Little Eve hissed happily as she was hoisted and flung about in the calloused hands of her beloved, the pious man utterly lost in strychnine-induced revelry. The Pentecostal congregants chanted with devotional fervor, an electric feeling of great spirit filling the room. Devotional, exalting men whirled about, praising the Lord in strange languages, their fists wreathed with serpents. The most Godly of them passed about a mason jar, each man merrily sipping strychnine-laden water in praise of God's glory and sacred covenant with Mankind. The fattened diamondback rattler was happy just to be close to Enoch, her passion's sole focus.
The sonorous timber of Enoch's deep voice as he chanted healing prayers and spoke in syllabic tongues sent her serpentine heart aflutter. Eve didn't mind at all when he gripped her a tad too tight in his exuberance, the comforting warmth of his firm hands was always welcomed. She'd only bitten him a few times, drawn into the group's ecstatic mood and acting on her ingrained viper instincts in the moment. Every year spent together with Enoch further cemented Eve's utter devotion to the big preacher man, and his heartfelt mission to espouse the wonder of God and his son, Jesus Christ. Her triangular head swayed and her hollow tail-tip subtly rattled to the hymn's rhythm, the joyous snake caught up in the religious revival like usual.
Later that same night, Eve tightly coiled in upon herself in a scaly knot. The emotional snake was feeling cold and lonely, while Enoch let an ancient black-and-white television lull him to sleep. She wanted to snuggle up and get close to the warm, kindly, godly human. She always wanted to be close to him, and her serpentine anxieties gnashed at every moment's separation. Eve kept fitfully wriggling about herself, trying to find some comfort in her sparse terrarium. Enoch was a good man, but he just didn't quite understand Eve's needs, and she wanted for heat and humidity often on these cold, isolated nights. In that moment of love and longing, the rattlesnake prayed for deliverance. She prayed with every scale of her being, to be close to Enoch, to be someone he could love, to be someone he would love.
Eve fearfully slithered into the little plastic cave occupying her 10-gallon tank when a blinding flash suddenly flared bright nearby. Eve's slitted pupils widened in shock, as a perfect, deific manifestation of Jesus Christ appeared before her, shrunken to fit within the rattlesnake's cramped terrarium. The glowing avatar of God's son spoke with comforting grace to the fearful serpent, "Yay, lowly creature of the Earth, be not afraid. The humble purity of your supplication has been noticed by the Kingdom of Heaven. These great and righteous people you reside with overflow with the grace of the Lord, and you are to be elevated among them as an equal, with holy purpose."
The high-strung snake was utterly overcome with the momentous nature of this revelation, her forked tongue flickering about wildly as she tried to process the words of Christ, her mind sluggish from the cold. "Virtuous viper, hear the terms of my benevolent benediction well: This isolated font of godliness is an isolated bastion among the decaying, depraved society investing it. You must help maintain this great house of God's purity, by any means necessary. You must uproot the sickness of evil, from any direction it sprouts from."
Still struggling to understand, but utterly enraptured by the moment, Eve responded, "B-but Jesus, how? How can a lowly rattlesnake like me do such things? I don't understand, how will I ever be treated as an equal by these people?"
The glowing effigy of Christ dismissed these questions with a wave of his hand, answering, "You are to be granted the stupendous glory of being refashioned in God's image, but at the cost of great and necessary sacrifices. There are wicked souls infiltrating these simple and saintly people. The men can be forgiven, God overflows with forgiveness, but the women? You gotta eat 'em, or you'll turn back into a lowly serpent. I'll also give you cancer or something, for failing me."
The attentively listening rattlesnake's trigonal head flickered in shocked confusion, Eve hissing back in quailing timbre, "W-what? You want me...to eat the unrighteous? H-how will I even know who is worthy and unworthy?"
Jesus calmly approached the baffled snake, his sandals gently crunching on the terrarium's sandy turf. His presence radiated an ethereal bliss that overcame Eve's astonishment, as his knowing voice commanded, "Lol, just go for it. Chow down, and we'll sort 'em out upstairs, like the saying goes. Just remember to eat frequently, or I'll fill you so full of tumors you'll look like a Tsuchinoko. Christ out!" And with that revelatory proclamation, Christ swooced right on out of there. Eve was completely paralyzed, her ophidian brain struggling to comprehend the enormity of these inexplicable happenings. A subtle tingling gradually spread across her patterned scales, growing into an all-encompassing sensation that obliviated all thought from her racing mind.
Eve groggily pushed herself up, struggling to stand upright as her wits slowly returned. She looked around, immediately overcome with a terrifying sense of alienation at her familiar surroundings, unable to place her inordinate disturbance. Slowly, it dawned on her; Eve's entire sense of scale and perspective was suddenly violently skewed as she awkwardly teetered about, her panic intensifying. It wasn't until she looked upon herself, that the full breadth of the situation became apparent. Eve softly gasped, "I...I have hands! Arms! Legs! Feet! By God almighty, I finally have real, human feet! And they're really cute!" Eve appreciatively and unskillfully wiggled her toes, marveling at her newfound physical dimensions. It seemed she wasn't going crazy; the lowly serpent had been raised up high by the glory of God. Eve looked down and gently stroked her huge, rotund, writhing stomach, admiring the muffled cries and desperate hand-prints pushing out from within. Eve then narrowed her green eyes in confusion, having enough sense of traditional human anatomy to note the abnormality, as her memories all came rushing back at once.
***
Mabel groggily got up from the worship hall's carpeted floor, her head pounding and throat burning. She regretted that last shot of strychnine, her heart still fluttering from the deadly toxin's lingering after-effects. The young woman immediately began pouting upon waking, realizing she'd been left between some church pews to sleep the strychnine off. Realizing her faith had been found wanting in front of the entire congregation, the precocious hellion mentally recounted the lurid series of events that likely lead to her being rejected God's rejuvenation. Hoping her penance had been duly served, Mabel fished out her phablet and began flicking through page after page of numbers, planning out her next session of sinning. A grating headache lingered, Mabel feeling like she'd suffered the Mother-of-All hangovers, the slightest noise making her temples throb. Mabel groaned in frustration upon hearing a scaly rustle from behind, turning angrily to regard the source. An absurdly large rattlesnake was coiled and poised right behind her, its serpentine muzzle yawning wide, exposing a glistening, pink interior. Just as poor Mabel began an emphatic shriek, the great serpent lunged forward, engulfing her head in an instant.
Eve's serpentine lips marched forward in uneven, incremental steps, each side of her jaw capable of extending forward independently. The snake had been super-sized by Heavenly necromancy, and the diamondback rattler had been overcome with an all-consuming hunger for sinful, female flesh. Eve just let her predatory instincts take over, letting her rippling throat muscles do their voracious work upon the squirming lass. The viper's wide jaws cloyed tightly to Mabel's shoulders, gradually sinking the girl's freckled width in with forceful swallowing motions. Mabel posed little resistance to the gluttonous snake, and Eve didn't even bother stinging her meek prey as she gobbled it down whole.
Due to suffering prolonged undernourishment throughout her teenage years, Mabel was a short and lanky woman for her age. This made Eve's ordained feasting easier, but the enlarged serpent still struggled to consume her bucking prey. The snake's neck began rippling with the fitful outline of Mabel's head as she sank deeper and deeper into the viper's slimy, gripping innards. Eve's bifurcated tongue flickered about Mabel's stomach as the snake felt her prey's little hands meekly clawing at her throat's slippery lining, instinctively urging the snake to gulp down harder and faster. The petite woman's slim hips did her no favors in delaying the inevitable, as Eve's elastic cheeks inched over her victim's gyrating pelvis, Mabel's protuding hipbones luridly visible as the descended down the rattler's scaly, tapering frame. Eve's head shock back and forth as her kicking prey's left knee socked her snout, sending Mabel's outline wobbling about the creature's cloying neck flesh. Eve kept pitching her jaws forwards over the girl's pale legs in steps, until a pair of cute, socked feet protruded from the serpent's drooling, scaly lips. The hungry predator's forked tongue flickered over Mabel's curling soles as they sank down out of sight, the victorious snake's lips sealing shut with grim finality.
***
Finishing with her perverse recollection of events, Eve shuddered at the subdued sensations of Mabel's final moments. Looking at herself more closely, Eve morbidly realized she now perfectly resembled Mabel, even somehow becoming clothed in the devoured girl's tacky, puritanical dress. Hearing footsteps approach, the transformed rattlesnake woman sank down between the church pews. Eve froze as she heard Enoch's Appalachian-accented voice call out, "Mabel? You up now, girl? I told you tha' Preacher's strychnine's none yer business! I mix it up extra potent for m'self."
Eve's occupied stomach began wildly thrashing and crying out, eliciting the embarrassed predator to push down on her stomach intently. Bizarrely, rather than simply stifling the squirming girl, Eve's stomach suddenly glowed slightly, flexing wildly and sinking back down to normal shape. The enchanted snake woman felt a rush of intense, pleasurable energies emanate out from her transformed stomach, as her prey seemingly dissolved with miraculous speed. By the time Enoch reached where was Eve sprawled out between the church benches, she appeared just like any normal young woman.
The romantic woman's heart started fluttering as she stared up at the Pentecostal preacher's looming face, lined with concerned. Eve struggled to find the right words to say to him, to explain how much he meant to her. Realizing she had the appearance of the woman she had just devoured, Eve took a long pause to consider the best approach to explain things to Enoch. Looking up at his patiently waiting face, Eve said, "