Wednesday, January 11, 2012
Sunday, January 8, 2012
Snaik
Manfred knew plenty about catchin' snakes. Knew plenty more about cookin' em. Only time Manfred didn't find himself out in the desert was when he was away fightin' the war. Came closer to dyin' from mustard gas than dyin' from any snake bites. He knew how to treat snake bites better than anybody. Knew how to draw out the poison. Most snake bites didn't even bother him anymore. Built up some type of tolerance.
Manfred was a grandpa. He sent his only son off to the war just like he done. Thought he trained him real good about survivin' but turns out he wasn't taught good enough. Manfred was left over with his two grandsons. Twins they were. He knew how to raise em good. Knew he wasn't sendin' them to any wars like he did his one and only son.
Manfred's grand kids loved his snake stews. They were gettin' to know how to catch snakes. Gettin' to know how to cook em. They were good boys, Abner and Wally. Only 11 years old, the both of them. Lot like their dad in most ways. Manfred sure did love his grand kids, was gonna raise em best he could. At least that was the plan.
Plans tend to get spoiled when you get bit by a snake you've never seen before. Especially when the bite hurts like nothing Manfred's ever felt, and made him shit and piss himself before the snake even pulled it's teeth out of his hand. By the time Manfred pulled his hand out of the snake hole he was already sweatin' bullets and shiverin' uncontrollably.
Manfred knew he was in trouble this time. Knew he might not survive.
Manfred didn't know that in the next week he was gonna swallow one of his grandsons whole. Didn't know he was gonna drive the other one insane.
-
Abner and Wally never thought much of their friend Jimmy's set of tin can walkie talkies. Jimmy found it amazing that they could talk to each other from such a far distance away, but the truth of it had been, Abner and Wally could talk to each other from any distance without some old rusty cans. If they didn't want to spit words out into the open air where just about anybody could hear em, they spit em into each other's heads. They figured it was just a side effect of being born at the same time together. Figured it was a good way to make fun of Jimmy and his cans without Jimmy knowin'.
It was also their favorite way of cursin' around grandpa. Cursin' out loud usually led to a whoopin' for whoever the guilty twin was. But cursin' was fun, and it didn't hurt nobody. Grandpa cursed all the time whenever he got bit by a snake, so he was bein' a bit hypocritical.
Jimmy had gotten just about fed up with Abner and Wally. He knew they were makin' fun of him, he just didn't know how. He packed up his cans and went home to play by himself.
Abner and Wally kept playin' by themselves until they saw their grandpa stumble home lookin' mighty sick.
"Somethin's wrong with grandpa." Abner said inside Wally's head.
"No shit." Wally said out loud.
-
After they had cleaned their grandpa up, and found the snake bite that had put him in the condition he was in, there wasn't much Abner and Wally could do. Their grandpa had taught them some basic first aid, but he was well beyond the point of needing first aid. The veins in his right arm were beginning to bulge out of his skin, and taking on a sickly black color.
Grandpa Manfred looked like he was trying to say something to them. His mouth was opening and closing and his eyeballs were rolling around in his head. Abner was dabbing at his head with a wet towel, but stopped when he saw the bulge start working it's way up grandpa's throat.
It began right above his sternum. Something pushing against the skin of his lower neck. It tumbled and pushed its way up slowly as grandpa's neck muscles strained to move the mass. The bulge moved painfully slow, and Abner and Wally could barely watch as their grandpa struggled with it. Abner was barely able to shift his grandpa forward so that he could spit up whatever was caught in his throat easier.
Grandpa Manfred seemed to go into a trance while he was coughing up the mass. His eyes rolled completely back into his head until they were just white. The only way Abner and Wally could still tell he was alive was because he kept clenching and unclenching his fists.
Eventually what looked like a mangled, black bird exposed half of itself from behind Manfred's teeth. Three more wretches from Manfred dislodged the bird from his mouth and sent it flying to the floor with a splat. He then leaned back into his chair and continued to breath again, but in a very labored manor.
-
Abner didn't even remember pulling his bike out of the shed and getting on it. Some type of silent agreement had been made after he had witnessed his grandfather throw up a whole bird that he would go get the local doctor while Wally kept watch on grandpa. Abner had a four mile bike ride ahead of him, and it was getting dark out. He couldn't make heads or tails out of what he'd just seen, but he knew it was bad, and they needed a doctor.
About a mile into his trip a familiar voice rung out in his head.
"Did you make it to the doctor's house yet?" Wally asked from a mile away.
"Nope, not even close yet. Is he gettin' worse?" Abner asked, beginning to pedal harder because he thought he already knew the answer to his question. He was surprised by what Wally said to him next.
"Not at all. I mean, he doesn't look too good by our standards, but on a different level he's becoming much better."
"Wally, what is that supposed to mean? What's going on there?"
"Listen, forget the doctor. Just come have a look for yourself."
Abner stopped pedaling for a moment and just stood on the desolate road, confused, and debating what he should do.
"Just come. Trust me."
Abner listened to his brother.
-
"WALLY?" Abner yelled through the house from the front door. When he got no answer, he decided to venture inside. The kitchen, where he had left his brother and his grandpa, was deserted. A single moth flew around the ceiling silently. The only sound in the house was a slow dragging that occurred every thirty or so seconds. Abner could only stand there and listen for several minutes, too scared to do anything else. He knew something had gone wrong. Knew something bad had happened.
When he worked up the courage and found the source of the noise, he knew he had made a mistake in coming back instead of getting the doctor. Grandpa was lying on his side on the floor. His chest and neck were swollen significantly and only expanding more. Abner could hear ribs creaking and cracking from fifteen feet away.
Worse than the sight of his grandpa's distended body was what was coming out of his mouth. A pair of small legs, with one shoe still on the left foot were extending from his grandpa's mouth, or what had remained of it. The strain from having such a large object in his mouth had ripped his lips from the corner of his mouth to his ears. Blood and vomit covered the floor around his head, and as he watched his grandpa vomited again, which came out around the legs in a slow trickle.
Abner slammed the dining room door and locked it shut from the outside, trapping his grandfather inside. He didn't know what to make of what he had just seen. Didn't know whether he should cry or throw up.
-
Turns out Abner did both. He was still huggin' the toilet when his brother began talkin' to him.
"Abner, It's alright, don't cry." The voice inside Abner's head rattled off. It sounded like someone talking through the walls, but he knew the voice was coming from inside his head.
"Who's that?" Abner cried back, through tears and a runny nose.
"It's your brother silly, who else talks to you in your head?"
For the longest time Abner and Wally were convinced that they could only talk to each other telepathically. Their viewpoint on the situation changed when their grandpa took them to the carnival one summer. One tent down the row of circus freaks housed a deaf, dumb, and blind boy who could play pinball like they had never seen. Wally and Abner were only mildly interested in the boys skill, and were just about to rush off to see the Bearded Lady, when a voice went off in their heads saying "See me. Feel me. Touch me. Heal me." over and over again. The voice was loud enough to give them an instant headache, but no one but them seemed to be hearing them. When they turned back to the deaf, dumb, and blind boy, he had stopped playing pinball and was facing them both.
But right now Abner knew there was no deaf, dumb, and blind boy anywhere near him. He knew the only circus freak was in the next room, and it had just swallowed his brother whole.
"Abner listen to me, everything is going to be ok."
"How can you say that? I just saw Grandpa swallow you up!"
"It's not as bad as it seems. Just come in, try it. We can be together in here." Wally said. His voice was different somehow. Abner almost didn't recognize it.
"What are you talking about?"
"I don't want to be alone in here Abner. Don't let me be alone."
Abner threw up again.
-
A wicked lightning storm rolled it's way over the house. A chorus accompanied the arrival of the storm and had joined in with his brother's voice beckoning him to join them. He didn't know exactly where they wanted him to go, but if it meant being swallowed by his grandfather, then he was going to do his best not to listen to them.
As each chant came and went, his brother's voice became less recognizable. The quality of it became more serpentine each time they shouted out to him in unison. Soon, Abner imagined, he wouldn't be able to distinguish his brother's voice at all. He wasn't even sure if it was his brother reaching out to him anymore. Wasn't sure if he was losing his mind or not.
Lightening storms in the desert didn't need any thunder to go along with them. Grandpa always called it "heat lightning". Abner always like watching it from inside his room, but right now the flashes of light were disorienting and making him more sick than he already felt.
From inside the room where he had locked his grandpa, he heard a mean hiss, and something bumping into the door repeatedly. Abner picked up a poker from the fireplace. He didn't know what he was going to do with it. He knew he would do something if he absolutely had to.
-
After an hour had gone by, Abner was beginning to lose his mind. He had taken feathers from his bedroom pillow and jammed them into his ear to try and get the voices to stop calling to him. They were only saying one thing now - "JOIN US", and it sounded like it was coming straight from the mouth of hell.
Abner tried screaming over the voices, but his voice had gone hoarse after twenty minutes. The only thing that had improved was that he couldn't hear his grandfather banging against the door to try and get out of his enclosed room. When Abner took a closer look at the door, he could still see it shaking in it's frame, and a puddle of liquids began to seep underneath the door. The liquids were green colored in some spots, and dark red like blood in others. Whatever the two liquids were they wouldn't mix together, much like oil and water stay separated.
As he was inspecting the door, the rhythmic crashing appeared to stop. As soon as he noticed this, the voices ceased in his head as well. He pulled the feathers out of his ear and let them fall in the nasty puddle of goo. The lightning hadn't stopped, but because it wasn't making any noise either, everything was quiet.
Abner gripped the poker he still had in his hands tight. He knew that it would be stupid to open the door and look. Knew he was probably going to do it anyway.
He pulled the door open. All the candles in the room had been knocked to the floor and it was quite dark. He could make out the shape of his grandfather on the floor, but he didn't appear to be moving. A flash of lightning cut through the darkness of the room, and lingered just long enough for Abner to look into his grandfather's eyes, which had completely changed from the dark brown ones he had looked into his entire life, into dark yellow and black slits. The flash of lightning ended, sparing Abner from looking into those eyes any longer.
The chain of events that occurred next happened very quickly. When everything went dark again, Abner saw the shape of his grandfather begin to move, slowly at first, but then it picked up immense speed, and shot past Abner, knocking him backwards into a coffee table. His grandfather slithered awkwardly towards the front door. He couldn't quite achieve the gracefulness a snake slithers with, because of the extra arms and legs that he had, but he was doing quite alright for himself, and was practically out the front door by the time Abner regained his balance.
Abner didn't know what he was doing next. Didn't know why he was chasing after his grandfather with the intent to end his life. He raised the poker high in his hands and gave chase as his grandfather slithered down the front steps. He slipped on the slime trail a couple of times but eventually caught up to him and brought the poker down right into the middle of his grandfather's back.
-
Grandpa Manfred didn't know why he was crawling on the ground like a snake. Didn't know why he couldn't speak anymore, but could only make hissing sounds with his mouth. He didn't know why he had eaten one of his grandson's whole.
He guessed he understood why his other grandson had chased him down and stabbed him in the back with a poker. Understood why he wanted his grandpa dead. That poker hurt quite a bit, but he guessed he deserved it. He didn't mean to snap back and knock Abner down on the ground. It was just kind of a reflex. He felt awfully sorry about it afterward, and kept on his way out into the desert. He was gonna get himself as far away from his grandson as he could, because he didn't want to hurt him too.
-
Abner lay on the ground watching his grandfather slither away. When he had stabbed him in the back with the poker, his grandfather knocked him down on the ground and bared a nasty set of fangs towards him. He thought he was gonna get eaten too, just like his brother, but then his Grandfather's expression had changed, and he kept on slithering out into the desert. The poker was sticking out of his back.
A blue bolt of "heat lightning" came down and struck the poker. Electricity exploded the side of his grandpa's distended stomach about fifteen feet away from Abner. Wally's body pushed its way out of a tear the explosion left in Grandpa Manfred's side, face first. Wally's lifeless eyes were staring straight at Abner, and his lips were pulled back into a crooked smile.
"I'm going to fucking eat you alive Abner" Wally's voice calmly said in Abner's head.
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