The town slept under a heavy blanket of darkness, it was quiet, as if the world had held its breath in the moments before twilight.
The air was cool and heavy, carrying the faint scent of damp earth and frost.
*Click*
A quiet flash has disturbed the slumber of the night.
It came from an old, tarnished camera. Although it had been through a lot over the years, it was preserved carefully, evidence of an owner who had cherished it.
"Nice." A young man smiled as he checked on the tape.
Fatigue was written all over his face, the result of nights spent without enough sleep. A slight runny nose hinted that his thin, cheap clothes offered little protection against the cold.
Yet nothing can cover the excitement in his eyes. After all, photography was the one and only hobby Aurora had.
He exhaled as he continued along this path, and a soft cloud drifted from his lips, hovered briefly in the icy air before fading.
Suddenly, a faint rustling reached his ears.
Aurora tilted his head towards where the sound came from, lifting the camera in preparation as he readied for a possible shot of stray cats wandering the streets.
However, his heart skipped a beat when the rustle had a strange rhythm — deliberate, wet and unnatural.
He became skeptical about what the creature might be — not out of fear, but curiosity.
As twilight approached, the shadows softened, and the edges of buildings and trees grew faintly visible, outlined against a horizon that was no longer entirely dark.
That's when he saw it — A thin, sinuous shape slithered over the frost-dusted ground, glinting under the dim streetlight.
Snakes.
Two identical looking snakes wrapped around each other, twisting in an unnatural embrace.
One snake seemed… heavier, more solid, darker, with its scales reflecting an odd, unreal sheen. The other flickered slightly, like a computer glitching in reality itself.
Instinctively, Aurora took two steps back.
He had never watched snake documentaries before, but even so, he could instantly tell what-ever's happening here was no ordinary encounter.
This may sound weird, but from his perspective, it looked… as though one snake was absorbing the other.
"I am out of here..." Aurora murmured as he took a few steps backwards.
He admits, this was a very interesting scene to observe. If he could afford those expensive smartphones, he would've undoubtedly captured every detail of it.
However, his current camera takes way too long to focus. Although the image quality was still the standard, he doesn't want to linger more than a second around this unusual phenomenon.
Just as he was backing away, he noticed something strange — the snake didn't shrink with increasing distance, unlike the streetlights or trees.
No... Is it growing?
And the flickering one — the second snake which was acting like a glitch before, had vanished into thin air!
'Oh Hell Nah...' Aurora thought to himself as his pace quickened, backing away as quickly as possible.
He glanced over his shoulder to check — and froze.
A bloody, gaping mouth, lined with jagged fangs, was coming straight for him.
The snake had grown tenfold; although the distance between them was at least a hundred meters, it moved with impossible speed, closing the distance in an instant.
Its scales shimmered in the dim streetlight, black and purple like liquid shadow.
As the fangs drew closer, ready to tear into him, Aurora's mind raced, his life flashing before his eyes, and yet… rationality lingered, stubborn and sharp, at the edge of terror.
***
Aurora was born into poverty, raised in an unstable environment where time was always something taken — by work, by illness, by absence.
This strange name was given by his mother after witnessing a rare natural phenomenon once in her life, calling it the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.
She had raised him alone, hoping her son would live long enough to witness something just as extraordinary.
But she did not stay long enough for that moment to come.
Her death came too soon, leaving Aurora to grow up learning to survive rather than dream.
In her final moments, she handed her son — who she loved the most, a brand new camera she had saved for his birthday.
"Please... My baby. Please go see the world, witness its beauty." She whispered.
"And store it inside this camera... So I could see it too..."
"You will always be..."
***
*Beeeeeep*
A truck suddenly roared past before Aurora's eyes, ramming the monstrous snake into a wall with a deafening crash.
Dust and shards exploded outward, blurring the street in a cloud of smoke.
From inside the cab, the driver coughed violently, lungs burning with smoke. His hands shook as he pushed the warped door open.
Metals groaned under the weight of the impact, and with a heave, he climbed out.
"What the hell was that?" He shouted at Aurora, who had collapsed on the ground, struggling to process what had just happened.
"I—RUN!"
Just as Aurora opened his mouth, a frantic scream tore from him. He jabbed a trembling finger in front, pointing behind the driver as he warned about the hidden danger.
But it was too late. The upper half of the driver was gone before his eyes, severed effortlessly. The remaining pieces of his body landed at Aurora's feet.
The snake coiled its body around the truck, squeezing it tightly with angry force. Its entire body was covered in burns and bruises, and visibly there existed a deep cut around the midway of its trunk.
However, not a single flicker of relief crossed Aurora's mind; and the horror only intensified. The deep cut was letting out a dark, purple glow. As time went on, the glow pulsed and thickened, almost alive, as the wound began to close.
Crap! Aurora scrambled to his feet, heart hammering, desperate to find an escape.
His gaze fell unwillingly on the driver's remains due to how close it was; his stomach twisted violently, desperate to look away, to shut his eyes and block the repulsing sight.
But just as he was about to do so, his eyes caught something — a small glint on the ground. It was a lighter, fallen from the driver's pocket, lying among the scattered glass and debris.
His eyes darted to the petrol slowly seeping from the truck's ruptured tank. A desperate plan, an idea has sparked in his mind.
Suppressing the urge to puke, Aurora snatched the lighter with a trembling hand.
He flicked it, and a tiny spark flared, catching the petrol with a hiss. Flames leapt and spread along the asphalt, devouring the leaked fuel with astonishing speed.
Before the abomination was able to react, the fire surged, and swallowed the truck whole.
*BOOM!*
The explosion tore through the street. The force threw Aurora backward, with burning fragments of asphalt and glass raining around him — some even landed, which he quickly put out.
A terrifying, guttural scream of pure rage echoed as the monster writhed and vanished into the inferno.
'Did it work?' Aurora dropped the lighter and started to flee, there is no need for him to stay behind and check the result.
But just as he took his second step, a violent gust tore through the street, slamming into his right side. Pain lanced through his torso, sharp and heavy, as if a second truck had struck him instead.
His body flew through the air, crashing through the window of a nearby residential building.
As his consciousness begins to fade, a tiny, heartbreaking thought pierced through his mind:
'Damn... I think my camera broke...'