Scott glanced at it, attached to the wall, the only thing that looked out of place in the jungle. He yanked the string dangling from the bottom, and it rang out.
Thomas nodded, and Scott did it again, and again.
The gay snakes slammed their bodies against the glass.
“Holy fuck.” Scott shuddered.
They reminded him of horror movies, not ofAnaconda, but of zombie films where the undead beat restlessly at the windows and doors, wanting to devour the humans inside.
The snakes were uncoordinated, knocking into the glass.
Thomas’s low chuckle met Scott’s ears.
“Relax,” he said. “They won’t hurt you.”
Scott didn’t believe him.
Thomas used a key to unlock the window of the gay couple’s tank. It swung open, and the two bound snakes flopped out, spilling onto the floor. Their black tongues flicked out as they headed for Thomas at an alarming speed as he stood there, dangling a fat black rat in their faces.
“Thomas,” Scott said in warning as the snakes’ bodies shifted back and their heads reared, ready to strike.
Thomas grinned, waiting for it.
“I was scared before,” Scott mumbled to himself. “Now I’m terrified.”
“Now you know how I felt, watching you thrash around on the bed earlier.”
The snake launched, snatching the rat from Thomas’s hand.
“One time,” Thomas began. “I tripped on the chair leg, knocked myself out.”
“Well, you did paint the whole room and everything in it the same colour. It’s not the smartest idea.”
Thomas ignored the comment. “I was feeding John at the time.”
Scott looked at John’s tank; its occupant was waiting on his branch. “The huge anaconda?”
Thomas hummed, holding a rat out for the snake that had yet to eat.
“I thought I might wake up inside John’s stomach.” Thomas laughed as if it wasn’t the most terrifying thought in the world. “But he’d just wrapped himself around me, waiting until I regained consciousness.”
“That’s…creepily sweet.”
“Oh, it’s not.” Thomas snorted “The only reason he didn’t eat me was because I’d given him a big breakfast that morning. A roadkill deer. Otherwise…” Gordon or Virgil – because Scottcouldn’t tell them apart – snatched the rat from Thomas’s hand. “That would’ve been me gone.”
“I thought you wanted me to like them?”
“It makes no difference to me whether you like them or not,” Thomas replied with a shrug. “I think they’re beautiful.”
He tossed a couple more rats in the snakes’ enclosure, encouraging the two entwined snakes back inside.
Scott stood paralysed against the wall as Thomas fed each of his snakes.
He saved Lucy, the deadliest one, until last, and gestured for Scott to come closer.
Scott inched further into the room, just enough that he could see her through the glass.
She was a clay brown with light-brown diamond shapes on her body. Her eyes were too big for her pointed head, beige with a slim vertical pupil down the middle.
