Saxon Was My Friend by Harrison Kim

A child haunted by a floating head longs for a serpentine companion to scare it away.

Image generated with OpenAI

My first sighting of the head happened while I lay in my baby buggy. Its face grinning, half open, tongue flat, the insides of its mouth moist and red. Its limpid turquoise eyes stared into mine. I held a white object in my hand and threw it. The mouth grabbed, swallowed, and the face sailed up into the air and was gone. My mother looked down from where she pushed the pram, her curly black hair falling.

"Did you throw away your candy?"

The next time the head appeared, I lay in a bed. Startled awake, by its deep voice. The open mouth so wide, talking one word, and that word was "give." I held back but the face loomed closer, its breath meat-strong, like the sausages I ate for supper. This time I threw my stuffed bear and heard a snap. The mouth closed, one tiny bear paw sticking out between its thin lips. And again, the head flew away from me, up beyond the roof of the room and disappeared.

"The face ate my bear," I cried at the breakfast table.

"You had a nightmare," My mom said, but she could not find my bear friend. "What did you do with it?"

She wiped my tears while my father scraped food off his plate. "Adrien's playing for sympathy," he said as he pushed his knife.

A memory later, the face came again, but this time I was ready. I threw my pillow, to scare it away. It gobbled up the whole cushion. The next time I fed it my pajama top, then another night, my shoe.

"What are you doing with your things?" my mother asked.

"I fed it to the head," I told her. "So it leaves me alone."

"I can't for the life of me find his other runner," Mom told Dad, who made me look all over the house.

"One thing a man must know is how to sort what's real from what's not," Dad said.

He took me out fishing and the lines got all tangled. Then he tried to teach me how to hammer nails and I bent them all.

I heard him talking to Mom.

"Adrien's going to have a tough life if he doesn't harden."

Another memory later, my bedroom window lay open, and the face floated through. It hovered behind me, grinning as usual, its deep voice intoning, "I want, I want."

My little brother Jesse slept away in his crib in the far corner of the room. Why didn't he hear it?

I looked away from the head's huge hypnotic eyes, then felt its sausage breath upon my back. I turned around, the face inches from mine, and it demanded again, "Give me."

I remembered what my dad said about hardening.

"Get away!" I yelled.

I leaped out of the covers, climbed out the window to the back garden, into a warm summer night. The head followed as I crept between the raspberry rows. I turned around and there it was, staring down, its lips bobbling. "Give me!"

"All I have to do is throw it something," I thought, and reached to toss some berries but another face caught my eye.

A snake, curled up under the canes. A fully grown garter, coiled under the moonlight. Probably from the nest under the rocks at the back of the yard. Behind me, a shriek. I turned to see the head's face contorted, its eyes bulging at the serpent. It flipped itself around and flew towards the heavens, screaming, curving over the house in the direction of the stars. The snake below me stared up, silver shining on its back, mouth opened to show the soft inside.

It took a week for the head to return. I threw it all my birthday chocolate and complained to my parents once again.

"These are simply bad pictures," Mom told me. "Coming out of your sleep."

They took me to a doctor who talked about nightmares and how they weren't real and finally I said, "Yes, I think I just dreamed everything."

"That's a good boy," said the doctor.

But now I knew the face's weakness, and I hated it now. That twisted, yearning mouth wanting more, those huge eyes that insisted to look into mine. Its curling lips, and that horrible breath.

"Can I have a pet snake?" I asked Mom, and she said, "No, but we can get you a dog."

"I want a snake," I said.

I had an allowance now and bought candy and muffins which I would toss to the face when I awakened at night. After supper one evening I crept out into the garden with a big empty pickle jar I found in someone's garbage. I snuck around on my hands and knees but didn't see a snake until I looked on the compost pile. A tiny black form lay there. A baby! I'd read I should grab it right behind the head, and that's what I did. Funny it didn't struggle.

I pushed it into the jar and put the lid on. I'd punched in air holes so the creature could breathe, took it back through my bedroom window and left it beside my bed with a towel over top. That night, when the face bullied me for presents, I remained patient. The head filled a space as wide as a dresser now, its rancid breath permeated the whole room. I waited until its lips almost touched my forehead then whipped the towel off the pickle jar.

A shriek erupted, I saw all up the face's hairy brown nostrils and the red under its eyelids as it fluttered for a second then took off like a rocket through the ceiling.

"Thank you, little snake," I said, and rolled over to sleep

In the morning, I turned to look at my savior. It lay still at the bottom of the jar.

"Little snake, are you ok?" I asked, and opened the top, but there was no movement.

My second friend was dead, and I cried.

My little brother Jesse turned around in his bed and cried too.

Mom ran in, implored me to tell her what was wrong. I stopped snivelling, hoping she'd stop asking, but when Dad came home, he squatted down to my level and said, "You have to tell us, come on, a man would be brave enough to let us know."

"I didn't want to kill anything," I told him. "But I hurt my little snake that I found in the garden."

And I showed them the pickle jar.

"He said he wanted a pet," Mom said.

"That's a black slug," Dad told me. "Not a snake."

"I wanted to scare the head," I confessed.

"Your brother doesn't see it," Mom said.

I was glad. I wanted my parents to have at least one son they could be proud of.

They took me back to a different doctor, called a "naturopath."

"Psychiatrists never did anything for me," Dad said. "We need someone who can help Adrien grow up."

The doctor appeared as a short man not much taller than I, with thick glasses, a curly moustache, and a secret half-smile that revealed slightly fanged incisors. He offered a tall chair, I sat level with his eyes, and he told me, "All men have things they are afraid of."

"Everyone's afraid?" I asked.

The face rose up from behind the Doctor's high-backed chair. It grinned and opened its mouth wide. I smelled its meaty breath.

"The head is right behind you." I told him.

The doctor turned around. "I do not see it."

I pulled a candy out of my pocket and threw it at the face, which swallowed and faded through the back of the office wall.

"It ate what I tossed, and now it's gone," I said.

The doctor said nothing for quite a while. Then he stated, "You know, the head believes in you. You feed it what it wants. So, it keeps coming back and getting larger. It's attracted to you because you're afraid."

"That's why I need the snake," I told him. "To keep it away."

Dr. Boutin ran his fingers through his moustache.

"Try using your own will," he said. "And see if you can shrink that damned head."

He began move a blue jewel that dangled on a chain. "Watch the spark," he said.

The jewel moved back and forth.

"Imagine what would keep it away?" he asked. "What would help your will grow stronger?"

"Snakes," I said. "The head is terrified of them."

"When you see the head," Dr. Boutin told me. "Imagine the snake who is your friend and ally."

He gave me exercises in visualization, I conjured up vivid pictures of snakes in my mind, the easiest thing I ever did. The shape and litheness of the creatures charmed me from the start. I spent hours in the back garden observing them, to imagine them better. How their blood controlled their mood, their languidness in the sun, their activity at night. I caught one swallowing a slug, how big its jaws widened to take in the food!

Over time, as I fought its presence with all my counter images, the head shrank smaller and smaller. By my twelfth year it showed up the size of a cherry, shimmering by my bedside. Though it shed tears, I did not give in. I kept thinking of my tiny dead slug friend.

"I will eat this candy," I told the head, and popped one in my mouth as its tiny mouth salivated.

I felt pride in myself, for the first time in my life. My will was strong.

"You ate my bear," I told it over and over. "You exist only if I let you, and I deny you now."

I kept no gentle feelings then, for that head nor for anything or anyone else, except for my parents and brother Jesse. As I pulled away from the head, I moved towards the snake. I envisaged a mighty serpent, a fully grown Burmese Python, glowing huge and smiling above my bed. It was comforting, to harness the power of that stare. When I looked at my reflection in the mirror, I detected slight flecks of turquoise at the sides of my eyes, and I stuck my tongue out and sniffed the air.

While I studied serpents, my brother Jesse fished with my dad, spent hours in the workshop with him, pounding nails into boards, sawing and painting, building birdhouses and bookshelves. I was proud of my brother, how he fit well with Dad and with the world. Someone had to fill that role. I now lived in a place of my own creation. I missed only one thing. I needed a real snake of my own, one I could call a true friend.

My dad said he built his own world as a kid, and walked to the beat of a different drummer, but he found his way.

"You'll do that eventually, Adrien," he said.

Mom was reluctant to allow me a pet, but Jesse helped them change their minds, he was wise beyond his years.

"Adrien follows his own path," he told them. "He will always be different, and we must guide him in his own expression."

"You can keep a pet snake in the basement, if it's always in a cage," my dad finally allowed. "But to build character, you must earn the money yourself."

"I'll need another cage for the mice," I told him. "To feed Saxon."

"You already gave it a name?"

"I've thought about this since the first time I saw him in my mind," I said. "Chasing the head from the room."

"Now that you're older, I can tell you I had visions myself growing up," Dad told me. "My parents sent me to doctors, but like you I used my will to find a different path. I focussed outward, on building things, and became a carpenter. I always had friends to build with. You seem to need a friend, more than anything."

"My best friend will be Saxon," I said. "He'll be my focus outward."

I picked and sold the produce from my section of our huge garden. Beans, raspberries, lettuce. I walked the streets and picked up cans and bottles. I hiked into the hills and cut bundles of sage to sell on the street. While there, I talked to the rattlesnakes, hiding themselves under fallen pine branches. "Don't be afraid," I said, my whispery voice calming their shaking tails. "I'm your companion."

I liked how well they hid themselves. I thought I was clever too, hiding the face that appeared in my childhood with my own snakey will.

Coming home, I examined angles of my face in the mirror, touched the sharpness of my incisors, stuck out my tongue, tested how wide my mouth would open.

I brought Saxon home on my fifteenth birthday. A baby white python, about two feet long. It took all my savings to buy him and his cage, and the cages for the mice he would consume.

I donned gloves when I fed him, so he would know the difference between my flesh and the rodents'. I liked the way his mouth opened, reminding me of the head, how it was able to adjust and swallow the large things that I threw. Now I was in control. I managed the mice and the feeding times, and when I would appear. I understood that I might be like the head to Saxon, except I gave him sustenance, I did not take. A welcome presence, not nightmarish or distorted. Saxon seemed to appreciate my face, stirring when I looked into his cage, his growing tongue flickering my way, sensing I was his provider.

I began to sleep in the basement, the only sound the skitterings of the mice in their cages. I felt comforted by the sight of Saxon's growing white torso, lying like a long pillow in his cage.

He grew, and it became necessary to find money for a larger enclosure. I pedalled from house to house on my bicycle with its cart, asking if people had extra bottles to donate to feed my pet. I gathered sage from all over the hills.

"How big is that creature going to get?" my mom asked from the top of the stairs.

Saxon and I commanded the whole basement now. Dr. Boutin the naturopath assured them this was just a stage I was going through.

"One day he will shed his old ways and grow new ones, much like the snake he loves," the Doctor told them when we went in for a conference.

Privately, the doctor took me aside and said, "When you threw that candy in my office and it disappeared, I never found it on the floor. I never heard it drop. Keep that head at bay, Adrien. Keep feeding Saxon."

Jesse told my parents, "Everyone needs a place to grow into their reality."

Mom and Dad rented a little apartment down the street for themselves. Mom told me

"It's that musty smell in the house. I think it's the mice. Nothing to do with you."

I knew my face was changing. My eyes more like jewels, turquoise centres, my neck long and curving, and my mouth widening as I tried opening it and swallowing larger morsels of food.

I didn't see Dad much at all now. He and Jesse were always out together, fishing or working.

"Jesse will take over the family company when he's ready," Dad told me when he came over to deliver some food and pet supplies. "You should think of a place of your own for you and that snake."

"When he's fully adult, Saxon and I can move out," I told him, though I knew it took a long time for pythons to grow to their full size.

A few years went by. Saxon rested in his third new home, a thick chicken wire structure with a gate that I built myself. It took up much of the basement. Saxon measured twelve feet long now, his torso as thick as a man's. I fed him large rats which I kept in rows of cages in my old room upstairs. When he was dormant, I cleaned his cage, set up an old bath in one corner to bathe him in.

One day Jesse came to see me.

"Brother, you can't stay here with the snake forever," my brother told me. "You're twenty now. Don't you ever think of having a girlfriend?"

"I don't think of girls," I said. "My will is strong. I tend my friend in this house where I belong."

"Mom and Dad are going to sell," Jesse said. "They want me to help you move."

"They can't do that!" I yelled. "What'll happen to Saxon?"

"I've thought about this," Jesse said. "You could donate him to the zoo. Then you could take the bus down and see him every day. Heck, you could get a job there!"

"You said everyone finds a different reality." I told him. "My reality is here with Saxon."

"Listen," Jesse said. "It's not a different reality."

He walked to the other side of the room and brought over the old mirror I had there to watch my face from time to time.

"Look at us," he said, holding up the glass. "See how our faces are the same?"

I stared at our eyes. His were clear. Mine had turquoise flecks. His forehead clear of lines. Mine, deep creases.

"I don't understand," I said.

"I know the head exists for you," Jesse went on. "Remember, we used to share a room, when I was just a baby in the crib? I saw you throwing your bear, your precious things. I felt your torment from that head, heard you crying when your pet garter snake died. You needed a place to be in peace. But Mom and Dad can't support you forever." He stood up. "All your life you put into caring for Saxon. He's too big for you now. You need to be strong, use your will and find a different way to live."

That night I lay on my foamy on the basement floor and wept, Saxon motionless in the cage by my side.

"Jesse knew," I cried. "He knows how life has been for me."

My tears fell and the world swirled round me as I rocked myself from side to side. As I cried, a rancid odour rose around me, one I had not sensed in a decade. I turned to see the head rising from the side of Saxon's cage. It wasn't scared anymore! Its face opened wide as I heard its deep voice once again, "Give me, Give me!"

"Why aren't you afraid?" I whispered. "You were afraid of snakes!"

I heard Saxon's body bump against the cage. I turned on the flashlight at the side of my bed. Saxon raised his head and opened his huge cottony mouth. The face just grinned at my companion.

"Give me," it said.

But Saxon was powerful, and hungry, with a body that could crush a small animal easily, a mouth that could open up and swallow this head with ease.

I stood in the semi-darkness as the face grew level with me, I breathed the familiar sausage stench, saw the spittle on its glistening bottom lip. I turned off the flashlight and moved towards the cage gate. Moonlight fell through the small window on the upper wall as I threw back the gate.

"I give you," I told the head.

The head, emanating its own yellow glow, floated through the cage opening, Saxon looked up as the head's mouth opened. Saxon's mouth gaped too, wider and wider. His torso slithered forward. The head dropped to the floor to meet him. The insides of both their mouths glittered.

Who would win? I thought of Jesse holding up the mirror that afternoon. Yes, we were brothers, but we were different. He was of the light, and I was of the dark. Saxon and the head were grotesquely similar. Saxon in the real world of the wild, to eat or be eaten, the head erupting from my own dreams. Was it right for me to pit the head against Saxon? I remembered what I yelled to the floating face many years ago, "You exist only if I let you."

Why was I allowing it to rise again? And this time, what strength it had obtained, to overcome its fear of serpents!

I rubbed my hands against the side of my face, faster and faster, as the head and Saxon struggled to swallow each other. The basement whirled around me and I crashed against the cage. It was time to act, or time to surrender! My own mouth opened, and I leaped forward, fastened my suddenly humungous jaws around the back of the head and bit as hard as I could. The head screamed, bulged and split. The front half fell into Saxon. Half the nose, half the mouth, half the eye socket. I swallowed my part, face to face with my python, the edge of its mouth white as bleach, and I knew now that half of the head lay in him, and half lay in me.

I fell back, slamming the cage door and the fastener shut as I felt what I'd eaten squish and slide down inside me.

Saxon's glittery eyes stared out like stones as I lay on the floor. A bulge moved down his neck. Now I knew why the head feared the snake. Saxon, ruthless, without emotion, without the foolish empathy I had as a child when I tossed the face anything it desired. I was now the hard man, like my dad always wanted. I'd connected mouth to mouth with the snake and swallowed my part of the tormenting demon.

I would not flinch from what must be done next. Saxon must have his freedom too, for I'd found my way to be. I would open the door and let my snake go. Then, I needed to move into the real world just like him. My father would be proud. I stared at the side of my head in the mirror, opened my mouth and bared my fangs.

"Give me," I commanded.