39. Scales Unnatural
I watched as the snake slithered through the sand. It was a grotesque thing, short, fat, and its scales hued in colours unknown to nature. Despite its miniscule size, its hiss was a most grating and deafening noise, and in its path it left only a destruction well beyond proportion to its mass. It apparently contained in its tiny brain so amount of sentience. It would feign attack again and again, but always stayed just out of the reach of the shovel which I wielded, hissing in its loud and indecipherable screeches. As with every encounter that I had had with the repugnant species I knew that if I waited for the light of dawn the creature would be pushed back to whatever den from which it came.