have offered to pay you to volunteer, if you had refused, but it's just as well.
Without the payment I can afford to perform the more extensive mutation."
I did NOT like the sound of that last phrase. The blur that was Hector came close enough to see again.
"You should be able to blink voluntarily. Blink twice if you can."
I tried to ... blink, blink. It worked! Hooray, I could control... my eyelids. Wonderful. Now I can crawl to
safety with the power of my massive eyelashes. Or not.
"Good. I'm going to feed you now. Normally snakes eat live prey, but rather than subject you to that, I will
be feeding you a semi-liquid food replacement. It's not bad, certainly tastes better than the burned egg and
half-raw potatoes in grease that seems to be the standard here." Hector's voice conveyed the kind of disgust
of someone who had never been forced to survive on BAD camp food, after their first worst meal.
I would have laughed, if I'd been able to. The food at this place was one of the many reasons that Camp Yucca
Caca was nicknamed "Yicky Yucky Caca-Phooey" by the campers. The other reasons were many, but the highlight
last year was the crappy un-insulated cabins with their insect population. Termites were frequent visitors,
and last summer we got to watch a war between the termites and the carpenter ants. The paper-wasps were the
surprise victors. Of course, the latrines here were even more special. The joke was "Why do bears shit in the
woods?" And the answer was "Because it's more sanitary than Camp Yucky Caca-Phooey toilets!"
On top of that, the "showers" were usually cold and nasty. Hey, at least that was an up-side, I wouldn't have
to put up with the showers or latrines or especially the food. And I haven't even mentioned the horror that
is "camp activities" - two mandatory hours of misery and humiliation with the camp counselors leading us in
games and recreations that had to be illegal under the Geneva Convention.
My musing was interrupted by something semi-flexible forcing its way into my mouth, and down my throat. I
almost choked, but it went past my wind-pipe without problems. When Hector loomed into view again he was
wearing some kind of weird headgear. "I have a fiber-optic camera on the end of this probe so I can avoid
pumping your lungs full of nutrient fluid," he said cheerfully. I thought about that when I felt something
warm squeezing into my gut. I couldn't taste anything, of course, but I felt pretty full after a only about
thirty seconds.
"I'm leaving the feeding tube in place for now, it can come out later," Hector said in a sort of detached
dispassionate voice. "So you know. I initially planned on something more than the simple Eunectes Murinus -
that's the Green Anaconda, world's largest snake - but I'm not sure if the sample Titanoboa DNA was actually
correctly sequenced. And it might be uncomfortable to return to human afterwards ... assuming that a serpent-
to-serpent change could even work. So it will be Eunectes Murinus first."
He came close again and smiled. It was semi-creepy because he didn't show his teeth or anything, so it looked
a bit like the Grinch with slightly more of a curl at the edges. "Now, so you know, the change to snake will
begin when I inject you with the secondary trigger. I'll also be injecting some additional substances that
will enable a faster modification of bones and organs. But you should be happy to know that I am using a less
coercive serum so that your head won't change structure completely. Otherwise your brain could be damaged, and
we don't want that to happen again."
His voice became very serious, and he pulled back the goggle things so I could see his eyes. They looked
remarkably human given the reptilian gaze he'd given me yesterday. "There are some risks. I won't hide that
fact from you. I will check with you repeatedly to ensure that you aren't losing your humanity and that you
are not in pain. If you fail to respond with the blink code - two blinks for no, three for yes - I will stop
the changes at once, but I believe that you will find the experience as fascinating as I will. And you have
one opportunity, now, to tell me to stop. I can reverse everything, but you would have to go through the
entire three months of summer camp here, doing all their activities, and eating their food. So think about it
for a few minutes."
I thought about it. I really thought hard about it. This was at least different. Nothing fun, but it was a
different kind of not-fun than the excruciating boredom, the nasty food, and the rest of it. Hell, I couldn't
change it, and I know this might have been me feeling all Stockholm-Syndromey, but I was kind of interested in
seeing what would happen. And so far, even with being naked in front of everyone, this was less horrible than
the mandatory Talent Show last year. Nobody would believe my "What I Did This Summer" essay, but then they
never did.
Suddenly, Hector was back in my face. "What do you say? Blink twice to be reverted, three times to continue as
my experimental ... subject." He was clearly thinking 'victim' but I didn't care. I blinked twice, then a
third time. What the heck, right? He smiled for real, the first actual human non-robot-like expression I'd
seen from him.
"Really? Excellent! Thank you! You won't be sorry, I promise." He moved back into the blurry distance and I
wondered what I had gotten myself into. But he was out of sight and I couldn't hear him. I felt a little
drowsy from the food and went to sleep for a few minutes.
When I woke up the sun was finally warming me enough that I felt good. I could feel my body again, though I
still couldn't move anything. Hector was humming some sort of classical music piece as he started fiddling
around with something I couldn't see clearly. He came close, and started to explain as he was working.
"Your change will be finished within two days. It might take you three or four more days to learn how to move
properly."
I felt a couple sharp pinches in each arm, and several around my legs and one, humiliatingly, in the space
between my legs.
"There you go. Now for a quick anatomy lesson on the squamates - that's the order that contains lizards,
snakes, and worm lizards - so you won't be too surprised. The sub-order serpentes in particular are seldom
visibly different by gender. Males and females look much the same from the outside. But, the males have
something a bit different. Rather than a single external penis, they have two, called hemi-penes, and they are
inverted into their bodies by a retractor muscle, or when they erect, they evert out into the outside. This
change is the first one I am triggering, to protect you from what would otherwise be an excruciatingly painful
experience."
I wasn't sure about that at all, but then everything in my groinal area went all tingly. Not in a good way,
more like pins-and-needles. There was a sharp hard tug as I felt my testicles pull painfully in, then a sort
of tearing sensation. I started blinking rapidly, the closest thing I could come to screaming, but then the
pain got really sharp, and then it stopped suddenly, and it felt numb, then I could feel the muscle that you
can tense, the "kegel" muscle, pulling hard, and it felt like I was sliding into something. I never thought
it would feel like that. When it finished I wasn't sure how, but it felt a little like I had put on a condom
or something.
"Excellent," Hector said. He put his phone-camera up to my face where I could see it, and there was a movie,
showing my personal favorite organ, getting hard, then my balls sort of suck up against it and Hector pushed
on each of them, and there was a squelch that would have made me flinch if I could have, as they slid inside
my body, then my penis turned inside out and sucked into my body as if it were 30 below zero. I knew it was
still there, but it didn't show at all on the surface. Hector took the camera display away, and grinned into
my face.
"You probably find me to be unbelievably perverse for saying this, but that is one of the most arousing things
I've seen. It's going to be fascinating to see how your sexual response changes. You'll definitely remain
male, don't worry, but there are things you can do now ... well, you will be able to do."
I have to admit he was right. He was a total pervert, and I was kind of bothered, but I figured it wasn't
that bad. But again how many people can turn someone into a snake. Up til now I hadn't really believed it,
but this was proof. I was going to be a whatever-he-called it. Eunectes. Anaconda. I would be a snake for my
birthday.
Man. This was the last year my parents would be able to force me to come to this dump, but with Hector
Poindexter's happy little needles, I wasn't sure if I was going to be leaving.