Ecdysis 

Tack pays the Reptile Land man three dollars to unclip a velvet rope leading to the basement stairs. Hector’s idea—go somewhere quiet and hidden and underground to talk. Hector got some news about his dad who bailed on him ten years ago.

The basement reeks of frying crickets and baking reptile shit. Milky snakeskins drape the tanks, and the whole place emits a roadkill stink that worms its way down Tack’s throat. He lights a cigarette and a joint simultaneously just to breathe. Hector leads him to the end of the hall, past two dozen flickering tanks where snakes coil like springs. In other cages, tarantulas skitter and chameleons tightrope walk plastic vines.

In the back, next to a massive glass tank housing a python, Hector parts his lips. A mouse skitters behind his head, an escaped meal, a captor too smart for its own good. It leaps into Hector’s long hair, and he ducks, yelps. Tack’s hands dart into Hector’s hair, and it’s softer than he imagined. The mouse squirms and Tack squeezes until something inside pops. He dumps the mouse into the python cage. It’s still alive, but limping, blood pearling out its mouth.

The mouse marches its death-drunk stumble around the python’s orange slit eyes. Yet the snake doesn’t move, even when the mouse climbs over its snout. Tack supposes snakes aren’t always hungry, aren’t always wanting to kill. Maybe they just savor suffering.

“Remember my father?” Hector says next.

Tack remembers a man who looked like Hector, beautiful as Hector and tall as a bear in Tack’s child memory. When they were little, Tack convinced Hector to steal his dad’s keys to sit behind the wheel and pretend to drive his bright blue truck. Tack imagined driving with Hector to Gotham, because he’d just seen Batman and was bothered by the way the Joker died, wanted to kick Michael Keaton in the dick. Hector’s dad found them there and swatted Hector’s scalp hard. After he quit crying, Hector’s dad gave them a truck-bed ride through the country dirt roads, past sunflower fields that blurred too quickly, the truck going too fast, and Tack was sure they’d bounce out and crack their heads open on the road. He’d held Hector’s leg in terror the whole ride.

“Not really,” Tack says.

“Turns out he’s dead. I got a letter and a package with this inside.” Hector tosses a tiny glint to Tack. It’s a gold tooth, and then Tack remembers that, Hector’s dad smiling with one side of his mouth and this tooth would flash and he’d point a finger gun at Tack and pop.

“It was in his left canine,” Tack recalls.

“Thought you didn’t remember.”

“Dude was a class-act douche.” Tack almost says more, almost tells him how much he understands, how dark it gets, how it fills your gut and drowns your lungs. But unloading his shit on Hector wouldn’t help, would just be selfish sharing. He hopes the joints they’ve smoked over the years have stripped away those memories of a deadbeat worth less than the weight of tooth-gold in Tack’s hand. Tack reopens the python screen and flicks in the gold tooth. It bounces off the python that still refuses to move.

“I don’t think that python is even real,” Tack says.

“That was mine, asshole,” Hector says. “His,” he says quieter.

“Reach your hand in there and get it back then.” The mouse pauses its perambulations around the cage to sniff a tooth and then hobbles over it. Even that death-row rodent has no interest in a dead dad’s gaudy gold tooth.

Hector keeps his eyes down, soft hair curtaining his face. Tack can tell he’s pissed about the tooth but probably more because Tack is showing him what a loser father is worth, less than snake shit. If Tack consoled him, put an arm around him, would he push away? Hector can’t know how much Tack wants to hold him and crush this hurt, how badly he wants to grind his father-memory to gold dust and then suck it up his nostril, where he can hold that breath for Hector forever.

“Let’s go say yes to a bunch of drugs, dude,” Tack says and touches Hector’s wrist for three burning seconds.

“I want his fucking tooth back.” He stares into the cage, won’t look at Tack.

“I’ll give you fifty bucks for it,” Tack says. “I’ll let you roll a quarter ounce into one giant blunt,” he bargains. “Come on. You don’t really give a shit, right?”

“I’m not leaving it in there,” Hector says. He’s gone stupid and sentimental and it’s venom in the veins.

“Fine, man,” Tack says. “If it bunches your undies that much.”

This statue snake has likely been dead for days anyway, and the creepy owner probably gets off on displaying a massive lump of snake corpse. But when Tack dips his hand in, its forked tongue flutters. Time to rip off the scab. He snatches at the tooth. Too quick to go unnoticed, too slow to avoid the python’s curved fangs pouncing into his hand. They carve in deep, hook inside him. He jerks his had upward, carrying the snake’s dense body up out of the cage by fangs that tear his flesh.

Hector grabs the snake’s body. They could yell, either one of them, and the creepy owner could maybe do something. But these fatherless boys learned long ago they don’t need men to rescue them. Hector bends the snake’s tail cruelly, but it doesn’t unclench. He pulls, and that just hurts worse. Hector spits at the snake’s mouth then, spits multiple times, spits as hard as he should be spitting on a father’s grave. To Tack’s surprise, the snake releases, and they wrestle him back into his tank.

Together, they find a stained slop sink to wash Tack’s hand. Hector’s spit and Tack’s blood swirl pink in draining soap foam. Hector wraps Tack’s hand in paper towel and one of the rubber bands he uses to tie back his hair. This bite feels more precious than a gold tooth, and Tack hands it over to Hector without apology, without thanks, because they don’t need to say what’s obvious. Tack only wishes he could speak the unsaid, how grief chews like python fangs and leaves behind a black empty, how saying they’re close as brothers has never been enough. The mix of spit and blood, that’s closer to the truth, their bodies together concocting a reptile repellant, enough to scare off any creature.

Back at the python cage, the mouse senses its doom, that it always was and always will be food for a greater beast. There’s only one fate, and the python surges, clamps onto the mouse’s ass and noose-knots its body around twitching ribs. The mouse squirms and chirps, but the python hugs steadily, will never let go.