Fresh out of high school, Janice Peters knew that she was cut out to be an actress. After playing a tree in first grade, she just had to have more of that sweet green light that only shown on performers. She would sign up for a play at any opportunity; the pinnacle of her school play career was, in her opinion, when she had landed a lead role as Joan of Arc. Her head of flowing brown locks and, to say the least, fine proportions of the rest of her body were only bound to propel her further onto the silver screen. She had it all: talent and looks.
The first commission from a budding studio came only a few days after her graduation. They called themselves Desert Rose; their aim, so the commission said, was to redo ancient romance scripts for the modern audience. Their first job was Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra, and they wanted Janice to play the role of Egypt's most notorious queen after only a few tryouts.
Then the issue of the cobra came up.
Everyone at the studio knew that cobras were deadly. Some said that, because Shakespeare's text was vague, they could, in theory, get away with some other snake. Others insisted that they use a cobra for the production because the trademark hood would instantly tell the audience "OK, this is a venomous species." Others still wanted a real asp, even though it had been decided long ago that an Egyptian cobra was the most likely suspect of Cleopatra's death.
It wasn't until someone suggested, "I have a friend who's experimenting with false water cobras" that the problems really began.
Apparently this friend was something of an eccentric. He was trying to breed the false cobras for less-potent venom in hopes of making a snake with venomous capabilities on par with a common cornsnake. The tests had, so far, been effective on mice; none had shown any toxic symptoms, but had instead been constricted and eaten normally.
Now, remember that this was a new studio who was completely unaware that false water cobras had bad tempers. Sure, they were far from being as poisonous as a true cobra, but that didn't make them necessarily pleasant.
It was the owner of the snakes, not the studio manager, who suggested that she come over and see what would be biting her on the breast. It would be a female, he explained, because males were nothing short of monstrous the vast majority of the time; as long as she would survive the ordeal, Janice really didn't care. She just wanted to be comfortable around a slightly-venomous snake when the time came to shoot.
"'Lo there," the breeder - Janice had heard his name as "Will Harris," so she recalled - greeted at the actress' entrance into his humble abode. He had a bit of an accent that Janice couldn't quite place, and clearly wasn't used to talking to anyone formally. His house, she could tell, was completely devoted to reptiles- every room was stacked to the top with Rubbermaid containers and various plastic-glass combos.
Janice passed a myriad of other reptiles as she was led to the false cobras. A white and red boa constrictor flicked his forked tongue as she passed by; some sort of green python was entwined around a branch against a photographic background; in cages that could probably fit a full-grown man inside, serpents like coiled, painted, muscular trees lounged.
The menagerie was a feast for the eyes, but the pythons and boas were merely appetizers. The main course - a female water cobra that William had dubbed Electra - had definitely been worth the wait. Deep brown blotches on the snake's back contrasted sharply with her natural, tan background color. Janice noticed that the snake had an obvious hood, but lacked the typical upward posture that defined a cobra. Her patterning, nonetheless, put Hollywood fashion to shame; they could imitate natural beauty, but there was no fabric exquisite enough to replicate such a pattern, scale for scale, pigment for pigment. Her amber eyes and flicking tongue were focused upon the two humans who had entered her domain, almost as if saying "what fools enter here?" with her gaze.
"She's beautiful," was all that the wide-eyed actress could breathe.
"Isn't she, though?" Will affirmed, taking the serpent out of her watery terrarium with a snake hook. "Careful, she still bites a bit- touch her on the body if at all."
Janice reached out a hand nervously to pet that beautiful, patterned, scaly skin. It wasn't that she had a phobia of snakes; no, this was quite the opposite. Electra had left her awestruck with her natural beauty. So much of the entertainment industry revolved around acting and lies, so seeing something that was so beautiful by birth was simply astonishing.
It struck Janice that, of all things, this snake -this creature so associated with lies and deception, with death and decay- was one of the most beautiful, honest beings she had ever met. She didn't know much about keeping reptiles, but, just from her wanderings in this man's house, one thing was certain: There was absolutely no bullshit to be had around an animal that could crush a pig, breath by fainter breath, and swallow it whole. You either knew what you were doing or would end up going to the hospital.
And, heaven help her, something was positively enthralling about that.
"Now, this'll sound odd," William warned, snapping Janice out of her verily trancelike state.
"Hm?" was all the actress could say.
"Could you, ahh, strip for me?" the herper asked with a blush. "Well, it's more for Electra, really...she's the one that's going to be biting you through the suit or whatever. Call it a rehearsal without the garb on."
Janice's first instinct would have been to say no. She would have gladly denied such a nerd the chance to see a naked movie star. Mind, he was helping the studio, but he was obviously a bit desperate for a look at an attractive woman's body. It was obvious by his unkempt hair and general disregard for the social hierarchy that he cared for reptiles more than people, but that didn't mean he lacked a typical male libido.
Then he said it was for the snake. That changed everything. Janice couldn't exactly place why it changed how she felt about the subject matter, but she was defintely willing to take her clothes off for the beautiful serpent.
So, with Electra watching her from the hook, Janice began to strip. It started with her light green T-shirt, then quickly progressed to the removal of her running shorts. She had to peek over at Electra again before removing her underthings; she really didn't want the reptile man to notice that thinking about the serpent had made her a little bit wet, but it felt almost like Electra was encouraging the motion. She finally knelt, fully nude, on a bed patterned with a snakeskin sheet.
"Now, if you'll excuse me," Will said. With a Q-Tip, he dabbed a bit of something called Mouse Maker on her right breast. Janice asked what it was; he told her that it was something used to encourage stubborn feeders when they switched from mice to rats, or when (for reasons he didn't quite understand) they fed their snakes sausages made from assorted mouse bits.
Whatever it was, it made Electra suddenly go on high alert. Darting her head in different directions in search of the new scent, she flicked her forked tongue in long, slow licks before focusing on the nude actress.
"Now, you sure you're ready for this, Janice?" the reptile man asked. The actress gave a firm nod; she was as ready as she'd ever be.
Janice was tempted to run. A bead of sweat trickled down her cheek as the snake was placed on the bed before her; despite her admiration of the serpent before her, there was the constant, primitive fear that only came from a prey item being watched by a predator. She figured that was how a live rodent must feel before-
Before it was struck.
"Ah!" Janice let out a small scream as the snake bit her on the rack. A bite on such a sensitive area was actually a bit less painful than she had imagined; it felt more like a series of pins had pricked her breast, but there came a feeling without a name. That cold bite on her tender breast had led to a simply electric emotion that probably didn't have a location in the brain for neurologists to pinpoint; it was somewhere between arousal and revulsion, between love and hate, between fight and flight, between light and darkness. The gates of Hell and Heaven had been opened, and she was right in the glorious thick of the chaos. She was both wounded and strengthened by this feeling without a name; it was her medicine and her poison.
It felt...wild. Primal. Savage. Full of emotion, but emotionless.
She had plenty of time to dwell on it as the reptile man unhinged the serpent from her teat. Electra's teeth had left bleeding, red marks, but she didn't care.
Will, however, cared a lot. He gave her his number and bade her to call him immediately if anything happened.
"Don't worry," she told him, "I don't feel a thing now except some mild pain from the bite."
Nonetheless, Janice drove from his house a changed woman. She had never gotten that close to a snake before - indeed, it was hard to get closer than the intimate contact she had experienced with Electra.
Acting was a gloss term for "being a good liar," she had realized. No matter how bad a product or movie was, if good actors endorsed it, the company would make money off of the lie. It only worsened from there in a sickening snowball effect; not only would people buy the crap that came with the lie, but once people started idolizing you, they wanted to lie, too. Girls starved themselves to look as attractive as their idols; people would spend countless amounts of money just to WATCH you lie, again and again. Then a liar would marry a fellow deceiver, and even more untruths would be written about the affair.
Janice rubbed her forehead a little as she walked up the stairs to her apartment. Thinking this hard was giving her a bit of a headache, but no matter how hard she tried to push it aside and focus on her lines, she couldn't stop stewing over the fact that she had trained all her life to become a professional liar.
It was only when she scratched at some peeling skin on her waist that she noticed something was really bizarre. Instead of feeling softer skin beneath the dried flakes, something hard was starting to form. She quickly got in front of a mirror to get a better view at the growth.
"Scales..." Janice gasped. Indeed, the pattern that was spreading across her torso mimicked that of Electra, down to the rows, pattern, and shape of the scales. With a loud snap, a tail, which itself blossomed with a full coat of brown, camouflaged scales, burst free of her spine, ripping her shorts to smithereens in seconds. Were she not already in a panic, Janice would not have noticed her breathing suddenly becoming deeper, almost as if something was happening to her lungs...
With a shocked twist of her stomach, she realized that her very torso was stretching, making her fall over almost as soon as she was aware of the fact. She tried to support herself the best she could with her arms, which, while also becoming scaly from her elbows down, were quickly tipped with the thick, mildly-venomous claws that replaced her weak fingernails. Her legs were swiftly being reduced to bony stumps before becoming nothing at the base of her scaly, five-foot-long tail. The rest of her extended ribcage blended seamlessly with it, but oh, that wasn't the biggest change she felt.
No. As her serpentine half finally began to finish its rampant effect on her body, she could feel her urges rise. Whether this was because of the mental serpent, that Kundalini that yogi spoke of so often, coming to the fore, or perhaps because her clitoris had grown to match her new, thicker body, Janice didn't care. The freakiest part was over; there remained a sense of power, a sense of lust...
A sense of truth.
Almost playfully -and, to her relief, easily- she slithered over to her purse in her new body. Being quite careful not to scratch any part of her phone with her new claws, she dialed the number of that reptile guy. She saw her forked tongue flick eagerly as the man's phone rang; it felt eerily like she was ordering a pizza.
"Come over. Right now," she said as soon as he picked up. Her tongue flicked again; she had been careful to avoid the S sounds. "I'm a bit hungry."
