SNAKE FOOD by MYLES ZAVELO
November 6 2024Mice in the freezer. Next to the ice cream. This month last year. So tightly packed into each other. Translucently spooning.
This month last year, too: when that hoodlum came to bleed right in front of my house.
Decomposition, psychiatric consumption, and how there wasn’t even a snake.
Not any longer.
Now, I don’t want to blame the victim, but he’d gotten himself stabbed in the head.
It must’ve gone down up the street…
Presume he’d gotten cute with the wrong crew…
It was getting late. I was just enjoying myself in the living room with my new tangerine soda. I was wearing my best loungewear. I started to hear suffering very out of nowhere. I put down my magazine for men.
I’ve lived here my whole life.
I went outside.
There the hoodlum was. Rasping by a matter of inches. I took another sip of my soda, which was delicious.
After several heavy, diseasey breaths—all collapsed and bleeding on the sidewalk, mind you—he called me an autistic brat.
What? The hell? Where? Did that come from? I’d never heard that one before. Surely not.
His eyes: blood.
Still.
My house, loungewear, soda, me: guess I’d too many hopes and dreams and lovely things tied up in him.
Then the ambulance came and took him away.
I answered some questions. The police forced me. I didn’t give up any names. I was wearing my best loungewear. I was the man of the hour. All the neighbors said so. They think I’m sweet. I felt grateful and lucky to be alive. I’ve lived here my whole life.
The next day, on the toilet, I’m playing a video game on my cell phone, and this detective from the organized crime unit—Irish, Female, 35 or 45—calls me up. (Also—I really, really enjoy entertainment—think that’s my main sin—that’s my original suspicion…) She was only interested in forcing more answers.
Her agenda was the agenda. She seemed to command the whole global population. She knew my vulnerability—how to cut it open, and then how to enter it.
Hypnotizing me: she was on the verge.
I couldn’t leave the toilet. I almost told her everything. I even almost gave names.
But when a piece of gum started wriggling in her mouth, I pictured that wrong crew—those rough wild cards—cutting me up. I could see myself bleeding. I could see my blood talking to bugs. I don’t know how to run. A person can’t live like that.
After she hung up, I opened the freezer to visit my snake food.
It was the principle of the thing, really.
These criminals know full well the life they sign up for.
Jamie had been a rosy boa. I gave him to myself for my birthday—which falls on National Constrictor Day—when my parents moved out west.
And? What? The point? Of what?
This?
Well, the point was the finest line: the snake food you gorge/the snake food you become.
Now I have made myself forget too much.
Plus, it’s always a brand new day, and you know I’m right.
Myles Zavelo lives in New York City.