The Viper Ritual

The summer only had about a week left in its short lifespan before school reared it's ugly head once again. Fortunately for Miranda, this would be the beginning of her senior year. Unfortunately, she had yet to accomplish her goal of making herself look prettier before school started. She was still very bony and thin, her long blond hair still always managed to look greasy and dirty no matter how many times she washed it, body hair was a reoccurring issue, and her acne was still more that a bit undesirable. No makeup products or best of the best clothing lines seemed to alleviate her personal feeling of being unattractive. She sometimes felt so ugly that she was reluctant to even show her face in public. At this point, she had given up. She was turning nineteen tomorrow and had acknowledged that she really wasn't too terribly excited. Maybe she had just gotten used to it after eighteen other times that never once lived up to the hype her family and friends generated. However, she had planned to make this one different from the rest; do something a bit more... exciting.

She drove out to her friend Christian's house around 10:47. He lived just outside the city in a small house with a barn and some animals behind it, further accentuating that he was a bit of a country guy. She walked up the stairs of the barn to the upper floor and was greeted by all her friends. Christian, Sam, and Donovan. Christian was the aforementioned average country guy, whom could be a bit of a hardheaded sometimes. He wasn't exactly the sharpest but was real down to earth and was the one whom decided to organize the whole ritual. Donovan was one of the lesser known members of the football team and was certainly the better looking of the two guys that were there. He was infamous for being the one who would throw out the really controversial but admittedly funny joke. Miranda had a crush on him since sixth grade but felt too unattractive to make any kind of hint that might imply that she was into him. Her self-consciousness was really driven home as she personally thought he was looking particularly good this evening. Sam was of middle eastern descent and was never seen without her neck bracelet while wearing all black. She held the ever so coveted reputation of the really weird girl, but had turned out to be really sweet when her friends got to know her.

"Miranda!" Sam squealed as she wrapped her arms around her best friend.

"About time you showed up." Christian said.

"Actually, I'm early, so shut up." Miranda jokingly said. "Hey Don, did you get everything we need?"

Donovan said yes, opening his backpack and pulled out the following items: a bottle of rubbing alcohol, a salt shaker, three wax candles, red food coloring, and the severed head of a snake.

"Looks like we're all set," Christian said as he stood up and began moving several clumps of hay aside.

"So what exactly is the ritual supposed to do?" Miranda asked.

Christian shrugged. "I found it on the creepypasta wiki. All I know is that it was very poorly written and that it's about exchanging something to a snake-demon empress of gluttony for, I dunno, a pair of fuzzy die or some shit like that.

"Well there we go, I guess that explains everything."

They all sat in a circle with the lit candles placed in the middle. Christian turned off the lights so the candles were the only source of light, casting a dim glow throughout the entire room (aside from when Sam's phone accidentally went off.) Donovan used the red dye to make a pentagram around the candles, making Miranda cringe in embarrassment as she thought to herself how silly this actually was, compounded by the fact that they were about sacrifice a bag of fingernails to the demon empress of gluttony and snakes. She laid a picture of herself when she was seven in front of the candles, followed by the snake's head being put on top of it, and finally, she placed a tiny bag of her own fingernails inside the snake's mouth. Christian cleared his throat as he tried to recall the prelude speech required before the actual ritual could begin.

"Spoo-ky Scare-y skel-etons." Sam sang, making Christian screw up and laugh. After telling her to shut up he quickly regained his composure and began.

"It is here whence I graciously offer you the piece of a mortal soul, dearest Empress. From the maw of hell and into the ravine of the afterlife arises what man has desired for all his brief existence. In the embrace of perfection is birthed the ideal exchange of life and death. To gamble the greatest pair of die on the table of thy wishes. To create a new form of life never before seen but greatly desired by the collective of man. To abide their principle of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, to take the risk of exchanging life for death. It is here whence I begrudgingly offer you the piece of a mortal soul, dearest Empress."

"Boy, that was some of the cringiest shit I've ever heard." Sam jeered.

Everyone laughed but Miranda. She looked at the dark, hollow, beady eyes of the snake. She felt them staring back at her, sending a cold shiver down her spine. She was half-expecting the snake to say something or move it's head at the very least. "What now?" She asked.

"Now we wait for the Empress to show up, I guess." Christian said. "That's what the ritual said."

Miranda shifted uncomfortably. "How... how long should this take?"

"The pasta said anywhere from the end of the speech to sunrise."

Sam rolled her eyes, "Joy."

---

Miranda awoke in her bed the next day. Her body ached, her back was incredibly sore, and she had a pounding headache. She just lay still trying to pretend that she was still tired. She noticed that her sheets were messier than usual and how unkempt her room looked. What the hell happened last night, she thought to herself, unable to remember the events that happened after the ritual's completion. She had noticed how bloated she felt and saw a large lump under the sheets where her torso was. She threw the sheets off the bed and immediately felt a shock in her chest so powerful that she felt as if she were about to have a heart attack. She... was pregnant. She rushed to the bathroom and saw that in the mirror stood a pregnant reflection of herself. She lifted up her shirt and saw that her belly did indeed resemble one of someone who was nine months in. She put a hand on it and felt that it was significantly cushier than that of a normal pregnant stomach. There were no visible veins, her belly button hadn't popped out, and her skin was very smooth. Come to think of it, the skin across her entire body was smooth and without a single hair or blemish. It was so alien to her to see her face complete clear of acne and scars. Her eyelashes were full and her hair was lush and flowing, without a single trace of grease or dirt. She had also noticed that she wasn't completely thin and bony anymore. Her cup size seemed to have gone up by three and her general figure was thick and sexier, baby bump aside. She was at a complete loss for words. What the actual fuck happened last night?

She turned her phone on and saw that her phone had been blown up with messages from her friends asking where she was and if she was okay. She saw that today was the seventeenth, the first day back to school. That's impossible. Her birthday was on the thirteenth. She had been asleep for four days. Nothing made sense. How could she have been asleep for four days? Who did she have sex with? Was she raped? How could she have become fully pregnant in only four days? What happened to make her so beautiful all of the sudden? In the midst of her internal panic her phone rang. It was a Skype call from Sam. She immediately answered.

"Miranda! Where the hell have you been?"

"Sam! I- I don't know- wha-"

"Miranda, slow down, honey. What happened?"

"I- I'm pregnant."

"What!?"

"No, no- you don't understand. I'm nine months pregnant. Like I'm talking full term. Here, lemme show you." She switched the call from audio to video.

"What the- that's impossible. Is this some kind of prank?" She saw the fear in her eyes; pure, unrefined, and genuine fear. She couldn't have been lying.

"What the hell is happening to me, Sam!?"

"I don't know! But listen, have you seen Christian?"

"Huh? What does he have to do with this?"

"Nobody's seen him in days. He disappeared just like you did. His parents haven't seen him, no one's seen him. I think it has something to do with the Viper Ritual."

"Sam, this is fucking serious."

"No! No! Hear me out; the ritual said a whole bunch of vague stuff about birth and taking life in exchange for giving life and shit. Maybe-

"Sam, you are seriously not trying to tell me that a demon took Christian in exchange for getting me pregnant."

"I don't know."

"How do you not know? You were there!"

"Me and Donovan had to leave early, meaning only you and Christian by yourselves."

"But, what about-

" Look, I'm gonna be late if I don't get going. Meet me in the cafeteria for breakfast and we'll talk then."

"You really want me going out like this!?"

"If it makes feel any better, you look really pretty."

"I know. I don't know how that happened, either."

"Maybe they'll cancel each other out?"

"Goodbye, Sam"

Miranda hung up and threw her phone to the side. She sighed helplessly and looked down at her stomach. "Where did you come from?" She asked her belly as she gently rubbed it. She was surprised that she didn't feel any movement. No kicking, no moving around, nothing. What the hell was inside her?

School was an absolute hell for Miranda, no matter now much Sam comforted and reassured her. People murmured and whispered behind her back in first period about how she must have gotten knocked up last semester and told no one about it, and how crazy it was because everyone knew that she was a good kid. She'd see them look at her from the corner of her eye, talking about how much better looking she had gotten, which did make her feel a bit better, but when she'd hear them talk about her being pregnant and wonder who the father was she could feel her face turn red from embarrassment as she covered her stomach and sank into her chair. She and Sam were getting ready to leave around lunch since they were seniors. Sam had suggested that they go back to Christian's house and look for clues that may lead to a logical cause for his disappearance. Before she could catch up to Sam on the way out she had bumped into Donovan. He asked if she was alright and what happened to her, with Miranda telling him that neither she nor Sam had any idea. He complimented her on how amazing she looked, making her look away and blush as she brushed her hair out of her eyes. He told her that she meant a lot to him and he'd be happy to help out with her kid. Sam called out for Miranda to hurry up. She thanked Donovan and hugged him before running after Sam. She was so happy that Donovan was finally showing signs of being into her after so many years, but sort of in a way felt bad for being happy in such a dire situation with Christian being missing.

---

Sam pulled her car up beside Christian's house and they went back into the barn. Sam took the liberty of searching the house while Miranda took the barn. The candles were still there, same with the goofy pentagram and the snake's head on top of the picture of young Miranda. She shuffled through the piles of hay beside the wall. Nothing. No blood, no dirty bootprints, and no sign of anything relating to Christian's sudden vanishing. The only thing that seemed out of placed was what appeared to be a large, crusted, thin and transparent towel on the floor. She did, however, noticed his phone on the floor. She sat down and picked it up, searching through all the messages of people asking him where he was. He hadn't made any calls or sent any messages. It seemed as if he just up and left without taking his phone. His browsing history didn't show anything and neither did any of the apps he had. She went to his camera roll and saw that there wasn't much to see there, either. There was, however, a four-minute long video that seemed a bit out of place. The ritual site was in the corner of the thumbnail, leading her to believe that they had finally found something.

The video was sideways, implying that the phone was laying down sideways. Christian was backing way from something, begging them to please leave him alone and that he had done nothing wrong. He was breathless and covered in scratches and bruises, clutching his broken arm. A figure walked past the phone towards him. Miranda was shocked, as that figure was her. Not the old, unattractive Miranda; the new, beautiful Miranda.

"Miranda, please! You're not yourself! I know you're still in there! You're still in control!"

She leaped towards him and tackled him to the ground. She had her hands clutched tightly around his throat as he fought with all his remaining strength to get her off of him. He struggled less and less until he finally just gave up and lay there. A devilish smirk crawled onto Miranda's face. She leaned in and ran her tongue up the side of his neck. A look of horror fell upon his face Her jaws quickly unhinged like a snake, Christian's entire head being engulfed in her extended maw. Inch by inch she shoved more and more of him down her throat. Shoulders, torso, waist, thighs. Once his knees were in her mouth, she slurped the rest of his legs in like spaghetti noodles. With a loud and thunderous gulp, Christian was gone. Her stomach bloated out to the size of an exercise ball. It sloshed and gurgled loudly, the churning drowning out her prey's muffled scream. She licked her lips in a sick sense of satisfaction and her palms traversed the surface of her over-sized girth. She opened her mouth and pulled out something that looked like a giant, slimy laundry detergent sheet from the back of her throat, throwing it haphazardly on the floor as if it were nothing. She struggled to hunch over her giant gut and picked up the phone and held it facing her, on top of her stomach.

Present-day Miranda was mortified at what she just witnessed. "This can't be happening," she panicked to herself, "This isn't happening. I'm in a bad dream... None of this is real... It's not real. It's not real. It's not real. It's not real. It's not fucking real."

"Oh it's real, dear," the Miranda in the video said, "Believe me."

"Wha? Are you-

"You know, I really wish you could've remembered this. Your friend tasted so good. I haven't had a meal like this in centuries, lemme tell ya."

"No. This is not happening. I'm dreaming a dream where I died and now I'm in hell."

The Miranda in the video chuckled. "You're friend certainly is alive and kicking," she teased, drumming her fingers on the top of her belly, "Just like you."

"No! No that's not possible! I didn't eat him!"

"You didn't. I did. He summoned me, unknowingly requesting an exchange of death for life. You've always wanted to be gorgeous, and let's be honest, he didn't have much to offer the world."

"I... I don't understand..."

"The new life is the new and beautiful you that you've always dreamed of. The new death is, well, you know," she smirked as she patted her stomach. "Simple as that."

"I... I couldn't have... I didn't know! How do I get him back!"

"There's no going back, sweetheart. Your gut's already taken care of that. Well, almost, given that you still have a bit of a belly."

Miranda was silent.

"Don't feel so bad, honey. I was hungry, you were an adequate vessel, we ate him, digested him, and I gave you something that you've always dreamed of to say hey, thanks for dinner."

Miranda was still without words. She noticed her dim reflection in the phone's screen. She had dark bags under her eyes and a few pimples beginning to form on her left temple.

"You wanna stay pretty, right? Working together could benefit us both."

All her life, she had yearned to be beautiful. Now she had it. She could get anything she wanted with her looks. She could win anyone's heart she if she so desired. And now that she had it all, she was not about to give it up.

Sam came into the lower floor of the barn. "Hey Miranda, did you find anything?" She shouted up to the upper floor.

Upon hearing her voice, Miranda, for the first time in nearly five days, had felt just a tad bit hungry.

"Yeah, I did. You should come up here and look at it."

The Miranda in the video smiled, "That's my girl."

~JimmetyJumps