Weekly Drabble #338: Choices Made (Patreon)

This week's prompt comes from Jackson Bates with 'regret', the theme of a question put to one of the characters here. Enjoy!

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Choices Made:

“Do you regret it?” Ophydia asked as she shot the keeper in the head.

On the other side of the unbreakable glass, the man cursed. ROUND OVER, his computer screen told him. WINNER: SN3K2L0NG4U. “Regret what?” he asked as a new match started. They were playing in an abandoned factory this time. He did better on these matches. Ophydia loved sniping him and the warehouse had short sight lines, so it was harder to noscope him from across the map.

“Your job,” the woman asked. “Coming down here day after day.” Her coils, large enough to crush cattle, shifted. “Keeping all of us imprisoned.”

“You’re here for a reason,” the keeper replied. “All of you.”

“That reason is fear.”

“Can you blame us?” the keeper replied as his character picked up a shotgun and racked the shells as he ducked through a series of crates, keeping an eye on the rafters. It was just the two of them on this map. The game ran on a LAN. The containment center didn’t provide internet access to any of the cells, and only a few computers in the keepers’ stations had it. Even detainees as quote, unquote, well-behaved as Meridi or Ophydia weren’t allowed access to the outside world. Especially Ophydia, no matter how genteel the titanoboa-sized naga presented herself.

“Rrrmmmm,” the serpentine she-beast protested. “I was never a problem like Jorge, Kimmin or Drashul.”

“No, you were your own unique brand of trouble,” the keeper reminded her. “How many cults have you created?”

Ophydia smiled coquettishly. “Is it so wrong to want to be pampered a little?”

“The way you do it,” the man told her. “Yes.”

Though she was one of more physically imposing guests of the Care, Containment and Confinement Committee, the most dangerous thing about the naga wasn’t her size or speed. It was the honeyed words that dripped from her full lips and forked tongue. If she was given half a chance, she could talk you into almost anything. Throughout history, many people had fallen under her sway and she had been loved as a goddess and feared as a demon many times over, amassing great wealth and revelling under the adoration of her subjects.

Jorge would capture unwary travellers, or break into isolated cabins and homes in order to add the occupants to his stewpot. With a single gesture, Ophydia could get one of her servants to willingly walk off a cliff, or die to the last to allow her to escape from armies and faiths that didn’t accept the naga’s claims of divinity. She would find a quiet corner of the world, a group of humans that had never seen her before and start all over again. Now that she was here, Ophydia was no longer pampered as a goddess, but as long as she behaved, she was given many perks and benefits that few other guests of the hollowed-out mountain enjoyed.

She’d learned the rules very quickly and followed them – for the most part. Keepers and guards she didn’t like found themselves less under physical threat than from other inhabitants and more from what she would whisper to them. There had been several incidents of self-harm, including a handful of fatalities. Not from the naga’s lack of trying, though. Other times, facility personnel had proven to be security risks as Ophydia worked on them. There’d been at least two escapes and one incident where a missing keeper was found wrapped in the naga’s coils and not, as some of the staff had feared, because they were about to be eaten.

There had been attempts to use deaf personnel to watch over the silver-tongued snake woman, but she’d used that vulnerability against her gaolers. It wasn’t until her enclosure had been upgraded with the heavy glass walls, cameras and mic cutoffs to mute all noise from within that a modicum of safety from Ophydia’s enticements and torments was developed. Because she’d allowed them to carry out the work without a fuss, she’d been granted extra privileges. Unlike inhabitants like Jorge, who was dangerous enough that his enclosure still bore its original and centuries-old thick bars and heavy gates.

Nonetheless, no matter how quiescent they seemed, you could never trust any of them. There was a reason they were here, why the people here had scoured the world for these myths – these monsters – at great cost of blood and treasure.

The keeper caught Ophydia jumping between crates and gave her both barrels. Her avatar fell to the ground. He grabbed the health pack and grenade she no longer needed and ran off, knowing she was about to respawn. The games were officially filed under enrichment activities, rewarding good behaviour and keeping the detainees entertained. Meridi and Ophydia played together on the regular. The arachne got along well with the naga and, like Ophydia, Meridi was given some perks.

The keeper frowned as Ophydia came up behind him, an animation of his electronic execution playing out on the screen. “That’s a new build,” he noted as he glanced at the after-kill breakdown. Silenced pistol, smoke grenades, thermal sights and combat knife. Normally she was tripline, sniper rifle, thermals and laser sights.

“I thought I’d try something new,” the woman answered with a Cheshire grin. “Next one determines the winner.”

“That it does,” the keeper agreed as he ran through the dark, aware that as much as he was the hunter, he was also the hunted.

Do you regret it?

He looked over his guard station to where Ophydia lay, her long body twisting and turning over the ground like a wandering river. As if she could feel his attention, she lifted her head away from her TV screen and smiled back at him.