Kaa's head kept slipping off the tree branch, and Susie was getting pissed. She would just get his big stuffed velveteen body arranged just right, and the damned head would slip off and hang there above the fake jungle floor. Then, just as she had gotten the big stupid head just right, the tail would fall out of place ten feet away and she would have to adjust down there.
Kaa was supposed to loll on the tree branch with one big loop of his body hanging down, his head turned toward the giant stuffed Baloo who was eating honey on the other side of the display. The stuffed animals had arrived at the Weird Tales bookstore that day, and Susie had spent most of the day setting up the jungle tableau, the giant honey pots and fake trees, leaves and vines. Now it was late, the mall was closed, and here she was still trying to get the stupid snake to stay in place.
"If you won't stay in place now, what'll happen the first time some stupid kid grabs you," she muttered. "You're talking to yourself," Carrie remarked from the display she was putting together. Hers was a giant spiderweb of twine with the words "Some Pig" woven into the design. She also had a stuffed animal to pose: a basketball sized plush spider with long eyelashes around its eight tennis ball-sized eyes and eight purple legs. It was, of course, Charlotte the talented spider of literary fame.
"The goddam snake won't stay in place," Susie called over her shoulder. "They didn't give me any way to attach him to this branch - he just lays on top of it. And he keeps slipping off."
"Well, I'm just about done," Carrie replied. "As soon as I get the bottom of this thing stapled down, I'm out of here."
"You go ahead - I still have to get Bagheera posed," Susie said. "I'm here for a while yet. At least," she sighed, eyeing the long lime-green body, "I'm paid by the hour."
Susie gave up on Kaa for a while, leaving him to dangle at both ends and the middle while she got the black Panther posed on the left side of the display, opposite Baloo. Carrie had gone by the time she turned her attention back to Kaa, who looked somewhat forlorn hanging over his branch. "You're a little hung-over, aren't you fella," Susie remarked. She stood there critically eyeing him, hands on her hips. She was tall and slender, her long legs still taut from years of tennis. Now working her way through college, she didn't have much time for sport, but she still stayed in shape. In her short skirt and close-fitting sweater, she knew she still "had it"; too many young men came in to buy children's books, and she knew from the looks she got that she was driving Leo, the older manager, crazy. She had taken to wearing her skirts shorter, and finding opportunities to stretch for the top shelf when he was around, just to drive him a little nuts. She was sure it was working. "Got to take your fun where you can get it," she figured.
Now she turned her talents back to the recalcitrant Kaa. First the tail, looped around a convenient boll in the big plastic tree branch. Then his body, hanging down just right. Finally, the head. There just wasn't any place to stick it onto the branch - the surface was too smooth and round.
After his third fall, Susie picked up the snake's big shovel-shaped head and looked it sternly in the eyes. "You've been a very naughty snake," she announced, feeling only a little ridiculous. "And I know just what your punishment should be."
Holding his head in both hands, feet splayed triumphantly apart and feeling a little like Sheena of the Jungle, Susie announced "I'm just going to have to staple you down."
As if on cue, the damned tail slipped off the branch to her right, and Susie laughed. She grabbed the last three feet in her right hand, striking a conqueror's pose; right hand on her hip, left hand held high, still holding the big-eyed head with the felt tongue sticking out. "I might even staple your tail down, too" she whispered. "What do you think of that?"
"I had hoped we might be friendth," Kaa whispered, slurring his speech.
"Now I know I've been working too hard," Susie said. "Time to wrap this up."
"My thentiments . . . egthactly," the snake replied, very softly and with a terrible lisp. Susie froze, her heart beating just a little harder. "I'm really losing it," she thought.
A light touch on her left knee caught her attention. Somehow the tail had gotten across her back and over her left hip, and was now dangling between her knees. As she watched, the end of the fuzzy green body curled behind her left knee, and then sinuously circled around, crossing the front of her thighs and around her right knee. The plush snake's velveteen skin tickled her legs through her nylons.
"I . . . I didn't imagine that, did I," Susie whispered.
"I don't want to be thtapled," the snake said plaintively. It's body continued to gently twine around Susie's legs, down to her ankles.
"I jutht want to be friendth . . . " it continued as the loose coils around Susie's slender calves corkscrewed, smoothly pulling her legs together. "Friendth should be able to . . . trutht each other," it continued, as Susie lost her balance and grabbed for the fake tree branch with both hands to keep from crashing to the floor.
"Okay," Susie said, leaning against the tree branch. "I don't think I'm crazy, so you must really be talking."
"Oh, I'm doing more than talking," Kaa said, tightening its hold on her legs - she realized she couldn't pull her feet free of its still-gentle, but firm, grip. "I'm feeling playful. Will you play with me?" And with that, Kaa darted his dry velvet tongue at Susie as he backed himself onto his tree branch. With a mixture of horror and bemused surprise, she felt the thick body trapped between her thighs move smoothly up against her softness as Kaa tightened his hold on her legs still more.
"Here'th a game we can play," Kaa said, and suddenly Susie was lifted in the air, her feet dangling from his coils inches from the floor. All her weight rested on the plush, muscular body between her thighs, now pressing rhythmically and urgently against her sex. The sinuous, constant movement against her was stimulating, and she stifled a moan of pleasure and fear.
"Kaa, put me down," she whispered, helplessly suspended in his coils and fighting a rising wave of sensual pleasure radiating from her womanhood. It seemed his coils around her hips and legs were in constant spiralling motion, caressing her even as they tightened around her. She writhed, partly in an effort to escape and partly from the incredible electric sensation threatening to overwhelm her. "I don't think you can tell me what to do any longer, Thuthie," Kaa replied. "In fact, I think you have very little control over what happenth now, don't you." Kaa looked at her in a kindly way, then in one smooth motion pulled her up to the branch, to lay on his body. Completely wrapped in his coils from her sleek hips down, Susie grasped his body and looked up his length. "Here'th another game," he whispered, his body forming three huge empty loops between Susie and his face.
Now pressure on her hips and thighs forced Susie up along Kaa's thick, fuzzy body, toward his head. As her head passed through the first of the three loops formed by his body, Susie realized what he was planning.
But it was too late to act; in a rush he pushed her through the tunnel formed by his coils. Susie felt them constrict around her, trapping her arms against her body. One coil lay across her firm, pert breasts; one just below them, and one across her taut stomach. She jerked violently to free her arms, but his hold was too strong.
"I call thith game thlowly conthtrict", Kaa said, tightening very gently around her. The pressure across her breasts as his fuzzy skin moved against her was agonizingly sensuous. His body around her, in constant twisting motion, was hard and muscular. Susie moaned again, despite herself, writhing now in pleasure, even as she knew this would hasten the end. "Let me go, or kill me," she whispered fiercely. "But don't keep me in agony like this."
"But you're in my power now, Thuthie," Kaa said. "I get to dethide what happenth nectht."
Susie twisted and writhed in his grasp, fighting desperately for the only escape she had left to her. Still Kaa's powerful fuzzy body twisted down around her, driving her to the brink of orgasm. Susie felt herself growing faint, she thought at first from frustration; then she realized her breaths were shallow both from sexual stimulation and Kaa's constrictions. Her arms were bent in against her body, her shoulders caving in around her breasts, and she could barely draw air in with each breath - and still she could not escape the pulsing orgasm which lie just out of her reach.
Just when she thought she could not stand it any longer, and unable even to speak, she heard the words: "Now, Thuthie."
And Kaa twisted his entire body, thrusting himself against her pulsing womanhood and skillfully caressing her agonized nipples. Susie felt a soundless explosion of light and electric sensation through her entire body as Kaa opened his velveteen mouth and pushed her head into his throat. She convulsed over and over again in his powerful grasp as he forced her down his dry, fuzzy red throat.
Susie opened her mouth the speak thanks, to scream for her life, and found her mouth filled with fuzz. She opened her eyes to darkness; felt the close dry warmth of the plush predator around her slim body, and gave in to the darkness crowding all around her.
When Carrie opened the store the next morning, there was Kaa, securely coiled on his tree-branch in tableau, a slight hump in his lime-green body, and a very satisfied look on his cartoon face.
By B. Ferrett