He lay himself down beside the stream.
Strange, he didn’t usually need to rest on his way home from school, but he had an overwhelming urge to sleep.
His eyelids became heavier & heavier, & try as he might, he just couldn’t stop himself from slipping into a slumber.
As he drifted into his dreamscape he was trying to remember something his mother had called to him as he was leaving for school that morning.
His dreams were filled with images from his day: his mother waving goodbye, his biology lesson about reptiles, a pretty girl on the path. There was an animal that followed him everywhere begging for love, but he couldn’t quite make out what it was, and there was that nagging feeling that he’d forgotten something, something important.
Waking, he noticed a new, make-shift sign on the path by the stream. He tried to get up & read the sign but his feet were stuck. Thinking about it, he couldn’t actually feel them at all, neither his arms. With a supreme effort he managed to slither up to the sign & read it.
“DANGER!
POLLUTED WATER!
KEEP AWAY!
… It said.
Suddenly he remembered what his mother had called to him.
“Don’t walk home along the stream today love, there’s been a spill, some bio-something or other.”
“Ah well, too late now”, he thought.
Besides he had other things on his mind, a slinky, snakey lady in a tank in his brother’s bedroom for one. He’d never really thought about her like this before, but suddenly he was seeing her in a whole new light. He slithered his way, quickly, home. Only one question on his mind now –
How the hell was he going to get into that tank?
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