This all started with me being lonely.
And I make bad decisions when I’m lonely.
And I was very lonely.
I had been with my boyfriend for four years. We’d lived together for three. We had an apartment. A dog. We really, really liked each other.
Or, that’s what I thought.
But I come home after a weekend on the road. And I walk in the door. And the apartment’s half empty.
Fast forward two months. I’m alone. Except for work, I barely leave the apartment. I drink by myself. And I watch nature documentaries. Getting drunk and watching animals eat each other numbs my broken heart.
Until finally, one night, I decide I need a break from the animals on TV.
I get on my phone. I, uh, download one of the apps. I start looking.
And I find Kevin.
Kevin lived forty minutes further north. Close to the Minnesota-Canada border. It was a long drive. But that night, I was willing to do a lot to touch somebody. I didn’t have immediate red flags with Kevin. He even had a photo on his profile. Not bad looking either. He’s a big guy. And I like big guys. Nice, full beard. Lumbersexual, I guess. Think Santa’s strapping young nephew.
I didn’t have any red flags when I got to Kevin’s house. We went straight to the bedroom. He was a little clumsy in bed. I’d hoped for a smaller dick. But he was the first guy I slept with after the breakup. So, his kisses were like water in the desert.
And after we finished, he did something that made the chemicals in my lonely brain go nuts. Kevin held me. He just pulled me towards himself and held me against his side. All night. My face planted against his big, soft chest. I barely slept. Not because I was uncomfortable. The opposite. It felt too good. I didn’t want the feeling to end.
Kevin made me breakfast. We got to talking. Kevin was chatty. He lived alone in the house. He wasn’t much of a people person. Well. He laughed. He wasn’t much of “living” people person.
I asked what he meant by that.
Kevin worked for the state morgue. He spent his days intaking and autopsying unclaimed dead bodies.
He goes, “You’d be surprised how many anonymous corpses pile up each year. Especially up here.”
Why up here, I asked?
“Yeah, every year, when the snow melts, we find a bunch of corpses in the woods. A lot of ‘em are near state parks. Or, or around fishing lakes. Because people are dumb. I’m sorry, but it’s true. People get drunk, and then they get lost. Or they wreck their car and they try to hike out and the snow eats ‘em alive. And you would be amazed—amazed!—how many people never get claimed. Even after I figure out who the poor dead fucker is!”
Kevin’s job wasn’t the red flag. The red flag came next. I needed to take a shit. Kevin pointed me to the bathroom. And when I sit down, there’s this purple gym bag next to the toilet. And I guess I was being nosy, but it was right by my feet. And I just peer inside a little.
There was money in that bag. A lot of it. Stacks of hundred-dollar bills.
Okay, I think. That’s weird.
But I had spent four hours with my face pressed into Kevin’s chest hair. I hadn’t had an endorphin dump like that since my life went to shit. I didn’t want to leave Kevin yet. Besides, people got their reasons.
I went back to Kevin’s the next night. And the night after that. A pattern develops. I come over. We have sex. We cuddle all night. He makes breakfast. I leave. And I don’t ask about the bag of money.
But on the third morning, I run into red flag number two. Over breakfast, Kevin asks me if I have the day off. I say yes. I’m hoping this means another round of sex and cuddling. Maybe even spending the day together.
But that’s not what Kevin was angling for. Kevin goes, “Okay, cool. So you’re free to maybe run an errand for me?”
It was a bold thing to ask of a three-night stand. At most other times in my life, I would have probably scoffed out loud. But instead, I just say, “Sure.”
Kevin goes, “Great. Fantastic. So, what I need you to do is, I need you to drive up to the border and pick up a cadaver they’re holding for me there. It’s some hiker who crossed over into Canada and got himself killed and they need to bring him back to the states. It’s an hour north. I’ll spot you for gas; I swear to God.”
I stare at Kevin. This handsome man who I had known for less than a week just asked me to pick up a dead body for him. My response should have been to walk straight to my Subaru, drive away, and block Kevin’s number.
But instead, I ask Kevin why he can’t just do this himself.
Kevin goes, “Yeah, I know. It’s just, I’m having an issue with my driver’s license. And nobody cares here, but I’ll have to cross the border to get the body and it’ll be a whole thing. Listen, I get that we just met. But I have a good feeling about you, man. You seem…strong. Like a reliable, decent person. And this would really help me out. And hey, I bred you pretty good last night, right?”
Anal sex as down payment for an international cadaver pickup. I should have laughed in his face. I should have hightailed it out of there. I should have named the crazy. Should have.
Kevin goes, “And hey. Afterwards, I’ll make you dinner. I’ll get a fire goin’ in front of the couch. Do we have a deal, handsome?”
He sticks his hand out.
And I shake it.
An hour and a half hour later, I’m helping a very fidgety man lift a black body bag into the back seat of my Subaru. Now that I’m removed from Kevin, it’s really hitting me how insane this is. He better cook me prime rib tonight.
I step back from my Subaru and stare into it. There is a dead body inside my car. God.
The fidgety man steps closer to me. We are standing outside of the small office where the body was being kept. It’s all official, government property. But somehow, this all feels very under the table.
It occurs to me that I have signed nothing, shown no ID. This fidgety guy was just waiting for me when I arrived. All I did was say that I was here for Kevin. And the fidgety man nodded and summoned me inside to help him lift the cadaver. It was simple. It was weird.
But what version of this would not have been weird?
The fidgety man and I are alone in the parking lot. But he speaks in a whisper anyway. He says to me, “Tell Kevin. No autopsy on this one. It is very important that you do not open this body bag for any reason whatsoever. Do you understand?”
I nod. I have absolutely no desire to unzip the bag.
The fidgety man continues. He goes, “And, please. Take the smoothest roads you can. You must avoid potholes, speed bumps. Can you do this?”
I nod again.
The fidgety man gives me one more instruction. “And you tell Kevin…” He pauses. I can tell he doesn’t really trust me. Which almost makes me feel better. Like maybe there is something legit about all this.
The fidgety man finishes, “Tell Kevin, ‘No autopsy.’”
The fidgety man waits for me to nod. I do. And the fidgety man walks away. And as I drive out of the parking lot, the fidgety man watches me go.
As soon as I’m a few blocks down the road, I pull over. I call Kevin. He picks up. I tell him that I have it.
Kevin goes, “Oh great. Thanks a ton, dude. I really appreciate it. Would you please drive it to the state morgue in Grand Forks? I’ll grab it from you there.”
I tell Kevin that the guy who gave me the body gave me these weird instructions about not hitting any potholes.
Kevin laughs and goes, “Don’t worry about that, he always says that. I mean, the reason is kind of gross. But cadavers can, um, well, they can spill. And you don’t want that in your car.”
I tell Kevin that the fidgety man said there must absolutely be no autopsy.
Kevin just laughs again. “Oh, whatever. What’s he gonna do, fire me?”
I ask Kevin how a Canadian state employee would have jurisdiction over Kevin anyway.
Kevin goes, “Right. Exactly. He can’t even legally do that. He’s just trying to be the big dog or whatever. All right. Just meet me at the state morgue. See you in an hour.”
The drive gives me plenty of time to regret my decisions. The facts begin to organize themselves in my mind. There is a dead body in the back of my car. A total stranger asked me to pick it up for him. Another total stranger gave it to me with weird instructions. There was no paperwork. I may be committing a crime right now. I may be committing a felony.
And that cadaver smells absolutely horrific. I may not be able to get this smell out of my car for days.
Why am I doing this? Why am I in this moment?
I know why. Because my heart is in a coma. So I can’t feel my decisions while I’m making them.
About halfway to the morgue, the storm shows up. Big, mean snowflakes start pelting the car. I’m not scared. I’ve lived in Minnesota my whole life. This happens.
But it’s never happened with a dead body in the car before. I am not in the mood to get stuck on the side of the road with a possibly illegal cadaver. This is not the time to need roadside assistance.
I drive faster than is safe. If I speed, I can be at the morgue in twenty. I focus on not losing control of my car as the road gets slick.
I forget to dodge the potholes.
And I hit a big one.
The body bag leaps a few inches into the air. It lands back on the carpet with a smack. There’s a crunching sound. Like the dead body just broke its nose.
And suddenly the worst odor I have ever smelled in my life floods the car. It is the literal smell of death.
I vomit. Instantly. Uncontrollably. I throw up Kevin’s breakfast all over the inside of my car.
And then I lose control of my car.
If you’ve ever lost control of your car on a snowy road in Minnesota, then you know the weird thing that happens. The world spins around you. It’s like being inside a tornado. Everything moves incredibly fast. But time itself slows way down. It’s like rapid slow motion.
Maybe that’s just what your brain cooks up when it realizes you’re probably about to die.
I don’t die. Thank God. But my Subaru does. It skates right off the side of the two-lane road and barrels down a hill and into the woods. The car slams to a halt. Nose-first into a pine tree.
When I regain consciousness, I take inventory of my body. I push the airbag back and feel my face. There’s blood. But as I press my face with my hands, there’s no sharp pain. Nothing is broken.
I wiggle my body. Plenty of soreness. My right shoulder feels like something took a bite out of it. But again, nothing feels broken. I breathe a sigh of relief.
I test out my neck. That’s the big one. I twist it gently to the left. No serious pain. My driver’s side window is cracked. I can’t see the road. Just a lot of trees. And a lot of snow.
This is not good. But before I figure out what the hell to do now, I need to twist my neck the other direction.
I do.
And immediately to my right is the body bag. The front end of the body bag. I realize that’s what the pressure on my right shoulder is. Teeth. Pressing through the fabric.
And I almost scream. But I don’t. Because by the time I register that there is a dead body trying to eat my shoulder, something else happens.
The body bag twitches.
The black fabric jerks to the right. Then to the left.
Somehow, I do not panic. I breathe slowly. I turn my head back towards the front of the car.
It’s not that I’m not scared. It’s not that I don’t believe in ghosts. It’s that I’m from Minnesota. I grew up in the woods. I know the dead body isn’t moving. Because I recognize that that twitching isn’t human.
And if I freak out. Whatever’s in that bag is gonna freak out too. That bag is just made of plastic. If whatever’s alive in that bag wants to get out, it will.
Gently, I reach across my stomach and unbuckle my seat belt. It hurts. But I get the buckle out.
The body bag twitches again. Harder than before.
My throat cottons out. Whatever’s in the bag. I think it just figured out what I just figured out. It’s not the only living thing in the car.
I have two choices. Continue to slowly, calmly exit my car. Or, bolt.
My choice is made for me. The bag lurches towards my face. I feel the dead man’s teeth shift to the left.
I fling my door open and throw myself out of that car. I land with a crunch on snow and brush. I spin onto my back. Inside the car, the body bag is creeping into the driver’s seat. I kick the door closed.
I breathe. I just breathe.
I look at the snowflakes. They are still coming down.
And then the cold finds me. I’m wearing a sweater and jeans. I brought a coat, of course. But it’s in the car. Along with my gloves. And my hat. I am not dressed for this weather. At all. My sweater is already absorbing moisture. Soon, I will be both cold and wet in a snowstorm in the woods in Northern Minnesota.
This is how dead bodies happen.
Please, dear God, tell me I have my phone in my pocket.
I do.
Now, please, please, dear God, tell me I have at least one bar of coverage.
I do.
I should call 911. I’m not that far from Grand Forks. An ambulance can get here in about thirty minutes. I shouldn’t have any irreversible damage by then. Just some frostbite.
That’s what I should do.
But I already wrecked my car in the woods. With a probably illegal corpse inside of it. I’m not going straight from a hospital to a jail. I already have a felony on my record; story for another time. I don’t need another one.
So I call Kevin.
“Hey, handsome. You here?”
I tell Kevin that I am not there. I am somewhere in the woods off of County Road 45. And I need him to tell me what the hell is in that body bag.
“Whoa, whoa, slow down. You got in a car wreck? Oh shit. Are you okay?”
I tell him I’m functional. But I need to get out of the weather as soon as possible.
“Okay, okay. Share your location with me on your phone. I’ll come find you. Just get back in your car and turn on the heat until I get there–”
“I’m not getting back in the car,” I yell. “There is something alive in that body bag!”
Kevin goes, “What? No there’s not. I think you may have a concussion, bud.”
I assure him that even if I do have a concussion, I am not making this up. I tell Kevin he better tell me what’s in that body bag or I am calling the police.
“You don’t want to do that, handsome. The police show up, it’s gonna make a bad day a lot worse. I’ll be there in twenty. I’ll take you to the hospital. Just get back in the car until I get there.”
And Kevin hangs up.
I shiver. I clutch my shoulders. I weigh my options.
I look over at the car. The body bog is wedged between the front seats. It’s leaning into the driver’s seat. But it’s still. It’s not moving anymore.
I guess it’s possible that I saw movement that wasn’t there. It could have been…I don’t know.
I approach the car. I put my hand to the driver’s seat door latch. But I can’t get myself to pull it open.
Why the hell would you put an animal inside a body bag? And alongside an actual human body? I run through a list of what it could be. But nothing really makes sense.
I rub my shoulders to keep my blood moving. I bury my fingers in my crotch to stave off frost bite until Kevin comes.
Finally, I hear a voice from above. Kevin. He’s hiking down the hill.
Once he’s down, he jogs over to me. I should slug him. I should tell him off. But he opens his arms wide to embrace me. And I fall into them. My adrenaline collapses. I weep into Kevin’s chest.
Kevin opens his winter coat and pulls me into it. He takes off his gloves and his hat and puts them on me. My skin begins to recover. Kevin kisses my forehead and examines my cuts.
We both turn to look at the car.
Kevin goes, “Damn, handsome. Nice work.”
Kevin walks over and peers into the car. He opens the drivers side door. I step back a pace.
Kevin goes, “Well. I don’t think it ripped. That’s good. Okay. I’m sorry to ask you to do this. But we’ve gotta get this guy up to my car.”
Again, I stare at Kevin. I am not used to having someone say so many insane things to me with a straight face. I do not know how to articulate the feeling back to him.
Kevin reads my face. He goes, “Look. We need to get you to a hospital to get checked out, I totally get that. But you’re a smart guy. I think you get that this body bag needs to not get processed through the Grand Forks PD. And if that’s not gonna happen. We can’t leave it here.”
I go, “Kevin, there’s an animal in that bag.”
Kevin laughs. He goes, “No. I’ll tell you what’s in that bag. You’ve earned the right to know. There’s a dead hiker. Whose chest cavity is stuffed full of bags of heroin. Okay? Maybe they popped out in the crash and are rolling around in there. You’ve been through hell today. But I’ve been doing this a long time. And you were just in a car crash. So, please. Let’s just get this over with. And you never have to see me again.”
The trunk door still works. It opens. Kevin grabs the body bag by the feet and yanks it hard. It dislodges from the passenger seat and slides towards him.
Kevin goes, “See. Told you I’ve been doing this a long time. I’ll take the head.”
I study the body bag for any twitch in the fabric. Any sign of unaccountable movement. But now, the bag is still.
It takes us half an hour to get the body bag up the hill. Before we reach the road, Kevin sets his end down to go make sure we have privacy. The coast is clear. We carry the dead body up onto the embankment of County Road 45.
Kevin pops his trunk. He goes, “On the count of three, just throw it in.”
I ask Kevin if he’s sure he wants to do that.
Kevin goes, “Come on, handsome. If I didn’t care about you, I would have just left you out here to turn into next month’s heroin suitcase. On the count of three.”
We throw the body into the car. I watch intently for some kind of reactive movement. But Kevin slams the back door shut before I really have a chance to observe.
Kevin goes, “Alright. Hop in.”
We drive in silence to the hospital. I try not to make it obvious that I’m watching the body bag in the rear-view mirror. I don’t know why I tried to be surreptitious about that. Screw Kevin. Why do I care if he sees me being nervous? Why do I care if he knows I don’t trust him?
Kevin notices my anxiety. He reaches over and massages my neck with his free hand. I relax into his touch.
We approach the hospital. I breathe a sigh of relief.
But then we drive past it. Kevin doesn’t stop.
I tell Kevin he missed it.
Kevin continues massaging my neck. He goes, “I’ll get you there. I promise.”
I remind him that I was just in a car wreck and may have a concussion.
Kevin tightens his grip on my neck. He goes, “I can’t get this body into the morgue by myself. Just help me get it inside. And then you’re free to go.”
And then I’m free to go? So that’s what I am. Kevin’s hostage.
We pull into the parking lot of a short, isolated building at the back of an industrial alley. None of the factories on the street appear to be open anymore. The short building is the only one with a light on.
Kevin goes, “That’s a relief. I was half expecting the power to be out with the storm.”
Kevin pulls around the back up to a loading dock. I worry that this isn’t even the state morgue, that it’s some abandoned office where drug deals happen. But sure enough, I see a sign on the back door: “Minnesota State Morgue.” I read the hours of business. We are not within them.
Kevin parks. He hops out. I look back over my shoulder. Which hurts. But I check out the body bag one more time. It’s not moving. But it also looks like it might have moved. The wrinkles in the fabric aren’t quite where they were a few stoplights back. I don’t like this.
But I haven’t liked any of this for hours. And it’s almost over.
Kevin pops open the trunk and goes, “Come on, handsome. Let’s do this.”
I tell Kevin to stop calling me handsome.
Kevin goes, “You’re in no place to negotiate, handsome.”
We carry the body bag through the back door and down a narrow hallway. We enter an autopsy room.
“Right on the gurney,” Kevin instructs. We get the body up onto the metal platform. “This way.”
Kevin pushes the gurney to an industrial, walk-in refrigerator.
“No peeking,” Kevin laughs, as he punches in the keycode to open the industrial fridge door.
When he opens the door, I see that it’s not a refrigerator in the normal sense. It’s not just a closet. It’s a whole room. Full of gurneys. Full of dead bodies. And lining the walls are the metal compartments that make this room unmistakably part of a morgue.
Kevin closes the door gently behind me. Which I do not like, but don’t have the energy to fight. He wheels the cadaver to the back of the room, about thirty feet ahead.
“Check this out.” He snaps on a pair of medical gloves. And without any hesitation, he unzips the body bag. From head to toe.
I repeat. The guy said not to autopsy this one.
“Yeah, well, that guy hasn’t learned yet how to work for tips.”
And just as Kevin says the word “tips”. Just as his tongue forms the letter “s”. The power goes out.
I’m done. I’m in a morgue. In pitch black darkness. With an insane person. And a dead body full of heroine. I start to hyperventilate.
Kevin’s voice cuts through the darkness. “Don’t freak out. The fridge door opens manually from the inside. We’re not trapped.”
I reply, “I’m done, Kevin. I’m done. I’m leaving. I never, ever want to see you again.”
A small flashlight bursts on. It’s Kevin’s cell phone. He shines the light right at my face. I cover my eyes with my hands. Kevin goes,
“Breathe in for five. Breathe out for five. In for five. Out for five.” I do what he tells me.
Kevin shines the cell phone flashlight on the body bag. Kevin goes, “Yep. He ripped alright. Whew!” He reaches inside and pulls out a bloody Ziploc bag full of white powder.
“What did I tell you? Heroin.” He sets the bag on the gurney and pulls another bloody Ziploc bag out of the cadaver. “Heroin.” He pulls a third bag out. “Heroin.”
Kevin pauses. “Well, are you leaving or not?”
For some godforsaken reason, I say nothing and I don’t move.
Kevin goes, “I don’t know why I even asked. Of course you’re not leaving. And this won’t be the last time we see each other either. You’re acting like you hate all this. Like I’ve betrayed you or something. And, to be fair, I am sorry about your car. But that’s not what your reaction is about. What this is is you’re just terrified that you like this. You’re telling yourself that I’m some terrible person. But that’s not what your dick thinks. Your dick thinks I’m the outlaw you just fucked. You had sex with a drug smuggler. And then you helped him smuggle drugs. And it’s the most alive you’ve felt in your whole fucking life.”
Kevin pulls one last baggie out of the corpse.
“Nobody wants to be a bad person. But everybody wants someone else to be a bad person. And they want that bad person to fuck them. Tell me I’m wrong. Go on. Tell me.”
Maybe I would have told Kevin. Maybe, with a few more seconds to reflect, I would have figured out if he was full of shit or not. But there wasn’t time.
Because Kevin saw something inside that body bag. His eyes went wide in the light from his cell phone. And Kevin said one of the last things that Kevin ever said. Kevin goes, “What the fuck?”
And then a dark, shining thing leapt out of the body bag and clamped onto Kevin’s hand.
Kevin didn’t scream. I didn’t scream either. It was too fast. It didn’t make sense.
The dark, shining thing let go of Kevin’s hand. Kevin dropped his phone and the light from it shone onto the ceiling. He clutched his hand to his chest.
“Oh my God,” Kevin moaned.
I ask him what the fuck was that.
“It’s a fucking snake. They put a fucking snake in it. It bit me.”
I ask him what kind of snake.
The snake answers. In the light from the cell phone, Kevin and I watch in terror as the tall, slender thing rises up out of the bag like a puppet. It seems to stand on legs. I have never seen a snake this tall before.
But I’m not confused anymore. It’s immediately obvious what kind of snake it is. Even for two hicks in Northern Minnesota. There’s no mistaking the flared hood around the snake’s head.
The King Cobra stares Kevin right in the eyes. And Kevin stares back. He doesn’t move. For the first time since we met, Kevin looks utterly helpless.
He should have lurched backwards. He should have thrown his body into the darkness. Anything to put distance between himself and it. But I understand why he couldn’t move. I couldn’t either. Looking in the eyes of a King Cobra is like looking into the eyes of a god.
It struck at Kevin again. Much faster and much farther than seemed possible. And its aim was true. It bit him on his Adam’s apple. Right on the center of his neck. And as fast as it bit, it retracted. It returned to it’s standing pose and regarded Kevin, this terrified man that it had just envenomated. Twice.
Kevin collapsed to the ground, gasping in the dark. The cobra peered down at him. It hissed. But not with rage or fear. With a kind of satisfaction.
I fling my back against the wall, putting as much distance between myself and the gurney as possible. “Kevin! Kevin! Talk to me!”
Kevin couldn’t talk. All Kevin could do was gasp and gurgle.
I hear Kevin begin to crawl. I’m disoriented in the dark, but he must be crawling towards the exit. I want to follow him. But the snake sits between us, still illuminated by Kevin’s fallen cell phone, the only visible thing in the windowless, powerless room.
But I still have my phone.
I slide along the wall into the corner, putting about fifteen feet between me and the snake. I do not take my eyes off it. I call 9-1-1.
The woman asks what my emergency is. I tell her someone has been poisoned. She asks for more information. I tell her that I’m trapped in a morgue with a snake and my friend was just bit twice.
Thank God, she doesn’t laugh. She calmly asks me to explain. But I tell her to hold on. Because it sounds like Kevin just stood back up.
“Kevin! Kevin! Are you up?” From across the room, Kevin murmurs. I think he’s saying yes. The snake pivots its head to look at me.
But it pivots its head back to Kevin when Kevin begins to open the door. I hear the exit door creak. But it moves slowly. Kevin is struggling. His muscles are not cooperating, not listening to his brain anymore. His nervous system is beginning to shut down. And he is probably struggling to breathe through his swollen throat.
Kevin fails. He falls to his knees with a crack. In the dark, he makes a strange noise that suggests his mouth is filling up with saliva or foam. As the venom hits his brain and his heart, he is entering a seizure. The two doses of venom is far, far too much. His body is giving up. It is preparing to die.
I say Kevin’s name into the dark one more time. Kevin’s reply is the sound of his skull hitting the floor as his consciousness abandons him. The door jiggles as his body twitches, as the nerves up and down his body panic, as they scream for any information from his brain. As they beg the venom to let them talk to each other.
It does not. The 9-1-1 operator asks me if I’m still there. But she seems far away. I listen as the door stops jiggling. Kevin’s nervous system surrenders. His diaphragm forgets how to pull down oxygen. His death seizure ends.
Kevin makes one last noise. It sounds like the word, “Wait.” But maybe his mind was too saddled with venom to conjure a word. Maybe the sound was just his last exhalation pushing past his swollen throat and between teeth full of foam.
“Sir? Are you still with me sir?”
I don’t answer her. Because I can’t use my phone as a phone anymore. I need to use it as a flashlight. Kevin’s phone goes out. Blackness floods the room again. And I cannot see the cobra.
I hit my phone screen, ending the call but lighting the phone up. I point it in the direction of the snake. I find the gurney. I see the body bag. But the snake is gone.
Fuck.
I am alone. In the dark. With Kevin’s carcass. And the thing that killed him. It is too much. I slide to the floor. I curl into a ball. I let terror wash over me.
But I keep touching my phone screen and pointing it ahead of me. I see the tile floor. I see the legs of the gurney. I see the wall of cadaver cubbies to my left and right. But I don’t see the snake.
I don’t know how much time passes before I can string thoughts together. Maybe it’s a few minutes. Maybe it’s an hour.
What snaps me out of it is the cold. With the power out, the cold has seeped into this room. The temperature is dropping. I can see my breathe in the light from my cell phone.
A light which I only have a limited amount of. Because my battery is getting low.
I need to formulate a course of action.
I can call 9-1-1 again. And they might be able to rescue me from this room. But even if they do, they will find me in a room with Kevin’s dead body, a bunch of heroin, and a trafficked exotic snake. The police may be able to get me out of this alive, but I’ll do decades behind bars. I have to get out of this room on my own.
I decide to hug the wall. Light my path with my phone. And make my way to the exit door.
I stand up slowly. I put my free hand against the wall. And I begin to walk, footstep by footstep along it.
The light from my cell phone bounces up and down. I’m so adrenalized that my hand is shaking uncontrollably. Despite the cold, sweat pours down the back of my neck. I see no sign of the cobra. Perhaps it went back into the cadaver. That would be a win.
I reach another corner of the room. The corner connecting this wall to the wall with the exit door. I am close. My heart beats faster.
And then it leaps into my throat.
There’s Kevin’s face.
Swollen. Pale. Pointing at the ceiling. His mouth hangs open. His tongue fills that opening, three times its normal size. His eyes are bloodshot.
The wound on his neck is surprisingly small. But his neck still swelled up to the width of a car tire. Kevin died bad.
His body lays pressed against the door. I’ll have to push him away to get at it. But once I do, I’m out of here.
I point my cellphone at the door and find the handle. There it is. I reach out for it.
A sudden growl causes me to jerk back. And I see it. The cobra. It is curled up on top of Kevin’s dead body. It stands up in the air, rising four feet, nearly meeting my gaze.
I shine my light in its face. It hisses. We regard each other.
In retrospect, it makes sense that it was hiding on top of Kevin’s corpse. It’s a reptile. The room was getting colder and colder. Freshly dead, Kevin was probably the warmest thing in there. Other than me.
Because I realize that I may be about to be bitten and then die a slow, awful death, a kind of mental clarity arrives. I really don’t need to be here. I never needed to be anywhere near Kevin. Or anybody. People always say the best way to get over someone is to get under somebody else. But it’s not true. I didn’t need to go sleep with some stranger to medicate loneliness. What a dumb idea. Yeah, loneliness hurts. A lot. But it’s okay. It’s really okay. I wish I’d realized that. I wish I’d figured out that before I got myself killed.
I think back to those nature documentaries. I didn’t see one about snakes. But no creature wants trouble. I stare at the cobra. It rises up a little higher. It fans its hood. Its scales form a design like a second pair of eyes. God, it’s beautiful. It growls again. I didn’t know snakes did that. Huh. How about that.
The door handle is about two feet to the left of the cobra’s mouth. I shine my light on it.
I go, “Pardon me.”
I reach out and grab the handle and gently, slowly, tug the door open.
The cobra hisses as Kevin’s corpse begins to move. But I keep the motion smooth, predictable, and slow. It’s difficult. Kevin is heavy. The snake is heavy. But it’s open the door or die.
I get the door open wide enough to exit.
I step back. I return the cell phone’s gaze to the cobra.
The cobra dislikes this.
It launches at me.
I scream. I drop my phone. The light vanishes.
I feel the cobra’s hood collide with my chest. But it is as disoriented as I am. It tears a hole in my shirt with its fangs. But it does not reach my skin.
The door is still right there. I step along Kevin’s body, grab the door, and yank it all the way open. I barrel out.
And as I hurl myself out of that horrible room, I step on the cobra. The cobra screams. I feel it wrap itself around my leg and bury its fangs into my thigh.
I don’t care. I just run. I crash through the dark autopsy room and out into the hallway. I can see the light of day. With the cobra wrapped around my leg and dragging behind me, I run for daylight.
And once I burst through the exit door, I trip over its ten foot body and together we tumble down the exit stairs and onto the parking lot pavement, now covered in snow.
I hit the ground hard. It dizzies me. It takes me a moment to regain my visual clarity.
But when I do, there is the cobra. It sits in a messy pile on the ground beside me. It rears up and hisses at me once more. For some reason, I smile at it. I don’t know why. Perhaps as some last gesture of goodwill towards another living creature. After all, it bit me. It won. I will die soon.
The cobra and I look each other in the eyes for a few seconds longer. And then the cobra flees. It hates the snow and slithers rapidly into a crawl space beneath the morgue. It vanishes into a new, more familiar dark.
I roll over on my back. I wait for the poison to hit. I try to feel for it within my body. To see if I can locate it. To see if I can trace its effect. To narrate my own slow death.
“Fella. Are you okay?”
A face comes into view. An old man stands above me. He holds a purple duffle bag.
I don’t respond. He goes, “You Kevin’s friend?”
I say no. I am not.
The man regards me anxiously. I know why. He’s here to pick up the delivery. He thinks its still inside. He can’t tell if I know why he’s here.
The old man looks up at the morgue. He eyes the wide-open back door. He doesn’t like it. He goes, “I’m gonna come back later. You need something?”
I ask if he can drop me off at the hospital. He asks if I can stand.
I can, amazingly. The venom does not seem to be hitting me yet. I get myself into the old man’s car. He drops me off at the emergency room and speeds away.
The venom doesn’t hit. Ever. Because it’s not inside me. It was a dry bite. The snake chose not to envenomate. Maybe it just needed a ride out of that room. Maybe it was out of venom. Maybe it had mercy. Who knows.
The hospital bandaged me up and monitored me for a while. I told them I needed cobra antivenom, but the nurse laughed and treated me for frostbite. When I realized I wasn’t dying, I paid off the nurse to not record what I said about the snake bite. And a day later, I just walked out of there. I called highway patrol and said I had lost control of my car and they didn’t question it. They helped me dig it out.
I’m sure they found Kevin’s body. How could they not. I don’t know if they found the cobra. I wonder if it’s still living under the morgue. Burrowed somewhere warm. Waiting for spring.
Anyway. Sometimes knocks at the door worry me. Sometimes I’m afraid that the cops will finally figure out who else was at the morgue, or who else had been to Kevin’s house. Or that one of Kevin’s associates will. But thus far, I’ve stayed lucky.
I got a new dog last week. She’s cute. When she’s a little bigger, I’ll take her on hikes through the woods.
And on lonely nights—and there are plenty of lonely nights—I masturbate.