You’re giggling before you even wake up, the sensation of something slight and swift and slender flickering over the soles of your feet sending spasms of hysteria through you, shaking you awake. You instinctively lash out with your foot but miss whatever it was that was tickling you, instead just kicking a big bulge in your duvet.

Legs sinking back down onto the firm surface beneath you, you blink blearily, wondering for a few seconds where you are. It comes back to you - you’re in a tent with your girlfriend, out camping in a nice secluded spot. You specifically chose this site because it was off the beaten track, so the pair of you could have some undisturbed quality time together.

So what was it that disturbed you? You can’t quite figure out what happened - you’re still so sleepy, so groggy. It crosses your clouded mind that your girlfriend might’ve tickled you awake - that’s the kind of thing she’d do, after all. But you can feel her lying next to you on the thin mattress that only slightly cushions the hard ground beneath your tent, her breathing heavy and steady. She’s still asleep, clearly.

You raise the covers with one hand and peer downwards, hoping to spot some sign of whatever woke you, but you can’t see anything except your own nude body. (It’s the height of summer, and you and your partner were intimate immediately before sleep last night.) There’s no sign of anything that could’ve tickled you. Letting the thin duvet fall again, you wonder if there was anything there in the first place. Maybe you dreamed it, vividly enough to startle yourself awake.

Oh well, you are awake now. Inhaling deeply, you roll onto your side, intending to rouse your partner too.

She’s lying flat on her back, the duvet having fallen just far enough down from all your wriggling around to expose her bare breasts. Her eyes are open, wide and glassy, gazing at the ceiling of the tent.

You stare at her in bewilderment, fear flickering through you. Lying there like that, so still, with that vacant stare - she looks like a corpse... She isn’t, is she? She hasn’t had a heart attack, or a stroke or something, during the night...?

No, you can see the rise and fall of her chest, and you can hear her slow, deep breaths. She’s alive. But there must be something wrong, for her to lie there so lifelessly... Maybe she has had some kind of medical emergency, but it hasn’t killed her - just put her in some kind of catatonic state.

You start to reach out to her with the arm you’re not lying on, to lightly push her or shake her shoulder, in the hope of snapping her out of it. But before you can do more than bend your arm, it suddenly locks up, going completely rigid and frozen.

Alarmed, you go to look down at it - but you can’t. Because the rest of you is frozen, too. Stiff and still and static, like a statue on its side.

You should be panicking right now, unable to move anything but your eyelids. Instead you just feel a kind of heavy, numb dread, drowning out anything else. Thoughts aren’t coming to you very easily right now, as if your brain is just as stuck as your body. Your awareness of yourself is receding, cutting you off from the feeling of your fixed form, like you’re watching all this happening to someone else.

You lie there gazing fixedly at your supine girlfriend, both of you reduced to lifesize dolls lying on the floor of your tent.

You have no way to tell how much time passes before something changes. Unfortunately, the change isn’t either of you regaining the power of movement. Instead, it’s a sound. A faint, high-pitched hiss, coming from somewhere under the duvet.

In the lowest edge of your peripheral vision, you can see something move underneath the covers. A tiny head pops out, right between your girlfriend’s breasts. A thin, winding shape slithers up her cleavage, making its way towards her face. You can see it clearly enough to figure out what it is, even in your dazed, dissociated state.

Most of the snake’s body is still between her tits, scales sliding along her skin - but its head has neared hers, and its thin tongue darts out and licks her under her chin. She doesn’t react. She just keeps on lying there, totally inert, eyes wide and empty. You’d have expected her to flinch, or even cry out, at the ticklish sensation.

It occurs to you, a bit belatedly, that you now know what tickled you awake.

Lowering its head to rest against her skin, the snake slowly starts to slide sideways, around and under her neck, pushing its way between her and her pillow. The rest of its body follows suit, and as it gradually works its way around one side, it emerges from the other and makes its way back to the middle again, encircling her neck like a collar.

Then it carries on, wrapping round for a second time.

As you watch helplessly, it cinches itself tighter. And then tighter still. You hear a croak, and then a series of faint, feeble gurgles. She’s still staring blankly upwards as if she has no idea what’s happening to her, but if she’s got the same scant crumbs of awareness as you, she knows that there’s a cobra coiled around her throat, slowly cutting off her breathing.

You still can’t feel outright panic, the level of terror appropriate for watching your partner being choked to death. But you certainly feel fear, and anguish, even if it’s submerged by enough sleepy haze to turn it into a kind of hopeless resignation. You fight it the best you can, mustering what little willpower you still have to try and move, to break free of the paralysis gripping your body as tightly as the snake is gripping your girlfriend’s windpipe.

It’s no good. You can’t so much as twitch. You’re completely, irresistibly immobilised, powerless to come to her aid.

The worst thing, even worse than your girlfriend getting throttled, is having to lie here and watch your girlfriend get throttled. The serpent’s head pokes up in the air and waves around in your sightline, the only part of its body not constricting your love’s neck like a hangman’s noose. It’s like it’s taunting you, waving at you and jeering, “Ha ha ha-ha ha, I’m killing your girlfriend and you can’t stop meeee....” Like it’s the Nelson Muntz of the reptile world.

Suddenly there’s a louder, deeper hiss, from somewhere in the near distance. At once, the snake unwraps itself and slithers hurriedly away, its tail between its metaphorical legs.

You can’t tell if it’s too late. You can’t tell, by looking or listening, if it stopped strangling your sweetheart in time to spare her life. If she’s breathing, it’s too weak to hear, or to visibly raise her chest. Her eyes remain wide open, still fixed on the roof above her, but that doesn’t mean there’s anything left behind them. You have no idea if she’s alive or dead.

But there’s another, more immediate problem. Something else has entered the tent. Something big and heavy enough that you can feel it, moving along the floor behind you. Another rumbling hiss indicates to you what this is.

Perhaps the small snake was a scout, sent ahead to soften up the prey - before the true hunter arrives.

You feel something firm, rough and scaly, against your bare back and butt - a long, coarse body like a tree trunk, if a tree trunk could slither on the ground. It pushes you hard, rolling you sideways. Your face comes to rest in the crook of your partner’s neck, your half-outstretched arm awkwardly embracing her, your legs entwined (as much as two rigid mannequins can entwine anything).

You think you can feel her breathing beneath you, her heart hammering. But you could be mistaken. It could just as well be your own heart.

Something wraps around your feet and ankles - something wet and hot and slimy, stinging your bare flesh. It travels upwards, slowly working its way up your legs - and your girlfriend’s, which you can still just about feel through your overwhelming numbness.

As the gross feeling reaches your waist, and you can feel another heartbeat thrumming around your lower half, you figure out what’s happening. The giant snake is swallowing you both, sliding its jaw along the length of both your bodies. You guess it pushed you closer together so it could fit you both in its gullet at once, making you a more digestible meal. It must’ve been betting that its eyes weren’t bigger than its stomach - that it could manage both of you if you were lying atop one another.

It’s hard, even now, to get too distressed. Obviously you’d rather not be eaten - you’d rather live, and have a long and happy life with your girlfriend. But there’s not much you can do about it now. You’re still unsure whether she’s even still alive. And even if she were, the venom that must’ve made its way into your bloodstream when little Nelson licked your feet is still holding you still, keeping you from putting up even the slightest bit of a fight. There’s nothing you can do to stop the larger snake from devouring the pair of you.

You idly wish you could see her face one last time, your unwavering vision buried in her neck. But at least she’s here. At least you can feel her, as much as you can feel anything with your senses impaired by the petrifying poison. At least you’re together.

That’s a comfort, if only a small one, as your head is enveloped in that vast maw, and your surroundings are nothing but humid, sticky, itchy and irritating. The beast’s innards push you and your partner even closer together. It feels as if you’re melding with one another, becoming one.

Ah, you dimly realise - that’ll be the stomach acids melting both of you down, your gradually dissolving flesh squelching together. You’re abstractly fascinated, wondering how much more of this strange sensation you’ll get to experience before you lose consciousness for the last time.

If anyone were to stumble upon this remote location (and for their sake, let’s hope they don’t), all they’d find in the tent was the enormous snake lying on the floor, its stomach distended, at least for a little while, by the lost young couple inside.