‘I’m alive!’ Was my first thought.

‘What the fuck am I?’ Was my next one.

  I couldn’t feel any arms or legs on my body, but I certainly felt alive. Almost instinctively, my tongue shot out, and I could smell my surroundings. And just by that action in which I had no control of, I understood which animal I reincarnated as. My new body slithered its way out of whatever the hell that warm place was from before, and I found myself with a bunch of other similar-looking creatures.

‘Now this is the shit yo.’ It kind of sucked I wasn’t reincarnated as a human again, but the chances of getting that a second time out of all of the other millions of other creatures in the world had to be astronomically small.

  As I left my mom’s snake vagina, I noticed that I had a strange addition to my new body that my other siblings didn’t have. To the left of me was another snake attached to my fucking body! I was some sort of mutant two-headed fucking snake! Immediately I tried controlling my new reptilian body to the fullest and mentally let out a breath of relief. It seems I was in control for the most part.

‘Can you hear me?’ I tried just for the sake of it.

  The tag-along did not even act as if he heard me. He simply licked at the air with his tongue and tried moving their body somewhere. Of course, I put a stop to this immediately and took full control of our body. Like hell was I going to allow this newborn to take us wherever. Instead, I decided to get used to this new body and test some sick shit out.

  The baby head didn’t like how I had more control over their body and hissed at me. To respond to that, I slapped it on the head with our tail, and the little son of a bitch tried biting me!

‘You little piece of shit! Who do you think is going to help you survive in this world, you ungrateful-” The tail continued to whack the newborn on the head as I used my innate snake reflexes to dodge its repeated strikes.

  It was going to learn who was the boss in this relationship.

‘Ow! You fucking-’ It landed a bite on me, and I whacked it on the head even harder. Which only caused it to bite down even more. This little fucking tard was going to kill them both! Can snakes be knocked unconscious? I'm about to fucking find out!

  The repeated strikes to the head eventually knocked the young baby head out and released its grip from me. All the anger flowing through me at my almost premature death almost caused me to consider swallowing my other head. Deep down, I had a feeling that this would kill me as well... Which is why I didn’t go through with it.

‘I better find something to deal with these wounds before I bleed to death or something...’ My tongue tasted the air, and I could smell something outside the little den my mother birthed us in.

Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

  Moving my way in that direction, I could finally see the outside world. Lugging around this unconscious dead weight was a bit of a hassle but I figured it could help build muscle. If snakes could do that. I’m definitely going to figure out if snakes can train their muscles because their entire bodies were basically muscle! Could you imagine some beefy ass roided-out snake? That’s gonna be me.

  Speed? Who needs that if you can crush the life out of anything you can wrap around? Oh, I'm trapped in the jaws of a wild beast? Let’s see who dies first between the super strong snake that can crush the life out of crocodiles, alligators, jaguars, and even humans! What about defense, you say? Haven’t you heard that the greatest defense is a strong offense? I’ll kill anything that tries to eat me unless it's too big. Then I'll have to run away and settle our differences on a different day.

‘Since I'm only an infant snake, I should focus on little critters for now. Until I build up some reliable muscle, that is.’ I slithered my way towards the deep grass, very excited to start my new life as a snake.

  As far as I could tell, I didn’t have any venom or poison I could inject into prey or spit out. Moving my body felt natural and not as awkward as I thought it would be. Especially since I was a human in my last life with functioning limbs. Maybe it came with being a snake. I know that some animals are fully capable of surviving on their own without any help from their parents right after being born.

‘Oh, you’re awake sleepy head? Wanna try biting me again?’ I stared my other head down.

  It seems he learned his lesson and didn’t fight me on control over our body. With a flick of my tongue, I could taste something in the air moving somewhere northwest in these tall grassy blades. It wasn’t that large, and since I was just born, I suppose a quick meal wouldn’t hurt. We slowly moved our way towards the small animal scurrying along the grass, perhaps looking for some bugs to munch on or grass to eat.

‘Are you thinking what I'm thinking?’ I telepathically asked my other head. It seems they did because they also understood what I was getting at.

  We made our way around the tasty-smelling animal and stalked it silently. Once we made it close enough to the little furry, I could finally see what it was. A nice little brown mouse, the perfect first meal. Since it hasn’t caught on to us yet, we moved in while it was busy searching for food. My other head and I posed to strike at the same time. Our body already preparing to attack.

  Our heads moved so fast that the mouse didn’t even have the chance to squeak before it was pierced by our fangs. My body instinctively started to wrap around the rodent’s body. I didn’t know whether to use as much force as possible to try and crush it or just suffocate it, but my other head knew exactly what to do somehow. So, I let it handle, killing our first meal along with swallowing it whole. It was a very educating experience for me going forward.

  The mouse occasionally let out a few squeaks every now and then, but we weren’t really suffocating it as we were trying to stop its heart from beating as soon as possible with our constriction. This made sense to me as just because something stopped breathing doesn’t mean it's dead. But if its heart stops beating, that is an absolute guarantee that it’s dead. For most animals, anyway...

  Once we sensed that its heart stopped beating, my other head got to work on eating the little critter while I kept an eye out for any potential predators trying to sneak up on us. I unraveled my body after the mouse’s heart stopped and the baby started swallowing its warm corpse whole. He was taking his sweet time getting it into his mouth. We can’t stay out in the open all day, you know?!

  I decided to help him by nudging the mouse’s ass into his mouth with my head, and he finally got it in. As it was going down his gullet into our shared stomach, I began to slowly slither away. The sun was rising, and I didn’t know how well we would camouflage in the day.