Insomnia Wake #Wattys2016

Chapter 8 - Snakes Always Win Staring Contests

About 7 Years Ago...

"I don't know where I am, but this hair is AWESOME!"

The name is Buddy. I'm just an average teenage boy, but I have a passion for self expression through my hair. I was born in 1962 in the country of Russia, and I am currently 16 years old. My dream is to travel the world with a food cart, but everyone says it's a ridiculous dream. I'm going to prove them wrong, without fail.

I had just gone to sleep and woken up in a dark forest. The forest didn't seem strange in itself, but the circumstances by which I ended up here certainly were. I didn't remember going camping or anything the day before, and it was certainly too warm to be anywhere near where I live. After taking a look at myself, I found that I was fully clothed, but not in my clothes. Well, I guess they're my clothes now! Upon further inspection though, I found to my greatest enjoyment that I had a full head of hair, and it was spiked in multiple places.

It's like I've been offered a second chance! I have no idea how, but I've been given a new life! Terror broke out. No! Did I die?! How could that have happened?! I took into consideration my current predicament. Oh, I get it, this must be the afterlife! Looks pretty nice to me.

At that moment, a brown snake with deep red eyes crossed within a few feet of me.

Ah, so there are animals here too!

The snake lifted its head up and pointed its face at me. For a second we just had a bit of a staring contest, and throughout the entire time it was aggressively licking the air. Eventually the licking got so intense that the snake was waving its head around as well, as if taking part in a wild ritualistic dance. It was too funny a sight, and I laughed out loud.

The snake face immediately focused right on me and without hesitation bore its fangs and lunged right at me. I instinctively turned around and ran, but the little snake was incredibly quick, and was catching up to me.

I'm going to die! I'm in the afterlife, and I'm going to die! What even happens if you die in the afterlife?!

The snake had caught up, and took a final jump at me. I fell on my back and covered my face with my arms, bracing for impact. I felt my hair stand on end as I lay there in terror.

I never felt the serpent's fangs boring into me however. After a few seconds of cowering on the ground I tried moving my arms away from my face to survey the situation. My arms wouldn't do this, though, and seemed to be connected somehow. I found that I could move them up and down, so I moved them closer to my chest.

I found that attached to my arms where what looked like hundreds of needles. On the ends of the needles was a perfectly skewered snake, which apparently ran face-first into this wall of thorns. After a little bit of maneuvering I was able to remove the now dead monster and took a closer look at my arms. These needles weren't needles, they were the hairs on my arms!

A little bit of experimentation later and I discovered that all the hairs on my body would stiffen and relax on queue. The world in which I had been dropped off in was quite strange indeed, but I was already loving it.

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After several weeks of travelling from town to town, safe haven to city, I had finally arrived at one of the famous meetup spots of the world. Here, I thought, I would find someone to travel with, to ease my loneliness and make the journey a little safer. Everyone was smiling and chatting up quite the storm. It was no surprise to me that it sounded like a continuous roar of thunder from nearby, as an expanse of people stretched off in each direction.