The Blue Dragon: Chapter 2

-- CHAPTER 2: Santa Monica --

****

-- TWO DAYS AGO --

“Ohhh… fuckkk… yeah…” I groaned, relishing the heavenly feeling of being buried deep within the tight confines of a warm and welcoming pussy. I paused at full depth, soaking in the sensations and holding Hannah Hampton’s hips to keep her bodacious booty pressed against my pelvis.

“So biiig…” Hannah groaned, hanging her head down between her shoulders with her elbows braced against my mattress for support. The gorgeous girl was bent over on all fours receptively – relaxed and perfectly happy to wait until I was ready.

“So tiiight…” I murmured a reply, sincere praise in my voice. She really did have an ultratight twat, and her shapely ass in my hands was pure perfection. “I really wish we could do this more often.”

“Any more often and I’d break a hip,” Hannah giggled while glancing back at me over her shoulder, her bright green eyes sparkling. She tossed her long, shimmering dirty-blonde locks so that they cascaded over to the other side, granting me the same kind of picture-perfect view of her exquisite face that she gave to the camera for her magazine shoots. And her sunny smile made the whole room glow from more than just the morning sunlight through my windows while she laughed, “Every time we get together, it takes more than a week for me to recover.”

I gave her an equally warm smile. “Just making sure the trip is worth your while.”

“More than worth my while,” the luscious lingerie model replied before giving me a coy wink and then waggling her hips. “Fuck my brains out, lover.”

I grinned and started thrusting.

I didn’t go from zero to sixty right away. My dick was too thick and Hannah’s channel too narrow for that, even with the copious lubrication of her arousal. The leggy dirty-blonde was a stick-figure with tits and hips, and it always took a couple of minutes to stretch her out before I could really lay down the lumber.

At first I reached around to slide my fingers beneath the hanging hem of her peasant top, push her bra out of the way, and cup her firm breasts as handholds. I nibbled her neck and up her cheek at the same time, until my horny Hannah turned her face to meet mine for a tongue-filled kiss.

As her tunnel of love started to loosen up, I straightened my spine and relocated my hands to her shoulders, yanking back on them to guide Hannah’s sway forward and back to meet my thrusts as if we were a pair of Newton’s Cradle balls with nothing between us. She then arched her back and tossed her hair, howling with happiness as I repeatedly drilled deep into her depths.

“Oh! Fuck! Me!” Hannah cried in staccato rhythm with my powerful plunges. “Fuck! Fuck! Me!”

“Fffuuuccckkk yyyeeeaaahhh…” I growled in a single long exhalation that spread across my metronomic rhythm, in stark contrast to my lover’s truncated yelps.

“So! Fucking! Deep!” Hannah howled. “So! Fucking! Deep! Fuck me, Aksel! Fuck me!”

“Hhhaaannnnnnaaahhh…” I groaned. “Hhhaaannnnnnaaahhh…”

“Aaakkkssseeelll… Aaakkkssseeelll…”

“Unnnngggghhhh!!!”

I thrust forward one final time and then stopped myself, feeling perhaps a little too close to cumming. Taking a break, I bent forward to kiss her ear and then released her shoulders, pausing to catch my breath.

Rather than hold herself on all fours, Hannah let her arms buckle as she went facedown on the mattress. Then she turned to give me that picture-perfect over-the-shoulder coy smile, the one that made men buy magazines and made women buy lingerie to try and get their men look at them the same way. And I could tell that she wanted to roll over and make love face-to-face.

I pulled out and let the svelte, sexy doll flip onto her back and then spread her legs for me. I gladly guided Mr. Happy back into her warm and welcoming folds, and she cooed into my ear as I re-filled her up. Then she wrapped her arms around my neck and pulled my face down to hers for a sweet kiss.

Although I very much liked Hannah, and I was pretty sure Hannah liked me, I wouldn’t describe her as my “girlfriend”. We were friends – friends with benefits, certainly - but just friends. It was a mutually beneficial relationship, and not an exclusive one in any way. She knew that I was regularly fucking other girls, and I knew that she had other guys around the world that she would visit. Perhaps if she would ever settle down in one place long enough to spend more time with me - and perhaps if I would ever stop fucking everyone with a pair of tits who would let me - the two of us could maybe explore the possibilities of what we might potentially mean to each other.

But she would never settle down in one place. Hannah loved her jet-setting lifestyle too much: exploring new places, meeting new people, and trying new things. I could follow her on Insta and TikTok and all her other social media postings like a million other guys who wished they could be with her. I supposed I should be happy that unlike the vast majority of them, I really could be with her every now and again, like just right now.

Deep inside her. Stretching her too-tight twat with my too-big dick.

Hearing Hannah Hampton moan into my ear, “Fuuuck, Aksel. Nobody else makes me feel the way you do.”

Life could certainly be a lot worse.

Hannah wrapped her long legs around the back of my neck and the pair of us humped away the morning like lusty bunnies. I was always good for at least two rounds, so she had me fill up her womb with all my spunky sperm and then we just kept going with my unflagging erection, using that first cumload as extra lubrication so I could truly hammer her hard.

I wanted to believe her when she told me nobody else made her feel the way I did. And I was pretty sure I was the only guy she’d ever told that his cum was the most perfect moisturizer she’d ever experienced.

Seriously: Hannah once insisted that me giving her a facial made her acne go away right before a photo shoot. And ever since then, she’d gone out of her way to make sure I sprayed my seed all over her supple, silky-smooth skin at least once.

Right on cue, after my sexy swimsuit model squealed out her third orgasm, she dropped her legs off my shoulders and pushed for me to get up. I quickly stood atop the bed and let her grab onto my massive member with both hands, double-stroking my shaft while parking her pretty face right in front of my pulsing prick.

“Oh, Hannah!” I grunted, rapturously gazing at her gorgeous face. “Oh, Hannah! Hannah! HANNAH!”

She shrieked with excitement as I covered her comely countenance with all my creamy cum. She aimed my cock cannon first at her forehead and then each cheek before pumping out the remnants and then using three fingers to rub my hundred-percent-organic “moisturizer” into her skin. Her eyelids were closed until she scraped them clean. And with one final flourish, the green-eyed girl’s irises sparkled with delight as she popped her fingers into her mouth and sucked on the digits with relish.

“Thanks for cumming,” she quipped merrily.

“Anytime.”

****

I kissed Hannah at the curb before she stepped into her Uber ride and then returned back to my apartment building after she was gone. A pretty Latina babe who lived with her boyfriend smiled warmly at me as we both got into the same elevator. We exchanged some casual pleasantries but nothing too flirtatious. She then got out on the third floor, and I continued all the way up to the eighth.

There, I strolled casually down the hallway and into my spacious luxury apartment with a spectacular Pacific Ocean view. Through the floor-to-ceiling windows leading out to my balcony, I could see the shimmering blue water beneath golden sunshine, and part of me wanted to turn around, go right back downstairs, and hit the beach.

The more realistic part of me recognized that I’d already frittered away the entire morning having sex with Hannah, and I shouldn’t waste the entire day being unproductive. Working as a contract programmer meant that I got to make my own hours and rarely had to leave home. But it also meant that if I didn’t turn in my work, I didn’t get paid. And luxury two-bedroom corner units with ocean-front views weren’t cheap.

So with a sigh, I went into my home office, turned on my computer, and sat down as my three monitors all came to life. I won’t bore you with the details. Suffice to say I spent the remaining daylight hours missing out on that golden sunshine, instead slaving away to satisfy The Man.

The sun had started to set when my stomach growled to express a carnal hunger rather different from the typical one that dominated my life. After taking a deep breath and letting out a long exhalation, I closed down the various programs running and shut down my computer before reclining back in my desk chair and thinking about what I wanted to eat.

My high-rise apartment building was only a few blocks from the beach, just past the Third Street Promenade and within walking distance of the world-famous Santa Monica Pier, so I wasn’t short on options. There were fancy five-star restaurants, cheap street vendors, and everything in between. One could find gourmet French cuisine, burgers and fries, or eclectic Asian Fusion.

Everyone in the world considers different parameters when choosing where to grab a bite. One parameter perhaps more unique to me was a restaurant’s likelihood of attracting beautiful young women in their clientele. Thankfully, Santa Monica had a plethora of such establishments. My city had a vibrant nightlife. And in addition to the youthful, adventurous, entertainment-seeking locals who lived in my area, there was a constant flow of tourists year-round in search of a good time to meet, hang out, and hook up.

That third activity was my favorite, of course. And even though I’d gotten laid multiple times with Hannah both last night and this morning, after spending the majority of my day glued to the desk chair in my home office, I was eager to go in search of fresh pussy.

In the end I decided to visit the Santa Monica Pier. The restaurants there were overpriced tourist traps, but they also featured the highest probability of meeting adventurous young women on vacation who were looking for a good time. And I soon found myself strolling along the boardwalk past the “End of the Trail” Route 66 sign and towards the huge lit-up Ferris Wheel at the end of the pier, half-looking for a place to eat and half-looking for pretty girls.

As usual, The Ax Effect had many different girls half-looking at me. They couldn’t really help it; their gazes were drawn to me as if by magnets, remember? And as I continued along through the crowd, I found myself meeting the eyes of more than a few beautiful women who somewhat unexpectedly caught themselves looking at me.

A trio of tall, slender blonde babes talking to each other with Eastern European accents seemed promising, and we exchanged warm smiles until I realized they were a mom and two teenagers (most likely jailbait). A glammed-up brunette with big fake tits put on display in a black leather corset winked at me, and I winked back once I recognized her as a one of the local hookers on the prowl. A variety of middle-aged ladies gazed dreamily in my direction, not that I paid them any mind. I wasn’t necessarily averse to older women - I’d enjoyed several exciting cougar hookups in the past several years - but my preference had always been for hotties closer to my own age.

A couple of petite Asian cuties holding a map caught my attention, and they giggled and blushed when I flashed them a smile. Holding their hands over their mouths as if in embarrassment, they turned to each other and babbled excitedly. But when they looked back at me and realized I was heading their way, they got scared and started walking away. I followed slowly, already formulating my opening lines about asking if they needed directions and offering to be their guide. It had been a while since I’d had a threesome, and the shortest girls often had the tightest twats.

The two girls came to a stop facing away from me, joining a small crowd off to the side by a railing. There were always street performers on the pier, busking for tips: magicians, musicians, dancers, and the like. And I stepped behind the petite girls, looking over their heads to see what all the fuss was about.

An old Asian man with white hair and a stereotypical Fu Manchu mustache and beard sat on a stool inside a large circle formed by a thick, braided rope typically used on a boat dock for tying up ships. A small Beats Pill speaker played a haunting melody of Chinese zither music. Adding to the man’s overly stereotypical look, he wore a red and black hanfu outfit straight from the ancient Qing Dynasty, complete with a traditional scholar’s hat. But even with his overly garish outfit, nobody was looking at the man himself.

A woven basket had been placed directly in front of the old man, safely within the circle of rope. The basket’s lid was off and set aside, holding several dollar bills, a couple of fives, and a twenty. Within the basket itself, what looked like a King Cobra waved side-to-side in the air, ready to strike. And the circle of hushed onlookers stared at it as close as they dared without coming within range of the venomous serpent’s deadly range.

“Step into the circle. Do you believe in Destiny?” the old Asian man invited to all in a thick accent, beckoning with one slowly waving hand that almost matched the hypnotic sway of the upright serpent. “Find out who is fated to live. And who is fated to die.”

No one actually stepped forward, but almost everyone glanced around wondering who just might. The two cuties in front of me chittered together before turning to look back at me over their shoulders in unison, as if they sensed my presence behind them. Their eyes went wide as they saw me, but a moment later, one of them gestured forward, asking in what sounded like a Cantonese accent, “Did you want to try?”

I rolled my eyes and shrugged like it was no big deal. For one thing, I knew that King Cobras were brown or black with patches of yellow. This snake was clearly quite green, patterned with alternating ragged light and dark stripes. Further, it didn’t have the trademark hood of a real cobra. So I was pretty damn sure that the snake wasn’t actually a cobra, nor was it likely of any real danger to me.

I mean, I lived in America. Whether a cobra or something else, I was pretty sure the authorities running the Santa Monica Pier wouldn’t let a real venomous snake perform in an unregulated public space like this where it might actually hurt someone and cause all sorts of liability issues.

“Step up, young man, if you are brave enough,” the old man called, pointing directly at me.

“C’mon, bro. You can do it!” a guy hollered encouragement.

I shrugged, looked back at the old man, and asked reasonably, “What kind of a snake is it?”

His eyes turned to half-slits as he raised his chin and mumbled something in Cantonese that I didn’t catch. I glanced around, finding that nobody else seemed to understand what he said, at least until one of the petite girls in front of me turned back around to explain, “Mangshan pit viper. Very dangerous.”

I frowned and gestured at the still-waving snake. “Pit vipers don’t stand up like that. They remain coiled and only strike when prey get close enough. This must be some kind of elaborate trick.”

“Then you have nothing to fear,” the old man challenged before opening his mouth in a mocking grin, revealing only a half-dozen yellow, rotting teeth.

I harbored no death wish, but the overly theatrical old geezer had publicly challenged me, and I didn’t want to look like a fool. I knew I couldn’t actually be hurt here. This was California: the Lawsuit State. And besides, there were two pretty girls staring at me in awe.

So with a sigh, I stepped up to the circle of rope. A roar of cheers and encouragement burst from the small crowd, louder than I had expected, and I turned to realize that more and more people had arrived. There had to be at least fifty people around, all watching and waiting to see if I’d chicken out.

“What am I supposed to do?” I asked.

“She can be yours,” the old man intoned before cracking another gap-toothed grin and laughing as he added, “For the right price.”

I rolled my eyes. “Of course there’s a price.”

“For twenty dollars, you may hold her,” he explained, the thickness of his accent diminishing as we got down to business. “For a hundred, you may walk her beyond the circle and return her, basking in the praise of all who witness you.”

I stood up straight and arched an eyebrow, looking dubious.

The man then added, “For a thousand, you may keep her.”

“I’ve no desire to keep a snake,” I scoffed, reaching into my pocket for my wallet for a twenty. It wasn’t that I wanted to spend the money, but I still considered it a small price to pay to keep my pride and not back out.

“What a man desires and what he is destined for are very rarely the same thing,” the man scoffed, waving his hand dismissively. “Keep your money.”

I frowned, already holding up the bill. “What?”

The old man’s eyes went half-lidded, as if he were in a trance. He raised his right hand palm up and quietly mouthed words no one could hear, looking for all the world like he was communing with the spirit world. I had to admit, even after all of the other street performers I’d seen here on the pier over the years, it was a pretty convincing act.

“Step into the circle,” the man finally intoned, his thick accent back full-force. “Fate has already decided for you.”

“You can do it!” the guy from the crowd hollered again.

Taking a deep breath, I took a step forward. But abruptly, one of the girls behind me reached out and grabbed my wrist, arresting my forward movement. She instinctively babbled something in Cantonese before catching herself and switching to English. “You must not! It is a viper! Very dangerous!”

“I’m sure it’s not really dangerous,” I reassured her, tugging back on my wrist to free it. “They wouldn’t let someone bring a deadly snake here. It’s probably a garden snake of some kind that this guy has managed to train to stand up.”

But she held my wrist firmly with both hands. “I mean it. It is a viper. A real one! My brother had a Mangshan and I know the pattern. Also, garden snakes have circle… ah… circle eyes!”

“Round pupils?” I ventured.

The girl let go of my hand long enough to point and then pinch her fingertips together. “This one has… skinny eyes!”

I frowned and took a hard look at the snake. It was still waving side-to-side, and from this range I had no idea how the girl might be able to tell whether or not the snake had round or elliptical pupils. Still, I was pretty confident that there was no way an actually dangerous snake would be here on the pier, and I didn’t want to let any sense of fear override my better judgment.

“It’s not a viper,” I stated with conviction, removing the girl’s hands from my wrist and then tossing the twenty-dollar bill onto the overturned basket lid along with the other tips.

“It IS a viper,” the old man intoned.

“Well of course you would say that,” I told him. “Let’s get this over with.”

The snake actually hissed the moment I finally crossed the line of the rope circle. Its mouth widened, and I stared at the two long ivory fangs, needle sharp, pointing down from its mouth. Was it just my imagination, or were there tiny drops of venom on the tips of the fangs, glistening in the fading sunlight?

It had to be my imagination. Besides, they had just turned on the pier lamps, which were casting lots of extra beams of light from unexpected directions.

“Take her…” the old man intoned through half-lidded eyes. “Claim your destiny…”

“It is dangerous!” the girl behind me warned with a wail.

“You can do it!” the guy in the crowd repeated.

After one more deep breath, I let out a sigh of resignation more than anything else and then dropped to one knee in front of the snake’s basket. It sized me up, hissing again as it waved side-to-side, staring me right in the eyes as if it were almost human. But as soon as I began to extend my hand forward, it refocused its attention on that instead.

“Take her…” the man repeated. “She is fated to be yours!”

I was tired of the act by now. Hesitating any longer would only drag out the drama, which I was sure would be great for the old man, but unnecessary for me. Knowing full well that the snake wouldn’t actually strike, I rather casually reached my hand out to grab it, not even in a hurry. And sure enough, it made no attempt to dart at my hand.

Instead, the snake continued waving side-to-side as if it didn’t even recognize my approaching hand anymore. At that point, I figured it was a realistic-looking animatronic. No way would a real pit viper be able to keep its body upright in a cobra-stance for that long, anyways. That said, the snake’s supple, almost silky skin certainly felt real enough as soon as I encircled its body with my hand. And when I started to lift it out of the basket, the rest of its body reached up to coil around my forearm.

Definitely not an animatronic.

The crowd cheered as I turned around and held the snake aloft. I saw visible relief on some of them who had worried the thing might actually bite me, especially the two cute Chinese girls in front. I winked at the one who had tried to warn me, and she batted her eyelashes prettily in response.

Wicked-hot petite Chinese girls threesome, coming right up.

Oh, and some clam chowder. I was still hungry.

Pain suddenly shot through the back of my hand, and I immediately opened my hand as if I’d been stabbed, which… well… I had.

Somebody screamed. Maybe it was me. I turned to look down, finding the green pit viper’s fangs buried in my flesh. It seemed to be looking straight at me, and this time I could clearly see its diamond-shaped pupils glistening in the light.

More people started screaming.

Shaking my hand, I tried to dislodge the creature, but with more than half of its body coiled around my forearm, it wouldn’t let go. Indeed, now that I was no longer holding it just beneath its head, when the snake yanked its teeth out, it had plenty of room to first hiss and then strike straight at my face.

Miracle of miracles, I managed to simultaneously jerk my head back and swing my arm away just far enough for the snake’s fangs to fall just short of piercing my cheek. Only then did I feel its body start to uncoil from my arm. And a moment later, it released me to drop down and race for freedom.

The viper wasn’t the only thing falling. My head was tilted back, and lights swirled in spirals above me across the darkening night sky. The Ferris Wheels’ rainbow kaleidoscope of colors joining the swirl filled my vision with an overabundance of sensory inputs, to the point where I couldn’t see anything at all.

I didn’t even feel myself hit the deck.

****

Unwanted, overly intense lights once again blinded me, but this time I was able to raise a hand and block them out. Well, the bright white light in front of me I was able to block out; but flashing red and white lights still bounced off the surfaces around me.

The pungent scent of smelling salts still wafted beneath my nostrils, and I was able to focus, I realized there was a uniformed paramedic kneeling over me. He took the pen light away from my face and sat back a bit on his haunches, stating, “Take it easy, sir. Don’t try to get up too fast.”

I blinked several times, taking stock of my situation. I laid flat on my back, feeling the unyielding, uneven surface of the pier’s wood deck planks beneath me. A quick glance at my surroundings indicated that I was in the exact same spot where I’d fallen. An ambulance was parked nearby. And there was still a crowd of people around me, although the two cute Chinese girls were nowhere to be seen.

“The snake?” I asked, my throat feeling unexpectedly raw. “What happened to the snake?”

“We’ve asked around. Nobody knows. It’s not here anymore, but that’s not much of a concern,” he replied.

“Not much of a concern!” I exclaimed, propping myself up on my elbows. “There’s a venomous pit viper on the loose and you don’t think it’s much of a concern?”

The paramedic favored me with a lopsided smirk. “Venomous? Nah. It was probably a garden snake of some kind.”

“It bit me!”

“Which is how we know it’s not venomous.” The man gently took my hand and held it up for me to see. There were two puncture wounds from when the snake had bitten me, but even to my untrained eye, it was clear that there was no swelling, discoloration, or any other signs of venom.

I blinked. “But… but… I got so dizzy… and then the lights started swirling… and… and the toxicity knocked me out.”

The paramedic’s smirk widened, but a moment later he cleared his throat and schooled his features into a mask of seriousness. “In all honesty, sir, you most likely fainted. Simple as that.”

I frowned. “I don’t faint.”

“I understand that, sir.”

I scowled and pursed my lips, my wounded pride daring him to contradict me. But instead he merely fought to maintain his mask of seriousness for another second or two until he stood up and then extended a friendly hand down to help me up as well.

With a sigh, I reached up to take his hand. A moment later I was on my feet and looking around. Not only were the two cute Chinese girls gone, but so was the old Fu Manchu man, his basket, and even the rope circle. I wondered how much money he’d already made tonight. It couldn’t have been THAT much, at least not enough to make all this commotion worthwhile.

Turning back to the paramedic, I asked, “Is there anything wrong with me?”

“Nothing but the bite marks. I’ll put on some ointment and bandage them. But after that, you’ll be good to go.”

I took a deep breath and then sighed wearily. A moment later, my stomach gurgled angrily at me. I still hadn’t eaten a thing.

What a fucking night.

****

With all thoughts of hooking up with cute tourists pushed aside and out of mind, I let out a long burp and then pushed aside the remnants of my clam chowder in a bread bowl. I sat all alone on a barstool at my kitchen island, an empty beer bottle and my dinner’s take-out bag my only companions. I kept the lights low and indirect. I was starting to get a headache, and brighter lights would only make it even worse. Just one more thing adding to my evening of misery.

It was times like these that I wished I had a steady girlfriend instead of a variety of hookups and a few regular booty calls who all liked me well enough but could never really keep up with my rapacious libido. A steady girlfriend would keep me company on a night like this, giving me someone to talk to while sharing a meal. A steady girlfriend would ask about my day and then tell me about hers. A steady girlfriend would get up from her barstool and go collect a glass of water and two Tylenol to help relieve my headache while perhaps also giving me a shoulder massage to help soothe away my tension.

Or perhaps recline against the sofa’s backrest with her legs in the air and let me fuck away my tension.

Okay, with the meal now finished, thoughts of hooking up with cute tourists were coming back into mind.

But I was in no position to go hunting. Not tonight. Not with this headache and not with this… feeling… like I needed to throw up.

I didn’t quite need to vomit. It felt more like another burp that didn’t quite want to come out. My stomach felt stretched, like there was too much pressure inside it. And after bending forward over the counter, I yawned and raised my right leg just a little bit until a massive fart exploded out of my ass so suddenly and so hard I wouldn’t be surprised if I’d blown a hole through my pants.

Seriously, though, I rather hoped not, because it also felt like I might’ve shit myself a little. And I really didn’t want to be cleaning up tiny pellets of poop from my luxury apartment floors.

Thankfully, the fart had at least relieved some of the gas, and I felt a million times better. But the headache was still there, and I finally stepped off my barstool and headed around for the medicine drawer to retrieve my bottle of Tylenol.

I quickly downed two pills. Then, feeling filthy and craving a shower, I staggered into my bathroom and started stripping down. A quick check of my silk boxers confirmed that no holes had been blasted through the material. But they still smelled like ass, and I honestly couldn’t be sure there weren’t shit-smears in them. And not feeling in the mood to toss them in the laundry, I dumped the boxers into the trash can instead.

Minutes later, I stood beneath the hot, soothing spray of my shower. It wasn’t often that I showered alone, and I wasn’t particularly thrilled to be doing so now. Cleaning up was just so much more fun with a naked girl’s soapy boobs rubbing your back, you know? And I somewhat regretted not calling up one of my semi-regular booty calls to come join me first.

Still, I knew I could still call up one of them as soon as I got out. Even if my dinnertime hunt hadn’t exactly gone according to plan, that didn’t mean the night had to be a total bust. But after stepping out of the shower, toweling off, and heading into my bedroom to change into nice clothes presentable enough to wear in front of a beautiful girl, the feelings of gaseous nausea started to build in my belly again.

And I did NOT want to have another epic fart in front of a beautiful girl. I knew with absolute certainty that if I did, whichever semi-regular booty call I’d brought over would never, ever want to see me again.

Realizing I should take some Pepto, I staggered back into the kitchen’s medicine drawer and pulled it out. But before I could grab the little bottle of pink pills, my abdominals clenched of their own accord, bending me forwards over the kitchen island. Bracing both hands on the countertop, I let out a loud, noxious belch that sounded more like a sick dinosaur’s than a human’s. And then my ass started to feel like it wanted to fart again.

Oh, shit.

The headache roared back, worse than ever. My stomach clenched, and suddenly I was sweating so much it felt like I was in the shower again. While my left arm went around my midsection, I planted my right palm on the countertop and braced my forehead against it just in time to let rip with yet another mega-fart that rivaled the cataclysmic celestial impacts from the formation of the universe.

At least the release of gas once again gave me a sense of peace. I was still sweating like crazy, my shirt was wet, and my skin felt clammy. But when I looked up and raised my head, my eyes jerked open wide, and I shouted in terror as I stared at the back of my right hand.

Sickly green and purple colors spread out like spiderwebs from beneath the bandages covering the snake-bite wounds, as if my veins and arteries had started carrying radioactive waste instead of blood. There were no red rashes and the flesh itself had not started swelling. It was just the unearthly color that gradually expanded further and further across my hand and then down my forearm that set off alarm bells in my mind.

That and the intense, piercing pain.

Pain.

Pain.

PAIN.

So much pain.

I was gonna die.

My stomach heaved. My ass felt like it was filling with gas again. But the pain radiating needles of sharp, stinging agony throughout my entire body was far worse than anything else. I needed help. I needed to get to an emergency room. I needed to dial 9-1-1.

But my cell phone was back in my bedroom.

It took all the energy I had to push myself off the counter. I managed to take two steps towards my bedroom before my legs buckled and I collapsed. I gasped for breath, feeling the internal gas pressure inside my body’s cavity expanding so much that my lungs were being crushed.

I couldn’t breathe.

I couldn’t move.

I was gonna die.

Over-pressured blood roared in my ears and squeezed my brain.

Phantom lights swirled in spirals across my vision, a rainbow kaleidoscope of colors blinding me completely. Inhumanly pungent scents filled my nostrils. Wet slime coated my fingers. And loud banging sounds echoed off the walls within my skull, as if someone were taking a hammer to the back of my head.

But then the banging sounds abruptly stopped, and I suddenly felt cool hands gripping my arms and rolling me over onto my back. Fresh stabbing pain abruptly blossomed from my chest, directly over my heart, but the agony from its impact diminished almost instantaneously.

Cooling ice began to spread outwards from my chest, quenching the fires of needle-like anguish that by now had covered my entire body. Further and further the revitalizing relief expanded down my torso and outwards down my limbs, turning off each point of pain as it went. And within seconds, the torture was over.

The phantom lights were gone. I still smelled like sweat and stank of ass, but the nausea had passed and I no longer felt the urge to hurl. My skin still felt clammy and my shirt was soaked through, but I’d stopped sweating. And the room fell into silence around me, save for the sounds of my own breathing…

… and hers.

A petite young woman with electric-blue-dyed hair in a disconnected pixie cut with shaved black sides loomed over me, concern etched into her warm, almond-shaped eyes.

“Holy shit!” she exclaimed. “You alright? Still breathing? Okay… okay…” By this point it should’ve been fairly obvious that I was still breathing, although the girl seemed to be muttering more to herself for reassurance than anything else.

I panted heavily, my chest rising and falling. Speaking of my chest, I glanced down at it to see a very large syringe sticking out of it, with the kind of massive needle usually used for animal tranquilizers instead of humans. “What the…?” I gasped with wide eyes.

“Anti-venom,” the girl explained breathlessly. “I can’t believe they sent a viper after you. But that was the only one I had, and if she catches up to you again, there’ll be nothing we can do. C’mon. We gotta go. We gotta GO.”

“Go?” I gasped, still gesturing at the massive syringe sprouting up from my chest. “Who’s ‘they’? Who’s ‘she’? Go where?”

“Away from here,” the girl insisted, unceremoniously grabbing the syringe and then yanking it up and out of my chest without a second’s thought.

“FUCK!” I exclaimed. The damn needle hurt even more coming out than it had going in. And I half-expected a fountain of blood to come spurting out.

But no such fountain spurted, and the blue-haired girl quickly got to her feet. “C’mon, Aksel,” she urged. “We’ve gotta go.”

“Nuh-uh. No way,” I retorted, scooting backwards away from her until my back bonked into the wall. Still on the floor, I raised my knees defensively and balled my fists. “I don’t know who you are, and I don’t know how the hell you know my name. So I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what’s going on.”

“No time.” The girl shook her head vehemently. “If they catch me, they’ll kill me the same as you. I’ve risked enough banging down the door to come rescue you. You want answers? Come with me. But I’ve got to get out of here to save my own skin.”

“I’m NOT leaving with a stranger when I don’t even know her name,” I insisted.

Groaning as if I were the most uncooperative toddler in history standing in front of a toilet refusing to be potty trained, the blue-haired girl threw her head back and balled her fists momentarily before glaring at me with pure annoyance all over her face.

“I’m Rae. That’s my name. Stay or go? That’s up to you. But come with me if you want to live.”

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