Modern Medusa

by Animals

Modern Medusa

Melissa joined one of those outdoor online clubs a few months back and was about to go on her first group trip. She initially thought it was a good motivation to stay in shape, meet people her own age as well as travel and see the great outdoors. This weekend would be her first trip and was rated low on the difficulty scale, only two on a scale of five. It was a 7 day camping and hiking trip that was scheduled over the 4th of July. As the 4th fell in the middle of the week, she did not have to take any vacation days as the office was closed the first week of July. They had arranged to have food brought in at regular intervals so she need only pack her clothes and gear. Her biggest apprehension was the fact that she could not convince any of her friends to join her. Everyone she would met on the trip she had only chatted with online.

The trip was basically a large circle around one of the many mountain peaks in Colorado. The main organizers started Friday afternoon at the base of the mountain for the hike to the first checkpoint on the Main loop trail. They would hike up to the Main Loop Trail, camp over night, then leave in the morning for the next campground on the Main Trail. At each campsite, more members would hike up from the foothills, join the group and move on the next day to the subsequent meeting place. Therefore each night new members would join and old members would drop off and hike back down the mountain. After completing the loop the group would slowly break up as they made it back to their original meeting place. From Melissa's viewpoint, it made the most sense to start the hike up the mountain on Sunday morning and join the main group at the second site on Sunday night. Any other start point would easily add two hours to her drive from home to the trailhead at the base of the mountain.

Maybe it was the stress of meeting new people and spending an entire week with strangers. Maybe it was her apprehension over trusting all the new camping gear she purchased for the trip. Maybe she feared hiking and camping at altitude. Whatever the source of her fear was, it started the night she typed in her credit card number and secured her spot on the trip. Each night the dream occurred, sometimes it was a continuation of the previous night, sometimes it was completely different. No matter what the nightmare the end and the content were always the same. She would wake up in the middle of the night, cold, soaking wet, and unable to sleep after screaming herself wide awake from the snakes.

It started innocently enough and hardly that scary. Just a dream in Roman Times, in which the snake-covered head of Medusa turned many a mortal into stone. But the dreams quickly evolved into more frightful events. One night she imagined she was entombed in an egg only to push her way through the egg and find herself surrounded by other hatching snakes. Once she imagined she was Jennifer Lopez getting swallowed whole during the filming of Anaconda. Other times she was slowly strangled as a boa constrictor coiled up around her and squeezed her last breath. She never liked snakes before the dreams started and was getting to like them less with each sleepless night.

When the inevitable trip date arrived, with great apprehension she packed her car to meet a couple from Utah for the hike up the mountain to join the group near the mountaintop. She had packed plenty of anti-venom serum “just in case” and learned to identify many breeds of snakes “just in case”. Unfortunately, at the last moment, the Utah couple called her and canceled on the trip. An emergency had occurred late in the office on Friday and despite working all day Saturday to solve it, they could not afford to leave for a week to go camping. This meant that she would have to make the 6 hour hike from the base camp to the checkpoint by herself. If only they had called her before she arrived at the base camp, she could have turned around and gone home. Convinced she could make the trek alone, she threw better judgment to the wind, grabbed her pack and started up the trail.

She was making great time so she stopped off and decided to reward herself with an early lunch. Melissa located a nice flat rock just off the trail overlooking a green valley and broke out the powerbars and protein drink and relaxed in the mid-day sun. Unfortunately, halfway through her lunch, she discovered she was not alone. A large rattlesnake had quietly coiled up on the warm rock next to her and was patiently sunning itself in the burning sun. Just like in so many of her dreams, she froze, her eyes locked in a stare-down competition with the sleeping snake that hadn't even realized she was there. She sat there for an eternity trying to identify the mystery snake before deciding that someone had to make the first move, so it migh as well be her. She slowly began to move off the rock, not realizing that the rattler had reinforcements in the nearby brush.

Melissa thought she was free and clear, as she was precariously balanced half standing on the ground, half leaning on her right arm on the rock, and her left arm pulling on a nearby tree to help lift her off her lunch rock. While she performed this slow ballet, the sunning snake was still sleeping on the rock. It was then that his friend began rattling between her legs, only inches away from her hiking boots. The second snake awoke the sleeping snake that was suddenly all too close to her right arm and head. She had gone from nearly being out of the woods to suddenly losing the scariest game of Twister she had ever played.

It was bad before when the dark gray, almost black, shining snake had coiled up alongside her, but worse when a second snake appeared ready to strike beneath her. It was only a matter of time before the inevitable happened. In the blink of an eye the 2nd snake lunged and latched onto her thigh, just above the knee. The shriek of pain and the sudden movement caused the first snake to take hold of her shoulder blade. She quickly lost her balance and began rolling down the side of the hill with her newly acquainted friends still locked firmly in place. Her last memory was tumbling end over end until she hit her head on a stump and was rendered unconscious.

When she awoke, reality set in a second time. Her body was throbbing in pain and her head was pounding. She sat up to check her wounds; they were everywhere. Dozens of the mysterious shining snakes were crawling all over her. Not wasting any time, she jumped up in fear and ran up the hill. As soon as she jumped from the brush and ran, the snakes just disappeared. She tried to calm down but instead quickly grabbed her gear and ran as far up the hill until she was breathless. Was it a dream? Were the snakes real? Did she actually get bite? What happened to the wounds? She couldn't answer any of the questions but knew that her body was badly bruised, and scratched, but remarkably no broken bones that she could tell. She quickly packed her gear and did a quick inventory of her gear that she snagged while fleeing from the imaginary snakes.

That night she met the rest of the group -- about three hours later than planned. She neglected to relay the story about the snakes, saying instead that she lost her balance and fell. She could barely keep her heart from racing and was hardly able to sleep, still incredibly disturbed from her trip up the mountain. Her paranoia continually increased by the unusually high number of sightings by herself and the other hikers of the mysterious black snake. A strange patchy spot that began to develop on her shoulder and thigh -- the two locations of the snakebites -- fueled her fears. To make matters worse, her skin was becoming increasingly dry and itchy as the days progressed. She blamed the extra sun, the hot cloudless days and the change in climate, but still could not convince herself that everything was fine.

The nights became stranger and even more restless as the trip wore on. One night she imagined waking in her sleeping bag only to have hundreds of snakes slithering their way out of as she left her tent. Another she was roasting marshmallows on the campfire when the stick she was using turned into a snake holding her marshmallow in its mouth. Another night she dreamed she was eating spaghetti, but when she turned away, the noodles transformed into a plate of interlocked snakes writhing around her fork.

The strangest dream occurred on her last night with the group the evening before beginning her descent back to base camp. It had begun raining shortly before dinner and turned into an all out downpour by nightfall. Everyone retired early and enjoyed the first cool night since the trip began. Everyone except Melissa, that is; as usual, she could not get to sleep. When exhaustion overtook her body she found herself immersed in a wild erotic dream. She was lying in her bed safe at home. She reached into her bedside bureau and checked the batteries in her favorite sex toy. The buzzing noise and gentle gyrations worked her into a much deserved partner-less orgasm. Before she completely enjoyed this moment of ecstasy to the fullest, she looked down between her B-cup breasts to see her left hand wrapped around the mystery black snake that was wickedly pleasuring her with it's split tongue. The tail of the snack had encircled itself around her wrist and up to her elbow. When the reality of this vision (inside the dream) finally set in, she awoke from her trance and promptly tried jerking the snake away. Instead the snake lunged forward burying its teeth into her privates while continuing to bring her to climax. She kept pulling the snake away with both hands, each forceful tug exciting her more and more. She awoke the next day, strangely fulfilled yet scared out of her mind. On one hand the wild erotic dream was the most bizarre she had had since the trip began. However it was the first night she had actually received a complete night's sleep.

Melissa departed early the next day for the hike down to base camp. The rain had all but stopped and she started slogging her wet gear back to her car. She hiked down past the spot of her initial encounter with some trepidation, but without instance. Unfortunately the trip down was not without it disasters. About a half mile from her car she lost her footing on the slippery trail and slide down a steep incline. The erotic dream started again in her unconscious state at the bottom of the hill. This time the snakes appeared from all around her. She tried to escape, but was paralyzed. They began crawling all over her, through her long blonde hair, down her shirt, into her backpack, and up the leg of her pants. She was covered by hundreds of the snakes, seemingly devoured alive by the reptiles. They coiled around her legs, encircled her breasts beneath her sports bra and became tangled in her hair beneath her ball cap. But the worst was yet to come as one of the snakes made it's way up her leg and then entered her. She wanted to scream, remove her clothes and prevent this animalistic violation but was paralyzed to do anything. The snake slowly made its way into her and began squirming all around inside her womb. She would

have cut herself wide open to release the snake but she could only lie there in the dirt going insane with both pleasure and fear.

This seemed to last forever, but finally she snapped back into consciousness, only to find herself alone in the dirt. There were no snakes, no paralysis, only the throbbing of her head from what was probably another mild concussion. She vowed that day that she was putting her hiking gear away forever! She tried to ignore it, consoling herself that the trip was nearing its end. She hoped the dreams would end with it. She finally returned to her car, covered in mud, still wearing her tattered clothes, and started the four-hour ride back to her house.

Upon arriving at home, she jumped into the shower before cleaning out the car or washing her camping equipment. She thought a hot shower would wash the dirt from her fall, as well as the reminders of the eerie nightmares. The rash that had started nearly a week ago had gotten worse and covered her legs and most of her upper body. Her skin had also became increasingly drier despite the frequent application of calamine lotion and moisturizers. The itching became worse to the point that it was no longer just a distraction, but more of an obsession. She contacted her doctor on Monday and made an appointment for mid-week. Unfortunately he could not identify the rash, so instead recommended a prescription lotion to help clear up the rash and the itching and asked her to return in a week or two to check on her progress.

For two weeks she tolerated the rash. But by the second weekend, the rash was unbearable and spreading rapidly. The bottoms of her feet were now thoroughly infected and driving her insane, especially at the office, where she did not feel comfortable constantly removing her shoes to rub her feet. Her arms, legs and scalp were also a deep red from the constant itching and scratching. Her skin was flaking off like the aftermath of a sunburn, giving her the worst case of dandruff she had ever known. She planned on contacting her doctor to schedule a follow-up on Monday.

When she returned home and showered Friday night she made a startling discovery. While drying herself off with a towel, a large patch of dry, red, irritated skin peeled off the small of her back and fell to the floor of the bathroom. Beneath the freshly exposed skin was a series of scales covering about 3 inches in diameter. She screamed and tried to remove the scales but only succeeded in exposing a larger area of scales expanding nearly the width of her back and almost 5 inches in height. She spent the evening trying to sleep and trying not to scratch herself for fear that she would expose more scales. But almost unconsciously she would periodically awake throughout the night to find herself scratching or rubbing her body.

By Saturday morning the situation had worsened. Her back was almost completely exposed from her waist to the bottom of her shoulder blades and the area was working its way around to her stomach. Her legs had also started changing, exposing scales on the insides from her ankles to her knees. Other changes took place over the weekend as well. Her firm, 27-year old breasts had increased to a full D-cup and were much more firm and erect then in recent years. Her naturally blonde hair had started turning black from the roots and growing at a much faster pace. She didn't leave the house all weekend, instead she spent the days researching other medical anomalies and trying to identify the mystery snake.

By Monday morning she awoke to a completely different person. Her jet-black roots had grown to her shoulders with another 24 inches of blonde tresses dangling from the ends. The shedding process continued throughout the weekend, exposing scales on the bottom of her feet up, around the back of her ankle and to the base of her knees. The growth of scales on her back had begun to slow and had formed a thin line up the back of her neck just to her hairline. This thin line began to expand in an inverted Y-shape around the side of her back and just below her breasts. She had felt relieved that the scales did not take her breasts, but instead just followed her sensual curves along the bottom of both and then around to her back again. The scales continued down from her bosom to her navel where the shedding was still occurring. Her feet had started becoming uncomfortable, as the scales appeared to be pulling away from the soles of her feet. This long lump started at her heel and tapered off as it approached her toes and made her feel very unstable when she walked. That morning she made two phone calls. The first was to call sick to work; the second to arrange a doctor's appointment.

Her normal doctor had taken a week off, so she reluctantly decided to wait until he returned. She could not bring herself to reveal her scale-covered body to a physician she had never met and couldn't trust. So she was scheduled for the following Wednesday, a mere 9 days from now. What would happen between then and now? How could she work? What was going to happen?

By Tuesday morning her change had continued. The scales had worked their way down from her breasts and had over taken her navel and had continued working further south. Her slender stomach was now completely covered in scales. Her once petite belly button was quickly absorbed by her snakeskin and was indistinguishable from the surrounding area. The scales on her back were growing as well and had extended well past her waist and covered both cheeks of her firm butt. She began feeling her body for the first time since the changes took place. She instantly was reminded of the erotic sensations she felt holding the snakelike vibrator that night in the tent. Her nipples instantly became hard as nails as her head began to swim in ecstasy. She felt down past her butt cheeks around the tops of her legs as a large layer of skin peeled away from her leg.

This instantaneously snapped her back to reality as the layer of skin drifted to the floor. She ran to a mirror in her bedroom and saw the scales extended from the heels of her feet skyward to the top of her neck, disappearing into her hair. As she turned around, the reptilian skin started on the sides of her ankles up past her knees and midway up her thighs. The serpent skin reappeared just below her waistline and extended to the bottom of her well-endowed breasts. As she stared into the mirror she was stunned at the changes that had taken place. Only her face, arms and pleasure centers had been spared. She let out a brief sigh of relief as she thought that her womanhood had been spared. “...As if any man would ever sleep with me now,” she thought.

She began crying for the first time as her situation began to take full hold of her. As she wiped the tears from her eyes, she noticed how gray her arms had become -- the same color the rest of her skin had turned just before it flaked away. She told herself it was only a matter of time before her arms fell to the same fate as the rest of her body. She continued her examination in the mirror and finally worked her way down to her feet. The long cylindrical cone along the sole of her feet had become more pronounced and looked like a snake skin sausage was growing from her heel and warped forward to her toes. It was impossible to stand, and she was forced to crawl on her knees to the phone in order to tell her boss she would be sick again today.

The rest of the day was spent on the phone and surfing the web trying to identify the mysterious snake which infected her so many weeks ago. She spoke with veterinarians and snake experts researching any possible poisons or viruses that caused scales or other type of skin shedding skin related disorders: nothing. Hours were wasted and not a single lead as to what had happened to her in Colorado while hiking through the mountains. She went to sleep Tuesday night fearing what would happen overnight and what she would wake up as the next morning.

Wednesday held a whole new round of changes. Before even lifting the covers she began exploring herself. She began to grope all over her body but everything felt different this morning. Even her reptilian skin felt harder, less sensitive. Whenever she moved she heard a faint rattle much like the sounds the snake made before striking. She felt her breasts and instead of the soft sexy skin she had always had felt, they felt stiff and scaly. She sat upright in her bed and ripped off the covers fully expecting to see her breast covered in the now familiar skin.

She was momentarily relieved to find her breasts had not fallen victim to the snake virus, but then she saw that they were sprouting little rattlesnake tails where her nipples used to be. Her tits would now be permanently erect with the three-quarter inch rattles that sounded with her every movement. This did not explain the strange feel her breast had, since her skin was still her own. At that moment she saw the next change. Each of her fingers had developed into snake tails with rattles at the end of each one where her fingernails once were. From her newly developed rattles extended a snakeskin that grew down her fingers into her scaled skin on the backs and palms of her hands. She threw back the covers and ran her new snake skin hands down her body, below her breasts, past her waist, where her bush used to be. But the scales never stopped! She looked past her D-Sized breasts and discovered her entire body was now covered in scale. Her bush and vagina were completely lost in the scales. She rubbed furiously trying to gain entrance to herself but there was nothing there.

She jumped out of bed to run to the mirror to investigate the morning's changes. Instead of landing flatfooted, as she would normally expect, she landed as if she were wearing high heeled shoes. She looked at her feet to find a pointed 6 inch rattle snake tail pointing straight down at the ground forcing her foot into the same position as a towering pair of high heeled shoes. The scales now wrapped the tops and soles of her feet beautifully, blending the heel as part of her body. Remarkably, she was able to stand and even walk on her newly defined feet. She made it to the mirror and began to closely examine herself. Her attractive, five foot one frame had grown to nearly six feet in height. In addition to the six inches added to her heels, her legs had become longer, thinner, and sexier. Her lack of hair and sex organs between her legs was freaky at first, but extremely sensual nonetheless. Her large breasts stood out proudly from her chest as pert as any she had ever seen on any of the highest paid supermodels. As she moved and rotated to take a full look at herself, the rattles now attached to her heels, fingers and nipples hummed rhythmically. Her jet-black hair had stopped growing at her waist. Her blond remnants had somehow broken free from the new black tresses and lay on the floor in a trail from the bed to the mirror. She started running her new fingers through her hair and then noticed more changes since the night before.

The scales, which previously stopped atop her neck now, continued along the base of her hairline. They proceeded along both sides of her head, forming a widow's peak on the top of her forehead. She feared that her face would soon be overtaken by the changes when she began closely examining her face. Her cheeks and forehead remained tan from the camping trip and had not turned gray like her legs once were and her arms and since became. Her eyes appeared squinted and pointed as opposed to round as human eyes always were. Most of her teeth had slowly shortened over the last week, but a pair of them on her top and bottom jaw had grown dramatically longer and become pointed like fangs. Her tongue had also grown thinner and appeared to be dividing in two along its length. She prayed that her face would not completely change -- that she could keep some human identity.

Melissa called in to work for the third time in as many days, but could not explain to her boss the reason for her absence. Only one more week before her doctor would return. Would she even bother to go? Her transformation must be nearing completion. She accepted the fact that there would probably be no cure for her now, and started putting plans in place to live as the reptile she was turning into. By Friday she contacted her boss a fifth time explaining that she would have to resign. Holding the phone in her left arm she gazed down at her right arm while her boss begged her to continue working. It was if a snake with five finger length tails had swallowed her arm. The shape of a snake's head had grown around her upper arm and shoulder blade. There was an eye on the front and back of her shoulder that remained forever open. Fangs from the simulated upper jar were driven deep into the flesh of her shoulder. Her boss babbled on begging her to explain her resignation.

He promised pay raises, more vacation, company car, bigger office -- anything she wanted. What she wanted was her body back. She wanted her jet-black hair, that had quickly evolved into a snake's tail that hung the entire length of her back, to fall off and be replaced by her original blonde hair. She wanted fingers not covered in scales that rattled with her every movement. She wanted to close her eyes and make everything go back the way it was. She wanted at least to blink them, something she had been unable to do since her beautiful green human eyes were replaced by these black soul-less voids. She wanted her heels firmly planted on the ground, not floating suspended on 6 inch stiletto like rattles. She wanted to have sex but these endless black scales covered her crotch. She wanted her constantly erect nipples to stop protruding through every shirt in her closet as if the temperature of the room was 40 degrees. She wanted her boss to shut up long enough to get a word in edge-wise.

“So here's the deal.’ Melissa interrupted her boss. Each word containing an “s” sizzled on the phone as her long sinewy split tongue slithered through her fanged front teeth. I can do my job at home as I usually do on the weekends anyway. I have teleconferencing and as much computing power and the same ISDN line as I do at the office. You can keep the company car and the bigger office, just give me more vacation time and a slight raise in pay and we will call it even. I can phone in the meetings and send all my work through e-mail. The sales department can solicit new companies that need Web Pages developed and maintained as they have always done. Just send the requirements to me via e-mail and I can do all the artwork and formatting over the network. I need out of the customer interaction end of it and that's all I'm looking for. If it's not working out after six months, then I will submit a formal resignation and that will be all.

Her boss was stunned but knew Melissa had her over a barrel. She had close to ten years working around computers and almost as much time in web development. She was an invaluable resource and her boss realized that she would be nearly impossible to replace. Reluctantly she agreed and arranged to pack up her office and have it shipped to her house. With all the details agreed upon, Melissa promptly took a week off to get settled into her new body. By Sunday night there were no immediate changes so she figured she must be finished. The only thing that she could not adjust to was her constant desire for sex. Ever since her crotch had become encrusted in scales she was unable to satisfy herself. The scaly nature of her body was a constant reminder to the erotic dreams she had in the tent the last night of her trip. If she let her mind wonder too far she would unconsciously find herself massaging any part of her body in a desperate attempt at relief. Sometimes this would continue for hours before she would snap back to reality.

She eventually adjusted to her new body. The familiar buzzing and humming of her rattles soon became a soothing symphony that she eventually forgot was even there. She very seldom left the house and was able to track down a multitude of e-businesses that would deliver her every need to her doorstep. She spent most of the day naked, as human clothes simply did not feel right. On sunny days she would coil up in her sunroom and bask in the light of the day.

There were two things that she never fully adjusted to. Every year at the same time she had became infected for the first time, her old scales would begin molting and a fresh new skin would appear. She was never the same color or pattern two years in a row. She started as pure jet black and had since been green, red, yellow, striped, dotted, and various other iterations. The other thing was her monthly friend that she regretted as a human and disliked even more as a snake woman. Instead of a monthly period as most women have, every four months she would give birth to nearly a dozen or two live snakes. She would awake one morning to the creepy feeling of having snake after snake squirm their way out of her body. The scales that denied her access to her womanhood so many times before would glide out of the way allowing her babies to wiggle into the world.

She would generally monitor the snakes for a few days and then release them into her backyard. She would never see the snakes again nor did she know where they went, but she did notice that a lot more delivery vans were making stops in her neighborhood then she ever used to remember…

Modern Medusa copyright 2003 by Animals.