The Snail

An Old Joke Runs Long

When Ethan Reynard woke up that morning, it didn’t seem to be any different of a day than the one before it or the one before that. The alarm clock trilled out its incessant shriek at 7:45 a.m., and he hit the snooze button twice to get some additional beauty sleep. Finally, he stepped out of bed and walked zombie-like to the bathroom to take a leak and scratch his a*s something fierce. To be fair, he could have scratched himself at any time, but doing so while peeing just seemed to go hand-in-hand. Once a few ounces of dark, smelly urine left his system and that ever present itch was scratched, Ethan walked back to the bed and slept for another twenty minutes.

Once Ethan fully rose from his semi-futile attempt at getting some shut eye he went to the kitchen to get some breakfast. Pulling a bowl from the cabinet, he poured himself a heaping bowl of Count Chocula and applied a generous portion of milk. Ethan loved Count Chocula because, not only was it delicious and brought childhood memories to life, it also left a nice bowl of chocolate milk to slurp down once the cereal was gone. Ethan made an attempt to eat all the flaky bits before the marshmallows, but decided it was impossible halfway through and gobbled the rest down as if his life depended on it. He slurped down the remaining milk noisily.

After breakfast, Ethan went back to the bathroom. He turned the hot water on in the shower to give it time to heat up properly, and set about brushing his teeth. He knew there was some specific way to brush teeth that’s more effective, but he was never one for playing by the rules so he just brushed however the hell he felt like. Today he felt like brushing his teeth standing on his head. Somewhat clumsily, he flipped himself upside down against the wall, wetted his toothbrush, and began scrubbing vigorously. After about a minute he flopped himself onto the floor and stood upright as the blood was beginning to pool in his head. Ethan rinsed his mouth in the sink and watched the spit spiral down the drain.

He stripped his pajamas, which consisted of whatever pair of boxers he was wearing the previous day or nothing if he didn’t wear any underwear, off and stepped into the now lukewarm shower. Ethan turned on the shower radio to a station dedicated to hits from the 90’s and began belting out *NSYNC’s Bye Bye Bye as he washed the previous day and night’s grime off of his body. When Only Wanna Be With You by Hootie and the Blowfish came on, he picked up the shampoo bottle and used it as a makeshift microphone. Ethan remained in the shower, singing himself hoarse to all of the 90’s biggest hits, until the hot water ran out completely.

Once he had dried himself off, Ethan walked to his dresser and grabbed a clean pair of boxers. He slid them on, followed by a mostly clean pair of jeans, and then socks. He pulled a t-shirt with an ironic saying on it out of the closet and threw it on as well.

Dressed for the day, Ethan walked back through his apartment to the front door. He slid on a pair of beat up sneakers and grabbed his keys from a hook on the wall. As he stepped out the door, he corrected himself at the last second and jerked his foot to the right to avoid stepping on a snail that was sitting cozily on his doorstep. Ethan bent down and picked up the snail to examine it more closely. The body of the snail was a putrid color of green with a burgundy shell flecked with white. The snail’s slimy antennae were moving slowly back and forth like a pair of alien tentacles.

“Stupid snail,” Ethan said. He reared and hurled the snail as far as he could toss it. The snail landed with a rustle in the shrubbery across the street. Without a second thought to the snail, Ethan walked to his car and set off for work.

It’s hard to say if the following months from that day were a direct karmic result of Ethan’s actions or not. Some may argue as such, but others �" cynics and atheists mostly �" would wholly disagree and state that nothing is related and that everything is just a random series of events controlled by nothing. I can’t say who’s right or who’s wrong, but what I do know is that that particular day marked the beginning of a series of events that lasted for an entire year, and were completely disagreeable with Ethan’s existence.

On the day in question, Ethan got in a fender bender on the way to work and ended up being fired for being late one too many times. He went home and drank until he blacked out. The following week was filled with more drinking and blacking out, but with a bit of Tetris mixed in. By the end of the month, he had spent so much time inside not bathing that he smelled and looked like something that had been passed through the digestive system of a sick, old woman.

The following month, August, he got his s**t together and started looking for a new job. Three weeks were spent scouring the city and internet for available positions that he was qualified for which didn’t seem to exist. Eventually, he settled and took a position at the local Taco Bell as a cashier. It wasn’t a terrible gig, but that was only because of the free food he got on every shift. Other than that, it was hell on earth.

In October, Ethan met a girl he easily would have considered the love of his life had he not walked in on her and what could only be described as a horde of other people all naked and fornicating with each other. He wouldn’t have minded it so much if they weren’t convening their orgy on his bed. The day after they broke up, Ethan woke up to the knock at the door. It was a process server delivering the summons to court for the lawsuit against him from the driver of the car he had rear ended the month previous.

Ethan went to court in November and, of course, lost with staggering impressiveness. Having no money to foot the bill, all Ethan’s property was seized and he was cast out on the street. Being a homeless man in the winter time isn’t exactly the most desirable of lives, but Ethan made due. Months passed as he struggled to stay alive in the cold against a hunger so fierce it often made him see things that may or may not have been there.

In early February, Ethan came across an old friend who somehow recognized him through the dirt, grim, and gnarly beard. The man let Ethan move in to his apartment and got him a haircut and shave. The man even set Ethan up with a job to get him back on his feet. It was a kindness Ethan could barely comprehend. As a kind of thanks, he gave into temptation and slept with the man’s girlfriend.

Back on the streets, but this time with a job, Ethan somehow managed to rent out the same exact apartment that he had been occupying only a few months previously. He moved in with a single box of clothes that he’d bought with his first few paychecks at his new job. He then began slowly amassing the things he’d lost.

One thing he acquired that he didn’t have previously was a newfound addiction for sex. Most people wouldn’t think this necessarily a bad thing, but for Ethan it turned out to be a rather crippling addiction. Each night he would prowl the streets for a new fix, usually a young girl who had too much to drink, but he was not stranger to prostitutes either. After months of plowing through any nubile young lady or smelly old w***e he could find, Ethan found himself a human Petri-dish for sexually transmitted diseases. He had contracted and cured every non-lethal disease that existed �" excepted herpes, of course.

In June, just eleven months from his encounter with the snail, Ethan began therapy to cure himself of his insatiable desire for a good lay. The meetings were difficult and he slept with one or two of the women there within the first week, completely defeating the purpose of the meetings themselves. But go he did, and slowly he got better, and only screwed one or two girls a week as opposed to one or two a day.

And so it was, exactly one year to the date from the beginning of this little tale, Ethan’s alarm clock went off, and he silenced it with a smack that was maybe a bit harder than necessary. He got up, brushed his teeth in a normal fashion, took a shower, got dressed, and ate some breakfast. This time it was Cinnamon Toast Crunch, but still equally delicious. He put on a new pair of old beat up sneakers and grabbed his keys on his way out the door.

When he opened the door, he found a snail sitting on the front porch. Now, the human mind doesn’t have the best powers of memory, generally speaking, so Ethan made no connection to the event. He bent and picked up the snail. It was a putrid shade of green with a burgundy shell flecked with white. Ethan stared and the invertebrate for several seconds, a memory stirring somewhere in the back of his mind but never fully coming to fruition. He could tell there was something familiar about the snail but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it.

Just has he began rearing back his arm for the impending toss, he noticed the snail’s beady black eyes making contact with his. It’s not easy to read the expression of a snail, but Ethan got the feeling it was an angry glare as opposed to the normal blank expression a snail should have. Ethan was shocked to see it was also opening a tiny slit he assumed it was the creature’s mouth.

“Hey,” the snail admonished in a squeaky voice. “What in the hell was the point of that?”