There was a snake on the dock.

Logan didn’t believe in signs. He wasn’t superstitious and he wasn’t especially religious. But he couldn’t deny that on his last day at the cabin, the last day before he had to give up the keys to the realtor… well, a black snake with glittering red eyes that twitched its tail and stared….

It was a little odd.

It was as if the world wanted to kick him when he was down. Worst week of your life? Here’s one more thing to make it even better!

The cabin had been in Logan’s family since his grandparents built it in the 1960s, back when the property prices in the Okanagan had been comparable with any other rural area in the country. There had been garden snakes around since before he could remember, but they were always people shy. You’d get one glance of glittering scales before they slithered under a bush or into a crack in a rock pile. Instead, this one lounged at the base of the dock as if it didn’t have a care in the world. If snakes had eyelids, it would be blinking lazily at him, brazen in its relaxation.

Creepy mother.

Maybe it was sick. Did snakes get sick? He had no desire to go anywhere near it, but at the same time, he wanted to enjoy his dock for one more day, dammit!

Logan made his way up the path to the utility shed, his flipflops making slick noises as they stuck to the burning wood. His family kept the lawnmower and gardening equipment there—if the tenants hadn’t stolen them.

A musky odor wafted from the room as he opened the door. Everything was there—inner tubes, gardening shears, his grandfather’s fishing rod mixed with the tools hanging from the wall. The tenants must have been so focused on their drug business that they hadn’t bothered absconding with the contents of the utility shed. After all, what growing druggie took time away from ruining their landlord’s property to fish?

He couldn’t help a deep feeling of shame from washing over him as he thought about the state of the cabin. His family had left him in charge of the finances. He’d done what he’d thought best. Every year, as the Okanagan had exploded with tourism, the property taxes just grew steeper, so he’d rented it out. What he hadn’t counted on was that the remoteness and water access had attracted the worst type of renter; a drug dealer that turned the attic and half the main floor into a marijuana grow op.

By the time he’d discovered it, the ceiling and walls were moist and full of mold, the insulation was shot, and his family’s vacation home was ruined. Insurance had refused to cover the repairs—there was a clause for drug dealer damage, apparently—and he couldn’t afford both the repair costs and the property taxes. Hence the realtor.

Logan ran a hand through his sweaty hair, feeling a tension headache coming on at the thought of the overdue conversation that needed to happen with his big sister. She didn’t know. His sister was always the responsible one, and he couldn’t face the judgment he knew was coming as soon as he admitted his failure.

Stinky balls! Couldn’t he have one more day to kick back with a couple of beers, lounge around in the sun and work on getting that skin-cancer tan? Reality could go ahead and stuff it.

He sighed before grabbing the fishing rod and making his way back over to the dock. Maybe the weird-ass snake had left.

Yeah, no such luck.

“Hey!” he shouted at the snake. “Piss off!”

The snake raised its head, tongue flashing as if it were tasting the air before apparently deeming Logan a nuisance to its sun-siesta. It lowered its head and went back to lounging around.

“Ugh,” Logan said, before inching forward and extending the fishing rod. He had no desire to hurt it—that would make a hell of a mess—he just needed it to leave.

A shudder passed through him as the end of the pole touched the side of the snake. He nudged it.

It reared, its body swivelling closer to the edge of the dock, dark eyes gleaming in the sun.

[Lifeform identified! Initializing System….]

Logan froze and then dropped the fishing rod as if it had turned into a hot wire. In the background, the snake also froze, jaws wide open and eyes glazed over.

Had his prescription sunglasses turned into VR glasses? Logan yanked them off, blinking in the glare of the sun.

But even as he stared, expecting to see that weird-ass text glowing from the lenses, the text hovered in front of his eyes no matter where he looked.

Was he hallucinating?

[Lifeform identified! Initializing System….]

A shimmer saturated the air. The dock underneath him shuddered, violent waves rocking the shore. But the air was still, the sun bright in the sky, not a breeze to be found.

Then, just as suddenly as it started, the lake calmed, and the dock stabilized so quickly it was as if he’d passed into the eye of a hurricane.

[Lifeform identified! System initialized.]

The message again! With a jolt, he blinked rapidly, trying to clear the hovering text. No matter what he did—closed his eyes, covered them with his hand—the words were still there, hovering. Then they changed, scrawling like text in an old-fashioned DOS system.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

[Lifeform identified as…]

[Human.]

[Protocols found for Species: Human.]

[Welcome to the System! Your world is in violation of Edict 10: Preservation of Species. Species: Human have been deemed a threat to the rest of the species on Earth and a culling of 99% of the Species: Human, will commence in 365 days. Only the top rated 1% ranked humans will survive the Day 365 species culling.]

[The other species within your world have been deemed blameless and as such the System has awarded them with common, uncommon, rare, epic, and mythic abilities. These species will also receive System notifications.]

[Countdown protocol for Species: Human, initialized.]

[Countdown: Day 1 of Day 365 before species culling. Only the worthy survive.]

[Current rank: 6,488,319,241 out of 8,025,432,612.]

[You are in the bottom 20th percentile.]

[Advance and grow.]

What the ever-loving fuck? None of the words meant anything to him. But he could hardly comprehend them let alone function as he wobbled in place. It was like trying to walk while an optometrist gave you a vision test.

But the snake didn’t seem to care that he was struggling. Its stunned look was gone, and in its place, was a look that could kill.

And had he mistaken its size? His first impression was that it was the size of a small garden snake, but now its black scales stretched over a body as thick as his upper arm and as long as the fishing pole. The sunning siesta snake might as well have been replaced with a snake on steroids.

“Holy crap!” said Logan as the snake suddenly lunged for him. His glasses fell to the dock with a clatter, and he tripped over the fishing rod, his hands skidding behind him as he broke his fall.

Now that he was lying down on the dock, nothing stopped the snake from slithering towards his bare feet and legs like something jacked up on Red Bull.

That thing wasn’t a garden snake anymore! It had fangs the size of his finger.

Logan scrambled backwards, the heels of his hands scraping against the wood of the dock, but the snake kept coming. “You can have the dock! It’s all yours!” Just don’t kill me!

But the snake didn’t care. Slithering forward, its tongue flickered, just missing the top of his foot.

Logan scrambled for the fishing rod, a muscle in his back pulling at the unnatural angle. The tips of his fingers touched and then he swung it with every ounce of strength at his disposal to push the snake back. But all it seemed to do was piss it off; its red eyes flashed before it darted like a rattlesnake.

He tried scrambling away and he was able to brace his knee against the dock, his feet behind him, but then what the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck!

“Fuck!” he screamed in agony so acute it was as if a meat hook was digging into his foot. The snake’s whole mouth had swallowed half his foot, sandal and all. Red eyes glinted at him as the thing moved, swaying back and forth, finger-length fangs tearing into his skin.

Heart beating out of his chest, Logan kicked, shaking his leg as if he were doing frantic calf raise exercises, but the snake only dug in deeper, causing agony to tear through him so strongly it made him lightheaded.

Not being able to think, desperate to get the snake off, he grabbed the only thing within reach—the fishing rod—and hit it with the flexible end.

It was like hitting a wooden board with flexy string.

He kicked the thing with his other leg, but his flip flops made the kick ineffectual, and it caused yet more pain, this time to the toes of his other foot. The snake’s skin was hard, like rock.

It continued to gnaw away, its fangs digging in deeper like a razor-blade. If he didn’t do something, he was going to lose his foot, maybe even his life.

Frantic, he scanned everything around him, trying to come up with anything that could help. It must have been only a few seconds as he considered and discarded options, but to him, everything moved at a snail’s pace.

He could flop over the side of the dock into the water, but if the snake followed, he’d drown. He could try crawling back to the cabin with the snake attached, but that could cause the thing to dig in its fangs even deeper and make his situation worse. There was nothing on the dock but a discarded beach towel, sunscreen and the fishing rod, its line already tangled around one of his fingers.

Wait a minute.

With desperation enhanced by agony, Logan grabbed the beach towel, throwing it over the snake’s head and covering its eyes. Then he pulled on the fishing line already tangled around his finger and unspooled it. Leaning forward and screaming when that caused the snake to dig in deeper, he wrapped the loose line around its body, just below the towel covering its eyes.

When the snake felt him tightening the fishing line around its neck, it released his foot, skidding down, fangs shredding his skin.

“Hell yes!” he screamed in stunned relief, letting his arms go boneless, which released the tension on the line.

That was a mistake.

The snake latched onto what was in front of its mouth: his big toe. Its fangs sliced Logan to the bone.

“You mother--! Fucking! Fuck!” Blood poured onto the dock, saturating the towel red and making everything slick.

This time his desperation turned into rage. He pulled on the line so tightly that it cut into his palms, pulling, pulling, pulling, until it broke through the snake’s tough hide, sawing through like sharpened steel.

But the snake didn’t make it easy. He’d lost feeling in his toe as the thing continued to sway back and forth, mindlessly gnawing away underneath the towel. With a last frantic pull of the line, the snake’s tail finally twitched, its body lifeless as it slumped to the dock.

Ding!

What…?

It sounded like a cooking timer.

The weird text was back.

[You have defeated a Level 1 Sunning Siesta Snake!]

[You have received the title, Eager Beaver! Wow, not even five minutes after System integration and you’ve already slaughtered your first unique being! 10 bonus attribute points awarded. This achievement earns you the enmity of all snakes and causes them to attack you on sight.]

Was he in a wilderness reality show? Nothing else made sense.

“Hello?” Logan questioned with a rasp, scanning the cabin and the land around the beach. But just moving his head made everything sway in a sickening lurch. He was losing blood and based on the amount trickling onto the dock, a lot. He didn’t think he had that much blood in his body. That wasn’t a good sign.

He needed to get to the hospital, and stat, but his phone was all the way back in the cabin and there was no one around or even within shouting distance.

This must be what survivalists felt when stranded in the woods in a crisis without a cell phone. At least there was one positive—he’d have a hell of a story to tell his sister and there was a chance she’d feel so sorry for him that she’d forget about how he’d had to sell the cabin. Yeah, and pigs would fly.

….Like regular old garden snakes transforming into murdering behemoths. Okay, medical attention! Obviously, that was a must if he was thinking in tangents while bleeding out.

Bracing himself, Logan moved the blood-soaked towel, getting his first look at the damage. The snake’s mouth was still latched onto him, so that was the first step. Steps forward! He had progress.

It was surprisingly easy to pry the snake’s mouth away from his big toe which allowed him to scoot back with a wet squelch.

Gore.

Gushing blood.

Shredded skin.

And where the fuck was his toe?