Smother
I am a very ambitious snake.
Some may be intimidated—I for one, am scared of my own self—and others may be aloof to all my capabilities. But let me be fair, let me be honest and warn you that your character is about to toy with a very aggressive python. And while I try to encourage you to walk away, to see me as a very, ambiguous threat, you might not just listen.
And if you do not listen, then you will just learn.
And I promise when learning, when listening, if you aren’t devoured whole or suffocated, you will become a very strong snake too.
I hide in the shadows, comforted by the soft inhale and exhale of my live scarf wrapped around my neck. His head rests on my withers, his eyes closed for what has seemed like hours but could only be minutes. Is it just me, or does his weight seem unusually heavy while he sleeps?
I am watching everyone, a dragon flying over a village, while they meander aimlessly at each other. It is sickening, truly, to see such wasted time. They are awkward from a distance, stallions hip swinging to females like a beep boxing rap star. And females, appearing elegant and “flowy” ghostly haunting the potential recruit with sweet harmonized voices and gracefully written sentences. It is like the Queen herself has graced us all with her presence in every female born, no one is individualized. No one is special.
We all have an idea of what would make others like us, and aren’t we all fools to believe that ordinary is beautiful.
It is why I watch instead of sway, why I listen instead of speak. It is why I stand here with a sleeping python looped three times around my neck and shoulders and evidently giggle at the idiotic approach every recruiter has seemingly mastered.
It is why I slowly blink, slowly exhale, slowly indulge in what is around me.
Inhale
Exhale
Hush
One day they will see the most original, unique, perhaps terrifying creature has been the most intriguing of all.
I smell familiarity and instinctively my eyes follow. There, a stranger but one who shouldn’t be a stranger is recruiting. She is cool, calm, dare I say collected, very soft in her voice and very patient in her way of conversation.
Some people don’t care to get the job done, they enjoy the work in between.
We cannot all be smart workers.
I am bored, I always am, so I tell myself now will be the time I go and make use of my day. I emerge from my hunter green habitat and expose myself to the field of idiocy. By now Turkish has awoken from his afternoon nap and I feel him tighten his body as he lefts his head for a better scope of our surrounding.
Oh, that one.
Yes that one.
Seems we already have a representative of ours there, Smother.
Seems like we do.
Then why are you going?
You are shitty company.
He hasn’t fought me recently, not since our last argument. I had told him of my father, of my mother, of my abundance of aunts and uncles. I told him what they did, I told them how it affected me, I told him of the skeletons hung in my closet.
He fought me on if I was too rash on my decision.
I fought him that he had no idea what it felt like to be hated by the people who made you.
He said isn’t it easier to know you are hated and handle life accordingly, than to have no idea and be lied to?
I said it wasn’t easier.
Since then, I have felt our relationship hinder like a door on broken hinges.
“Hello,” I announce as I enter the conversation perhaps a little later than what normally occurs. Didn’t I warn you I am unlike the norm? “I am Smother, this is Turkish.”
It is a shame Turkish is not a rabbit and constantly rambling off the time, maybe then I wouldn’t find myself late.
Alice never found herself late.
But then again, I hated the story of Alice.
