Slither

What I remember most are his eyes. They were narrow, deep-set, and when matched with his bronzed skin and high cheekbones, he reminded me of a snake. At first, I found this intriguing, though not particularly attractive. Now, his features linger, forever a part of the tepid nostalgia of youth.

He was introduced as Shane. Shane was tall and lanky, and dressed himself in clothes that drowned his bony frame. He was the boyfriend of a friend’s relative, and therefore invited to our small party. The others vouched for him, and I took them at their word. After a few hours, the group parted ways. My friend’s relative stayed at their house, and the remaining four of us decided to go out and keep the night going. Shane had a prescription for Xanax, and as we would later discover, only offered it to my female friend and me. I had never taken pills before, but in my angst and recklessness, I was willing to try anything.

Not realizing how long it takes for these things to kick in, I declared that I was not feeling anything and insisted on taking one more. Shane stared at me a moment, asked if I was sure, reached into the bright orange bottle. By the time we made it to my house, my body felt crushed beneath its weight. But my mind was convinced I could accomplish anything. Despite protests from the others, I stepped out of the car and stumbled toward my door with a braided gait, each foot landing lazily in front of the other as if my shoes were caked with cement. I “walked” into my home, attempted conversation with my mother, and haphazardly stomped my way back to the car. I swung the door open and fell into the seat next to Shane. The next hour or so is completely black, though I have been told that in that time we stopped to get beer, and were dropped off at the Red Hill Motel-- a seedy spot on the outskirts of downtown Conway. Apparently the motel clerk saw Shane, my female friend, and I come in but questioned nothing. It’s not a surprise-- that’s how things go in that part of town.

I woke up to a fog billowing around my face. I found that I was lying in a cheap motel room on an even cheaper mattress, surrounded by walls stained by age and nicotine. To my right, my best friend was in a deep sleep. To my left, Shane leaned up against the headboard. Smoke from a freshly lit joint curled out of his mouth. My head was only marginally clearer than it had been earlier in the night, but the heaviness in my limbs remained, unaffected by the little bit of sleep that I’d managed to obtain. His dry thin lips met mine and, in my haze, all I could think of was his girlfriend.

“What about Nikki?”

Shane shushed me, sat me up, and coaxed me off the bed. He helped lift me to my feet, placed a gentle hand on the small of my back and led me toward an open patch of floor at the foot of the bed. He laid me down onto the musty carpet, face hollowed by the cold blue streetlight peeking through a gap in the dusty curtains. As he tugged at my favorite pair of jeans, I asked again.

“What about Nikki?”

He hissed at me. The gentleness with which he’d guided me off the bed was rapidly fading. He ran his hand between my legs, testing the reaction of my body. Satisfied, he placed himself inside of me. He thrusted once, twice, and a third time, his force growing weaker with each push. He stopped, pulled himself out, and looked off to the side, visibly frustrated. He chastised me for bringing up Nikki, and after a few moments of grumbling, he stood to his feet, pulled his baggy pants up to his bony hips and shuffled into the bathroom. I heard droplets of rushing water crash into the tub and knew that he was done with me. My weighted limbs struggled to redress me, and they fought even harder to drag my body across the thin carpeting. Sloppily, I climbed back onto the bed and saw my friend was still asleep and unaware.

The shower knobs squeaked from behind the bathroom door. Droplets slowed, then stopped, and after a bit of rustling, Shane walked out of the bathroom, got into the bed, back turned toward me. Nauseated but grateful to finally be left alone, I fell asleep quickly.

The morning after, my friend and I found ourselves on the side of Highway 501, walking with Shane back to his house. Our friend planned to pick us up from there, but until that friend arrived, we spent an awkward hour or two sitting in Shane’s living room watching reruns of MTV Cribs and Pimp My Ride. The three of us spoke only when necessary. We met his father, who did not seem to question why his nineteen-year-old son was with two young looking girls so early in the morning. In the days following, I confided in my friends about what happened. I apologized to Nikki, feeling shame for my promiscuity, and lamenting over the notion that I had “accidentally” let her boyfriend have sex with me.

Nikki promptly broke up with Shane and told me that she had a feeling that he was going to attempt to pursue me that night. We didn’t see much of the shifty eyed boy after that, save for one afternoon a couple of years later when we saw him walking around his neighborhood with a girl who looked to be as young as I was the night l met him.

I pushed the incident further into my mind. The topic would come up on occasion, but it usually ended as quickly as it began. I got a job with a commute that passed the motel twice a day, six days a week until I quit. Some days, I couldn’t help but look at the motel as I drove by. Other days, I made it a point not to. I had friends that lived in the same neighborhood as Shane, though I could never remember which street his house sat on.

Five years later, at twenty-one, something clicked and the yellow-tinged walls of the Red Hill Motel pushed their way into my musings. For the first time, I was looking at the situation through a perspective I failed to grasp in my adolescence. Reality came crashing in and I felt both enlightened and broken. I relayed my revelation to the friend who had dropped us off at the motel and picked us up at Shane’s the next day-- only for him to take on a bewildered expression and ask what I thought had taken place. His reaction made me think back to other times I talked to people about that what happened with Shane, all those moments in which they’d tried to get me to realize the memory for what it was, every occasion that I refused to look at it as anything other than a consequence for my lack of virtue. In the same breath, he divulged that Shane had died in a car crash a few years after that night in the motel. I’d only begun to sort through years of denial just a handful of hours before our conversation and was unsure of how to process this unforeseen chapter. I told anyone that would listen about my discovery, but peace was elusive.

I heard the same things about Shane’s death: “Good riddance”, “He won’t hurt anyone else”, “Karma’s a bitch”. For me, glee nor despair seemed to fit but apathy was not a fair descriptor either. Reflections on that night shifted through my mind and after an exhausting couple of days, I picked up a bottle of cheap wine and scoured the internet for the Final Tale of the Snake-Faced Boy. I came across a short article about a head-on collision on a deserted country road in the dark, early hours of the day. According to the news piece, the other driver swerved into the wrong lane, hit Shane, and died on impact. Shane was rushed to the hospital and died from his injuries a few hours later. The page listed Shane’s full name, which I used to hunt down his obituary. I choked down the bitter wine and clicked the link. Shane’s picture sat solemnly at the top of the page, and it was the first time I had seen him --really seen him-- since the day I left his house. His eyes carried the same vacant gaze. His face, unsmiling, stared back at me from the other side like it knew who I was, as if it remembered the taste of my stiffened lips and the feel of my skin underneath fingertips unwelcome, a face that still looked annoyed with me for asking “What about Nikki?”.

Most of the comments were left by his father, mourning the loss of his “sweet baby boy”. There were a few from a girl declaring her love for him, and more that described him as a polite young man, a gentleman full of respect. Their memory of him would be nothing more than a vibrant young life ended too soon, their “baby boy” who died a tragic death on a long and lonely highway. But for me, his death was the end of a string of reckless decisions, a situation of his own making, an event that threatened to knock me from my path to closure. I read over the obituary again and considered leaving a comment of my own, one that would challenge all those tender recollections. I decided instead to let the dead be dead. My quarrels were with him, not those who loved him.

I chugged the rest of my bottle of wine and stepped off to the bathroom. I undressed, somewhat reluctantly, turned the knob, and gingerly set foot into the tub. The droplets that bounced off the surface beneath my feet echoed the droplets I heard from the other side of the motel room’s bathroom door but I refused to take myself from beneath the water. These roaring bullets were not the same as the ones from that night, and I would not, could not, let Shane and the coldness of his face take any more than what had already been devoured. I let the hot water run the soap from my body, dried off, and went to bed, drained and numb.

I awoke in a fit of tears and anger. The weight of five years came rushing down during my rest, and I was consumed by grief and guilt. Why, I wondered, had it been so hard for me to accept? My mind tricked itself to spare my heart from breaking, only for it to shatter on its own precious timeline. In my desperation, I tried to call the crisis hotline for the county I lived in only to find that the number was disconnected. It was nearing time for me to go to work, so I did what I’d been doing all these years: pulled it in, pushed it down, and kept it moving. Life demanded my attention, so I set my pain aside for a rainy day.

The shape of Shane litters every part of this piece. The crook of his nose is in every sweeping letter, the angles of his face in every long stroke, and the narrowness of his eyes lives in every line that begins to run out of room. Experiences are eager specters, demons in a space where misfortune runs abound. These ghouls stalk the corridors of our hearts and are likely to remain a part of who are. Even when we cast them into the dungeon, they remain inside the castle.

I’ve spent a long time dismantling the memory of Shane. Shame lingers too, floating through the slivers of empty space it can find in my chainmail-- though I feel its blade dull further with every swipe it takes. Memory is a fickle mistress with a stare both seductive and destructive, but the more we dance, the easier it is for me to spin her in pleasing ways. Even in those moments when she brings me no peace, my voice remain intact.