A Place for Snakes to Breed by Patrick Michael Finn

Author:Patrick Michael Finn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Down & Out Books

He felt himself shrink around the depth of his empty stomach in the dark squeezing his steering wheel though the engine was off. Another rest area and he was starting to forget what she looked like. He could feel his arms but his head and his chest had been carved away. His watch was dead and so was the clock in the dashboard. He opened his eyes and looked east but saw no breath of light over the sharp ridge of mountains.

He went to the bathrooms and found a vending machine among them. He’d only vaguely emerged from his stupor of wasted fatigue, so when he saw the rat balancing itself on a ledge between two candy bars under the pale light behind the glass, he flinched and sucked in a fist of air.

The rat didn’t notice. Peanut wrappers and peanuts themselves littered the top of the slot on the lid where the goods issued forth. Chocolate bars stood naked and brown over skirts of wrappers the rodent had torn open ragged. He nibbled nuts he held in his claws with rapid intensity, a beggar in the throes of starvation. He climbed from ledge to ledge, pulling himself up on coils that would otherwise push and drop whatever purchases were made.

But the rat dropped nothing. He embraced the bars of chocolate and coconut with a nimble balance on each edge, tearing with his long teeth and then chewing behind his jowls, his whiskers twitching and his little eyes sharp and alert. Once or twice he darted his head up to find what he might attack next.

The rat had just stripped the wrapping off a Baby Ruth when he froze, hunched forward, and brought his claws to his mouth as if to clean them. Compassion rose warm in Weldon’s chest. He touched the glass with his fingertips and a dawn he didn’t notice opened behind his back. The rat curled, twitched, then fell to the trap at the bottom with a clunk.

A man behind him whistled and when Weldon turned, he saw a squat shadow moving toward him with the hideous backdrop of a blue new day that promised nothing but sadness.

“What in the fuck happened to all that candy?”

The man stood before the machine, his hands on his hips or on the rolls that hung over his belt. He stared for a while before he finally shook his head.

“You try to steal all that candy with some kind of stick? With some kind of hanger for clothing?”

He looked over his shoulder, squinting.

“It was a rat,” he said to the man.

“A rat?”

“Yes.”

“Well shit. Where the hell did he go?”

“He’s still in there.”

“What?”

“Inside the machine.”

“Kidding me.”

“He died.”

“Kidding me.”

Weldon shrugged. His exhaustion had crossed into a new limit he’d never before known.

“How’d he die?”

“I think he ate too much candy.”

The man shook his head and beheld the machine and its unbelievable mystery.

“I know some drivers who keep rats as pets. Right in their rigs. For company. Build them little hammocks that hang from the roof.

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