by Ross Whitlock
Rattler waits in the dark with the One Actual Story on his forked tongue.
So everyone says. These days, stories float about in the lightning-struck sky above. There’s nae counting them all. They hiss and hum and sting the ear like ashes from the broken world. One day, you’ll hear about the bears and the cracked boulder. Next day, it’ll be the young doe who sank in the swamp and came back up with pine-tar wings and a sheen like a hummingbird’s breast. The mice say that the foxes did everything wrong, and the foxes say that the mice gnawed one too many roots and made it all crumble in the center. Even the birds, who all went starkers long ago, hide a story within their ragged, jagged bird-talk. More stories than ants on the ground and blowflies in the air. All wending their way toward the same damned punchline:
“…and that’s how the world broke.”
The bears’ cracked boulder kept cracking. The doe from the swamp was nobody’s messiah. The foxes fumbled; the mice gnawed. And that’s how the world broke.
Still. Ask about the One Actual Story, and you’ll tease a consensus from the muddle of crossed tales. Rattler knows. Rattler and only Rattler. Oh, there’s plenty of rattlesnakes out there, blending with the matted carpet of rot in what used to be forests, nestled in cracks under the too-big, too-close sun. But there’s only one Rattler. And the other snakes’ll nae speak of him, but to spit and call him outcast, heretic, starkers. His head got split, they’ll say, and his brains got well and surely pithed. Maybe you’ll listen close and hear how they’re all afraid, all those snakes. Afraid of Rattler and what he knows.
Three things folk agree upon: Rattler knows the One Actual Story, he’ll tell it to you, and you’d best be bringing him a pretty present. That’s his toll.
And, any-old-way, you have to find him first. He’s down in the dark. Is he North? East? West? It’ll nae matter, on account of there being nae compass any more. The world broke. Nobody (unless it’s Rattler) knows how or why or even when. Every creature’s inside-clock is busted, wires and cogs in a tangled bouquet, so nobody can say how old they are or what they were up to before the world broke. But it did. Bits of the world are nae up nor down any more. Some parts have crumbled while others have reached for the sky, knife-edged pinnacles every which way, as if to stroke the lightning. Half the world’s covered in swamp, and there’s things under the muck, long and ropey and hungry, that just keep going. The sun, when it shows its sickly face, is too big, too close. The moon’s nae just one moon any more.
In a broken world, eating and mating and staying alive are all and everything. Nobody sleeps. Time is in shards. The wolf sings with the stag, a melancholy duet, as one’s teeth tear out the other’s greasy innards. The birds are mad, starkers without their compass bearings. They batter themselves to pulp on cracked stone cliffs, dive giggling into the swamps, swallow hot coals and ground glass. The humans are all gone, their cities reduced to gravel and burning gasoline. Nobody knows where. Underground. Or up in the sky. Nae dead, on account of there being nae bones or clothes left. Gone.
In all this, how’s a creature to find Rattler? The best option is, you find where the world’s broken worst, and go that way. If you see anything safe, pretty, or normal, avoid it. Turn away. Go toward the worst ruin, the deepest calamity, the deadliest obstacle. Start every morning with the urge to kill yourself. Go starkers. Stay alive. Hold tight to your pretty present for Rattler. Keep on.
When you find his hole, you’ll know. It’ll gape at you, all a-glimmer. Rattler’s tunnel bores deep, deep into the world. A greenish, toxic stream of water, cool and burning at the same time, flows up and out against all laws of gravity. The tunnel floor is mud and the walls and ceiling are a church, a cathedral. Rattler’s taken all the pretty presents given to him, all the shiny stones and colored glass, the butterfly wings and glossy feathers, the chrome from human machines, the obsidian and jade and fool’s gold, the dead Christmas lights and circuit boards — all of it’s gone up on those tunnel walls. Every time some pretty fragment is dug from the shit of the world, it’s found its way to Rattler. Because that’s how badly folk want to know the One Actual Story.
Rattler takes the green, deadly water and mixes it with earth and mud, and pastes his presents, glues them into the mosaic. Some stretches of tunnel, you can nae see the stone through the mask of mud and glimmering, twinkling trinkets. Snakeskin weaves everything together. Rattler sheds it often, far too often for a normal snake, but what’s been normal since the world broke? Rattler’s old skins become braided tendons that hold his whole church of mud and pretty presents together.
Keep going. Deep and deeper. You’ll find Rattler in time. The tunnel nae ends; it keeps on boring into the black, airless core of the world. But Rattler’s made himself a nice nest, a tangle of mud and snakeskin, stretched across the tunnel like a spider’s web. In the middle of the web’s a hole, and when Rattler’s nae working on his mosaic, he drapes himself over the bottom edge of the hole like a tired, threadbare stocking. He’s always tired.
“Welcome, friend-o-friend,” Rattler will say to you. His voice is like a mouthful of sand. “Come all this way, have ya? Come to hear old Rattler flap his jaw? Gimme my pretty present.”
You’ve got to hold it up for his inspection. If you’ve brought him more than one pretty present, so much the better. If the distant daylight reflects off your present just so, or if you’re one of those creatures with dark vision, you’ll see that Rattler’s a sorry, sorry sight. His left eye is gone. So’s his right fang, taking the venom sac with it. Worst of all, the other snakes got one thing right: Rattler’s head’s been split. Right between eye and socket. His hide flaps open and his skull pokes out. You can almost see his brains. He must be starkers. If only there were nae such terrible, furious sanity in his one leftover eye.
“Very fine, very pleasant,” Rattler will rasp, after he’s tilted his split head this way and that to assess your present. “Drop it on the ground, friend-o-friend. I’ll find the perfect spot for it later. Now, you’ll be aching to hear the One Actual Story, yes?”
Yes.
Rattler will laugh and wheeze in his voice of sand. “Of course. Everyone has to know. How the world got broke. How everything turned to baked shit. Unclog the wax from your ears, friend-o-friend, and have a seat.”
You’ll find a dry patch, well away from the toxic green trickle. You’ll rest your tired paws, or claws, or talons. You’ll scratch your fur or fluff your feathers. Maybe you’ve got dark vision or maybe you’re blinder than a mole, but you’ll fix your eyes nonetheless on Rattler where he dangles limp. You’ll unclog your ears.
“Now,” Rattler says.
“You may well smell a rat. How come a measly snake knows it all? When the world broke and everyone lost their way, how come I nae lost mine? Well, friend-o-friend, I could lie and call myself The Chosen One. Plenty have done so. But I’m humble. It was pure luck. I rolled snake-eyes, and that’s a mighty fortunate roll for a snake, so it is.
“When the world broke, I happened to be out in the driest, parchiest, most remote little stretch of desert I could find. I was a young snakelet then, all puffed up with self-worth, taking my slinkabout. The slinkabout is something young rattlesnakes do now and then, to prove their moxie, or to find their purpose in life, who knows, but we’ve always done it. What you do is, you catch a mouse, but you nae eat it right away. You keep it close and you see to it that your mouse gorges itself on a very particular type of cactus with very, shall we say, esoteric properties. Once your mouse is fat to bursting and so starkers it can nae tell up from down, you take your mouse to the farthest desert, far from any other being, and you scarf your cactus-poisoned mouse right down. So I’d done. Once it takes hold, your mind goes to all manner of interesting places and you forget who and what you are, and you nae care. I could nae tell you if I saw anything during my little trip, anything useful or relevant.
“All I know is, when the world broke, my mind was in that other space. And I figure that might be what kept my mind safe. Why I nae lost my way, lost my compass, forgot what came before. So I figure.
“But, any-old-way, sooner or later I came back to myself and immediately kenned that something had gone wrong, wrong, wrong. The sky was nae any one color, and the sun was too close, too swollen. The desert was blasted and twisted and drippy like pine sap. I knew I could nae still be on my trip, ’cause I felt hungry and itchy and scared. I nae knew which way to turn; nothing looked familiar. But I saw a cluster of hills in the distance, so I figured that’d be a place to start.
“I slithered my gingerly way over what had been the desert, and I approached the hills, and they were nae hills.
“They were the gods.
“You’ll know all about the gods, of course.”
At this point in his story, Rattler will pause portentously, as though his tale needs real, true validation. Of course his listener will know all about the gods. That’s one thing nobody’s forgotten. There’s the Bossman, the first god, who made all the others and then left, back to wherever that sort of being goes. The littler gods took it upon themselves to make the world, although it’s a point of exceeding controversy which god actually did so. You have Big Flanks, the bear god, and Weave-the-Grass, the rabbit god. The frog god is known as Ruggalumph the Sonorous, and the mole god is Honorable Sniff and Sift, and the fox god changes his name every week to confuse people. There’s one bird god who is also a million bird gods; it’s tricky. Nobody can pronounce the name of the alligator god, but if you snap your jaw a few times, that’s close enough. There’s too many more to count. We know it. Rattler knows we know it.
Once he’s got the proper affirmation, Rattler will go on.
“The gods. Each and every one, splayed and sprawled over the shattered ground. I should’ve been honored, but I was pissing-myself terrified. The gods were in a horrible, loathly state. Big Flanks and Weave-the-Grass, Thundering Hoof and the bird god, or bird gods, and even that clever red foxy. Nae really alive, nae exactly dead. Their bodies were torn and riven. Their fur, scales, and feathers made a gory carpet. Their eyes, those that still had eyes, were milky marbles, staring miserably at nothing. I saw things reflected in those eyes, things that have nae business existing anywhere. Worst of all, the mouths. Where each god had once had a mouth, muzzle, beak, or snout, each god had a ragged black hole with stringy edges.
“I slithered through the fallen gods, trembling and jittering, scared that they really were dead, even more scared that they were nae dead, and would move and look at me with those awful, hopeless eyes. What could’ve done such a thing? In my jitters, it took me a bit to realize who was missing. I clenched my nerves and made the rounds again, just to be sure. Nae mistake. One god was nae there. My own god. Old-Dry-Snakeskin.
“I left the poor, rotting gods, picked a direction, and stuck with it. It became clear to me that the whole world was broke, and when I met other creatures, I saw that they’d all lost something. Wit and memory had given way to confusion and frustration. I nae told a soul what I’d seen, what had become of the gods. Why make the broken world even more hopeless? But I held in my snake’s heart a flicker of hope.
“Whatever had befallen the gods, Old-Dry-Snakeskin had escaped. I was nae surprised. Old-Dry-Snakeskin is one tough god. He’s the one who really made the world, friend-o-friend. Let no one tell you different. Old-Dry-Snakeskin spit the world into being, crafted it from venom and his own shed skins. And his mighty, thunderous rattle beat the stuffing out of any god who tried to stick their paw into his work. Don’t you interrupt, friend-o-friend. I’ll nae have any creature butting into the One Actual Story. This is gospel. Old-Dry-Snakeskin is the reason we have a world at all.
“So if the world had gotten broke, figured me, then Old-Dry-Snakeskin could fix it.
“But where to find him?
“Well. Old-Dry-Snakeskin likes dark, dry spaces. He likes to be cool and shady. These days, most of the world’s surface is swampy, knife-sharp, overly parched, or all at once. Nae good places for Old-Dry-Snakeskin. But below the surface, that’s another story. When the world broke, an impressive portion of it crumbled and fell into itself. A lot of folk went with it, and plenty more have fled into the depths, away from the too-huge sun and the blowfly swarms and the terror. I figure there’s at least as much world below the surface as there is above it. It’s nae any less dangerous or wrong. But, figured me, it’d be the place to start questing for Old-Dry-Snakeskin.
“So down I went.”
Rattler will usually pause at this moment, shift his scales, and languidly crick his neck. His awful split head bobs from side to side. Behind him, the deep blackness yawns and seems to draw nearer.
“Now.
“Down below the surface is a whole ’nother set of unnatural-type tribulations that I had to learn to dodge pretty quick. Oh, I had me some close calls. Thick wormy things that wanted to suckle me down. Mushrooms walking like people and people stuck to the rock like mushrooms, that’d whisper all my dark secrets to me as I slithered by. I saw birds who lived on the ceilings of caves, upside-down forever. I fled from something that was legs, legs, nothing but legs. Had myself quite the set of adventures, but nothing we need trouble ourselves with just now, friend-o-friend.
“Nae till I came to the poison lake.
“This was long after I’d gone down. I’d learned what to eat and what to drink. And I’d found myself a compass of sorts. See, I’d nae idea where I might find Old-Dry-Snakeskin, in all that rock and tunnel. But I soon learned that the underground was hit by mighty quakes on the regular. Deep, wrenching quakes that crumbled rock and rewrote all that cave geometry. I imagine, to most of the creatures living down there, the quakes were just another occupational hazard. But rattlesnakes can feel rhythm. We know our percussion. If I sat really still during a quake and attuned my inner hearing bits, I knew. I was certain. Each quake was a rattle. A deep, angry, sad snake-rattle from somewhere far below in the black.
“So whenever a quake hit, I’d head toward where it seemed strongest. And that’s how I came out a narrow tunnel and stopped dead on the lakeshore.
“Only a fool would stick a toe in that lake. Can you picture behind your eyes a cavern so big you can nae see the far side, or even the ceiling? Now imagine the lake reaching from wall to far-far-off wall, hissing and sizzling, purplish in places, piss-yellow in others. Huge bubbles rising and exploding like ticks on a brushfire. One slip and I’d be a goner. The lake would take my body apart; I’d be a grisly scum across the surface. And no path led around the cavern’s edge; the walls sloped right down to the poison froth at the edges. So what was I to do?
“I sat there for a spell, pondering. Figuring I’d need to backtrack, find a new way, waste time. But then I saw something bobbing across the lake toward me. A boat? The lake would eat any boat just as readily as flesh. But it drew closer, and I realized it was a stone boat. Yes, a stone boat, a floating basin of rock, its sides pitted from the acid, but holding firm. How can a stone boat float? How can any of this be possible, friend-o-friend? I see the doubt on your lower lip. Feel free to turn tail and leave if you’ve ceased to believe. It was a stone boat, I tell you, and standing at the bow, poling the vessel along with a stone rod, was the rattiest, scraggliest, sorriest-looking magpie I’d ever laid eyes on. Or so I thought, until I noticed an even rattier, scragglier, sorrier magpie huddled at the stern.
“You’ve got to be careful with birds. They’re all starkers. But that stone boat looked mighty promising.
“ ‘And hello to you,’ said me.
“ ‘And more the same,’ said the magpie poling the boat.
“ ‘Fancy giving a snake a lift?’ asked me. ‘For safe passage, I’ll not bite. By my honor.’
“ ‘Plenty of folks want to cross,’ said the magpie. ‘Damned if I know why. But it’s good to feel useful. I’ll pole you across, friend-o-friend, but not for free.’
“ ‘I’ve nae much to offer,’ said me. ‘Perhaps my next snakeskin. Weave it into a cloak, keep off the poison splashes.’
“ ‘Don’t want to wait,’ said the magpie. He cocked his head and looked at me this way and that. Magpies, they love their shiny, pretty things. After a spell, he said, ‘Gimme an eye. I fancy those peepers of yours. All those little rainbows deep down. Your eye’s my price.’
“ ‘I’m greatly sore to think of losing an eye,’ said me.
“ ‘An eye or no passage. Take it or leave it.’
“I could nae see as I had much choice, so in time, I nodded assent. The magpie hopped off the boat, his beak flashed, and just like that, he’d taken my eye. All hurt and aching from my loss, I slithered into the boat. The other magpie at the stern watched me. The first magpie waved a wing toward her and said, ‘My sister,’ though she looked awful old to be his sister.
“He began to pole us back the way we’d come: him in the bow, his sister in the stern, me coiled up in the middle, still aching. He held my eye under his wing as he poled, held it close and covetously. His sister quickly took to staring at him, at my eye where it peeked from under his wing. I’m nae much for reading bird expressions, but the look on her beaky face disquieted me. It must’ve taken hours to cross that lake. In time, I could nae see any cave walls at all, just bubbling, hungry poison and acid in all directions.
“Somewhere out there in the middle of that awful stew, the sister-magpie spoke. ‘Gimme the eye, brother,’ said she.
“ ‘You can see it when we’re safe across,’ said he.
“ ‘Gimme it now, brother,’ said she. ‘All that you’ve taken from me. All that you’ve left me hurting and sore. All the tears I’ve shed on your behalf.’
“ ‘It’s my eye,’ said he. ‘I took it, nae you. Maybe I’ll let you look at it now and then.’
“With that, his sister hunched herself down, a knot of ragged black and white. I thought that was the end of it. But then she flung herself at her brother, right over me and into him. I kept very still as the two magpies fought and cursed and tugged my eye back and forth, back and forth. ‘All you’ve taken from me,’ she kept saying. ‘All you’ve taken.’ Her brother gave as good as he got, and I saw that he’d lost his grip on his stone pole and it had slipped down below the surface. We were adrift.
“When it happened, it happened too fast for most to see. One minute, they were still kerfuffling over my eye, the next minute she was gone. Over the side without even a scream. Her brother and I looked over and watched as the lake took her apart, spread her out, dissipated her. Pray you never see such a thing, friend-o-friend. Her brother knocked his head against the stone boat, over and over, and made sounds like a kitten in pain.
“ ‘Listen here,’ said me. ‘I’m awful sorry for your loss. But if we can’t find a way to make this boat move, we’ll drift until we die.’
“The magpie hauled himself up and looked at me like he was already dead. ‘I said I’d get you across,’ said he. ‘I’ve nae had an unsatisfied customer yet and I nae plan to.’ Then he dipped his ragged wings in the acid and pushed. Again. Again. He ferried us the rest of the way across with nothing but his wings. It must have hurt like anything, but he made nae sound. Finally, after more hours, we reached a stony bank with fresh tunnels leading away to more caves.
“ ‘I’m greatly obliged,’ said me.
“He looked at me. His wings were down to a little bone and tendon. ‘Thanks for the eye,’ said he. ‘May I be cursed. I did it all for her. No one sees. I did it all for her.’
“He rambled like this for a bit, and I figured I’d nae get nothing more from him, so I turned to slither away. All I heard was the slight ploosh of the magpie’s body slipping over the side of the boat and into the poison. I watched as the lake took him apart. He held my eye tight against his breast until there was nothing left of either one. I lay there, looking down into the burbling stew, long after there was anything to see. Then I turned away and continued on my journey with many strange new sorrows in my heart.
“But, any-old-way, that’s how I lost my eye.
“Now.
“Some space of time after the poison lake, I found myself in a maze of tunnels, all twisty and turny like coral. In this maze were a great number of fuzzy little bats, all flapping this way and that, all squeak and chitter. They pretty much ignored me as I slithered through hard, caked layers of their guano. Best I could tell, those bats seemed locked in some great political and military strife, fighting battles, making and breaking alliances, backstabbing, scheming, politicking. For what? For another ten feet of tunnel? It nae made sense to me, so I kept on slithering. Let the bats have their madness.
“Then luck kicked me right in the rattle. Another one of those deep earthquakes hit the tunnels, and as always, I turned my head towards where it seemed strongest. But I nae counted on the crumble, the jagged spray of broken rock that cascaded down on me before I could dart out of the way. The rockfall pinned me tight, so only my head and a bit of my body could even be seen. And limber as I may be, those rocks held me tight and fast. Things nae looked good.
“I lay there for some time, getting hungrier, wondering if this was it. I tried hissing for help, even though only those fuzzy little bats were around to hear. Finally, one bat flew down and landed to have a look at me. A tiny little thing he was, ears as big as the whole rest of his body, eyes all popped out. He shimmied left, then right, and I gave him what I hoped was a friendly snake-grin, and that’s when he squeaked in righteous excitement.
“ ‘By mine troth!’ cried he. ‘But the legends are true, for I see with mine own eyes! Thou has the twin swords of Daghm-har! Thou bears them within thine maw, waiting the grasp of a true hero! Mine time has surely come! Though I am but the runtling of the Clatterskap Clan, youngest heir, though the war goes ill for us, mine destiny is upon me and all true wingèd!’
“ ‘The hell you talking about?’ asked me.
“ ‘Crimson moons and riven rock!’ chittered he. ‘Scrape and ruin upon mine foes! All shall tremble! Long ago and far away, the Great Cratered One hid the twin swords in a place only the most stalwart would find! I never dared to dream it would be I, Onin of Clatterskap, who would wield such glory! Noble sword-keeper, give to me the blades and let me take up mine father’s father’s mantle! All shall tremble! The Ancestress and her eighteen earless husbands! The red guard of the Isenken Crevice! Fat Pellik and his bullyboys! The faithless ones who scheme against us, who break our bones in battle, now shall taste the dread fears of old! All shall tremble!’
“I could see this Onin of Clatterskap was no less starkers than the rest of those bats. I let him rave and froth in his euphoria, and when he quieted down a bit, I asked him if he could shift the rock and set me loose.
“ ‘I will assist thee once I clasp the twin swords of Daghm-har in mine claws, noble one,’ said he.
“ ‘But I need my fangs,’ said me.
“ ‘But I need the twin swords,’ said he.
“ ‘Tell you what, friend-o-friend,’ said me, knowing he had the upper hand. ‘I’ll give you one fang…that is, one sword…and once you’ve shifted the rocks and set me loose, you can have the other.’ I figured once I was loose, I’d eat him and take my fang back. Losing an eye is bad enough, but a fang is truly tragic.
“ ‘Thou art silver-tongued, sword-keeper,’ said he. ‘When the twin blades allow me to conquer mine foes and win the great war, when I sit upon the Onyx Throne and wear the Micah Sigil upon mine brow, I shall remember who bore the swords to me, by the grace of the Great Cratered One. Give me one sword, and I shall free thee forthwith.’
“So I opened my maw nice and wide, and Onin reached in with the little claws at the joints of his wings, and he tugged and twisted, and just like that, he plucked out my fang, and the venom sac too. Oh, how it ached. And how he chortled, waving my fang around with the sac all a-dangle beneath.
“ ‘Now shift these rocks,’ said me.
“Onin got a very calculating look on his wrinkled little bat face. ‘Now that I think on it,’ said he, ‘one sword should be more than enough. If I need the other one, I know where to find thee. Farewell, sword-keeper. Onin of Clatterskap is off to write a new history and turn the tide. All shall tremble!’
“And off he flew, taking my fang with him, the two-timing little bastard. I heard his all-shall-trembles fading off into the gloom and I despaired.
“Nae ask me how long I was stuck in that rockfall. All around me, the bats were warring in earnest, and it seemed Onin was using my fang to great effect. I nae ever saw him again, but from what fragments I caught, he’d murdered all his brothers and sisters and was leading the Clatterskap Clan on a campaign of bloodthirsty slaughter that’d make your hide crawl. I stayed alive by luring more bats down to where I lay trapped. After all, I still had the other sword of Daghm-har. I’d promise them power and victory, let them reach into my maw for my other fang, then snap my jaws shut and chew and gulp. Bats are stringy.
“Finally, a mighty quake occurred, and the rocks shifted, and I was able to writhe my way to freedom. Funny thing, but it seems the quake happened at the very moment Onin was leading his army in the final campaign against the Baron Starlicker, his mightiest foe. Victory was within Onin’s grasp after so many campaigns, betrayals, and massacres. But just as the two armies flung themselves at one another, the quake broke loose a mighty stalactite that plummeted from above and squashed Onin and his army into raspberry jam. So that was the end of Onin, and his beloved sword, my fang, got squashed along with him. Probably his death began a new epoch of scheming and backstabbing and politicking, and probably those bats are still there, too starkers to stop their eternal war. I nae stuck around to see.
“But, any-old-way, that’s how I lost my fang.
“Now.
“Deeper down, always deeper down. Figuring I’d better find Old-Dry-Snakeskin or just curl up and die, ’cause I’d nae be much of a snake with one eye and one fang. It became hotter, the air thicker. I began to hear many new sounds. Booming, clanking, clattering and crunch. Machine sounds. Human sounds. Scraps of ash flittered in the air and smears of black oil sullied the rock. I saw metal in the rock too, girders and rivets, a rusty skeletal framework. So dark and deep, yet humans had come here to take what they could. And what terrors had been birthed from steel and axle grease when the world broke?
“The ash got thicker and the oil got smearier, and everything reverberated and echoed off the metal. A mournful, orangey-red glow seeped from cracks and crannies. So much heat threw my senses out of whack. I didn’t sense the first human until he came right up behind me and snatched me below the jaw. For all my thrashing and snapping, I could nae do much to free myself. This human had black oil smeared across him in purposeful markings, and ash stuck to him all over. He looked me over and I could see he was starkers like every other soul I’d met down here. He carried me off.
“Dangling and mightily uncomfortable, I was carried into a great chamber, lit by torch and the flowing of molten metal through troughs. Ash swirled like a blizzard; black oil dripped from every surface. An entire self-made tribe of humans awaited, all bowing and caterwauling before a fearsome sight indeed. The far wall of this great chamber was all rock that had melted and dripped over unknown epochs of time, a frozen stone waterfall. Fused to this was a titan of machinery, oil-dripping, great chimneys and spidery pipes, vents and shafts, billions of rivets and continents of rust. It chugged and snarled, belching smoke to stain the ceiling, flashing sparks. It was tall as the cave itself. Who knows what it was, or had been. The breaking of the world had given it new purpose.
“ ‘I bring a sacrifice!’ cried the human who held me. ‘Fresh meat for the Bossman.’
“ ‘Come and be honored!’ responded another. ‘How long it’s been since the Bossman tasted real meat!’
“ ‘What now?’ asked me, trying to make myself heard over the echoes thundering about the cave. ‘What’s all this?’
“The second human looked vaguely chieftain-ish, with old bones haloing his shaved cranium. ‘The Bossman, snake,’ said he, indicating the towering machine. ‘The first god, he who made the other gods and left for parts unknown. We have found him, see! He grows strong on meat and oil, and soon he will lead us back into the daylight with our newly smelted blades. We are his chosen, his only.’
“Well, that great machine was an impressive sight, but I could tell it was no Bossman, no god. I’d seen the real gods. It was just a big machine from the old times. But I knew arguing with these crazed humans was useless. I’d have left them to their worship if they had nae been about to offer me up.
“I struggled and tried to bite, but got nowhere. They carried me all the way forward, to a little stone altar. Its top was metal mesh, all caked and crusted with the blood of the poor creatures they’d sacrificed. I could see how my blood would ooze through the mesh, trickle down a pipe and into the belly of the machine. My captor flung me down on the mesh and held me there, while the chieftain brandished a dull chrome knife and chanted a multitude of complicated obeisances.
“I could nae get free. I could nae bite. I could nae talk nor bargain nor threaten with starkers humans. Things looked bad. Only one little freedom remained to me, one little trick: I could rattle. So rattle I did. I shimmied and shook my rattle this way and that. I rattled from rage and frustration, from all the hurt I’d seen and caused. Shicka-shicka-shicka!”
As he tells this part of the tale, Rattler will rattle. He’ll shake and shimmy, and the dry, eerie rasp will echo all throughout his tunnel. It’s almost possible to imagine that from behind him, from deep in the dark, foul void, one echo, faint and insidious, is nae an echo at all, but an answer.
“Shicka-shicka-shicka! All around the great cavern went my rattle, stirring the ash. Bouncing here and there, its echoes finding new cracks and crannies, whispering deeper. It made the humans fretful; they stared at each other with their yellowed, red-rimmed eyes, all a-wonder. I rattled with all my might as the chieftain raised his chrome knife to slit me open, to let my blood and guts ooze into the machine they so revered. But just then, a whispery trace of my rattle found its way right down into the world’s core…and was heard. And he answered, friend-o-friend. Old-Dry-Snakeskin answered.
“Up it came — his great, furious rattle. The biggest quake of all. Divine justice for those who would carve up his kith and kin to a false Bossman. The quake hit and all went to chaos. The walls shook and haroomed and cracked, and the machines snarled and squealed. Metal warped; magma roiled; rivets gave way with a pop-pop-pop. The humans all flew into a wretched panic, running in circles, wailing, clasping their hands over their heads and begging their lousy fake Bossman to deliver them. But with the swirling ash everywhere, soon all they could do was sneeze and wipe their eyes. My captor let go of me and joined the rest in stumbling about, sneezing, wiping his eyes. Chunks of rock and pipes and metal shards came tumbling down. I bolted for the edge of the chamber, for a crack or cranny I could shelter in until the quake ended. I was feeling good, feeling fine. Old-Dry-Snakeskin had heard my distress and saved me. The end was in sight, and what a story I’d have to tell my god!
“I was nae quite that lucky, sad to say. I’d just about made it to shelter when a great fold of metal, knife-edged, plummeted from above. The great machine wanted my blood after all. The knife-edge struck me right between the nostrils, between eye and socket. The pain was worse than anything I’d felt, worse than losing my eye or my fang. It erased all my senses, sent me into oblivion.
“I have a pretty good figuring of what happened to those crazed humans, though. The rock came down on them, and the metal of their machine, and all was buried in gray ash and black oil. They nae died, nae all of them, but they were left all crushed and squeezed. So they rallied and tried to squirm their way up and out, back to the daylight. But all that writhing and squirming through tiny rock veins compressed those humans, made them small and squat. And the ash covered them and stuck to them so badly it became like fur and a tail. And they wiped their bleary eyes so much it left a permanent eyemask of black oil. So when they finally did make it back to the daylight, they looked like nae humans anyone had ever seen. And when anybody asked them what they were, all they could do was sneeze from the ash: ‘Ra-ra-ra-cooooon!’ So folk called them raccoons, and that’s why we have those now.
“Oh, you thought raccoons were already around before the world broke? Just shows how badly everyone’s forgotten about everything, friend-o-friend. Remember, you heard it from Rattler: a raccoon is just a compressed little human covered in ash and oil. Maybe that’s how the real Bossman punished them for having a fake Bossman. Who can say?
“As for me, I awoke buried under the ash, in the tiniest of coffins, all surrounded by rock. My wounded head hurt like you could nae believe. I wanted to die. But I knew Old-Dry-Snakeskin had to be close, so I stirred my aching body and forced some sense into my throbbing skull and hunted for the next little crack to slither through, and the next, and the next.
“But, any-old-way, that’s how my head got split.”
Now Rattler will lift his poor, wounded head and tilt his chin up. His one eye gleams; you can make out an entire universe of tiny lights, all the pretty presents he’s glued to the walls of his tunnel, reflected. His hiss will grow quieter as his story takes on reverence.
“Now.
“I found it very dark and quiet, down near the core of the world. Nae new quakes hit — Old-Dry-Snakeskin had ceased his rattling. But it nae mattered, ’cause I could sense him near. I just could. He’s a god, my god. Ask any creature and they’d be just as sure of sensing their god nearby.
“I sought out cracks and crevices, forced myself all the way down. I left a few scraped scales behind me, nae caring. In the end, I poked my split head from a crack and all around me was space. Vast, black space. You have nae idea what real darkness is, friend-o-friend. I had nae hope of seeing a thing at first. I rested myself with my head hovering over that great void, so big as to be its own world. I let all my senses attune themselves to the dark. I waited patiently.
“In time, I figured I could ken what lay before me. More than just nothingness. A world-sized cavern, nae floor below, but a ceiling. I knew there must be a ceiling, ’cause hanging down from it were stalactites, fangs of stone wider than the thickest redwood, longer than the tallest, silveriest tower ever crafted by human hand. A fringe of stone older than creation itself, if such a thing could be.
“More time went by, and my attuned senses made out new shapes, and there came a moment when I saw the whole picture and was awed and humbled. He was there. He’d been there the whole time. I realized him all at once. Draped and coiled around the vast cones of rock, stretching from one limit of my senses to the other.
“Old-Dry-Snakeskin.
“But once I’d realized him, I almost wished I’d stayed blind. I can nae describe in how sorrowful a state Old-Dry-Snakeskin appeared. He was all bones. Dry, dusty ribs and vertebrae, a great fanged skull with nae eyes nor tongue, just a tiny bit of god-light glimmering in the sockets. Nae scales, nae skin, nae meat and guts. The skeleton of Old-Dry-Snakeskin dangled from the rock, long as a mountain range, worse than dead. Nae moving a single inch.
“One thing he’d still kept: his rattle. One small amount of his old godly glory. Such a fine, glossy rattle, longer than any mortal snake’s, almost as long as the stalactite from which it hung. Old-Dry-Snakeskin had nae tongue, and so he could nae hiss. But he could rattle. I waited, ’cause it’s unseemly to announce one’s presence to one’s god. After a long space of time, he noticed me. He nae moved, but I felt his attention shift. His glorious rattle twitched and shook, whispers running down its uncountable chambers. In that faint rasp, I heard his words.
“ ‘You’ve come upon me in a sad state, snakeling,’ rattled Old-Dry-Snakeskin. ‘A sad, sad state.’
“ ‘I guess we’re both in a sad state, Old-Dry-Snakeskin,’ said me.
“ ‘It pains me to have one of my own see me like this,’ rattled he.
“ ‘O, Old-Dry-Snakeskin,’ said me. ‘My lost eye aches and my lost fang aches more and my split head aches like no one would believe, but worst of all is the ache of seeing you all stripped down to bone. Who did this to you, Old-Dry-Snakeskin? Who committed this act upon your godly self?’
“ ‘All of them did it,’ rattled he. ‘All those faithless, harebrained, no-account bastards, all those gods. Took me apart, ate and drank me, wrung me dry. But at least I can say I’m nae worse off than them, eh, snakeling?’
“ ‘Why, I saw them out in the desert,’ said me. ‘All the gods. Nae dead, nae alive. Their bodies in shreds and their mouths turned to stringy holes. Old-Dry-Snakeskin, the whole world’s broke. I figured you’d be the one god left to fix things.’
“ ‘Just look at me, snakeling,’ rattled Old-Dry-Snakeskin mournfully. ‘I’m nae fit to be seen. My fine and glossy scales, gone. My venom, gone. My eyes and my tongue. I’m just bones and a rattle. A dead god, nae equipped to fix a damn thing.’
“ ‘How’d it happen, Old-Dry-Snakeskin?’ asked me.
“ ‘It all started with a rumor,’ rattled he. ‘A vile little rumor. Y’see, snakeling, I’m the one who made the world. The other gods all say they did, but it was me. I made the world out of venom and shed skin, and my rattle clobbered any god who tried to meddle. The other gods know this, so I scare the hell out of them. They’ll nae admit it. They wonder how I did it. It eats at them. They wonder what’s so special about my scales, my venom, my bodily matter, that it can make a world.
“ ‘So there was this rumor. I’d nae be half-surprised if that damned Reynard-the-fox-god, or whatever name he goes by this week, started it. Or maybe some other trickster. Who’s to say where rumors start; it nae matters once they get rolling. The other gods began to whisper that whatever I had in my bodily matter was the good stuff. The powerful stuff. The One Actual Nectar, the elixir and the panacea. Every god wants to build their own world, y’see, and the rumor whispered to them that Old-Dry-Snakeskin contained all the world-building stuff they needed. The rumor grew and grew until it was all the gods could think about. So they all decided to eat and drink me.
“ ‘They lured me into the desert, telling me there were signs of the Bossman’s return to this world. I fell for it, ’cause what god would have dreamed all the other gods were planning to eat and drink him? They got me out in the middle of nowhere, and they all fell upon me, and I could nae fight off every god at once. They tore me all up, snakeling, and they ate me. Scales, skin, meat, and guts. A god can nae die entirely, but I was about as close to dead as could be. And then they did the worst thing of all. They plucked out my venom sacs and passed them around, drank and guzzled down my toxins. It got them drunk, and nothing’s worse than a drunk god. They drank, and they waited for all the power to come upon them. And they drank, and they argued. And they drank, and they fought. And they drank, and they fought harder, until all the gods were tearing each other to pieces in one big ball of drunken, divine chaos. Struggling, thundering, raging, the gods pulverized one another, and kept on guzzling my venom until it ate away their mouths and their insides.
“ ‘And that, snakeling, is how the world broke. It’s because all the idiot gods got drunk and wrecked themselves beyond repair. I made the world, but the world needs all the gods to run proper. Now the gods lie piled up in the desert, wrecked. Only the Bossman could fix them, and I doubt he’s gonna bother. I’m so sorry, snakeling. You came all this way, lost your eye and your fang, got your head split. Just to hear me say this. The world’s broke for good.’
“ ‘But you can still do something about it, Old-Dry-Snakeskin,’ said me. I nae wanted to believe what I was hearing. ‘You made the world.’
“ ‘I already told you,’ rattled he. ‘I’m fit for nothing any more. I need scales and flesh. I need venom. I need a tongue. But without all that, I’m too weakened to help myself in any way. All I have left is my rattle, but I’m tired of rattling for nae purpose. I can make the underground shake and quake, but up there on the surface, they nae even feel a thing. If I go up there, I’ll just be a long string of bones, baking in the sun. That’s all.’
“Now, after all I’d been through, all I’d suffered, it might’ve been easy to give up right then and there. I thought about it. And then I said, ‘Old-Dry-Snakeskin, let me help. Let me help you get back what you’ve lost. I figure I’m the only rattlesnake left who nae suffered the madness and forgetfulness of the world breaking. Maybe it’s for a reason. So I can help you.’
“Old-Dry-Snakeskin looked at me with his empty, glimmery eye sockets. ‘Well, snakeling, you’re bold enough. But can you make me a new hide of fine scales? Can you conjure up new flesh for my dry bones? Fresh venom? Can you find me a new tongue? If you could do all that, why, I’d come back up. Oh, would I ever. I’d come barreling back to the surface, and the whole broken world would tremble. If only.’
“ ‘Let me try, Old-Dry-Snakeskin,’ said me. ‘I nae care how long it takes. Let me try to make you everything you need, scales and flesh and venom and a tongue. So you can come back. Come back to the world. You’re all the world has left now.’
“Old-Dry-Snakeskin’s rattle was quiet for some time. I stayed still, my head hanging over that huge, vast blackness, waiting to see if my god had given up the ghost.
“Finally, his great skull moved a little; his rattle twitched. ‘Try, then,’ whispered Old-Dry-Snakeskin to me.
“He rattled no more. I turned myself right around and began the long, tired slither back the way I’d come. I had a long way to crawl before I’d see the lightning-struck sky again. I might die a thousand times over. But now I had a reason to live. A purpose. A duty. I was the one chance Old-Dry-Snakeskin had of returning from his tomb in the world’s core. He’d given me permission to try.
“I had plenty more adventures on my way back up, but I’ll nae waste your time with talk of those. I lived. I came back up, felt the bloated sunlight, the bite of the blowflies. The world on the surface was nae less broken than before, but still I saw beauty in it. The beauty of purpose.
“Old-Dry-Snakeskin told me I could try. So ever since then, I’ve been trying.”
Now Rattler will fall silent. It’s nae the poised silence of a pause between chapter and chapter. It’s final. Even though he has more to say, it’s final. He’s waiting for the argument.
It always comes. You’ll be rolling your rebuttal around in the back of your throat right now. Because Rattler’s story nae sits well with anyone. Some fragment or detail always sticks. And within a moment or two, you’re going to spit it out, just as everyone does.
The brown bear will grumble and growl, “But that’s nae how the world broke at all. See, there was this boulder that cracked…”
Or the crazed, giggling bird will gasp out, “Nae magpie ever lived underground. That’s starkers even for us!”
Or the salamander will roll his eyes and declare, “Old-Dry-Snakeskin nae made the world. It was Rollumbol the salamander god, who took the leftover slime from his tongue and–”
Or the raccoon, all bristled and puffed out, fit to bursting with outrage, will blurt, “Now, just one gods-damned, piss-drinking minute!”
And that’s when Rattler’s sandy hiss will cut back in, cut off the argument. “So. Do you want the One Actual Story, or do you nae want the One Actual Story? Eh? Eh, friend-o-friend?”
He’ll wait for the sullen silence, and smirk. “You came all this way. You brought me a pretty present that’ll look fine here in my church.” He’ll bob his head, encompassing the tunnel of awful prettiness, a thousand thousand glittering remnants of beauty, stuck to the walls in the mass of clay and snakeskin. The green, toxic stream, flowing uphill. The nest of tendons running in from the walls, to the webby hole where Rattler dangles. The terrible black, choked, dusty void behind him. Now you’ll see: it’s a shrine to Old-Dry-Snakeskin.
“You’re correct, though,” Rattler says. “There’s no right or wrong. That’s what’s so interesting about gods. Somewhere out there, a fox is building a church to his god-of-many-names, and a salamander is constructing a chapel to drowned Rollumbol, one bubble at a time. A bird is making an eyrie for his many gods, who’re also one god. Nae one of them is wrong. Even those humans with their big machine, thinking it’s Bossman returned. Nae wrong. Everyone’s right. Right about which god made the world, about how the world broke, about how to fix it.
“They’re all right. But me, my story, is the only one that’s real.”
Rattler’s grin is terrible. Terrible.
“So now you know, friend-o-friend. You know what’s waiting down there in the world’s core. And you can see. My church to Old-Dry-Snakeskin is also his skin and his meat. When it’s done, when I judge it ready, I will rattle a message down into the depths. He’ll hear. And Old-Dry-Snakeskin will come barreling up. All dry bones, he’ll come. His skull will hit this nest of clay and skin, and it’ll stick to him. As he passes through this tunnel, he’ll strip the walls inside-out, slide the clay onto his bones like a pretty lady sliding on a stocking. All these pretty presents will be his new scales. The clay will be his meat. He’ll drink down this toxic stream as he goes, and that’ll be his venom. By the time Old-Dry-Snakeskin reaches the daylight, he’ll look better than ever. He’ll be ready. A brand-new light will blaze from his empty eye sockets, and the broken world will tremble.”
Rattler’s voice is worse than his grin. And the sanity that still blazes in his one eye is worst of all.
And then? you’ll ask, afraid to know. He’ll fix the world?
Rattler will laugh, low and vicious in his throat.
“Fix it? Fix it, friend-o-friend? Nae. Old-Dry-Snakeskin has enough rage in his bones to write new gospels of ruin. This world’s too broke. I nae saw that when I was young, but I see it now. I love him for it. He’s got big, big plans for the wreckage of this world. But he is nae planning to fix it.”
You don’t want to stay. You want to turn tail and run. But you have one more question. What does Rattler think will happen to him when Old-Dry-Snakeskin comes up?
Rattler will tilt his split head back and sigh. “Ahhhh. Well. I’m nae fit to be a snake any more. But Old-Dry-Snakeskin has more in store for Rattler. When he comes up, I’ll stay right here until his jaw closes around me, and I’ll root myself right down in his mouth. With my split head, I’m perfect for it. I will be the instrument by which he rains his gospel down upon the doomed world. I will be his tongue.”
His one eye will finally close. “I’m tired. Go. Thank you for the pretty present, friend-o-friend. Go.”
You’ll go. You’ll shuffle out of that glimmery tunnel, back out into the light of the too-big, too-close sun. You’ll leave that dark void behind and return, or nae return, to the places you know. You’ll hope they haven’t crumbled or shifted or gone away. As if it mattered. You can nae outrun Rattler’s words.
There’s one thing that holds true about each and every creature who goes to hear the One Actual Story from Rattler. Each of you, with nae an exception, regrets it.
But it’s just a story. A confuddled tale from a starkers snake. Let him build his church, you’ll tell yourself. Let him stick his pretty presents to the walls. It nae means a thing. Some other god will fix the world. Some other story is the one which matters.
So you’ll tell yourself.
And then you’ll begin to run, sprinting and stumbling over the blasted remains of the world, cutting yourself on rock shards, bit by blowflies. Always glancing behind you. Over and over. As if you could hear a deep, cruel, enraged rattle from somewhere far below. You’ll run. You’ll shut your tired, teary eyes tight.
You’ll pray that when Old-Dry-Snakeskin surges into the light, all coated and bejeweled in a brand-new skin, with his living tongue hissing and slavering and raving below his great, dripping fangs, you’ll nae be alive to witness it.
* * *
Originally published in ROAR, Volume 7
About the Author
Ross Duston Whitlock, writer, actor, scholar, artist, and jester, wrote his first complete work of fiction at age eleven. It was the screenplay for a ten-minute mystery titled The Case of the Sapphire Salami, and writing it filled him with a joy of creation that he never lost. He discovered the Furry community soon after and began writing anthropomorphic short stories that sometimes included more mainstream characters. His first stab at a young-adult novel featured humans and a saurian exo-raptor. A play in which the leading character believed he was a dog was the featured presentation in the 2004 Vermont Ten Minute Play Festival. Another play starred superheroes and a sewer rat named Lorry, a role that Ross wrote for himself (though his fursona was Felixpath, a fruit bat). In 2010, Ross began blogging about popular culture at dangblastedcritic.blog
Ross died in October of 2016 from side effects of the antibiotic Ciprofloxicin. At the time, he was working on the first two books in a young adult Furry fantasy series he described as “Redwall on steroids.” The first book, Henge, was finally published in April of 2025.