“Prey” by Maxim Loskutoff

I WAKE FROM A DREAM KNOWING that something, or someone, is in my bed. All the muscles in my arms and back are rigid. I roll over. A single, lidless eye gleams on the pillow beside me, milk chocolate brown with an elliptical pupil, swollen now in the near-dark. It's Voldemort, smiling at me with her long, double-hinged jaws.

I scramble out of bed, slivers of dawn leaking through the blinds and across my bare legs.

"Whatcha doing, girl?" I ask. "You have a bad dream?"

She's stretched as long as she can make  herself, like a spear. It's a startling way to see her. She's usually coiled or doing the S-slither. Her head on my pillow is next to an orange Cheeto stain, and her glossy gold-and-black body extends the length of the blue comforter and off the end of the bed. She's almost eight feet long. "You've grown," I tell her. It occurs to me that when we're lying side by side, she's a lot longer than I am. "You're too big to sleep with Daddy."

I lift her midsection and drag her back to her tank under the window. She's at least a hundred pounds. Her skin is slick: not wet, but not quite dry. It's surprisingly cool, like spaghetti that's been left out overnight. She starts to curl around my arm. "You're too big for that, too," I say, pulling away.

Her tank runs the length of my wall. It has a heat lamp and fake foliage, a heated log, branches that she likes to drape herself over, and a pool to soak in. A Hermione Granger doll sits in the corner. I spend most of my extra money heating the tank and buying her food and toys. The lid is pushed open. I think back on last night: a meatball Hot Pocket, pushups, some porn. Maybe I didn't larch the lid properly after I tried to feed her. The uneaten rat is gnawing on a fake leaf by the pool.

"Bad snake," I whisper, kissing her face and putt ing her on her log. "Stay." I snap the lid shut.

I get back in bed and stare at the plastic stars on my ceiling.

 

"I KEEP TELLING YOU, if you're lonely, just kill yourself," my roommate Jasper growls when I pound on his door. He came with me when I bought Voldemort at Tropical Pet World four years ago. We were freshmen at the  University  of  Montana—reading  Harry Potter and  smoking  a  lot of pot. We drew lightning bolts on the baby mice we fed her and said "Expelliarmus" when we flushed  her molted skin down the toilet. For a while, I said "Expelliarmus" every time I flushed the toilet. I've always had trouble with girls.

"It's an emergency."

"You can come in here with us," his girlfriend Nancy calls. I consider it. The three of us tangled up, whispering and re-situating our bodies. They're both in good shape. She plays rugby. She has incredible breasts and they'd be swinging.

I listen to her and Jasper rolling out of bed and putting on clothes. I don't know what she sees in him. He's my best friend, but he's big and blocky and has a Neanderthal look, like he should be constantly grunting. He's the right kind of big, I guess. Not chunky, like me.

He mutters about replacing my antidepressants with cyanide capsules as I lead them to my room. Nancy wears a pair of his boxers, yellow ducks floating on beige cotton. I've never seen a yellow duck in real life. Her short hair is spiked out every which way.

"She was right there." I point to the left side of my bed. "Stretched out straight as a spear."

"You let your snake in your bed?" Nancy asks.

"I didn't let her. I woke up and she was there. She scared me." I turn to Jasper. "I think there's something wrong with her. She hasn't eaten in weeks."

He scratches his mustache. It's new and he's proud of it. "She looks pretty healthy to me. I  thought it was normal for pythons not to eat for weeks."

"Not in June," I reply. "They're supposed to eat a lot in the summer. And she's acting weird. You should have seen her all straight. It was unnatural."

"It's pretty weird that you have a giant snake in the first place," Nancy says. She doesn't know Voldemort like Jasper does. She and Jasper have only been together six months. I didn't think they'd make it this long. He's never been serious with anyone.

"Take her to the vet if you're so worried," Jasper says. "She could probably use a checkup."

I haven't taken her since she was a baby and they gave her pills for parasites. She wasn't even a foot long  then. I toted her around in a little plastic case. Now, she watches me from inside her heated log, her chocolate eyes blank.

 

WE DECIDE TO CARRY HER in a garbage bag to Cats on Broadway. It's only two blocks away. I don't have anything else that will fit her. I put some sand at the bottom so she'll feel at home. "What a big, good girl," I coo, as we load her in. She writhes around, and it takes both of us to control the bag until she settles down.

"It's dark in there; she's probably sleeping," I say, to make myself feel better.

"This is ridiculous," Jasper says.

The bag is heavy and awkward and we end up dragging her through the grass. Around sprinkler heads and piles of dog shit. I'm glad our neighbors are at work.

The receptionist wears a salmon cardigan covered with cat hair. Her red perm is coming loose in the summer heat. I picture little saucers of milk scattered around her apartment. Cats gross me out—licking themselves, coughing.

"I have an appointment for my python," I say.

She looks at the bag, starts to say something, stops, and slides a clipboard across the desk. "Fill these out. The doctor will be with you in a few minutes."

''Are vets really doctors?" Jasper asks, in a whisper, when we're seated in stained blue chairs against the wall. He was pre-med for three years until he flunked Organic Chemistry. The waiting room is empty. A single orange baseball cap hangs on a coat rack by the door. It looks like it's been there a long time. On the phone this morning, the receptionist told me they could squeeze me in because of a cancellation. Cat magazines are fanned across a plastic table.

"I think this place is just for cats," I whisper back.

I finish the forms and return them to the receptionist.

Voldemort wakes and starts writhing again. Jasper pretends not to notice. I pull the bag closer to my chair. I was supposed to graduate last spring, but I failed some classes, so I have at least another year. I told my parents I'm double majoring. I can't imagine being qualified for anything more complex than filling a tortilla with beans, rice, and a blob of guacamole.

The vet's a young guy with tortoiseshell glasses. His white sneakers squeak on the linoleum floor. "Creative, I like it," he says, when we haul the garbage bag in. He introduces himself as Dr. Gavin.

We gently spill Voldemort onto the steel table.

"She's a beauty," Dr. Gavin says. He runs his finger along her back, and she's embarrassed—under the bright lights, being touched by a stranger. I silently promise to give her a belly scratch when we get home. "Dwarf Burmese, almost five?" he asks.

I nod. The room has a cat stink and I don't know how seriously I can take a doctor named Gavin. I tell him how long it's been since she's eaten.

He looks at me above the rims of his glasses.

"And I woke up with her in my bed last night. Stretched out really straight. She's never done that before. I think she might be sick."

He forces her jaws open with a tongue depressor. Her fangs are several inches long. It's weird seeing them in the light. It's like discovering your dad has a gun in his desk. The muscles in her jaw contract, trying to snap shut. Jasper is leaning against the door frame staring at a poster of a cat tangled in a mess of computer wires. "Wait, I'll fix this," reads the caption.

"Was she next to you when you woke up?" Dr. Gavin asks. "Head to head, feet to tail?"

I nod. Maybe it's a common, easily fixable python problem.

He looks directly into my eyes the way I imagine a real doctor does when he tells you you're going to die. He has a single jubilant nose hair. "You can never be sure, and I don't want to worry you unnecessarily. But it sounds like she's planning to eat you."

Jasper laughs, then stops when he realizes Dr. Gavin is being serious. I take a step back. The fluorescent lights seem brighter. Voldemort slithers lazily. Her tail doesn't fit on the table. It twists in the air. At her widest, she's thick as a basketball.

"You have to understand, even domesticated pythons are wild animals," Dr. Gavin continues. "They might get used to humans, but they don't bond in the same way a dog or a cat does. And when they're planning to eat large prey, they void their stomachs and compare their size to make sure it's . . . feasible."

I've fed her religiously for four years. Mice at first, then rats and rabbits. I give her a chicken once a month, and last Christmas, a goose. I had to sit on the lid of the tank while it flapped and banged around. Hundreds and hundreds of dollars I spend to make her happy. I take another step back and bump into a weasel skeleton. There are all sons of skeletons on the counter behind me: cat, raccoon, beaver.

"You aren't just a cat doctor, are you?" I ask. "I mean, you were trained with all animals?"

He laughs. "Yes, we're all regular, fully trained doctors of veterinary medicine here. I wasn't around when they chose the name. And like I said, I can't be sure that's what your snake is planning, but it is the most likely explanation. Burmese like big prey."

He pats my shoulder. "It's really not that big a deal. You have a healthy snake. As soon as she realizes you're not realistic prey, she'll start eating again. Until then, make sure the lid on her tank is closed tight. I'd recommend putting something heavy on it, just in case. Snakes are escape artists."

Prey. I try to imagine what it would be like to  be eaten. Would I wake halfway inside her, up to my waist? Or maybe just a foot in? Or all the way inside her, in the dark, with digestive acids eating my flesh? The goose kept kicking for a full minute after she swallowed it. I watched the whole time.

 

THE THREE OF us sit on stools in Taco Del Sol, where I work, eating burritos I made them for free. I did some serious Googling when I got home from Cats on Broadway, and I'm not the only Burmese owner with a stretched-out-snake experience. Although usually it's when the snake is planning to eat the family dog.

"We should kill it," Jasper says.

"Or find it a better home," Nancy says, picking at the tinfoil swaddling her burrito. "In a sanctuary or something."

"There aren't python sanctuaries in Montana," Jasper replies.

"I'm trying to be helpful. You know how much Derek loves his snake. He doesn't want to kill it. Don't be a dick."

"It wants to kill him."

They sound like my parents: "Fine, let him keep the stupid snake, but don't you think he should have some friends? Play a sport? Like a normal kid?" "Leave him alone! He's just shy." Jasper is in front of a Corona poster: beach, bikini, palm tree. His long, rectangular head blocks almost the entire bottle. I'm glad he failed O-Chem. He'd be a crap doctor.

"It doesn't want to kill Derek specifically," Nancy says. "It's just following its instincts. Don't start with your simplistic masculine bullshit."

She has some guacamole on her chin I want to lick off.

"All right, all right," he says, holding up his hands. "But I really do think we should get it out of the apartment. Maybe the pet store will take it back."

"It's a she," I say.

 

JASPER COMES INTO MY ROOM with a stack of chemistry textbooks. "I want them out of my sight," he says, putting them on the lid of Voldemort's tank. He pats me on the back, real friendly. I guess he feels bad. It's easy to take the high road when you're getting laid. I take the books off as soon as he leaves. I don't want the lid to collapse and crush her.

Most of me doesn't, anyway. Part of me wants to kill her.

"Think you're gonna eat me?" I hiss, squatting in front of her cage with the machete my dad got me in Costa Rica. I think I could chop her in half with one swing.

One really good swing.

I lean against my bed and stretch my legs. My posters of deadly spiders (black widow, funnel, the wandering Brazilian) look especially deadly in the moonlight. A purple galaxy glows inside my bong. Harry Potter action figures are being overwhelmed by a swarm of orcs on my dresser. It's almost midnight. Nancy isn't staying over. She and Jasper murmured to each other for a long time and then she left. I'm out of weed.

"After all we've been through? All those nights when I told you about my life and my problems, you were planning to eat me? All the times I fed you, the toys I bought . . . " I gesture to her rubber snake friends and the Hermione Granger doll. I'm sure there's a Shakespeare quote that sums up this kind of betrayal poetically, but all I can think to say is, "Bitch."

Her head is hidden inside the log. I can only see the lower two-thirds of her bunched against the glass like a large intestine. I tap the glass with the blade. "Look at me, bitch."

 

THE SHADOWS OF PASSING CARS roll across the ceiling. The red numbers on my clock increase and start over. I picture her slithering out of her tank, across the carpet, into my bed, her cool skin tightening around my throat. I get up and put the chemistry books back on the lid.

 

I HAVE THE NEXT DAY OFF and decide to go for a hike in the Rattlesnake Wilderness. Voldemort is asleep in her cage. The rat is sleeping, too, its little head on the partially eaten plastic leaf. I didn't sleep at all.

I try to walk or bike at least four miles a day to lose weight. I've gotten down from a thirty-eight waist to a thirty-six. It's hot out. The few shredded clouds look like they're fleeing a massacre. I turn off the main trail to avoid the dog walkers and head up Spring Gulch.

The trail follows Rattlesnake Creek through dense woods for a mile, then opens in a clearing below Scapegoat Ridge. I like it here. There's an apple tree a settler planted a hundred and some years ago. It's gnarled and wise and looks both out of place and completely at home. Strands of barbwire are stapled to its trunk to keep bears away. Grass and mushrooms and flowers grow in the sunlight. Towering lodgepole pines surround the clearing. There's some kind of beetle killing the pines. The beetles used to die in the winters, but the winters aren't cold enough anymore. All the Environmental Studies majors are talking about it. No one knows what to do.

I sit beside a pale mushroom as big as a dinner plate.

I can't kill her. It would be like admitting I'm wrong about everything. My parents would be relieved. "Maybe now he'll find a girl," my dad would say. And how would I do it? Stop feeding her? Chop her up?

A couple on mountain bikes zips by. They throw me mud-spattered smiles. It's hard to keep doing things when you have to do them alone. I wonder if the settler who planted the apple tree was alone, or if he had a wife and kid. Maybe his wife wanted apples. My history professor said settlers often abandoned their families because they couldn't stand the stress of worrying about them in such wild country. It's one thing to live with the fear of getting scalped; it's another to imagine it happening to your kid.

I take out my pocketknife and cut away a chunk of bark at the base of the trunk, by the end of the barbwire. Then I start carving. After a few minutes, I lean back and admire my work: "Voldemort 1893."

 

JASPER AND NANCY are in the living room watching Jeopardy! Light from the TV flickers on their faces. She has one of her legs thrown over his, making them a single four-legged creature. I head for my room but he turns off the TV. "Derek," he says. "We need to talk."

I went six miles—all the way to the top of Scapegoat Ridge, plus the ride home. I want to take off my shirt and look in the mirror and see if there are any improvements. I'm hoping I can sleep. I flop down in the frayed recliner across from them.

"Nancy's roommate is moving out and we're moving in together. At her place," he says. His thick, curly hair is cut short, pubic. It trembles when he speaks.

I want to close my eyes and ask if we can talk about all this in the morning and then never bring it up again. Jasper is my best and only friend. And Nancy—I haven't known her long, but they're the closest thing I have to family here. I don't want to be alone with my snake.

"I'm going to move my stuff over this weekend. I'll keep paying rent through the end of the month, of course."

"And we already put an ad on Craigslist for the room," Nancy says. "We'll show it, and if someone's good, we can all sit down together."

"I can get rid of her," I reply.

"It's not just the snake," he says. "We've been talking about moving in together for a while. Nancy's over here pretty much every night. She should be paying rent." He laughs weakly.

I pick myself up out of the recliner, pretend it's no big deal. "Yeah, that makes sense. Congratulations. Let me know if you need help this weekend, with your bed or anything." I walk down the hall slowly, carefully.

"You can keep the TV and the couch, the stuff we split," he calls after me.

 

I LIE ON MY BED, looking at the stars on the ceiling. They don't form any meaningful constellations. It must've been a kid's room before I moved in. People have never liked me much. "If you're going to be fat, at least be fun," my dad said once.

Jasper's put up with me longer than anyone except my parents. Four years we've lived together. He helped me pass Calculus. He did the dishes when I left them long enough. He was careful not to bring fatty foods home when I was on a diet. He never once acted like he felt sorry for me.

I spied on him and Nancy once. I heard them through the wall. We'd been to a party and I was drunk. Their door wasn't closed all the way. Nancy was on top and he had both his hands on her breasts. She grabbed the bed frame. He jostled her with his thighs. She threw her head back. The muscles in her shoulders stood out. Her ass was the whitest thing I've ever seen.

I've had sex with three girls. I had sex with one of them four times. But no girl has ever wanted to spend the day with me, or day after day. Let alone six months.

Voldemort slithers out of her log. She presses her head against the lid, where it meets the side of the rank. The gold parts of her skin have a caramel glow in the evening light. The markings on her face come together to form an arrow, pointing at me.

*

BY SUNDAY THE APARTMENT has tripled in size. I wander through the empty kitchen and living room. I find half a bottle of Rich & Rare and a family-sized bag of Cheetos in the cupboard. I finish them both. Jasper's room is stripped. A few pieces of tape cling to the bare walls. There's a dusty square on the floor where his bed used co be. I try to imagine where his body went and where Nancy's body went. I wonder if they held onto each other all night, if people actually sleep like that.

She gave me a big Lysol-smelling hug before they left. "Come over all the time," she said.

"Really," Jasper added. "Don't hang out alone." I could tell he was happy to leave. He was tossing boxes around, practically skipping.

Voldemort is making the gentle rustling sounds that used to be a comfort. Barbwire is duct-taped around the top of her tank. The steel barbs glitter. It looks like a concentration camp. The starving rat hardly moves.

This is a lesson. Stop being fat and weird. Get rid of all the Harry Potter crap. Buy weights. Grow a beard. Do pushups and watch football and smile whenever anybody says anything.

I've been telling myself to change for eighteen years, ever since Perry Macklin called me lardass and  pinched me before naptime. But here I am, alone with my snake in a two-bedroom apartment at 11:30 on a Saturday night. The same as I've always been. She flicks her tongue at me. I'm so tired my head hurts. I take the machete from the bedside table and lie down. I show her the blade. One really good swing. In prehistoric times, the weakest members of the tribe got left behind for the predators. Too fat, too slow, too sick. The ones who couldn't carry their weight. The ones no one wanted around. They curled in hollows beneath the boundless maw of night, clutching sharp stones, listening to things move in the dark, waiting.