The Embrace

         Sonia swirled the little silver spoon, creating a tiny whirlpool of coffee and cream. Within her mug, the bitter liquid gradually lightened, turning from near black to a comfortable amber. She tapped the spoon on the porcelain rim and set it on the counter.
         For two long minutes she stood staring at the cooling brew. She rubbed her protruding abdomen. Eight months. After eight months of nausea and backaches, eight months of multi-vitamins and fiber cereal, surely she deserved a cup of coffee. She raised the cup to her nose and let the steam explore her face. She had no problem giving up the cigarettes and the occasional cocktail, but she definitely missed her morning coffee. She patted her stomach.
         "You don't care if mommy has a little coffee, do you?"
         As if in answer, Sonia felt a subtle kick from within her womb. The mug slipped from her fingers. It fell, neatly separating into three pieces on the kitchen floor. She watched, shaking her head, as the warm liquid spilled out across the tiles.
         It was these moments that made her question her decision to stay in her apartment, rather than moving in with her mother until the baby was born. Staying by herself meant she wasn't subjected to a lecture every time she snuck a candy bar, and she could watch whatever she wanted on television. Unfortunately, it also meant that she had to make the difficult journey down to the floor when she spilled something (which was almost every other day now). Kneeling down was never too much of a problem. Getting back up, however was no small accomplishment.
         Sonia grabbed a dishtowel and, holding the counter, lowered herself slowly onto the kitchen floor. She scooped the pieces of porcelain into the towel and followed the small stream of coffee to wear it gathered in a puddle near the refrigerator, sopping up as much of it as she could. Then she saw the hole.
         It was at the base of the wall, partially hidden by the refrigerator, a gap over three inches across. She let out a noise that was somewhere between a sigh and a groan. Holes meant mice.
         She reached up toward the handle of the fridge to pull herself back up, resolving to pick up some traps on her next shopping trip. Just as her fingers closed around the handle, a spasm of pain shot through her lower back. She was growing accustomed to these backaches, but that didn't make them any more pleasant. She released the handle and lay back on the cold floor.
         "Well," she said, rubbing her stomach again, "You might as well get comfy, baby. It looks like we're going to be down here for a while."
         From floor level, Sonia observed a landscape she had never noticed while standing in her kitchen. She saw the tiny forms of dust and hair that gathered in silent conference beneath the metal coils of the refrigerator bottom. A turquoise button, the victim of her last attempt to wear her favorite blouse, observed them from a safe distance. To her left, under the stove, she counted seventeen cents (a dime, two pennies, and a larger coin that she guessed was a nickel but may have been a quarter), and the long ago replaced back pieces of two earrings. A lone red ant guarded these treasures, faithfully flitting from coin to coin.
         The tiles beneath her head began to vibrate with a low, steady rhythm. That kid in the apartment below (Was it Cordell or Cornell? Sonia could never remember) was blasting his stereo again. Ordinarily, she would have pounded on the floor until he turned it down, but now the deep steady pulse seemed oddly comforting, almost lulling. She closed her eyes, and sleep gradually descended to the kitchen floor to lay with her.
         She dreamt of non-dairy creamer and coins, and of mice.

         Mice. It could smell them, scampering through the narrow darkness. It felt their dried droppings, blending with the wood and wire, as it passed over them. Had it known that freedom would be so cramped and dry, so filled with dead ends and sharp corners, it might have stayed a prisoner. It might have remained coiled among the plastic rocks and shredded newspaper, and been content with the dead rodents that dropped before it twice a week, even when it noticed the sudden gap in the top of its reflective world. At least it might have chosen a better escape route, perhaps in the great mound of cloth in the corner. But there had not been time to think of these things. There had been time only for the simplest of navigation: up. Up the smooth wall and through the dark, tiny opening above. Up to the scent of mice and the promised safety of the darkness.
         As it slowly inched its long body through the dusty passage, stopping every few moments to taste the darkness with a slender tongue, it suddenly became aware of something above; something alive, but still. At the same time, the wood around it began to violently vibrate with sound. Just ahead it could see light, an opening in the wood just large enough for passage.
         There could be others in the light, others that would return it to its glass prison (as they had before). There could also be food. It tasted the stale air again.
         Hunger eventually won out over fear, and it slithered toward the opening, and the kitchen beyond.

         Sonia was awakened by a sudden series of cramps in her left leg, no doubt (she thought) the result of sleeping on the hard floor. Painful tightness began in her calf and traveled quickly up her thigh to her hip. Not yet ready to be awake, she attempted to shift her leg, but found it too heavy.
         As much from annoyance as from pain, she opened her eyes and tilted her head to see beyond her stomach. To her still-blurred vision, it looked as though her leg had somehow distorted itself, taking on a lumpy spiraled shape. She reached down to touch it.
Just before her hand reached her hip, Sonia's vision cleared. She snapped her hand up over her mouth, now open in an expression of disbelief.
         A speckled greenish form had wrapped itself around her left leg like a giant tentacle. The thing began as a narrow tip gripping her heel and extended into a massive coil encircling her thigh before tapering into a long triangular head that was just beginning to reach the summit of her swollen abdomen. A pair of tiny black eyes peered over her stomach at her, and a forked tongue pierced the air.
         Sonia screamed.
         Hunger had caused it to miscalculate. This still creature, soft as it was, would be too large to eat, even after it was sufficiently weakened. It had not coiled itself around the warm creature in vain however. There was another being here. A being that was also warm, but still. A being that was much smaller.
         Its intended victim screamed and moved violently from side to side. It tightened its grip on the creature's limb in response. Months of lying behind walls of glass had weakened it, but its grip was still unbreakable. It needed only to wait until the creature beneath began to tire. It knew from instinct, if not experience, that all creatures, even those protecting their young, eventually tire.


         Sonia thrashed her body from side to side, but soon discovered that the movement only caused the serpent to tighten around her leg, which was already going numb.
         This was not happening.
         Giant snakes did not attack women in their own kitchen. This was a dream, or perhaps a hallucination brought on by caffeine. Except, she hadn't had any caffeine. She dropped the mug. That's how she ended up down here in the first place. Which meant that the long beast squeezing the feeling from her leg and leering at her from the top of her stomach was real. She screamed again, but her voice became lost within the pulses of the downstairs stereo. She looked down in horror at the slimy head that seemed to be examining her abdomen. A terrible thought suddenly occurred to her. What if the thing managed to wrap itself around her stomach the way it had around her leg?
         "Get the hell away from my baby!"
         She swung her fist forward. It connected with the constrictor's head, knocking it to the side. The head rose above her torso in response. It opened its jaws to reveal an impossibly large mouth. Sonia swung her fist again, but pulled it back it time to escape the snake's jaws as they snapped shut. The head reared back higher, suspended by a writhing tower of scales. Sonia threw her hands forward just as the serpent lunged toward her face. Her fingers caught it around the throat, bringing its open mouth to a sudden halt inches from her chin. She lay there, struggling to keep her grasp on the slippery animal as its head whipped back and forth through the air above her face. The numbness in her leg crept upwards, enveloping most of her left hip. She managed a third hoarse scream, coming to the sudden realization that she would weaken long before her attacker.
         The floor beneath her still vibrated with music. From the corner of a teary eye, she saw the dishtowel, covering the remnants of her favorite mug, on the floor to her right. Her arms were already beginning to ache. Why the hell had she dropped that damn mug?
         The mug.
         Sonia tightened the fingers of her left hand around the serpent's throat, and dropped her right hand to the tiled floor, her fingers searching for the towel and its contents. The snake did not waste this opportunity. With a sudden thrust backward, it freed itself from her grasp. The pointed head reared back, the jaws parting again.
         Sonia's fingers found the handle of her coffee mug, now connected only to a small edge of the former cup.
         A sound that was more than a hiss, but less than a growl, escaped the constrictor's gaping jaws as it lunged forward. With a yell of exertion, Sonia swung.
         Sonia's makeshift weapon met the scaly head somewhere above her chest. The jagged porcelain sliced through the creature's lower jaw. It pulled its head back, its jaw hanging awkwardly to the side. Sonia swung again, this time stabbing the porcelain into the green flesh just above the serpent's eye.
         The creature's head hovered, bleeding, for a full three seconds, before dropping onto Sonia's torso.
         It took Sonia over ten minutes to pull the coils of dead reptile from her leg, and another fifteen to find the strength to pull herself up to a standing position. By the time she hobbled to the phone to call her mother, a sharp prickly sensation in her leg signaled that the numbness was already beginning to wear off. The dead serpent lay on the kitchen floor below her like a great heap of green rope.

         One floor below, beneath a pile of clothes, a long reptilian form slithered further into the corner. If it had known that its hiding place would be so damp and suffocating, it might have followed its mate up the wall and through the opening above. Maybe there was still time.