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The man knew, quite certainly, that there was a snake living within the burrow of his body. He had known this for some time and made peace with it. The cold and gentle palpation of the snake across organ and bone had given the man some sense of its size - he thought it was, perhaps, an eastern brown. The man would feel the curious movement of the snake day to day. Its tongue would work gentle brushstrokes in his oral cavity and sinus. A shiver would run through him as it tangled in his nervous system, hanging lazily from his spine. During the day, the snake slept deeply in his stomach; very late at night, it would glide smoothly across his brain.
For a time he had tried to kill it. He drank boiling water, and spent days cursing the raw blisters in his throat. Suspecting it was a parasite, he fasted until deep curtains of confusion and lethargy began to pull across his eyes. Still, the movements of the snake did not subside, and he felt no sense that he was harming it. In darker moments, he considered drinking poison. He felt the only option was to placate the snake. Perhaps through deference it would leave him in triumph.
In a moment of madness, he purchased a smooth, dead mouse from a pet shop and swallowed it whole. He felt no gratitude from the snake. It must not be an invader or fetus, suckling away inside him. It simply was within.
The man thought about the snake, and considered that it was perhaps the most intimate relationship he had ever had. The man wondered if the snake could read his mind, but felt his pointed thoughts and attempts at telepathic communication did not alter its movements at all. As his days cycled through work and family life, the man never mentioned the snake to anyone. He knew doing so would cost him more than the snake could ever take from him.
Acceptance and peacefulness of mind was the most important thing to him now. He wished the snake well. Maybe, with time, he would come to love it-love it as his snake. The man decided that he must love the snake. Stepping out of his front door, the man walked very far. Trees moved from orderly suburban assemblage to splatters of brown and green eucalyptus. Grass and weeds protruded in thickets. Fences went from stout and erect, to aged and broken, pinning barbed wire to the dirt. Kangaroos watched him. The man opened his mouth, and pulled his jaw as close to his chest as he could. On his knees, sodden in wet soil, he prostrated like a believer. The man breathed fully so the snake may smell something of its home before it came to reside within him. The man gently placed his own tongue in the dirt. The snake inside him sleekly pulled against itself, its old skin gliding off its dark and silver scales.
