Sitting at his tiny kitchen table, staring at the dark window of the oven and eating the now-cool pizza,
Blake tried to imagine the life of this snake: no limbs, flat head just inches above the ground, a writhing band
of constricting muscle, unable to so much as shiver to resist the slightest chill. Blake went to stand in front of
the bathroom mirror and removed his shirt. He touched his chest, his arms, feeling the sinuous bulge of his
own muscles beneath skin. No scales, just fine, blond hair covered his arms. For a moment, he could feel the
air around him like the python could, sapping and hungry for his warmth. How fast would he die, Blake wondered, if his own internal heat source flickered out?
Blake looked into his reflection in the mirrored door of the medicine cabinet above the sink. Behind
the door, Blake knew, one of Ian’s razors still sat. Blake had tried to throw it out for weeks, but the thought of
the razor having belonged to Ian, was enough to stay his hand. After they broke up, Blake’s friends had urged
him to move on, taking him out and buying him drinks, introducing him to their cute friends, but nothing
seemed as comforting as Blake’s memories of Ian. They were painful, barbed and jagged, but he’d wrapped
himself around their lingering warmth and hadn’t let go.
The distant wail of a siren somewhere in the canyons of the sleeping city brought Blake back to his disheveled apartment. He flicked off the light and returned to the kitchen where the python waited in his oven.
He approached the door but didn’t open it immediately, afraid that the snake would have vanished, or was
never there in the first place. Something inside him needed the python to be waiting inside for him.
He turned on the oven light and pulled the door open. Inside, a flat brown head splotched with dark
rings rose like a flame from the folds of the towel, shiny black tongue flickering, tasting. Blake knelt on the
floor, feeling the warmth from the oven wash over him. Slowly, the snake uncoiled, fold after fold, expanding
into the room. Blake felt like something was unraveling in his chest, leaving the core exposed and throbbing.
Trembling, he reached out his hand, an offering to the python coiled in his oven. It stretched over the gap,
wrapping its body around his arm, clambering up his bare skin. The scales were no longer cold, Blake noticed,
but smooth, dry, and warm. The python wound its way up his limb and circled behind his head. For a fleeting moment, Blake felt the contraction of the snake around his neck. He imagined his delicate spinal cord
concealed in his vertebrae stacked like plates, and for a moment, felt a rush of frightening awareness of the
fragility of his existence.
Blake rose to his feet, the snake draped and placid over his shoulders like a scaled mantle. He turned
and glided through his apartment, until he came to stand before a window that looked out over the street.
The glow from the city illuminated the pall of clouds that hung overhead with an unearthly g