Free The Hell Season by Ray Wallace

were arranged in a rough circle around the three humans, seemingly content to just watch what was taking place, to await the final outcome.
    Sweat poured from Thomas’s body. He felt like he might spontaneously combust at any moment. Falling to his knees, he was compelled to wrap his arms around his torso and after he did so he realized that he could not pull them away. The skin there had adhered together. The same was happening to his legs where they were pressed one against the other. He fell onto his side, nearly tumbled from the bed. Tanya lay next to him, facing him, undergoing a similar metamorphosis. She seemed to be growing thinner as he watched. Taller. Her neck was elongating and he could feel the vertebrae in his own neck starting to pop. Tanya’s hair, though, was becoming shorter, pulling back into her scalp. Her nose was disappearing into her face, leaving only a pair of holes there. And her breasts were shrinking as her torso grew longer and more emaciated. Grey and black diamond-like patterns were now visible across the canvas of her skin. Her legs fused into a single leg which grew longer until the tips of her feet, now devoid of toes, hung down over the edge of the bed out of Thomas’s field of vision.
    Snakes , Thomas knew, his mind reeling. That’s what we’re turning into .
    It was the last coherent thought he had as he flopped off the bed and felt the cool, dry flesh of his gathered, myriad brethren as they encircled him, embraced him, welcomed his now totally-unrecognizable-as-human form into their midst. Almost immediately, any feelings of fear or panic dissipated. There was nothing to be afraid of here. He was among friends, after all. Family. The hissing coming from all around him held no sense of threat or menace. Quite the opposite, in fact. He felt wanted. Loved. It was like going home.
    And then he was crawling, slithering across the floor toward the doorway and the stairs beyond. He could sense that Ron and Tanya were following. Down the stairs he went, joined by the throng of his new family. Then he was passing through a doorway behind the counter of the liquor store. It was only a short distance to the day-lit, afternoon world outside.
    The sun felt good on his body as did the heat emanating from the sidewalk that fronted the liquor store and the asphalt of the street beyond. Thoughts of what it was like to be human were already fading from his consciousness. There was a strange scent upon the air, a thick odor that stirred a longing deep within him. He flicked out his tongue and tasted it, his attention now turning to the writhing knots of serpents he saw in all directions. The snakes were mating, he knew. For the moment, none of the creatures seemed remotely concerned about possible predators or the need to search for food or even reveling in the glorious, hot weather. They were lost in an orgy of twisting and quivering, limbless forms. The sight of it, the taste of it on the air was intoxicating and completely overpowering. The crawling thing that had once been Thomas Wright approached one of the wriggling masses. And within its dark and hissing folds he lost himself completely.
     
    *
     
    Nighttime. And Thomas was cold. Naked. He lay there shivering for a time, curled in upon himself. He couldn’t help but wonder at the bizarre turn his life had taken, the inexplicable things he had recently seen and done. And, of course, he thought about Julia and the kids. He started to weep. Above, the sky rumbled with thunder. He hurt all over, no doubt due to his recent transformation to and from the animal form he had occupied. His joints felt loose like they were sewn together with inadequate amounts of thread. He imagine that if he stood and tried to walk he’d simply fall apart, a foot here, a piece of leg there, arms falling from shoulder sockets, his head bouncing off the ground and rolling away. So he decided that he would stay right where he was, that he wouldn’t even attempt to