📖 THE WOMAN AND THE BOA — “She thought I was her friend… until one night he noticed something disturbing in how he observed her.” 🐍💔

 

“You don’t have to be afraid of what you save,” she used to say, caressing the dark scales that slid down her arm. Isn’t it, Shadow?

She lived alone, in a small wooden house on the edge of the jungle. Their only company was the distant song of the toucans and the rustling of the branches at dusk. Until one afternoon, he heard a soft sound, almost a moan, in the middle of the path. There it was: a small boa, wounded, weak, about to die. She did not hesitate. He wrapped her in his shawl and took her home.

Days turned into weeks, and the snake, which he named “Shadow,” began to grow. He slept next to her, moved between the furniture as if he were part of the house, and sometimes, he stretched out completely next to her in bed.

“You know?” he said one night as he embraced her tenderly. You’re the closest thing to a hug I’ve felt in years…

But then, Shadow stopped eating.

“Don’t you like rabbit?” Not even the chicken? Come on, Shadow… You have to eat something,” she begged, worried.

She took her concern to the village veterinarian.

“Did you say that it stretches next to you?” he asked, his face pale.

“Yes, every night—is that normal?”

He stared at her, in a deep voice:

—He does it to measure himself. To find out if it is already big enough to swallow whole.

The silence became eternal.

Back home, his breathing was trembling. I didn’t want to believe it. I couldn’t. But that night… Something changed.

In the gloom, as he blew out the last candle, Shadow emerged from the shadows, gliding noiselessly across the wooden floor. He looked at her. Not like before. Not as a companion. Like something else.

“Shadow,” he murmured, trembling, “what are you doing?”

The snake approached slowly, its eyes fixed, hypnotic.

The woman backed away. His heart beat like a drum.

And then…

Shadow began to stretch. Slowly, deliberately. Next to his body. Measuring it.

“No… “No,” she whispered. You can’t do this to me. I saved you…

The candlelight flickered one last time…
And just as the woman gave e

🌙 Chapter 2: What Fire Reveals

The night was thick, dense as the fear that had settled in his chest.
The woman could barely breathe. Shadow was there… motionless… but not like before.
It was a calculated stillness. A wait.

He lit all the candles in the house. The flickering light seemed to barely contain the weight of the darkness that swirled in the corners. And in the middle of it all, that long, black, sinuous figure, with golden eyes like burning embers.

“Shadow… Please tell me it’s not true…” she whispered, tears burning in her eyes.

The boa didn’t respond, but slowly slid toward her, silent, graceful, like a nightmare that needed make no noise to terrify.

The woman locked herself in the kitchen, locking the door with the rusty latch. From inside, he could hear the dry brush of Sombra’s body against the wooden floor, searching… Smelling…
Measuring.

“I… I took care of you… I removed the thorns from your skin… I gave you a name…” he said in a low voice, as if pain could drive away betrayal.

The sound stopped. A silence crueler than noise.
And then… Something cracked. Not from the door. From above.

His eyes went up to the kitchen ceiling, and there he saw her.

Shadow.
Threaded between the beams.
Waiting.

The woman slowly backed away, stumbling over a clay pot.

“No!” No, no, no…!

The boa fell from the ceiling with a dull and heavy thud, as if the jungle itself collapsed to the ground.
The nearest candle flickered… and it went out.

In the total darkness, the woman screamed.

“WHY?!” he said, between despair and tears. WHAT DID I DO TO YOU TO MAKE YOU LOOK AT ME LIKE THIS?!

And then, a voice, grave, impossible, human, emerged from the darkness:

“Because you were weak. Because you made me trust. And now I can’t be what I used to be.

The woman was paralyzed.
Had the serpent spoken…?
Or had his mind begun to break completely?

But there was no time to understand it.
Shadow lunged.

And just as his body began to squeeze his ribs, as his nails scratched the ground for escape,
a loud, explosive noise tore through the night.

💥

The kitchen door splintered out.

And a figure appeared in the light of the fire…
Someone who shouldn’t be there.
Someone who knew more about Sombra than he ever confessed.

—LET HER GO, DAMMIT!

…

📖 THE WOMAN AND THE BOA – Part 3: “The cage you didn’t see coming…” 🐍🩸

The candle went out with a sigh of air…
And the darkness swallowed every sound, every thought.

The woman did not scream. I couldn’t. His body was paralyzed with fear. He could hear the wet rubbing of scales against the ground, the slow breathing of something that was getting too close.

“Shadow,” he whispered once more, almost begging. You don’t have to do this…

But there was no response.

The snake was no longer his companion. He was no longer the wounded creature she had wrapped in her shawl. It was something else. An ancestral, awakened instinct.

Again.

Something fell to the ground behind her. A glass jar. The woman turned her face slightly… And in that brief second, he felt the pressure.
The cold and powerful wrap starting at his ankles, climbing firmly, hungry.

His scream, muffled, was lost in the creak of the floor.

He tried to reach for the lamp, the door, anything… but Sombra already had it. And now he was looking directly at her, his forked tongue brushing against her cheek.

“No!” She gasped, her voice breaking. I’m your friend!

For a moment… just an instant… The snake seemed to stop.

And then, a sharp blow shook the wall.
A figure appeared at the door, enveloped in moonlight.

“Go back, you damned beast!” A deep voice shouted, and the flash of a machete flashed in the air.

Shadow whistled furiously and retreated.

The woman fell to the ground, panting, as the snake disappeared into the shadows, swift as lightning.

The figure approached, agitated.

“Are you alive?”

She looked at him, trembling.

“Who… you are?

The man lowered the machete. His face was familiar. A neighbor, perhaps. One of those who always passed by without greeting, without even looking.

“I saw that you hadn’t been to town for days. Something told me something was wrong.

She covered her face with her hands. Tears, anger… and shame.

“I thought I could tame her,” she whispered. “I thought she was my friend.

He helped her up carefully. She looked around.

“Animals don’t know gratitude,” he said quietly. “They only obey hunger.

The woman looked at the house where she had offered so much love… now only full of fear and danger.

But the worst thing was not that.

Because in the gloom of the night, in the depths of the jungle…
Shadow watched. Waiting.
Not because of hunger. Not because of revenge.
But because of something darker.

Because sometimes… what you save… is what comes to destroy you the slightest. From within.

And Sombra… it wasn’t over yet.

📖 THE WOMAN AND THE BOA – Part 4: “The bite of the soul” 🐍💔🌑

The people slept…
But the snake’s eyes never closed.

The woman, now with the house half closed, lived like a shadow of herself. She didn’t sleep. She didn’t eat. She just listened.
Every touch of a branch. Every rustle of wood.
Because she knew that Sombra would return.

“You shouldn’t have let her go,” said the man with the machete, as he repaired the back door. “You have to kill her before she kills you.”

She denied, with a mixture of fear and absurd devotion in her eyes.

“You don’t understand. She… She’s more than a snake.”
“Of course,” he snorted. “A beast with demon eyes.”
“No!” She turned, her face reddened. “Shadow understands me! She’s the only one who’s looked at me without judging me, without talking to me as if I were a poor madwoman from the mountains.”
“Because she doesn’t speak,” he interrupted her, dryly. “And what she doesn’t speak, doesn’t mean she doesn’t think of eating you.”

That night, the man stayed to watch.

But when the first rooster crowed, he was gone.

All that remained was his machete stuck in the ground… and a slimy trail that slid into the jungle.

She ran, shouting his name, but it was useless. Only silence answered.

And that same night, Sombra returned.

But not like before.

Not slipping.

But walking.

With human legs. With arms covered in scales.
With the face half of a woman… half of a snake.

The woman fell to her knees, her eyes bulging.

“What… what are you?
Shadow spoke. For the first time.

“I am what you made of me.

“I… I saved you…”
“No. You formed me. You fed me with your loneliness, your madness, your secrets. You made me grow inside you.

“No! I loved you!”

Shadow smiled, showing long fangs like needles.

“Then come.

And he held out his scaly hand.

The woman did not tremble.

He just looked at her, finally understanding that there was no longer a boundary between the real and the wild.

And then…

He touched that hand.

The door closed behind them.
And no one saw the woman of the mountain again.

Only, from time to time, the elders listened to the slurred singing of two voices in the jungle…

A human.
One… not so much.

🖤 END.

 

Six years have passed since the woman’s disappearance. The elders still tell the story with a shudder in their voices, and the children listen to it with open eyes, too big for their age. The house on the edge of the forest was sealed off by the police, but no one had the courage to demolish it. They call it The House of Silence, because from inside, sometimes, you can hear a creak… or a whisper.

But the story did not end there.

One damp afternoon, in the middle of August, a young biologist named Alma Rivera arrived in town. She came from the city, sent by a conservation institute to study the behavior of boas in the region. When the villagers mentioned the legend of Sombra to her, she laughed.

“Animals don’t act out of malice. They only follow their instincts,” he said, taking notes with interest in his notebook.

“Then you’re not going into that house,” warned an old woman, her face etched with wrinkles and her eyes showing she had seen too much.

—That’s exactly what I’m going to do.

And he did.

The day Alma crossed the threshold of the abandoned house, the atmosphere changed. The door creaked open, and the air was thick, almost fetid. The windows were covered in moss and cobwebs, but in the darkest corner of the room, something moved.

A huge boa, motionless, with its gaze fixed on the visitor.

But what Alma didn’t expect to see… was what was around her.

The floor was littered with bones. Some were from animals. Others… were not.

Carefully, Alma raised her camera and began recording. But something was off. The boa wasn’t moving. It seemed… petrified. Literally. As if time had trapped it there, in that position of eternal vigilance.

“Shadow?” he murmured, not knowing why.

Then he heard it.

A whistle.

It didn’t come from the boa.

He came from the forest.

And he was… human.

A soft, feminine voice, like a song lost among the leaves. Intrigued, Alma left the house, following the sound and venturing deeper into the jungle. The farther she went, the louder and clearer the song became. It was as if someone were calling her.

Until he found her.

Seated in the middle of the clearing, surrounded by snakes that slithered gently around her, was a woman. Her hair was long and dark, her skin pale, her eyes… they were not human.

They were like those of a boa constrictor.

“Are you looking for Shadow?” the woman asked, with a blood-curdling smile.

“Who… who are you?” Alma stammered.

—I was like you. A lonely woman. A trusting woman.

—The woman who disappeared?

The figure smiled more broadly. Its pupils narrowed like those of a snake.

—Shadow didn’t devour me. I devoured her.

Alma took a step back, but it was too late. The snakes around her raised their heads in unison.

The story that the people remembered… was only half of it.

The other half was just beginning.