They were from Russia, she told me, amongst other things--but I disregarded her warning nearly before she made it. My mom is the type who sends every email forward out there--I think perhaps she even hunts them down in her spare time--cautioning me against the latest hacker schemes or grocery store rapist tricks. I try to take her seriously because I know it's born out of a desire to care for and protect me, but when she launched into a discussion of her latest paranoia about hoards of foreign snakes, I tuned her out, deleting it like so much spam. I didn't hear her tell me that they would multiply endlessly, that they would hunt you relentlessly, or that the possession of their bite brought the sorts of horrors you only expect in the worst of nightmares.
Meanwhile I busied myself with young motherhood. At nearly one, Ben had just started to toddle around the house, and though that meant increasing opportunities to get himself into trouble, when he reached his little sausage arms up, hands grasping for me, I could feel my heart melting. I was going to be a good mom, so I would have to learn to mask that softness if I ever stood a chance at effective discipline. I had some time before he would be cognizant enough of his disobedience to warrant punishment, but not very much.
I had always wanted to have children, and despite the still fuzzy details of Ben's conception, I loved my little boy more than I even expected I would. I had moved back into my parents house, knowing I would need their help, but Ben was such a good baby I don't recall ever feeling tired, even in the dark of the night when he awoke hungry or after a long day of active play. Active, he was, a product of his mother, and he brought joy to our household in a way that babies often do.
It was at the end of a particularly lovely day when the events concerning my mother's warning began to unravel. I don't even remember putting Ben to bed that night, only that I found myself drifting to sleep in my own room, a sweet-smile resting over the day's closure.
The first one didn't startle me in the way you might expect, slinking its way over my stomach as it wrapped around my torso. It was as though my body had already resigned to its fate or perhaps was too lost in dreaming and thus unable to grasp the gravity of the situation. In my mind, I cannot separate the point between the first creature's advances and all of the others. As the snakes twisted their way around my limbs and tangled themselves into my hair, I slowly came to. It was strange and unreal, silly even, yet there they were, slithering and squeezing, an unusual weight confining me to my bed.
Before panic had an opportunity to set in, I assessed the situation. I would be fine as long as they didn't bite me, so slowly, I slid my way out of their grasp like emerging from some sort of spindly cocoon. I crept from my bed, head tilted to one side under the weight of the snakes that still squirmed through my hair. Hoping to shake them out, I remained hunched over as I backed towards the door. It seemed that the only way to loose the others was going to be to lob off all my hair, a fate I apparently feared more than death, since even in the duress of the situation, my vanity caused me to second guess that option. I chuckled to think I would rather risk leaving myself vulnerable to snake bites than lose my blonde locks. Luckily, it was not a decision I had to make. Once outside the door, I slammed it shut on all the other snakes, and the ones in my hair leapt from my head to slink back to their bretheren. My mother, whose intuition must have alerted her to the crisis, was waiting for me, and before the last snake made his retreat, he bit her toe, leaving what looked like a black bead underneath her skin.
"You have to cut it off!" she screamed, knowing better than I that the only way to prevent herself from becoming fully infected would be to immediately amputate the bitten area. She asked me to fetch a spoon, hoping that with a less violent tool, I would have the courage to carve it out for her. My stomach churned and I thought I would faint. I suppose my adrenaline was already depleted in helping me escape from my room, and there was none left for my current crisis. I felt my eyes rolling back into my head as the heavy anxiety threw me into a panic. My dad came in, and I fled the scene, allowing him to handle the operation. "They're calling for you," I heard him say as I left the room, and I could hear their hissing growing louder from behind the door. It was my name they whispered, a foul utterance that haunted me well after I was out of earshot.
And then, a silence. A calm. A scene change. Lights came up and there were colors and bright music and it was no longer a horror film but something like a pastoral or Dr. Seuss. Someone handed me Ben and I bounced him on my knees, assuming it was all over like a bad dream. He smiled and I smiled and I laughed. And then his face changed. And it all went dark again. Something was strange about him--Ben's eyes held an understanding far too advanced for a mere infant. Replacing the innocence of a child's wiles was the sort of scheming plot you'd expect from a fairy tale villian. He looked at me as if he knew more than me. His eyes had aged in the way of wisdom, and it was a dark wisdom. He'd been bitten. He was no longer my Ben but belonged to them. and if I didn't kill him, he was going to kill me.
Somewhere between the shifting and changing cinematics, my parents had returned to the room. I can't remember if I uttered my conclusion or if they just somehow understood.
"Do it quickly so there's no pain," my father urged. But knowing I hadn't the strength, he came to my aid. He took Ben into his lap, back against his chest, and set his large hands firmly around the little head. Ben's glare still pierced me, though he did not squirm or slither or try to reach for me. Entranced by how time muddied, how everything else blurred into the background, I could look nowhere but at the small child. Then, a sharp twist and a cracking I never want to remember.
The evil was gone, and then it was just Ben looking back at me, and then he was gone too.
My eyes swelled with tears as they locked on to my father's. I held Ben's little feet in my hands, feeling even smaller than they were. Like a child myself, I sought answers from my daddy with a statement that was really kind of a question. "I had a child once," I said.
"Yes, baby, yes you did." He offered me Ben to hold and I retracted. I couldn't--it wasn't him any longer and I was repulsed by his shell. But my father insisted, "you need to hold him one last time." And so I complied.
His little body was wet and putrid with death, his eyes as vacant as my own. I cradled the baby who was just a little too big to be cradled, lost in shock and fear and the nothingness of it all. In the whole, wide world, I knew of no other words: "I had a child once."
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