The Serpent Moves

“Do not interfere,” was scrawled in sharpie across a yellow sticky-note on the door to my apartment. It was signed, “-Upstairs.”

I shared the note with my wife later that evening when she got home from work. She didn’t know what to make of it either. “They must’ve just stuck it on the wrong door,” she said. At the time I liked to think I believed her. I crumpled up the note and stuck it in my jacket pocket.

“Well it’s doing very little to advance our relationship with them,” I said. Since we moved into the apartments two years earlier, we had taken for granted the silent luxury of having an elderly woman directly above us. Now the tired, thin ceiling above us bellyached with the presence of new tenants.

We had planned nothing more than a light dinner of rice and vegetables, but on a whim I opened a bottle of wine. I entertained the possibility that the wine, as it had done many times before, might become a vehicle that might drop us off at the doorstep of sexual intercourse. We had been married three years, but the thrill of conquest, though experienced less often than in the dating years, is no less fulfilling and breathes life into the otherwise inevitable, stale married-sex.

My plan prevailed. Once we finished, we existed in the afterglow for a period. We nevermind everything outside the four walls of our small bedroom until noises from the ceiling above our bed brought my wife back into present day.
“What are they doing up there again?”

“Hmm?” I asked.

“That constant thudding sound.”

Just like the night before, I climbed out and reached under my bed, picked up the baseball bat, and struck the ceiling, thud-thud-thud. Whatever was going on stopped, and I heard a faint pitter-patter of what seemed like a dozen feet scatter above me. I placed the bat back under my bed.
Some time during the shuffling about, Daphne rolled over, signifying the conclusion of intimate time. I rolled the opposite direction, our backs to each other, and closed my eyes.

As I drifted asleep I envisioned a python. It was coiled but seducing, and its tongue danced and its eyes pulsated. I began to sway in rhythm to the bobbing of its head. I startled awake, not because of the strange dream but because of a dull ache in each of my testicles. I immediately recognized the pain, as this had happened once or twice after sex in the past. I had been to the hospital for testicular torsions before (for the uninitiated or uninformed, think of if a grape were to be twisted on the vine) and knew how to relieve the pain without the assistance of the cold, unsympathetic hand of the emergency room nurse, and so I commenced the delicate procedure of coaxing everything back into subordinance.

Panic began to set in, but the pain began to subside around the time my wife whispered, “What the fuck are you doing,” and I returned to bed.
Daphne arrived home before me home the next day and so dinner was ready when I arrived-- a Thai recipe with chicken and vegetables in peanut sauce. After dinner I attempted to go for two-nights-in-a-row but the chicken and spice apparently made her gassy. I too was afflicted, but I maintained it could overcome by determination and focus.

Soon we were in bed, backs turned. She usually falls asleep before I do, but at one point I tried a last-ditch effort, placing my hand on her shoulder. All hope was lost when she merely groaned, declining my offer.

I was sure that she had fallen asleep when the noises started again. Just like the previous nights, it was a constant, steady thumping. Because my disposition—a state of frustrated arousal, I recognized the rhythm as something sexual. I could envision my upstairs neighbor, who would, for my own purposes that evening, be a stunning blonde with sharp facial features in the height of sexual ecstasy, just mere feet above my head.
I listened close, and was pleased to hear a woman’s breathy voice, softly cooing. The thumping continued, and as my ear became attuned, could distinguish between the squeaking of the mattress, the rustling of the sheets, and the thumping of the headboard against the wall. All of this, heightened by the sound of not one woman, but two or maybe three. This was eventually supplemented by the lower voice of at least one male.

The sounds grew louder, and I more aroused, until Daphne’s voice cut through my fantasy, “What is going on up there!? I wonder if they’re putting together furniture or something. They did just move in.”

“I have no idea,” I said, surprised at how loud my voice was in contrast to Daphne’s hazy, half-sleeping warble. I pounced up and retrieved the bat from under the bed again.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” she said.

“Why’s that?” I said, annoyed.

“I think we made them mad.”

“Well we shouldn’t have to hear this,” I said. If I’m not getting any, nobody’s getting any.

I struck the ceiling, this time harder than the times before. It may be because my senses were in a heightened state of alert, but this time I not only heard the pattering of feet, which, at the time, reminded me of the way cockroaches scatter when someone flips the light switch, but I swore I heard gasps and hisses.

I stuffed the bat back under the bed, but my wife said, with a huffy tone in her voice, “Well you have to deal with them now. I don’t have any part in this.”

“What do you mean?”

“They left another note.”

I stormed through the apartment looking for another yellow sticky-note. “I don’t care if they left another note! I’ve tried three times to resolve this civilly, so now they will have to deal with the apartment manager.” My balls throbbed. “Honey, where’s the note?”
“I threw it in the trash.”

“Well why did you do that?”

“Were you planning on saving it?”

“It would be nice to have when we go to the apartment manager. Fuck, my balls!” I doubled over. After I recovered, I pulled the garbage can out from under the sink.

“Did you burn it,” I asked.

“What are you talking about?”

“It’s burned up. All I see is black ashes.”

“Well why would I burn up their note?”

I put aside her unwillingness to cooperate and found the jacket I had been wearing the night before and reached into the pocket where I had crumpled the first note. I felt around, but couldn’t find anything. I pulled my hand out of the pocket, but gasped at the sight of my fingers, covered in soot.

I tilted my jacket pocket, shook it, and watched as wretched, black ashes fell onto the carpet.

“Honey, I don’t know what the hell is happening.”

“What are you talking about?” I could tell by the tone of her voice that she was waking up.

“What did the note say?” I asked.

“I don’t remember, some nonsense.” She was still oblivious to everything that was happening.

“Remember.”

She sighed. “Ugh, it was something like, ‘No more.’ Maybe it was ‘Never again.’ Yeah, it was ‘Never again.’ They wrote ‘Never again’ on a note and stuck it on our freaking door. I mean, who does that?”

I couldn’t answer her. It felt like my testicles were going to pop. I began to choke and gag, and Daphne was quickly by my side. I drifted in and out, and was soon in the passenger seat of our car. I tried to keep my eyes open, but they burned from my sweat. Lights and sound came and went, and despite my efforts at focusing on the voice of my wife, I eventually succumbed to the gravity of unconsciousness as the pain in my loins turned me inside out.

Shortly after I had awakened the next morning, in my own bed, my wife explained that I was examined and released after the doctors found nothing. “They figured it was another testicular torsion that simply worked itself out,” she said. And what of the fever? “The doctor said you were just having a panic attack over the fear of losing your manhood.”

The doctor said there would be “some tenderness” for a while and that it would be reasonable for me to stay home for a day or so, or until I can at least walk comfortably. I stayed in bed all day and attempted to recount what I could in my journal, but the work quickly took a life of its own as the writer in me tends to embellish “for the sake of the story.” As I spelled out a version of what happened, I began to take significant creative liberties where my memory failed, as it had during my in- and out-of-consciousness the previous night. For that matter, I questioned whether the python and sex orgies were nothing more than manifestations of a vivid imagination.

I spent the rest of the day in bed flipping through books or magazines. Something in me would awaken from time to time when a sound came from upstairs, but I was constantly disappointed as nothing occurred aside from the fridge shutting or the toilet flushing. Of course, I was uncertain if, with my “tenderness,” I would be able to keep up with them if they were to spontaneously start up again.

I had fallen asleep that night without incident in more ways than one. My situation had prevented me from soliciting certain relations from Daphne (in her words, “You need to just let it rest,”) and upstairs was quiet.

Deep into my slumber I became alarmed and sprung up, turning to my wife and asking what she wanted. I felt foolish when I realized that she was still asleep and I had only dreamt that she had called my name. It took me a moment to calm down as my heart raced from the shrill panic I had heard in her voice from my dream. Neither fully awake nor asleep, I began to replay the way she said my name, and did so until I had seemingly diluted the memory into a drone which slowly hummed, repeating my name. “Peter… Peter…” I could still hear my wife’s voice, but it was no longer shrill. It was soft, and it had an eerie, rhythmic charm to it. It was soon joined by several others, low and hushed. I then saw figures standing six feet tall, and realized they were serpents as forked tongues flicked out from underneath dark cloaks. They were walking in circles around me, slowly enclosing.

I sat up, and the visions melted away. I breathed, and the room slowly returned to four walls and a bed. Outside our bedroom window a twig snapped. I did not make a sound, but listened carefully for footsteps outside. The soft light from a lamp outside our window cast a soft, orange glow on our closed blinds. As my gaze was affixed to the blinds, I noticed the intensity of the lighter wither and fade, only to grow brighter again. This came and went, and eventually I was able to make out shapes passing between the lamp and my window, but none with enough definition for me to draw any distinction.

My arms had become like goose flesh, and I could feel every hair as it stood erect on my scalp. My wife, oblivious to all that was happening, was still asleep, and air hissed faintly between her lips. Either to protect her or to comfort myself I leaned closer to her. As I moved my face near hers, the hiss seemed farther away, and realized that it was coming from elsewhere.

I slowly rolled over and held my breathe. I again heard a hiss coming from the floor, and reached for my bat, but could not locate it. I blindly felt around on the floor and could not see it, but as my eyes adjusted I saw the long black rod several feet from where I left it. I reached for it, but recoiled as the baseball bat appeared to slide farther from me, and then bend itself around. The end lifted up, gazed into my eyes, and to my wonder, softly cooed.

I sat transfixed on the same eyes that seduced me in my dreams. His head bobbed up, down. Tongue in, tongue out, he invited me to hold him. I reached out and picked up him up. As I held him in my hand, he became long and metal hard. I turned and regarded Daphne, who lay still, motionless, defiant, as she had done so many nights before. It was then that I realized who had planted the notes on the door, the ash in my pocket.

I heard the sounds commence upstairs. I felt the thud-thud-thud move from the ceiling, trickle down the walls and along the floor boards, and gather at my feet. My body pulsated, flesh pulled tight like the skin of a drum. As I regarded my betrayer, snake in hand, I knew what I must do to appease my hosts. She remained with her back turned in defiance and so I raised the snake in the air and struck her, thud-thud-thud.