NuSkin--Snake TF

NuSkin—TF Story

“Mom, I’m back from A.J.’s house!” Mark shouted as he came through the door. He had been gone for a little while, but time flies quite quickly when you are with a friend. He looked at the grandfather clock in his living room and checked the time. It was 8:30 PM. Yikes! he thought to himself. He had been gone for a while, and if his mom ever found out that he had spent fourteen hours of the day at his best friend’s house, then it would be difficult to explain they were both playing video games nearly the entire time.

“Mom!?” Mark called a second time. Maybe she had not heard him? He didn’t know if he was going to wait and accept his impending punishment, or if he should look for her and turn himself in to her himself. This was a problem. He walked over to his pet garter snake’s aquarium. Heh, Cujo, you’re just the same as ever. The old snake and long time buddy of Mark was sleeping in a coil under his fake log, taking in the “sunlight” from the lamp above his aquarium.

When Mark got no response the third time, he figured he had done it. He was going to be in the trouble of his life, because his mother always hid alone away from him when she believed that he deserved some sort of punishment. What would it be…? Groundings from everything technological in his house? Lost phone priveleges? Unplugged computer? He could not say. But this was his turn to apologize to his mom for not coming back when she wanted him to. He sighed, and summoned up a bit of courage so that he could go and look for her.

Cujo seemed to feel his pain, and gave him a reptilian look that seemed to say, “Don’t worry, Mark. She can’t possibly do something that bad as punishment. If all hell breaks loose, then at least the two of us would still be together. She can’t ground you from me. Or at least, that’s what Mark assumed Cujo was thinking. But you never could tell with that snake… The emotions of a snake are very hard to tell from something with a single facial expression.

Mark loved that snake with all his heart. His dad had passed away when Mark was 4 years old. Cujo was older than mark, with a few more years under his belt. He was indeed an old snake, and Mark was one who often came to Cujo when he didn’t feel well. Cujo never seemed to mind, and Mark always believed that Cujo loved him back as well. He could dream couldn’t he?

Mark first went to check in his mother’s bedroom, and there was no one there. He trod up the stairs to the bedrooms and office. In the guest room and the office, again, nobody was there. Finally, he believed he knew where his mom was. As soon as he saw his bedroom door shut, he knew that she would be in there, waiting for his unsuspecting self to come to his senses and confess to staying out too long. He creaked the door open slowly, starting to say, “Uh, Mom? I can explain--“

To Mark’s surprise, he didn’t have to finish the sentence. In fact, there was nobody in his room at all. Just a note on his bed, upon which he could read the top words just barely from where he was standing. He picked it up, noticing that it was definitely his mom’s handwriting.

“Dear Mark,” the letter began, “I should have told you sooner, but there was a new job opening for me a couple hundred miles away from here. I have left early in order to save time, and make it to the interview in the morning. I’ll be back tomorrow around five. Microwave yourself something to eat and don’t stay up all night playing video games. Love, Mom.”

Mark sighed a huge sigh of relief. Safe. He hit the bullseye without even trying. His mom didn’t know what time he got home because she had already left. How great was that?

He set the note on the desk and flopped onto his bed, tired. True, he had gone to A.J.’s house and acted like a lazy bum the entire time, but the bike ride to and from was a couple of miles long. He was a little bushed, if only from that. He didn’t really feel like dinner, nor did he feel like going to the office and playing a game. With nothing better to do, he decided an early bedtime was the right way to go today.

He left the bedroom to climb down the stairs and feed the snake. When he arrived, Cujo was one step ahead, making his way across the floor of the aquarium to Mark’s end. He gave him a look that seemed to say, So, how did it go?. Marked looked at him with a relieved facial expression as he headed off to the fridge to get a dead mouse for Cujo. He pushed his way through the things on the shelves of the refrigerator to get to the container of dead mice, and noticed something there that was apparently new. He picked up the small, dark glass bottle and read aloud:

“NuSkin. The #1 veterinarian approved snake wound healer.” He opened it and looked at the liquid inside. It was dark green in color, about the same color as Cujo’s scales. Mom must be beginning to worry about Cujo, Mark thought.

Mark replaced the bottle in the fridge and got out the mouse container. He carried it to the aquarium, with Cujo already aware of what was going on. It was feeding time, and nobody could eat his special meal, except for himself. Tongue flicking in and out of his tiny mouth, Cujo eyed the mouse that Mark was pulling out of the container expectantly. Mark dropped it into the aquarium in a nosedive fashion before resealing the container and returning it to the refrigerator. Cujo seemed pleased.

Mark reached into the aquarium and stroked Cujo’s scaly back. Cujo was happy, not necessarily from the stroking but rather from the fact that he had gotten some fresh prey for him to eat. Maybe it was just priss, but he seemed happy all the same.

Mark left the lamp on for Cujo to have to sleep under for the night. Good night, Cujo, Mark thought. He turned the rest of the downstairs lights off before going upstairs to freshen up and get in bed.

Even though he was tired, and was ready to go to sleep, Mark couldn’t sleep for some reason. He couldn’t tell what was causing that sleepless feeling. Maybe it was the supreme dodge of the bullet he had done since his mom had left the house. No, that couldn’t be it, Mark knew that that was a happy thing, and he shouldn’t be bothered by it. Yet despite that, something else was troubling his mind and didn’t want to stop. Finally, he could put his tongue on it. It was the NuSkin stuff that his mom had in the fridge.

Maybe it was just paranoia, or maybe it was a bit of worry, but he couldn’t tell. What if Cujo was reaching his demise? What was he going to do if Cujo suddenly kicked the bucket? No pet snake to talk to would mean he might would have to get a cat or something, and they weren’t as cool as a Cujo. Nothing could replace Cujo, no way, no how. Mark just decided it was unnecessary paranoia, and tried to forget it. Two hours of constant worry more, he finally drifted off to sleep.

Suddenly, something woke him up from his deep sleep. But what? He couldn’t remember. And then he thought, it was my dream. I had a bad dream last night. Cujo’s not really hurt is he? Worried about the trouble of Cujo, whether it existed or not, he put on a pair of pajama shorts and a shirt before running down the stairs to check on him.

Upon entering the room the first thing that caught his eye was the clock. It was 1:14 AM. He’d been asleep for about two whole hours since he went to sleep. He was definitely sleeping poorly, and his worries weren’t helping. Maybe if he had waited another day for his mother to come back before he fed Cujo, he would sleep better. But his paranoid dreams forced him to look into Cujo’s aquarium. He’s only sleeping, Mark thought to himself. He was about to walk back up the stairs to head to bed, but he did a double take and noticed that his nightmare had become reality.

Cujo was indeed sleeping, forever. The state of sleep that all people go through by the end of their life. Death. And it was very hard to accept, especially for Mark. Mark rushed to the aquarium to see what happened, now beginning to cry. He looked over the snake’s lifeless body, searching for anything that might’ve killed him. And then he saw the lump of the mouse. Beside the big lodge in Cujo’s lengthy throat, were many tears in his tough, muscular, and mighty scaly skin.

“No, this can’t be!” Mark said, tears flowing out one by one now. “I’m still dreaming, I know it! I’m going to close my eyes, count to ten, and wake up in my bed from this dream.” Once he had done so, and realized that ten seconds later he was still standing in the living room, still seeing the bleeding, torn body of his lifelong reptilian friend Cujo the snake. “NOOOO!!!”

“Please don’t die now Cujo,” Mark said, “you were doing great. Why would you have to go now?” Mark sobbed in place for almost five minutes straight. Then he remembered. The NuSkin! Maybe Cujo will still be alright! “Don’t worry Cujo, you’ll be okay!” Mark said, still distorted with tears.

Continuing a steady stream of tears and “he’s okay, he’s okay, I know he’s okay,” he tore open the door of the fridge to take out the NuSkin, which was where he put it last. He pulled it open and took the brush lid to Cujo’s long, green, bleeding body. He brushed it on so thickly that it seemed to resemble Cujo’s scales. Cujo, with what seemed like a dying breath, gave one more look towards a sobbing Mark, Goodbye. That was that, the NuSkin didn’t help. Cujo let his head hit the gravel-covered bottom of the aquarium, tongue limp, and hanging far out.

No longer in denial, and now totally speechless, Mark fell to his knees and wept harder still for a while longer. He let his head hit the table of Cujo’s aquarium, sending the jar of NuSkin to the floor, where it shattered and spread outward along the floor. The puddle of the green goo seemed to expand on the spot next to Mark.

However, Mark was so absorbed in his loud sulking over his long-lost friend, that he never noticed the fact that the puddle of NuSkin was nearing the carpet, and his own legs. “I’m sorry, Cujo! I shouldn’t have fed you last night! It was my fault, forgive me!” Mark said, still sobbing, tears and snot covering the lower half of his red face.

Mark now stopped the extreme case of the bawling, and just sat still, hugging the passed snake’s aquarium. It was hard to take, and hard to except, but, it happened to everyone, everything. So there was no use crying over it, because tears wouldn’t bring his friend back. He jumped and became very startled at the feeling of something sticky touching one of his toes.

“The NuSkin!!!” Mark yelled, swearing under his breath. Now not only would he have to explain that Cujo had died to his mother, but he would also have to explain the mess of the jar of NuSkin slop that was increasing in size. If he didn’t clean it up, he would be in deep water. He dashed to the kitchen to pick up a wet rag and wipe up the huge puddle of NuSkin. He managed to wipe all of it off of the floor, and then tried to wipe it off of his foot, but got no result. He figured that the rag was already saturated with the stuff, so he went to the kitchen and got another one.

No matter how much he scratched, scrubbed, dabbed, tapped, and pulled at the NuSkin snake healer fluid, the more it seemed to dry up. By the time he got through his third wet rag, the dried up NuSkin had already forced its way halfway up his foot. “This is no good,” Mark said to himself. He picked up a piece of the NuSkin jar and managed to read a small amount of the fine instruction and fact information on the back of a small shard of it. “NuSkin uses a special… …makes new skin cells out… …existing ones to make… …natural skin… …use on snakes.” That was all that Mark could read off of the small piece, but he was trying to fill in the blanks as best he could at this hour of night.

Suddenly, the dried up NuSkin on his foot was up to his ankle, and itching profusely. He couldn’t really see why, so he ran upstairs to get his glasses. And he nearly broke something else when he discovered the problem. The NuSkin was making natural skin out of his living skin cells. Natural snake’s skin. And the stuff had already given his leg up to his shin a fresh coat of green scales that were quite itchy. He tried to resist scratching them, but eventually the itching pain gave way to the desire to scratch at his scaly leg.

With groans of pleasure coming from Mark as he scratched at the scales, he hardly realized that the skin had spread up to his thigh. Mark, on the ground had to roll onto his side to get the rest of the scales that felt scratchy and itchy. As if a strong force came out of nowhere, his legs seemed to push each other towards one another, which stopped Mark’s scratching. He first looked down, seeing that one leg had already become fully scaled, causing his mouth to drop wide open. Surely there wasn’t much more power to this NuSkin stuff, and it couldn’t go much farther. Maybe it would wear off in a day or two. But that was only the least of his worries.

Mark now became very worried about the fact that his legs were trying to stick to each other, and tried very hard to pull them apart. First with his legs, and then with his hands for extra backup power. But no matter hard he pulled; the force attracting his legs together eventually forced his legs to be stuck together, like a powerful magnet.

Now he was worried. “What’s happening? This isn’t normal, this must be a dream! Please, don’t let this be actually happening!” Who he was acknowledging, he could not say, for he was so surprised he was nearly speechless. As his legs, now both completely reptilian began to force each other together even harder, Mark began to grunt. The pain of his legs compressing together was more excruciating than any other pain he had ever felt. When they forced each other even closer, Mark couldn’t help but let out a blood-curdling scream. Whatever was happening was strong enough that he couldn’t remove his pants to see, and at the same time hurting like hell.

His PJ pants now seemed much shorter than they were before, or maybe he was a little longer. He couldn’t tell. He looked at them and gasped loudly as he saw that now, his pants had been absorbed through his scaly green skin, and the previous pain was revealed. Mark’s two legs had become one extremely long and mobile leg. At the end was a little point, and atop his legs, the green NuSkin scales had become long, pale yellow ridges from one side to the other.

Mark thought wearily, and almost unknowingly at first, Heh, that looks just like Cujo. Then he suddenly realized that it all began to make sense now. He, Mark, was turning into a snake, because the NuSkin stuff had come in contact with his skin despite the fact that it had read “For use only on snakes.” Why me? Why must I go through this? I haven’t done anything wrong! “Hey, if the forces of nature can hear me, I’M SORRY!!! FOR WHATEVER I DID! I DON’T DESERVE THIS! MAKE ME NORMAL AGAIN PLEASE!!!” Mark bellowed at the top of his lungs. But at this point, apologies didn’t, wouldn’t, and couldn’t matter anymore. Fate had willed it, and that was how his life was going to go.

Mark started crying again when his prayers were unanswered. He had gone through way too much in the last couple hours, and what a better way to end it than lose all of the human he had left in him! He swore loudly with every word he knew, and even ones he didn’t as he ignored the belly scales and green highlight scales forcing their way up to his chest.

“Not again!”Mark yelled, noticing the fact that his arms were now becoming forced to combine with his itchy, scaly, snakelike body. He hated that pain, but now that his arms were locked into their forever position, there wasn’t anything he could do about it. He cried out loudly, for the pain was almost too hard to keep quiet. But time took over his stretching body, and clamped his arms down under his scales, which interestingly enough, had also absorbed the rest of his clothes.

Now that his hands and arms were nonexistent, he would be forced to get used to the itching of his lengthening scaly body. He flipped over onto his back with little control, and he watched the scaly skin come nearer and nearer to his head, and he tried as hard as he could to push his head away from the wave of scales that was flattening out his tube like body, but it was no use. It made it to his neck and slowed down as they slowed down to torture him he figured.

Not only did the underscales and overscales slow their ascent at his neck, but they also widened the size of the neck so that it would be able to match the bone structure of his new body.  Once the scales hit his chin, he felt his scale and neck-bones working together to flatten his head out and lock it into a looking-forward position. His head slowly felt like it was being squashed under the pressure, causing Mark to want to scream. The lack of his speech now surprised him, and to try and force sound of his lengthy limbless body, he writhed around on his back, flipping over onto his belly, and writhing a bit more. He couldn’t help it; the pain was almost too much to bear.

Mark eventually gave up on writhing around, the pain wouldn’t leave him, and he was wearing out his new muscles. He watched with his still human eyes as his mouth and nose clamped onto each other, pushing outward to create a reptile snout, complete with stretched nostrils, an elongated jaw, and to top it all off, the forcing of his eyes to the left and right sides of his head.

He hissed, gasping sounds, screaming, and voice removed from him for good, when he felt all of his incisor teeth and molars fall out of his mouth and onto the floor in front of him, leaving only the canine teeth, which grew longer and longer until they pushed against the roof and bottom of his mouth. His tongue felt forked and significantly more opposable in increasing intervals. What’s more is the mucous and sense of smell from his nose had both disappeared.

He had heard that snakes can only smell with their tongues by testing the air around them, so he gave it a go. He flicked the forked tongue out of his big mouth, and swished it a little before jerkily pulling it back in. That settled it, his scaly body and head were the first of the tell-tale signs, but the tongue was essential for him to deduce that he was now a snake. But to his surprise, a little more pain revealed that his suffering was not over.

The first thing to happen was his eyelids began to feel like they were excruciatingly pressured. They felt as if they were just barely over the lens of his eye, and once the pain stopped, he tried to blink, but discovered that he still could see when he did. He realized that his eyelids had become clear. After a few blinks, his sight seemed to become more acute, and he could see practically everything in only a few odd shades of color. It was vivid and amusing, but nothing could give him back his humanity, so he hissed at the thought.

And for a few moments, there was nothing more. The NuSkin had apparently left its mark and made him into a full snake. He sat still briefly, examining the environment with his new senses. He tried movement and felt it happen, slowly but surely as if he had been doing it for years. He slithered into the other rooms of the upstairs, and then tried to tackle the downstairs. There was little problem for him. Maybe being a snake would be easy. Then he had to laugh, yeah right.

But before he could do anything else, the cramping feeling of his muscles caving in under the pressure of what felt like a thousand tough guys pushing his body into a smaller space. He watched in hissing pain as the world around him appeared to get larger, and he felt smaller. Finally, the pain ceased, and there was a calming sensation of nothingness around him. He tried to sigh, but instead flicked his tongue in and out. The itching had stopped. The cramping was over. He felt long, with no sense of the itchy scales forcing their way over his body. By now, it was all over.

Mark checked the clock briefly and saw that it had stopped ticking at about 2:00 AM. There was still time! He could no longer stay in his house, as he felt like a stranger there now. Unwelcomely, he hung his snake head low as he looked for a small enough exit from his large environment for him to leave so his mother would not be as traumatized.

If his mother were to arrive, there would be trouble, so he hoped for her to have the best in her life with her new job, if she got it. With a prayer in his heart for his reptile pal and his wonderful mother, he slithered out of the house through a hole under the corner of the door to the outdoors, never to return again.