Page 124 of Burn Bag
“What the actual fuck?” Edu snapped.
I jumped behind them, trying to see around their gigantic height and massive muscles, but I couldn’t see a damn thing. “What? What is it? Someone help him!”
FNG and Edu charged forward, and that’s when I saw it. My husband was in the tub with the giant snake wrapped around him. His eyes were wide and terrified, but he didn’t move a muscle.
“Get this thing off me,” Bradley hissed.
They were about to start pulling at the middle, so I rushed forward, “Stop! You have to start at the tail!”
Bradley glared at me, clearly aware that I was the culprit, even if I hadn’t admitted it yet. “You,” he hissed.
“We can argue about this later,” I demanded, carefully grabbing the snake by the tail. I started unravelling it, realizing that the snake wasn’t actually coiled that tightly around my husband. “Aww. He likes you!”
“What?” Bradley snapped.
“Well, he’s not actually trying to squeeze you to death. See, boas kill their prey by wrapping their bodies around their victim so tightly that the constriction cuts off the blood supply to the heart, brain, etc. But he didn’t do that. He’s seeking warmth and protection. He likes you!”
But as I finished unwrapping Simon from around my dear husband, I realized that Bradley was not smiling, and he didn’t seem at all overjoyed by my news. The snake wrapped itself around my shoulders, letting out little hisses as it moved.
My husband got out of the tub with the help of Edu, but he didn’t say a word. In fact, the only thing he did was shoot me what could only be considered a death look as his face reddened to a shade that I would call magenta.
“Get. That. Thing. Out. Of. Here,” he hissed.
“But—”
“Daphne, I have never hit a woman, and I really don’t intend tostart today. But I’m about to fucking kill something. I would really appreciate it if you were not in the path of my anger.”
A wise woman would have kept her mouth shut.
I was not a wise woman. “You can’t kill him. Simon is a good snake! And his owners didn’t have room for him anymore, so they were going to donate him to this horrible lab for testing! Can you believe that?”
“I don’t care,” he bit out. “I don’t care if they were going to slice him up and eat him for dinner,” he said, taking a step toward me. “I don’t care if they wanted to make leather boots out of him. I don’t care if they were going to toss him in a fucking meat grinder! That snake does not belong in my fucking house!”
I flinched back at the anger in his voice. Tears welled in my eyes, though I tried desperately not to cry. I hated when I cried, and I hated that he was seeing it. My lips trembled, and no matter how much I told myself to be strong, I was about to lose it. I turned on my heel with Simon still wrapped around me and fled the scene.
I could hear Harper chasing me, calling out to me to slow down, but I couldn’t. This poor snake was about to be used as a lab rat, and no one but Harper and I cared. I was trying to do a good thing. I was only trying to save a life.
I dashed out the front door and ran toward the wooded area behind the houses, desperate to get away. Once I was far enough from the house, I slowed down and sat with a thump in the grass, crying my eyes out. Harper caught up to me soon after, breathing heavily as she sat down beside me in the grass.
“Well, that could have gone better.”
I wiped my eyes and let out a humorless laugh. “I think I really screwed up this time.”
“Well, you didn’t ruin his truck again.”
“No, I just let a snake into the house, lost it, and it somehow wrapped itself around my husband. That doesn’t seem too much better.”
“Probably not, but there are worse things you could have done.”She cocked her head in thought. “I can’t think of any right now, but I’ll let you know when I do.”
“Thanks,” I muttered. “What was I thinking?”
“You were thinking that you were saving a life. There’s nothing wrong with that.”
I sighed heavily, picking at the grass as the snake slowly uncoiled from around my body and slithered through the grass. “This isn’t his natural habitat. I don’t know if he can even survive out here. He’s supposed to be in Africa.”
“We’ll figure out something. We can take him to a zoo.”
I nodded, but my thoughts were only on Bradley and how he would probably want to divorce me after this. “God, I’m such a mess.”
