Floyd and the Humans

by Scott Taylor

floyd went forth, sliding on his belly.  he was a reptile of the most servile and cringeworthy sort, a serpent of snakelike proportions.  from the beginning his life on planet earth had consisted of ground-slithering and bottom-feeding and naught else, it had always been thus and always would be.  his entire existence was a farce.

sliding along sidewalks he came to an intersection.  it was one he knew well, one he'd slithered through many times before.  the people passing by were all well-dressed, wearing suits and skirts and whatnot.  the attire would have been unfit for a serpent of floyd's dimensions, even had he desired to bedeck himself in any of it.  which he did not.  the world bedeviled itself with all manner of chicanery; the ends failed to justify the means for floyd.  he preferred the ground.

so there he was at the familiar intersection.  left and right he glanced.  the lights changed colors.  a few of the suits moved forward and seizing the opportunity floyd followed suit, trailing along in their wake.  no tires would ever dare to tread upon the suited fellows, and therefore would never tread upon him either, provided he first inveigle himself into the safety of their (admittedly) unwelcome and unsettling company.  along the asphalt and up the curb and onwards to more peaceable environs, or to even less peaceable ones, as the case may be.  let the fickle fates decide.

floyd snuck into a sandwich shop.  the owner was large and rotund and female.  he rose his head up to the level of the glass countertop, a maneuver he'd learned from the cobras.  at this point a cobra would have begun to dance and sway and all that, but instead floyd spoke.

"i lack the funds for a sandwich, and yet i am hungry," he proclaimed in his whiny nasal voice.  "perchance could i purchase one on credit?  i have a money order due to arrive on tuesday and would be able to pay you back then."

"no money, no sandwich," the woman retorted.  "besides, we don't serve yer kind in here."

"perhaps i could snack on one of your rodents instead.  establishments such as this usually have a rodential problem of one sort or another; i could be of some assistance in the matter."

"gitcher ass outta here," the woman snarled.

floyd slithered back outside, back amongst the shoes and the tires and the sneering steaming hordes.  it was hard making your way in the world today; like the sitcom said, it took everything you got.  life had become so intolerable lately floyd wasn't even sure he would have minded a good tire up the backside - get it all over with in one split second, a bit of a scream and a flash of light and that was it.

up a few blocks and over another and there was a door.  the sign was too high up for him to read but he chanced it anyway and went inside.  there was a long counter and a row of stools, he curlicued around one of the posts and coiled himself up on the cushion.

"have you any beer?" he asked.

this woman looked similar to the last but had fewer pounds on her, fewer years as well.  all the humans looked alike, when it came right down to it.  there was almost no way of telling them apart.

"this isn't a bar," the woman said.  her hands were on her hips and she was grimacing, some sort of hostility brewing there.

"a coffee then, if you please," floyd said.

coffee was poured and coffee was brought, a little porcelain cup and little porcelain saucer.  floyd rose himself up and his little forked tongue began flickering away.  a couple of working class fellows were sitting next to him, two guys on their lunch break or something.  they had slitted eyes and big beefy fists.

"vermin," the first one said, too loudly.

"vermin, shmermin," floyd countered.  "verminous i am not.  a case of mistaken identity, if ever there was one."

a pair of young ladies walked in and sat down.

"do you have the time?" floyd asked the nearest one, a note of hope in his voice.

"not for you, pal," she said.

the hope died, as quickly as it had come.  the girls went about their business and floyd went about his.  from what he'd been able to make out, the human experience consisted mainly of insulting others and being insulted in turn.  they'd been attacking each other ever since their time swinging around in the trees and things had just basically never improved.  you couldn't kill anyone outright anymore and so you went around flinging insults and that served to scratch the itch instead.  it seemed to give them pleasure to be rude to one another and get away with it.  the dick-measuring just never abated.

floyd slurped up the rest of his coffee and slithered away while the lady wasn't paying attention.  he had no money and no place to put it even if he'd had any.  he figured they'd have trouble tracking down a snake, even if she did put in a complaint.  he wondered what the APB would even sound like.  'wanted, snake on the loose, of medium height and build.  fair scaled, speckled complexion.'  besides, it was just a cup of coffee.  they'd probably get over it.

he snuck onto the subway and went to visit his cousin sabine.  sabine was a middle-aged copperhead, on the svelte side.  she lived in an alleyway on the north side of town, up around 120th Street.  floyd found the right hole and slithered his way in and found that his cousin was out, but that she had left the light on.  he coiled up and waited.

a few minutes later sabine returned from her forays abroad.  it appeared she had gone on a hunting expedition, judging by the rather scrawny-looking mouse she had locked in her jaws.

"mice, mice and more mice," she groused as she deposited the critter in the corner and slid forward for a proper snake embrace, a twining of necks and flicking of tongues.  "and they're not even any good, they're always half starved themselves."

"the truth be spoken," lamented floyd.  "how goes your afternoon thus far?"

"same as always.  just a whole lot of slithering around.  trying to stay out of trouble, you know how it is."

"indeed i do."

there was a marked difference in the manner of speech of the two cousins, owing to the fact that they'd learned the language in decidedly different places, from entirely different sources - sabine by watching TV, floyd by reading a book of shakespeare he'd found lying around.  when they'd been growing up there really hadn't been much english spoken at all, back when they'd spent their days gliding through fields and wending through forests, back when they'd still been country snakes and not city ones.  floyd reminisced.  it had been five years since his dear old ma had passed, ten since pa had done the same.  wherever did the time go.

"any word from aunt patricia?" he asked.

"naw, not a peep.  still suffers from all that indigestion or whatever the humans call it.  you know her, she always goes overboard with the food - the last time she tried to eat a rat whole she just about burst herself at the seams."

"nay, not a practical one, our aunt patricia.  suffers not from what one might term an overabundance of common sense."

"but she's a nice old girl, hafta give her that.  always so cheerful and upbeat.  so whatcha been up to, floydie boy?  still got that scale rash you had last month?"

"naught but an unpleasant memory.  received no doubt from slipping and sliding through one of the more disreputable eating establishments in town.  or so goes my own theory."

"the humans are a dirty lot, they are."

"dirty, and despicable.  detestable in every way.  i rue the day we ever set eyes on this filthy nasty hellhole of theirs."

"you could always go back to westchester."

"tis much easier to dine here.  one grows accustomed to the convenience.  tis harder to go backwards than forwards, once you've gotten a taste of the betterment, the upgrade as it were - a maxim that holds true in a vast majority of situations."

"you're spoiled, floydie boy, that's what it is.  you're gettin' soft in your old age."

"indubitably, my dear.  indubitably."

floyd chatted with his cousin a few minutes more and then they said their farewells and floyd took his leave.  there had been no good reason for visiting, it had just been nice to see a familiar face.  snakes got lonely too, ya know.  the rest of the family had long since been scattered to the winds and sabine was just about the only one left to talk to.  pity, that.  the modern world was a sordid thing, with all its separations and bouncing around.

it wasn't until he was back on broadway that he spotted the rat.  it was a big sucker, way bigger than the ones he usually saw around those parts, and it looked mean too.  good, he was in the mood for a tussle, a bit of sport never hurt anyone.  besides he was hungry, he hadn't eaten in forever.  without money you couldn't do much.  floyd lay there salivating.  that big bastard he was watching scoot down the sidewalk would feed him for days, it would last him a week.  the chase was on.  floyd began slithering faster and his quarry, sensing the pursuit, took a quick detour and went down a side street, accelerating his pace.  floyd followed.  left, right, left, right, back and forth, this way and that.  the people fell away and soon it was just floyd and the rat.  the street was dark and deserted, nice and quiet, just the way floyd liked it.  he wondered where they were, somewhere in the village he thought.  maybe in soho.  the rat looked tired, he was scampering with a fair bit less gusto than when they'd started.  floyd saw the finish line and surged forward to claim his prize and wouldn't you know it, at the very last moment the fat bastard leapt through a doorway and ducked inside.

floyd was enraged, he was starving, he threw caution to the wind and continued the pursuit.  it turned out the place was a little chinese restaurant, the kind that offered takeout, with a short counter and a few tables off to the side.  briefly cornered, the rat did a feverish little dance, then spun on his heels and ran along the wall, making for the gap in the counter and the space beyond.  the girl working the register saw him and squealed.  one of the cooks came over and grabbed a nearby broom but was too late, the rat made it to the cluster of crap piled near the stove before he could be eradicated and vanished, disappearing without a trace.  floyd was less lucky, he was now stuck between a rock and a hard place, between the irate employees dancing around behind the counter and a pair of customers who had just come inside to grab some beef chow mein, an elderly couple who were busy ogling with mouths agape the serpent coiled on the floor and barring their way.

"this sucks," thought floyd to himself.  in moments of stress the shakespeare dropped away.  he rose up from his snakey haunches.  "an order of general tsao's chicken, if you please.  to go," he said.

the girl shrieked some more and the cook waved his broom around, they didn't speak any english, and weren't in the mood to take any orders even if they had.  the cook propelled himself forward into the customer area, brandishing his weapon like a bamboo staff.  with a battle cry he dove forward.  floyd dodged, then slithered around to a spot closer in towards the wall.  the cook followed with a mad gleam in his eye, fully ready to do murder.  all floyd had wanted was some food, the whole thing was insane, it was unjust, it was enough to make one go back to the country and stay there for good.  the cook struck once more and this time floyd evaded with a lunge forward instead of to the side, and whilst the man was off balance gave him a good solid bite on the ankle for his trouble.  sometimes their pants were too thick and the fangs didn't sink in all the way but this fellow was wearing a pair made of flimsy cotton and so there was no problem at all.  the guy screamed and so did everyone else and floyd fled, he got the hell out of there and darted down the street and kept going until he'd practically made it to the water, until he was almost clear down by the ferry.  god damn these humans, i mean what was wrong with them.  what were they going to do with the friggin' rat anyway, they were always trying to kill them themselves.  there was no spirit of cooperation amongst men or beasts or reptiles or anything else for that matter.  the gods were a hostile bunch, to have made creatures like this in their own image.  we were all going to die and this was how we wanted to spend our time waiting for it to happen - you'd figure we would have gotten together, helped one another along, gathered in the park and sung kumbayas or something like that, but no, it was war all the time, battle and rage and death all the way to the bitter end.  no one ever made it out of the jungle.  we were stuck in the dark ages, for good.

floyd sat on a wall and watched the water.  it was nighttime now and the lights were on, and the stars were out although no one could see them.  another thing the city had done, obliterated the very stars themselves, wiped them from the sky with the glare of their own inferior brand of illumination.  a cockroach went by and floyd grabbed it up and ate it.  he hated the things, they tasted like crap but what could one do.  beggars couldn't be choosers.  he fought it down and resumed his seagazing.  he wished he were a fish, or a bird, or some critter capable of an improved form of locomotion.  he wanted to go across the water, to india or burma or something like that.  they had even more people over there but maybe they were nicer.  a few of them had to be, at least.  he watched the waves, considered the clouds, listened to the sounds of the night.  the racing of rats had run its course, he wanted more.

BIO: Scott Taylor hails from Raleigh, North Carolina. He is a writer and a musician, and an avid world traveler. His short stories and poetry have appeared in numerous print and online publications, including Vast Chasm, Adelaide Literary, Unlikely Stories, Literary Hatchet and Swifts and Slows. His novels 'Chasing Your Tail' and 'Screwed' have been released with Silver Bow Publishing, and his novellas 'Freak' and 'Ernie and the Golden Egg' are slated for inclusion in an upcoming anthology with Running Wild Press. He graduated from Cornell University and was a computer programmer in a past life." https://hound33.wixsite.com/scotttaylor