Priva-see chapter 4

It all began with a wet sensation nibbling at my toe. I dropped the last night’s dishes I was washing and looked down. It was long and slimy, and it made snake-like movement. It was a snake. Oh my bloody God, it was a snake. Reflex shot me into the air.

Why is there a snake in my Manhattan (Chinatown) apartment?

            I called for my cousin. He sheepishly entered the kitchen. When he saw the snake his entire body tensed up.

“Why is there a snake in our apartment?” asked Scar.

“The question we should be asking now is, how do we deal with it?”

“Let’s leave it alone?” suggested Scar stupidly.

“Excellent idea, Scar. Maybe it will sneak into your room tonight and bite you in your sleep.”

“I don’t f*****g know. I paid too much rent to be worrying about this s**t.”

He was right. We did pay too much rent to be worrying about a snake in our apartment. I called Paul, our landlord, and explained the situation to him.

“Why is there a snake in your apartment?”

“I don’t know, Paul. Now are you going to be useful and come over here and help us deal with it?”

“No. Do you expect me to drop everything I am doing, and come over to your house-”

“Apartment,” I corrected him.

“-And help you two grown man deal with a small animal?”

“Yes?” I said after a moment of silence. Paul hung up on me.

“It keeps hissing at us. Why is it doing that?”

 

Scar and I watched a David Attenborough documentary on snake as we continued our vigil. It took us nothing we could use against the snake however. We then contemplated killing it.

“Let’s use rat poison.” Suggested Scar.

“Good idea. Bring it here.”

Scar carefully laid the rat poison pellets in front of the snake as if they were Reese’s pieces. He sang to the snake as if it were a child we were trying to kidnap.

“Look, we brought you food. They are tasty. Yum. Yum.”

The snake didn’t care for them.

“So obviously that failed. What else have we got?” asked I hopelessly.

“We have the bug spray.”

“Bring it here.”

We were hesitant to use the bug spray on the snake. We didn’t want to agitate it. But on the other hand, it might choke the snake to death. I grabbed the metal canister and sprayed at the coiled-up snake.

BAD IDEA. The moment I sprayed at it, it unraveled itself and moved erratically. Scar let out a panicked cry. The snake moved its head back and forth, as if trying to find an angle to strike, but the spray blinded it. It retreated into the hole under the sink.

“Give me light,” said I, “if it is dead I want to see its unmoving body.”

Scar turned on the flashlight on his phone and shined it at the hole. I had my canister of bug spray at the ready. I peeked inside the hole. Rust and grease, but no snake. It was at this moment, when I was at my most vulnerable, I saw a flicker in the corner of my left eye. I turned and saw the snake flanking us. It had gotten out of the hole through some other exit, and it was now ambushing us. I had never seen such fast movement in my life. It whipped like a hurricane and launched itself into the air. I could stare down its thorax.

Before it could bite me however, a punch stopped him. Scar, in a panic, reflexively tossed a powerful punch out. It hit the snake straight in the head, knocking it limp.

 

“God bless you, Scar.” I whimpered, scarily believed that I survived the encounter.

“Is it dead?” whimpered Scar.

“I don’t know,” said I after regaining my composure, “but it is going to be.”

You could always find Mr. Whiskerpants humping something in the garbage room, and indeed today that’s where we found him. Neighbor’s cat. White Siamese. We tossed the snake at him hoping he would eat it. Mr. Whiskerpants did not know what to do with it at first. He just merely played with it.

“Alright, let’s go.” Said Scar.

“No, we have to make sure that it is gone.”

So we stayed and watched Mr. Whiskerpants bit off the head of the unconscious snake. Our innocence was destroyed that day. I still thought about it to this day.