Gus kept his eyes squeezed shut, praying that the heavy, cool weight draped across his ankles was just a piece of wet driftwood.
He lay perfectly still on the sand. The shipwreck had left him battered, salt-crusted, and exhausted, but it was the sound that kept him paralyzed. It wasn’t the roar of the ocean. It was a dry, continuous rasping, like sandpaper being dragged over concrete. Thousands of sheets of sandpaper.
Shhh-krr. Shhh-krr.
A forked tongue flicked against his calf, tasting the salt on his skin.
Gus’s breath hitched in his throat, a jagged whimpering sound escaping his lips. He opened his eyes.
The beach wasn’t beige. It was a writhing tapestry of green, obsidian, and russet patterns. They were everywhere, coiled around the debris of the ship, knotting over one another in heaps, burying the sand beneath a layer of muscle and scale.
He didn’t scream; his vocal cords were frozen in a rictus of terror. He scrambled backward, his heels digging into the shifting mass. He felt soft bodies burst under his weight, snapping spines, but for every one he crushed, three more poured into the depression his body left behind.
He saw a jagged rock formation jutting out of the surf fifty yards away, a gray spire rising clear of the infestation.
Gus ran.
He didn’t feel the bites at first. The adrenaline masked the sharp, needle-pricks against his shins. He thrashed through the surf, kicking away the coils that tried to snare his legs, and hauled himself up the sharp volcanic rock. He climbed until his fingers bled, scrambling up to a narrow ledge twenty feet above the water.
He collapsed, gasping, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped beast. He was safe. The rock was too steep, too slick with sea spray.
The sun began to set, dipping below the horizon and plunging the island into a sudden, chilling twilight. The air temperature plummeted.
Gus hugged his knees, shivering. He closed his eyes, exhaustion finally winning.
Then came the sound.
It wasn’t from below. It was a soft, wet plap on his shoulder.
He looked up.
The cliff face above him was moving. In the cooling air, the swarm wasn’t hunting for food. They were cold-blooded. They were desperate for warmth.
And Gus was the only thing on the island radiating heat.
From the darkness above, the ceiling of snakes detached itself, dropping like a heavy, living rain.
By Pamela Beach ‘Beyond the Blog’
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Pamela Beach is a multi-genre author, poet, and lyricist who writes from her home on California’s foggy Central Coast. She is the creator of the “Morro Bay fog-mythos” and author of The Unstoppable You. You can read more of her work and explore her complete “fog-mythos” collection at her blog, Beyond the with Pamela Beach
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