A Game for Madame Snake
“Yissss,” hissed the snake, hot in pursuit of a meagre little mouse, “soon you will be my lunch.”
“No,” squeaked the mouse, “let me be! I have a wife and children.”
“I don’t care.”
So the mouse scurried with all their worry, but Madam Snake did not tire easily. She could slither all day, her limbless body swaying side to side, shifting in shape and pushing her ahead with the propulsive force of an angry locomotive.
It had been a long chase through many hallways, escalators, and other such places. It had begun recently when Madam Snake, at last, broke out of her glass case at the pet shop and swallowed her way through the inventory of small rodents. It had been a ghastly sight, with few survivors. Thankfully, the mouse was able to distract Madam Snake from eating his six sweet little children and his darling wife, using himself as a distraction. But now, the chase through the mall had gone on long enough. The mouse’s little feet were beginning to cramp, and he knew if he didn’t think quickly, then his luck was at an end.
Through the mall, they had arrived at a strange place. An unfamiliar, human-made space full of disorienting, repetitive melodies and blindingly bright lights. It was too much for the mouse to take in, and he thought at that moment that he might be losing his mind. On the surface of a tall, colorful box with a vivid illustration of a Martian spaceship, the mouse noticed a small perforation he could easily fit into. Without a moment’s hesitation, he snuck into it, hoping he could evade the snake’s unwavering fangs. But it was only moments before Madam Snake arrived at this very box, and without failure she followed him through this little black hole, sliding into it.
What struck her immediately about this place was how immensely dark it was. She could only feel her way through what was obviously an elaborate configuration of cogs and wires that scraped against her patterned scales with a cool sensation of rigidity.
“What are you playing at, little mouse? I will catch you very soon indeed.”
And as if on cue, this snarky little remark preceded a very sudden and earth-shattering blow to Madam Snake’s scheming head. She could feel the gelatinous matter of her reptile mind jiggle with the concussive force of a smacking platform at the bottom of a pent-up spring.
She had no clue as to what was going on, but she was now being catapulted through a dizzying cascade of strange, unfamiliar sights, smacking and rubbing on plastic bumpers in a flat, claustrophobic space, each impact suddenly ricocheting her to another side of this cacophonous labyrinth. As her head bounced about, corner to corner, it always took the rest of her long curving body a second to catch up with it. Before she knew it, the snake was stretched from top to bottom, all across this configuration, filled with miniature figurines shaped like little grey aliens and astronauts with guns. They seemed to gyrate in her direction depending on where she went. And all around her was the sound of bells and chimes bleating in an unceasing soundtrack of jubilation. It was like the bell she used to hear back at the pet shop whenever a new human arrived to check out the place and stare right into her imprisoned, frustrated face. That frequent sound of the ‘welcome in’ chime, which had so long become ingrained into her psyche as a source of annoyance, was now suddenly playing louder and repetitively all around her. She was being shaken and pushed around so much that she completely lost any semblance of comprehending reality. She seemed lost in a flurry of sensory overload when, out of nowhere, she looked up and saw a familiar face glaring down at her– it was the face of the pet shop proprietor, looking down at her like the face of God, pointing down at Madam Snake towards a pimply teenager right beside him. And that’s when a mallet flew down from the heavens and cracked open the sky. A sheet of glass shattered into a rainstorm of imprecise shards. The proprietor’s hand reached out and grabbed Madam Snake.
She was now in his grasp, looking around, trying to make sense of her surroundings. She was so disoriented that she suddenly had to barf out all the contents of her belly. Like some of the toy dispensers nearby, she unloaded an entire cast of frightened rodents, all covered in slime and saliva. They looked around in relief to see that they were all still alive, trying to wipe themselves clean on the strangely patterned carpeted floor of this dying arcade.
“Madam Snake, how did you get here?” asked the astonished proprietor.
And as Madam Snake groaned and slowly regained consciousness, she looked back at the tiny little hole she had initially entered. The little mouse emerged from the coin slot of this pinball machine and gave her a wink before running back to his family.
