Limitless Evolution As a Snake

There. Gone; problem solved by someone who is not a pet.

The keeper frowns, checks a clipboard, tosses in another one. This one lands closer, actually bumps my tail, and I am so offended I lift my whole head up to stare at her through the glass with my most unblinking ”what is wrong with you” face. She flinches. Good, she better be scared.

I don’t even flick my tongue at the second rat. Why would I? I’ve had kebabs. I’ve had actual food, on plates, like a civilised monster. I’m not eating a popsicle shaped like a rodent.

Over the next few days, it becomes a whole thing. They try live crickets, which honestly feels like an insult. They try a chunk of raw chicken, which I stare at with the kind of contempt usually reserved for tax forms. They even bring in some kind of small caiman thing, scaly and unbothered, which just sort of paddles around the pool while I ignore it completely.

The keepers start gathering by the glass, murmuring to each other and squinting at me like I’m a broken vending machine.

”He’s not touching anything,” one of them says, tapping her clipboard. ”Vet says he’s healthy, no illness markers, but he hasn’t eaten in like a week.”

”Maybe he’s just picky,” says another, older guy with a moustache that looks like it’s been through some things.

I settle deeper into the rocks and give them my best unimpressed stare, tongue flicking out slow and lazy like I’m judging their whole existence. Which, to be fair, I kind of am.

That’s when the intern shows up. Young kid, looks like he’s still got student loan nightmares fresh in his head, holding a bucket of something that smells suspiciously like more frozen rats.

He stops. Looks at me, and so I look at him.

”I dunno,” he says, scratching the back of his neck, ”chuck a cheeseburger in there or something, maybe on a plate.”

The older keeper snorts. ”A cheeseburger?!”

”I’m serious! Look at him, he keeps looking down at me like I’m an ant. I think he’s got a complex or something.”

I absolutely am looking at him like he’s an ant. This kid gets it.

”Nah, hang on,” the moustache guy says slowly, ”I think the snack idea is a good one; the snake thinks he’s higher class than us.”

The whole group of keepers cracks up, actual proper laughing, the kind that echoes weird off the glass and concrete. I flick my tongue at them, unbothered, dignified, a king among peasants.

Then they all look back at me. Really look. The laughing dies down into something more considering.

”...Yeah,” the intern says slowly. ”Yeah, I think you’re onto something.”

Ten minutes later someone’s walking back through the staff door holding a paper bag with golden N on it, and the smell hits my heat pits before I even see it. Salt oh my god grease. Beef. My tongue is doing laps before the bag even opens.

They don’t just toss it this time. Somebody actually goes and finds a plate, a proper one, and sets the cheeseburger down on it like they’re serving me at a five-star restaurant instead of a reptile enclosure.

The intern slides it toward my rocks with a stick, keeping a respectful distance, because apparently I’ve earned that now.

I don’t even hesitate. I strike forward and swallow the whole thing in one smooth motion, bun and all, and the group outside the glass just stares.

”Well, I’ll be damned,” the moustache guy mutters.

A different little girl from before is back at the glass, practically vibrating with excitement. ”Mummy, the snake eats burgers!”

Her mum finally looks up from her phone this time. ”...Huh. Weird.”

Weird doesn’t even begin to cover it, but I’m not about to complain. Old Mate, you seeing this? I have successfully convinced an entire zoo staff to hand-feed me McDonald’s on a plate.

[System: Yeah mate, I’m seeing it. Proud and deeply concerned in equal measure. This is either the greatest hustle of your life or the exact moment you peaked as a snake. Possibly both.]

I settle back into my rocks, full, warm under the heat lamp, watching the keepers shuffle off already arguing about whether they should try nuggets next.

This is, without a doubt, the best scam I’ve ever run and I haven’t even had to threaten anybody.

So here’s a fun fact about me: I have never once, in my entire life, been carried anywhere on a velvet cushion.

Until now, the gurney glides down the hallway smooth as butter, some kind of anti-grav tech humming underneath the padding, and I am laid out on top of it like a discount Cleopatra.

My smoke tail drapes off one side. My head rests on a little velvet pillow shaped like a crescent, which, okay, weirdly thoughtful. Somebody in a lab coat is pushing me along like I’m a hospital patient instead of a several-foot-long apex predator made of smoke and bad decisions.

I figured they’d take me to a lab. Cold table, bright lights, some guy in gloves poking at my scales with a clipboard, the whole mad scientist experience. That’s what happens to weird supernatural creatures in every single movie I’ve ever seen.

Instead, I’m getting wheeled down a corridor with actual carpet. Deep red, soft-looking, the kind of carpet you’d find in a fancy hotel lobby. There’s ambient lighting. There’s actual art on the walls, moody framed photos of forests and rivers, like someone wanted this hallway to feel prestigious.

And tourists, actual tourists. A cluster of them stop dead in the hallway, phones half-raised, mouths hanging open as I drift past on my little velvet cloud. One guy in a Hawaiian shirt just stares as his brain reboots. A woman with a stroller pulls her kid back a step, eyes wide.

Yeah, peasants, that’s right, make way, smoke serpent coming through, nothing to see here.

[System: Oi, mate. You’re being paraded around like a bloody parade float.]