One Of The Lowly Slitherers
While digging through folders full of old writing, we turned up some ancient prompts and decided to share them. We’ll return to the chain story next week.
- Queen of the Snake People
- the sleep lab
- a severed thumb
- I feel so stupid
One of the lowly slitherers should be doing this, thought Serpentina VII, High Queen over all who coil, slink, and strike. She walked up to the door of the darkened room, the unsavory packet in her right hand. The gold scales and interlocking jewels of her robes of state made sussurance in her wake, especially the long train that glided on the linoleum.
Opening the door, she whisked her robes into the room with practiced grace and softly closed it behind her to shut out the garish light of the hallway. The room was divided into small cubicles, and in each was a bed upon which a person slept. Wires attached to their faces trailed to machines that recorded mysterious electrical impulses. Their monitors provided the only illumination.
Serpentina VII looked into each cubicle she passed, hoping that her objective would be as self-evident as she presumed. But after checking all the sleepers, she’d found none with bandaged hands, and no blood or other signs of injury.
Granted, the return of the thumb would be purely symbolic. It had lain overnight on the flagstones outside the royal apartments, so any hope of reattaching it was futile. But Duke Poisonfang feared this incident might be seen as breaking the truce, and thus lead to open war with the cat people. He insisted that only the queen could avert such conflict, and his operatives provided the location for the return.
Queen Serpentina moved silently back to the door. This was the wrong place, but maybe the duke’s spies would have updated intel.
The door was locked.
All the machines’ monitors turned red. The sleepers sat up.
“A snake!” they all cried out as one. “Kill it!”
Serpentina smashed the glass and let herself out. She chided herself for ever listening to Poisonfang.