Of course there was some confusion at first. It was a very confusing situation. When he told her that the snakes were over staying their welcome, she replied that “those boys sound like terrible guests.” Even after he explained the situation she clearly didn't understand.
The problem, he guessed, is that too often people use vermin to describe certain personalities. Over energetic people are likened to monkies and people who chat too much are like hens. One may be graced with the gentleness of a deer and a rat is known as a stoolie pigeon. So he understood her difficulty grasping that he had a half dozen real, living snakes now residing in his home.
Of course he had enjoyed their presence when they first arrived unannounced. When he found the first one he was sitting on the toilet reading Business Week, relaxing before work. It had been watching him for several minutes before he noticed it. He huffed in shock at the sight of it, but the snake calmed him with its clever words. He found that this snake in particular had a special way with its speech. It could elicit almost any reaction or emotion with its well placed phrases and perfect timing. With a flick of its tongue it could make him burst out in laughter, and with a nod and a pause he might weep uncontrollably. So when it invited several of its friends later that evening he welcomed them expectantly.
When the snakes wanted dinner they would ask for small eggs or rodents to feed upon. But they rarely ate. Usually they were content to laze about on the sofa watching the busy street beyond his window, or playing with the color knobs on his television. They didn’t care much for watching the television, which he was thankful for, because the noise would have kept him up at night. And he appreciated their presence. He was lonely with his girlfriend gone for the week, and he didn’t have any other friends in the city. They provided him with all the company he needed. At first.
But their skins began to pile up and their company grew more and more burdensome. Time and time again he was forced to pick dried mouse guts off his carpet or flick scales off his butter. They left the refrigerator wide open and always kept the heater running. Their words that he once found so invigorating, so enlivening, became painfully tiresome. They repeated the same stories over and over and his ears began to ring with their hiss.
He tried to be a polite host and merely hint that they might be getting tired of staying in one place too long and maybe they could find a more suitable home elsewhere. But they never took the hints. So he told them one night that they needed to leave. They paused, looking at him with their solid eyes, flicking their tongues, and resumed their chatter as though he had not said a word. He repeated his plea, which became an order when they did not respond. Angrily he grabbed a stray snake that lay wrapped around his coasters on the coffee table. It immediately produced its fangs and threatened to sink them into his arm if he did not set it down in an instant. He complied.
Indeed, no amount of bargaining or pleading would convince the snakes to leave. They were content to stay, and planned to make his home their own.
It took several hours of explaining before she understood the story. By that time the man had resorted to pantomime and picture drawing. He had acted the story out for her. But when she looked around the room and saw nothing she asked him where the snakes were. It happened that at that very moment they had left the apartment to buy a grocery bag full of crickets for a midnight snack, but it appeared to her that he was lying, so she left, crying. And all that was left of her in the room was a hair-tie that she dropped on the floor near the foot of the sofa and the smell of her breath. Like skittles and warm milk. And him, with the shed skin of a snake stuck to his shoe and a coiled bruise wrapped around the trunk of his leg.
