Chapter 2 #2
Floy was at Edison’s Eats, plowing his way through pancakes and sausage links, unaware his wife had just abdicated her wifely throne.
After he had eaten his fill, he went downtown to the little AT&T store to replace the phone he’d lost in the creek.
He picked out another Android because he knew how they worked and then sat down to wait while they located his account on the AT&T cloud to upload his info and photographs back into the new one.
By the time everything had been said and done, two hours had passed of still not knowing where Elvis was or what mayhem was still in progress. It was like playing Russian roulette without control of the gun.
He tried to find Razor and Beau, but they’d gone AWOL on him. The nail gun they used to play darts with at the Beers and Cues bar was missing, which meant they had no plans to return to town anytime soon.
By the time three o’clock rolled around, clouds had begun to gather. Elvis wasn’t going to suffer getting rained on, but Floy’s clothes were finally dry, and he didn’t want to wear wet pants again. They chafed the inside of his thighs.
It was broad daylight, and he couldn’t believe Elvis had gone this long unnoticed. None of this made any sense. The python was ten feet long—a distinctive golden yellow python, and he still couldn’t understand how a snake that big and colorful could just disappear.
Bothered by the incoming weather, his wife’s unexplained drama, and his buddies who’d gone AWOL on him, he went home, as fed up as he’d been in years.
He needed to wash the clothes Mayrene had thrown into the bean juice and get some clean underwear from their bedroom.
He was ready to take the bedroom door off its hinges if he had to. Her melodrama had gone on long enough.
The first clap of thunder happened just as Floy shoved the house key in the lock and turned it. He glanced over his shoulder at the dark, rolling clouds and then bolted inside just ahead of the unleashed rain peppering against the door behind him.
The interior silence didn’t register until he tossed his keys on the kitchen island, noticed the shopping bag full of snack foods, and the empty shelves in the pantry. When he saw one of her slippers lying near the back door, he frowned. It was all too quiet.
Mayrene always had the TV on during the day—for the company, she said. He glanced in the sink. The dirty dishes were still there. He opened the dishwasher. It was empty. Then he heard water running somewhere down the hall, but not a shower. Not the sound of filling a bathtub. More like a leak.
“What the hell,” he muttered, and headed down the hall.
What he hadn’t expected was the open door of their bedroom, or the tangled bedclothes.
Then he saw her phone sticking out from beneath the sheets, and the water running in the bathroom across the hall.
He turned off the trickle of water and went back through the house, but Mayrene was nowhere to be found.
He thought of the house slipper by the back door.
His heart skipped. What if she’d gone out to get a beer?
What if she’d slipped on the step and fallen?
He yanked the door open and saw her other shoe on the porch.
He pushed the screen door open and bent down to retrieve it, then looked out through the downpour and saw Elvis instead.
All ten feet of him—stretched out across the yard with a bulge in his belly the size of a . . .
Floy froze. It was the blast of rain blowing in his face that unlocked the shock.
‘NO, NO, NO”, he groaned, but as he turned to run back into the house to call the cops, he ran headlong into the partially open screen door instead.
A blinding pain shot right between his eyes as he fell backward, knocking himself out.
The only witness to the event was Elvis, who viewed it with complete disinterest—too busy digesting to bother.
It was a huge clap of thunder, followed by a lightning strike too close to the house, that brought Floy back to his senses. He opened his eyes, wondering why he was lying on the back porch with a throbbing headache.
Then he felt something wet running down near his ear and swiped, thinking it was from the blowing rain.
But when his fingers came away bloody, he sat up and reached for his forehead.
There was a crease down the middle, all the way to the bridge of his nose, that had never been there before.
And now, because he was sitting upright, blood dripped in his eyes and down his face.
He rolled over onto his knees to get up, and that’s when he saw Elvis again, lying in the downpour.
Memory flooded. He leaped to his feet and ran out into the rain, throwing his arms around the massive lump in complete despair.
Sobs were ripping up his throat, rain mixing with gushing tears.
He was shaking uncontrollably, certain that his tiny little wife had just been swallowed whole.
The python didn’t move. Didn’t react. It was doing what big-ass snakes do when they’ve just been fed. Digesting.
Blood and tears were mixing with the rain now and running into Floy’s eyes as he finally turned loose of Elvis, stumbling and falling and getting back up, trying to get to the house, then stumbling again because he couldn’t feel his legs.
Finally, he reached the back porch, fell into the kitchen, and found his phone.
Stuart Watts, the dispatch officer at the Blackjack Police Department, answered.
“Blackjack P.D., Officer Watts speaking.”
Floy was on his knees because his legs wouldn’t hold him, kneeling in a forming puddle of water dripping from his hair and clothes. Spit and sobs were coming out with every word.
“This is Floy Beaudine. Oh God . . . I need help. I think Elvis ate my wife.”
It had to be said that, for a moment, Stuart Watts felt puke at the back of his throat before he quickly cleared it.
“Floy, what is your location?”
“My house! My house! Mayrene is missing, and Elvis is out in the backyard with a bulge in his belly the size of Dallas.”
“I’m dispatching assistance,” Watts said. “Stay on the line with me while I—” The line went dead. “Lord, Lord,” Stuart muttered, dispatched an ambulance and all four of the officers on duty, then ran down the hall to the chief’s office.
For the last fifteen years, Lowell Arnold had served as the police chief in Blackjack. Other than drunks, the occasional family disputes, and natural disasters, his job had been simple—until today.
Watts burst into the chief’s office without knocking, and from the look on the officer’s face, Chief Lowell Arnold guessed that whatever he was about to announce couldn’t be good.
Watts was in the throes of a cold sweat. “Floy Beaudine just called. He’s in hysterics. His missing snake is back, stretched out in their backyard with a huge bulge in his belly, and Floy says Elvis ate Mayrene. Swallowed her whole. I’ve dispatched all four officers to the scene.”
“The hell you say,” the chief mumbled, then stood up, grabbed his hat and his raincoat, and headed out the door.
Rain was coming down in a steady, windless curtain as he jumped into his cruiser and headed out of town. Technically, this might fall under the auspices of the Sheriff’s department, but they’d work out those details later.
Tex and Dub were the two officers who arrived on scene first. The front door stood ajar, and Floy was lying on his side in the kitchen floor because that’s where his legs had gone out from under him.
He’d curled up like a dying dog, his body shaking, his hands over his tear-stained face, and a low, continuous moan coming up his throat.
Neither officer knew what to do about Floy, and they were both afraid to face the snake. “Where?” Tex asked.
Floy took a deep breath and exhaled the word, “Backyard.”