Snake Dream

Another thing found on my hard drive

                Disclaimer: This was a dream.

                Sitting in my room I felt a sudden urge that I needed to be somewhere, and so I stood. I walked out of my room through the door to the small balcony where the steps leading up to my floor are. This balcony just happened to be right outside of the door to my room, so that I was practically looking down into the stairwell as soon as the door opened. As I suppose I normally did I looked down into the stairwell, unlike normal times, however, there was a small kitten sitting on one of the stairs, and a young girl walking up towards them from the door which goes outside.
                I called to her, a nameless call of recognition, which she caught. She looked up at me and smiled, and a sense of familiarity flooded me. Something about this girl, and this kitten told me that they would be good for one another, and I felt a sense of relief that this would be the one to find the small animal. While she stood there craning her neck upwards to look at me on the second floor, I called down to tell her of the cat, pointing to it with a smile. She understood completely and made a small cheer before picking up the kitten and heading up the stairs.
                After the girl and the kitten were out of sight I looked across the stairwell of my floor and saw a small girl I recognize from somewhere. She was sitting in the room with the door half open, and started poking at a bag with a stick, but only a few times. The room looked like it belonged in a section of landfill. There was trash everywhere, not all of it in bags. There was only a single couch from what I could see, and the girl started to climb up on it so that she could find something.
                The bag she had been poking started to move a bit, as if something had taken residence in it. I sat for a moment to watch out of curiosity, and as I did a long, sleek, black snake with red markings in strange V shapes down its sides came out of the bag and crawled up onto the couch looking curious itself. As I sat and watched I tried to call out, to tell her that there was a potentially deadly snake now sitting on a couch with her. This girl couldn’t have been more than five years old, if it bit her she would die almost instantly.
                The snake began to dance and weave slowly, flicking its tongue out to taste the air, eyeing the girl curiously as it moved from side to side. She couldn’t hear me. Why couldn’t she hear me? Was I mute?
                I jumped the stairwell in a moment of action, believing I was the only salvation of this small girl now glancing behind a couch in search of something in this landfill room she was in. I burst through the opening where the door should have been and grabbed the snake just as it looked like it was about to strike.
                Oh please God let me have grabbed it in the right position.
                I opened my eyes and looked down into my hands. There were two beady eyes, two solid glistening fangs, and two red lines that went across what could be eyebrows that made it look as if this snake actually had eyebrows. For some reason as I looked down at this creature before me I could sense a feeling of hopelessness for its own situation. It was not writhing to wrap itself around my arm, it was simply dangling there in the air motionless. Under its chin was my forefinger, on its head was my thumb.
                Thank God.
                I mentioned to the girl in very few, vague, and far-off words that I had just saved her life, and that she needs to be more careful. Her response was lacking and indifferent, hardly the thanks a hero gets for making a mad dash over a stairwell to save someone’s life. “I’m looking for something right now Mr. Kizer. Can you come back later?” She didn’t even bother to turn around from peering down into the darkness behind the couch.
                As I left I turned around holding this animal, which seemed to look at me with a shrug. The look was so convincing I thought the snake had shoulders. The girl, however, had managed to make herself so cute that I wasn’t even made at her. She was reaching behind the couch, her shoulder planted against it, with her tongue out in concentration, staring straight up and making grunting sounds. Whatever she was looking for, I hope she finds it.
                I looked at the snake and checked its markings, which were now wrapped around my arm. I started pulling the body off my arm and he let me slightly. The animal had a strange sense of indifference, like a house cat that’s being held by a five year old from under its arms, and being drug all over the house.
                As I got to the stairwell I heard a small mewing sound. I looked down and the kitten I had seen before and watched the girl take away was looking up at me as pathetic as it possibly could. I suppose she couldn’t keep it. With a sigh and a roll of the eyes I knelt down, and took the kitten in my free hand to place it on my shoulder. As the kitten laid itself down into a comfortable position I started walking.
                I had to get this animal to some kind of shelter or place where they know about these kinds of things. From the markings I had guessed it was a Black Moa, extremely venomous. I had absolutely no idea where to go or what to do with it but I can’t let it stay here in this building filled with people.
                I headed to my car, a green Cadillac, parked in the parking lot, and climbed in the back seat to try to find something that I could put this animal in while I drove. I can’t drive and hold a venom filled wild animal in one hand at the same time. Plus, I wanted to stop for coffee, and if I took this thing into a convenience store, I might not ever be allowed in again.
                As I was routing around the back seat the kitten jumped out of my hand to lay in the seat next to me, and chose the moment that I had my head turned to realize that in my other hand there was a natural predator. I heard the hiss, and then I felt scratch on my hand as the cat lashed out. The shock of what had happened, and how quickly it had happened was enough to slacken my grip just enough for the black moa to strike my left hand between my thumb and fore finger.
                The black animal untangled itself from my arm with unnatural speed and fell to the floor of the car, dating under the passenger’s seat and out of sight as I sat there staring at the two cat scratches, and the two puncture wounds oozing blood down my hand.
                Help. I have to get help.
                I jumped out of the car and slammed the door, running back towards the building I had just left, trying to find anyone that I could who would know what to do, or to find someone who had a phone and could save me.
                I headed inside and told everyone I saw that I knew what had happened. Everyone had somewhere else to be, or started a conversation about something else entirely with me as if my life was not hanging on the line. As I was knocking on a friend of mine’s door I felt a cold rush of blood through my veins and my vision began to blur for a moment. I was forced to lean against the doorway.
                The door opened and I looked up. Chelsea. Chelsea!! She raises snakes, she’ll know what to…
                OW! Why the hell did she just slap me.
                The door slammed shut and I was left confused and disoriented, now with a sore hand and a sore cheek to match.
                Why will no one listen to me! I’m DYING!
                Hopeless I started running for my car. If no one else is going to help me I’ll get myself to the hospital. All I have to do is get the snake out of my car and get myself there.
                As I was heading towards the parking lot I saw an ex of mine. “JESS!!” I called out.
                She turned around with that tight-lipped smile she always had when she’s in a good mood and sees someone that she knows. I told her my story and her only response was, “Wow. Ouch.”
                This was the final straw. The last person on earth I would ask for help just turned me down. I went ballistic. I started yelling at the top of my lungs.
                “No one has been willing to help me. Everyone has just smiled and walked away and said they’ll call someone and not done anything. And now you’re going to do that same thing. You say you care, but you don’t, I’m going to die here with venom pumping through me and you’re going to walk back to your car and drive away and not even help me.”
                She wasn’t even phased. She just smiled at me and stroked my cheek and said, “It’ll all be ok. Have a nice day.” And then she began walking away, that same tight-lipped smile on her face.
                Aggravated, frustrated, and annoyed I began running to my car. I took about two steps before my blood ran cold and I fell to the asphalt. I tried to lift myself up with a grunt, and fell back down. The aching in my arms was so strong I could barely tense a muscle, let alone stand myself up. Something was running down my cheek. Tears from frustration?
                No. I wiped it with my hand and pulled it to my line of sight. Blood.
                Great. Now I’m bleeding from my eyes.
                “I’ll help you,” came a dainty voice that I should have recognized, at the end of an outstretched hand. I grabbed the hand and let them practically lift me up. She was much stronger than her size would make me assume. As I looked up into the face of my savior my blood ran cold for so many other reasons.
                …Kasey.
                “KASEY!?” I shouted.
                “Ugh. Fine. I won’t help.” She said, mostly joking.
                Frantic for any help I blurted out, “No. No. It’s fine. Help me to my car, it’s the green Cadillac.”
                She helped me walk there and I explained that there was a small cat and a snake in the car, and that I was afraid the kitten had been eaten by the snake, but that I had to get the snake out of my car to save my life.
                On the way there I saw Ben, who said he had heard from a friend what had happened and that he himself would die if he wasn’t able to see the stars with me again, so he came to help. He hoisted me onto his back and carried me to my car, setting me down away from the door and opening it. Kasey began to point a stick under the driver’s seat to force it out while Ben opened the passenger’s side door.
                While I sat there watching them getting dizzier by the second, I felt something on my back. I turned around and stood in fear as I stared at the face of a giant man-sized snake. Reacting on reflex I grabbed it by the neck just under the jaw, and felt my heart almost stop when I realized it was rubber.
                NOT FUNNY.
                Who the hell would do this to someone who is dying. In any other circumstance this would have been hilarious, and I would have even helped. But I’m dying, God Damnit.
                Where’s Ben? GOD DAMNIT BEN!
                A laugh and footsteps were all I got in response.
                I looked up into the car and saw that there were five or six kittens all over the car. Why are there kitten alls over my car!? From this angle I could see under the driver’s seat, and watched as the black moa was struck by some small garden snake. There were now three snakes curled into a ball underneath my driver’s seat biting at one another.
                Kasey sat poking them with a ball before a kitten jumped onto the driver’s seat. “Kitty!!”
                She’s out.
                I lay on the asphalt unable to move, able only to watch as the edges of my vision begin to turn black. Soon I realize my eyes are closed, and all I can here is voices. A girl’s voice yells out from somewhere, “Oh! Mo-Mo!!”
                What the hell’s a Mo-Mo?
                “Thank you Mr. Kizer for finding my pet. We play hide and seek a lot, but he got out this time.”
                I recognize the voice. It was the girl from across the hall. I open my eyes weakly and see her smiling, the snake in her arms and rubbing the top of its head against her chin while she giggled. My cat does that when he wants affection sometimes. I’m glad she found what she was looking for.
                I tried to say good-bye, to her, to Kasey, to the world. But I couldn’t find the energy to speak, and everything was getting darker. I heard Kasey’s voice roughly as if from some great distance and underwater, “Call me.”
                Poor Kasey, her phone never rings.

 

 

End