“Ophidiophobia”
“Before we begin,” Doctor Simonson said, “I think you should be aware that this is a somewhat...experimental procedure.”
“I’ll try anything,” Julia said. She looked haggard and wan, with dark circles under the eyes that testified to a lack of sleep. She knew she was a far cry from the lithe, tanned young woman she always pictured in her mind’s eye when she thought of herself, but it had been a rough few years. “You’re not the first psychiatrist I’ve seen, you know that. I’m not getting better—I’m getting worse, every day. Last week I actually started carrying an umbrella around with me, just so that I could have something over my head in case a snake somehow got inside the acoustical tiles and dropped down onto me.”
“You’re not carrying it now,” Doctor Simonson replied with a gentle smile. “I think that’s a sign of some progress.”
“Not really,” Julia said with a rueful grin of her own. “I stopped carrying it because I imagined opening it up one day and finding a snake inside.” She shuddered. “It’s not that I don’t know the fear is irrational, Doctor. It’s just that I can’t help picturing it in my mind, and once I do, I can’t make it go away. I knew it was irrational a year ago, when I accepted a transfer to North Dakota just so I could come to a cold climate. But knowing it’s irrational doesn’t help.”
“No, it doesn’t,” Doctor Simonson said understandingly. “And the previous therapies—”
“No help at all,” Julia said, shaking her head. “I started seeing someone about two weeks after I moved up to North Dakota, when I started having the nightmares about the snakes crawling into bed with me in search of warmth...” She trailed off for a moment, the mental image inspiring another instinctive shudder of revulsion before she reminded herself it wasn’t real, couldn’t be possible, never happened (except that it did sometimes, she’d read about it, how could it be irrational if snakes really did swim up through the toilet pipes sometimes and bite you from underneath or—)
Julia clamped down hard on that train of thought. “But all the conventional therapies have failed. Some have just made it worse, I think; exposing me to the object of the phobia just made me even more sensitive to it. They put me in a room with a snake in a box, and after about five minutes, I was screaming. I just...I need it to stop. I need to be me again. If your therapy will do that, I don’t care if it involves electroshock and a lobotomy at the same time.”
Doctor Simonson said, “No, nothing so severe as that. It’s just that the therapy you’re about to undergo wouldn’t have been possible even five years ago. Even now, the genetic engineering techniques we’re using are highly unconventional; there’s actually a lot about them we still don’t understand, which is why I’m only recommending this procedure to you because conventional therapies have failed and you’ve indicated a potential for self-harm.” He patted her on the shoulder reassuringly. “This might seem a little crazy, but it beats suicide.”
Somehow, Julia felt a little less certain about this after the reassurance. “Um...just what does this therapy involve, exactly?”
“I’m afraid I can’t tell you,” Doctor Simonson replied. “It’s part of the therapy. Now, you’ve signed the release forms already, but I do need a verbal confirmation that you’re ready before we can begin. So Julia...” He looked her square in the eye. “Are you ready?”
Julia almost said no. Something about the look on Doctor Simonson’s face when he looked at her triggered an almost subliminal reaction of distrust, like she knew he was lying about something even if she didn’t know what. Maybe even if he didn’t know what. She had a deep certainty in her gut that he wasn’t telling her what the therapy involved not because of any psychiatric concerns, but because if she knew, she wouldn’t do it.
But then she remembered the weeks of nightmares that had become months that had become years, the stark terror in her mind whenever she passed under a tree or walked past a field of tall grass, the panic attacks she’d gotten just from the ads for ‘Snakes on a Plane’ (and the living hell that air travel had become ever since then)...and she remembered the person she used to be. The person she wanted to be again. Julia knew that there wasn’t any choice. She had to say, “Yes.”
“Alright, then,” Doctor Simonson said. He checked off a box on her clipboard and walked to the door. “The therapy will commence as soon as I leave this room. And Julia? Remember, you are perfectly safe, no matter what.”
As soon as she heard that, Julia darted for the door, her earlier worries now crystallizing in her hindbrain into irrational panic. But she didn’t even make it halfway across the room before Doctor Simonson closed the door behind him with a sinister ‘click’ that made it clear it was locked tight. Julia wheeled around, not even sure what she was looking for yet but now in the grip of total fear. There had to be something, she knew, and it had to be bad, and...
A hatch in the wall slid open, and the biggest snake Julia had ever seen in her life slithered out of it.
“This is Rosa,” Doctor Simonson said over the loudspeakers. “She’s a genetically engineered Burmese python, the only one of her kind in the entire world. She’s the first snake ever designed for therapeutic purposes—we’ve specially crossed strands of DNA from a wide variety of reptilian species to produce a snake with no predatory instinct for human beings. She’s completely and totally safe, Julia.”
Julia heard the words, but they seemed distant and unimportant next to the giant fucking snake in the room. It just kept coming and coming and coming, coil after coil of thick, scaly, muscular serpent body sliding into the room as it tested the air with its forked tongue. She felt a hard surface against her back, and only then realized that she’d backed into the wall.
“It’s alright, Julia,” Doctor Simonson said. He was a little hard to hear at first, but once Julia stopped screaming, his voice was a bit easier to understand. “Rosa’s not going to hurt you. She’s genetically incapable of it. You’re the twenty-seventh patient who’s been in a room with Rosa, and all of the previous twenty-six came out not only alive, but completely cured of their fear of snakes.”
“I don’t care,” she whimpered. “I don’t care I don’t care I don’t care get it away from me get it away from me I don’t care let me out let me out let me out—” Julia looked around wildly for something to keep the snake at bay, but all the furniture was bolted down (and why hadn’t she noticed that before?) and there weren’t any windows and the snake was between her and the door (and getting closer, oh god it was getting closer and closer and closer and she couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t breathe)
Then Rosa looked her in the eyes.
Julia was astonished by the warmth she saw in the Rosa’s gaze. It seemed compassionate, somehow, friendly and welcoming in a way she’d never imagined being able to see in the eyes of a snake. She’d actually always thought of a serpent’s eyes as one of the creepiest things about them, two dark, beady little orbs that stared unblinkingly at their prey, but...
Rosa’s eyes weren’t dark at all. They seemed to glow as if lit by an inner light, pulsing with a soft green that slowly shifted into a deep blue, which was pushed out towards the iris in turn by a rich, warm yellow. Julia looked closer, trying to figure out what color she might see next in the snake’s strangely compelling stare.
Julia felt her breathing slow as her panic gradually subsided. The fear ebbed away as she watched band after band of color slowly and gently pulse outward from the center of Rosa’s eyes, replaced by a feeling of gentle peace and contentment. She honestly wasn’t sure which felt better, the contentment or the absence of what had become an almost constant terror.
“We’re not entirely sure where Rosa’s hypnotic abilities came from,” Doctor Simonson said over the loudspeakers, but Julia wasn’t paying attention to him anymore. His words just washed over her while she got better acquainted with her new friend. “We think it might be some sort of atavistic genetic sequence, something deep in her reptilian ancestry that came out somewhere in the cross-breeding. It’s probably the source of all the legends about a serpent’s mesmerizing gaze, though.”
Mesmerizing. Julia couldn’t think where she’d heard the word, but it stuck in her brain as she stared deep into the endless colors in the serpent’s eyes. She felt mesmerized. She tried for a moment to look away and found that she couldn’t; but instead of fear, that only produced more warm happiness in her mind. Rosa began to sway her head gently from side to side, and Julia found her body swaying in time to the rhythm.
The swaying produced a slow, gentle dizziness in Julia’s body, and she felt herself sinking to her knees without any conscious control of the process. It didn’t matter; it felt even easier to stare into Rosa’s eyes now that she was closer to the serpent’s eye level, and the rocking motion as she continued to follow Rosa’s movements with her body made her feel even more warm and comfortable. How had she ever been frightened of this? This was warmth, tranquility, bliss. There was nothing to fear in the endless fathoms of blue that shifted to yellow, yellow that shifted to green, green that shifted to blue once again...
The colors began moving faster, each eye shifting at a slightly different pace now as Julia sank deeper. She could almost imagine those same colors in her own eyes, as if Rosa was pouring the light down some imaginary connection straight into Julia’s drowsy, open mind. The thought quietly thrilled her as Rosa slithered even closer to her gently swaying form.
The snake’s eyes were now just inches from her own, and Julia felt the flickering tongue brushing against her skin as she stared helplessly into Rosa’s hypnotic gaze. She noticed out of the corner of her eyes that Rosa was coiling around her, wrapping her over and over and over again until her whole body was encircled with muscular serpent-flesh. Even then, Julia felt no fear at all. She was totally safe with Rosa. She didn’t just know it, she felt it.
The snake shifted its coils slightly, sending Julia toppling onto the floor to lie helplessly. She struggled a little, not from fear but just to feel the strength of the muscles holding her. She’d never been held like this before, so completely and powerfully captured, and something about it felt strangely erotic. The moment the thought came into her mind, Rosa’s eyes swirled even deeper with hypnotic power, and Julia fell even further into the sensation. She writhed in the serpent’s grasp, but now she was bucking her hips in arousal.
And somehow, Rosa knew it. That was the only explanation for the way that the tip of the serpent’s tail slithered up inside its own coils, questing for the hem of Julia’s skirt. That was the only possible reason why Rosa’s dexterous body wiggled its way past Julia’s panties to press against warm flesh.
So when Rosa slid her thick, muscular tail into Julia’s dripping pussy, pushing further and further in until almost a full foot of serpentine coils were buried in her cunt, it made perfect sense to her.
Julia moaned freely now, uncaring that Doctor Simonson must be watching the two of them, heedless of the taboos she was breaking. It wasn’t normal, but Rosa was no ordinary snake, either. She was warm, giving, hypnotic, a perfect lover in a way Julia had never imagined. Her skin felt warm and flushed with sensual heat, and the tail gently wriggling inside her pussy felt blood-warm now. She thrashed back and forth in ecstatic bliss, but Rosa’s coils held her as tightly as if she’d been bound.
“We think this is a natural consequence of the removal of Rosa’s predation instinct,” Doctor Simonson said clinically. “Since humans are no longer a source of food, Rosa looks to us for warmth...and stimulates sexual arousal as a means of producing greater body heat.” Julia knew it was more than just that, though. She could feel the connection between them, the devotion that Rosa brought to pleasing her lover. Julia knew she had to return that devotion, now and forever.
Julia grunted in orgasm as the snake’s tail slid in and out, in and out of her slick and steamy pussy. It felt like Rosa was never going to stop fucking her, and Julia never wanted her to. She heard herself mindlessly babbling, whimpering out a chant of obedience and worship and devotion to the creature that was taking her to new heights of helpless, hypnotic bliss. She felt better than she’d ever imagined, better than anyone could possibly imagine, and her eyes slipped closed so that she could feel each new peak of pleasure as it came. As she came. Even then, in her mind, she still saw the endless swirling bands of mesmerizing bliss as they sent her deeper into trance. It all felt so fucking good...
And then she felt Rosa’s fangs sinking into her shoulder, and knew that it felt even better. The bite wasn’t deep, almost more the nibble of a passionate lover than a serpent’s strike, and the venom felt warm and soothing as it flowed into her veins. Julia shivered once, then again as her orgasm took on an almost perpetual quality. She heard herself whimpering, shuddering, begging to be bitten again and again and again as the drug mingled with the sensations of the endless fucking to send her beyond bliss into a mindless trance of pure, obedient ecstasy.
Julia didn’t know how long she floated in that timeless, perfect state. She only noticed its passing as Rosa finally unwound her body from around Julia’s, and slithered away again towards her home in the wall. Julia felt barely together enough to pet Rosa’s sweat-slick scales as the serpent retreated; then she sagged onto the floor, floating in the afterglow.
Eventually, Doctor Simonson re-entered the room and helped her back onto her chair. “She must have really liked you,” he said. “She doesn’t bite just anyone.” He pulled his shirt aside for a moment to reveal twin scars on his own shoulder, healed and re-healed several times over. “It’s a harmless euphoric, by the way, although we still aren’t sure if it’s addictive or not. We’ve never seen any kind of serpent venom like it before to compare it to.”
Julia smiled dreamily. She still felt a little too dazed and dreamy to talk yet, so she just nodded and listened to Doctor Simonson’s words. “Of course, pythons aren’t generally venomous, but she’s got a lot of other snakes in her ancestry. One of them must have contributed something to the genetic mix.”
Doctor Simonson tilted Julia’s head back so she could look him in the eyes. She felt vaguely disappointed that they didn’t change colors. “Now, Julia...how do you feel about snakes?”
Julia’s smile widened into a blank, beatific grin. “love worship obey honor worship love...” she mumbled in a mindless chant until Doctor Simonson put a finger to her lips, stilling her voice.
“Good girl,” he replied. “It sounds like the initial treatment was very successful...” Julia saw it in his eyes for a moment as his face went ever so slightly slack and expressionless. She knew that she was not alone in her devotion. “...but I think that Rosa would like for me to schedule a follow-up session for you in the near future.” His eyes were distant now, seemingly staring at nothing, but Julia knew he was seeing the endless bands of pulsing light that captivated her still. “She doesn’t speak, but she has a way of letting you know what she wants. You’ll learn, in time.”
Julia whimpered in anticipation at the promise of his words. She sagged onto the chair, letting her mind slip back once again to the endless fall into Rosa’s serpentine gaze.