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Boa Constrict Her

Craig Corey

I was numb for maybe five seconds, and then my head began to throb. Waves of pain crashed inside my skull. I didn’t want to move. I didn’t even want to open my eyes. But the sooner I got something in me, the sooner I’d feel better.

I rolled off the bed and staggered to the kitchen. There was a bottle of vodka on the counter and I tipped it to my mouth. The first swallow tried to come back up but I held it in. I got a tall glass and half-filled it with the hair of the dog. In the fridge I found some OJ to top off the glass. I drank half of it in one throw and then carried it to the living room.

On the coffee table I found my canister of Percodan and swallowed three. I lit a cigarette and stretched out on the couch, puffing and listening to the bubbler on the 40-gallon fish tank next to my head. I turned and watched the angelfish float lazily in the tank, their puckered mouths opening and closing, opening and closing. I imagined myself in their serene little world. Slowly, the waves of pain subsided until they were just ripples lapping at my brainpan.

Another beautiful Saturday in my beautiful life.

Cephus raised his head between mine and the fish tank, his black eyes staring from the sides of his scaly face. His forked tongue slid out, danced in the air, and then slipped back in. His tail came up from the floor in front of the couch and slapped my leg.

“I know what you did last night,” he said.

“Good, because I don’t have the first fucking idea.”

“You killed that girl.”

“I was a real stud, huh?”

“No, Brian. You killed her.”

“Oh, yeah?”

Cephus nodded his flat head.

“So where is she now?” I asked.

“I don’t know. You put her in your car and drove away.”

“I drove? Last night? Way I feel this morning, I find that hard to believe.”

“I warned you it was a bad idea. To tell the truth, I was surprised when you came home.”

I stared at him. He began to coil himself around my leg. I felt all his little muscles flexing and gripping, gently but with latent power. It felt good.

“I think, my friend, that you’ve gone insane in your tiny boa brain.”

He moved his head back and forth, like an underwater plant undulating in a current. It was hypnotic.

“Do you even remember the girl?” he asked.

I slowly stirred my memory until images began to float to the surface. I was in a bar. On the east side, in the neighborhood south of the stadium. Drinking. A lot. Black Russians.

There was a woman. By her body she was in her early 30s but her face looked much older. There was a profound sadness in her that somehow attracted me. She drank appletinis. I thought that was strange because the only people I’ve known who drank appletinis were amateurs, and this woman was clearly an alcoholic.

She lived near the bar but she had a roommate, so I drove her back here. We made drinks. We took pills. Maybe we smoked a little. After that, I don’t remember.

“I remember the girl,” I said.

“Why did you kill her?”

“I didn’t kill her. You must have eaten a bad mouse or something. You’re tripping.”

He oscillated his head again. I didn’t like it.

I shook my leg until he uncoiled his tail, and then I stood up and went to the kitchen. I had to draw the blinds against the light. It was 12:30 already. I started the coffee machine and took a shower. There was something black under some of my fingernails and I caught myself wondering if it was blood. I told myself to get a grip.

Getting dressed, I looked casually around the bedroom. No rubber on the floor or anything to tell me if we had even made it this far. I swallowed a Percodan with my coffee, put on my sneakers and sunglasses and went outside for the paper. I found it at the foot of the driveway.

When I turned around and saw my car again, I froze. The bottom panel was splattered with mud the color of chocolate. I shook my head and closed my eyes, but the mud was still there when I opened them. I walked warily toward the car.

Mid-step, I had to stop and laugh at myself, creeping up on my car like it was a sleeping lion. It had been raining when I left work yesterday. I was drunk last night. Maybe I slipped off the road on the drive home. No big deal.

Inside I took a couple Ritalin and finished the vodka. I put my wallet and keys in my pocket and started for the door. Cephus was coiled up in front of it.

“Where are you going?”

“Get some more booze. Maybe some food. You want a rabbit?”

“That would be nice. It looks like rain. Don’t you want to wear your leather shoes?”

I shrugged.

“What’s the matter? Is there something wrong with your leather shoes?”

“Cephus, you’re really starting to—”

Then I saw them on the floor by the door. They were covered in chocolate-colored mud.

“Goodbye, Cephus.”

It did look like rain but I wasn’t going to wait for it. I drove straight to a car wash. Sitting alone and dry inside the car, I felt like I was upside down in the hull of a boat, rocking back and forth with the car, feeling the water squeeze the hood. The jets blasted away the mud, the brushes slapped the roof like whirling tendrils, and then the air blew the drops into streaks across the windshield. I didn’t want it to end. Finally the car behind me honked and I pulled through.

I bought some food at a drive-through and some booze at the liquor store. Then I drove to the pet store and bought a mouse for Cephus.

I couldn’t stop thinking about the woman. She had had black hair, barely to her shoulders. Dark brown eyes and full lips. That tragic melancholy. What was her name? God, I couldn’t even remember her name.

“Cephus,” I said when I got home. “What was her name?”

“Sarah,” he said. “Why didn’t you buy me a rabbit?”

“Maybe tomorrow. Just a snack today. Get in your room.”

Cephus slithered back into the guest room, which I had floored with linoleum to make it easier to clean after feeding. I followed him with the mouse in a plastic box. When I saw that Cephus was back in the corner of the room, I set the plastic box on the floor and slid open its little gate. I closed the door behind me after I left.

As I walked away, I could hear Cephus strike.

I lay on the couch, drinking vodka tonics and trying not to think about the girl. It didn’t work. At 7:00 I had a thought. She had said she lived near the bar. It was probably her local. Tonight was Saturday. I’d go back to the bar. When she came in I could stop worrying about it.

I opened the door to Cephus’ room and found him resting, sedated, with a little bulge in his body. I told him my idea.

“What do you think?”

He shook his head torpidly.

“That’s dangerous, Brian. Someone there might remember seeing you two leave together.”

“So what? Nothing happened to her. I’m just doing this so I can stop freaking out about it.”

“Suit yourself.”

It rained lightly while I drove across town. The intermittent wipers glided back and forth, back and forth, hypnotically swishing away the water. I sat and watched them even after I had stopped in front of the bar. A police car’s wailing siren broke the spell and I went inside.

It was a seedy little place that repelled young people who travel in packs. The piped-in music leaned to the lighter, whiter oldies. Not a place for couples, but not a pick-up bar, either. It was a bar for loners and the lonely. You were welcome just so long as you drank quietly.

Why I’d gone there the night before, I don’t know. Tonight I sat at the far end of the bar and drank greyhounds. If the old coot behind the bar remembered me, I couldn’t tell.

Every time the door opened I’d look up. I finally saw her at 10:15, but it wasn’t in the bar. It was on the television.

The news had footage of police pulling a body out of the shallows of a lake choked with long grass. They had draped a sheet across the body, but I knew who it was.

“Police haven’t confirmed the woman’s identity yet. She appears to be in her 30s. The cause of death is unknown at this time.”

No one at the bar seemed particularly impressed by the story. You see similar stuff on TV every night. I finished my drink for appearance’s sake and drove home.

“Well, Brian?” Cephus said when I walked in the door.

“She wasn’t drinking tonight.”

“What are you going to do now?”

“Wash the mud off my shoes and then get really, really wasted.”

The Sunday paper—when I read it at 2 p.m., through a haze of painkillers—had nothing that hadn’t been on TV the night before. No name, no cause of death.

By 4:00, a Ritalin buzz was bringing me out of my haze. I put on my shoes.

“This time I’m coming back with a meal for you, Cephus.”

“Thanks, Brian.”

I drove to the pet store and watched the little conies twitch and wrinkle their noses for about five minutes. I chose the most sluggish, bored, depressed-looking one they had. I always did. Somehow it made me feel better about it.

On the way home I listened to the news. They had identified Sarah Shalut and how she died.

“Get in your room, Cephus,” I said when I got home. “I don’t want any blood on the carpet.”

He slid back to his room eagerly. After a minute he called, “Hurry up, Brian. I can almost taste that rabbit.”

“Just hold on, buddy. Another minute.”

I put the box on the linoleum floor, opened the gate, and shut the door again. Listening, I waited for Cephus to strike. Soon I heard the rabbit shriek, and then I heard Cephus coil around it and squeezed its air out. I waited 10 more minutes.

“How does it taste, Cephus?”

He didn’t answer. I opened the door a crack and saw Cephus just closing his mouth around a rabbit-sized bulge. I closed the door again.

“Wasn’t very frisky, was it? That might be from the 10 Percodans I shoved down its throat right before I put him in there with you. It’ll take a little while, but they’ll get to you eventually.”

I heard him writhe around on the floor.

“I know you can’t talk right now, so just listen. I know what you did Friday night, Cephus. On the news I heard how the woman was killed. She was strangled, Cephus. Strangled.”

I listened to him thrash for another minute.

“Goodbye, Cephus.”

I made a strong drink, lay on the couch and lit a cigarette. The fish tank bubbled soothingly. I watched the biggest angelfish swim over and look at me through the glass.

“I know what you did to the snake,” he said.

Copyright(c) 2006 by Craig Corey

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