Boar and Snake
A short short story written with the painting Hogs Killing a Snake by John Stewert Curry in mind.
Painting by John Stewart Curry
Harpocrates was the name of the thing, the thing no one assumed was there because assumptions are dependent on a knowledge of a things existence but that, regardless and in spites of assumptions, was present always, existing and enacting its purpose; balancing on city lampposts and car rooftops and engines and bus stops and the tops and bottoms of shoes and the back and fronts of teeth and in hands and coffee shops and train stations and trains and within random blinking lights that mutely screamed with their blinks, ‘I make sound! I DO!’; Harpocrates had shape – a twisting shape with the rough outline of a semi-shadow lying on its back and staring up at the sky with its shape of a tongue held between its teeth to prevent it from ever wiggling – and used it to cover all the things it could reach within the boundary of what was already the bordered area of a large town, laying on the faces and movements of others and things, muting and booting the sounds those faces and movements could have made into non-existence; Harpocrates was happy and comfortable and purposeful and couldn’t remember a time it hadn’t been but then, as things usually go, they were no longer happy and comfortable and purposeful because not outside the shadow of their shape but also not affected by it were a boar and a snake fighting in a decidedly noisy way.
“This is nice, all this biting and groaning and hissing,” Boar – a strange size, somewhere between an elephant and an ostrich – shouted at Snake – an even stranger size, between a car and a fire hose.
“Nice doesn’t even come close to it,” Snake agreed, forked tongue of purplish pink flickering out to lightly lap at the hide of Boar that bristled in response as its tusks attempted to tusk the brains of its licking companion out.
“Did you know that if I put a hoof right here,” Boar positioned themselves to be able to cover the very tip of Snake’s tail with their cloven thing. “And press down like so,” Boar pressed down like so. “You will let out your version of a scream and I’ll grunt approvingly but also painfully because you’re my friend?”
“Did you know that even as I do my version of a scream my mouth will be spread wide because it will already be in the process of fastening itself to you?” Snake did their version of a scream, slivering in a perfect circle in spite of its trapped tail with its mouth opened wide. “Also that as I inject my teeth into your buttock,” Snake injected its teeth into Boar’s buttock. “You will bellow and thunder the ground and release my tail where on I shall strike at your eye before you make your own move in turn.”
Harpocrates grew with the speed of light and shadow and tried to throw its shape even heavier down on Boar and Snake but was repelled in the midst of trying away and with sound; a boing thwap sounding that reduced some outer parts of its shape into fragments that resembled scraps of paper rising from flames and already well on their way to becoming ash; Harpocrates looked for the ones it still covered and held so close in its coverage they were a part of it, looking to comfort them at this moment of upmost change, but they weren’t frantic or running mutely in circles of fear or looking bewildered at the decidedly strange scene, rather they got on with their days as if nothing and nowhere was wrong.
“Ahh, you’ve taken my eye. Well, enjoy it, it’s my left one but still, it should serve well in your belly provided you stay strong and recover from this and even go on to finish me off,” Boar gave a semi-bow as they picked Snake up from the low of their body with its blunted teeth and swung them in the direction of a standing citizen who was busy rubbing their cheeks with the palms of their hands in the wing mirror of a stray car. “And trust me, believe in yourself as I believe in you. You can recover from this.”
“Do you think? Well, with your belief I actually agree. I really think I do. But it’s a hard thing, recovering from a swing like this,” Snake – half bent around the citizen who no longer stood but lay in a heap making guttural noises that seemed pained but that then stopped all seeming because they could hear the noise of their noise, and clearly too – slithered and writhed and flexed what it had. “But your eye does feel good in me. Look. Can you see its bulge?” Between its bleeding scales, Snake showed off the orbish shape within its middle, which flickered in several blind directions, before lunging with flashing fangs at the hanging flesh of Boar’s belly.
“There it is! You’re right! Look at that eye go, living in there. I wonder what it’s seeing. If it’s seeing. I’d close my remaining eye to see if it’s seeing but no battle was ever won by the half blind as they say,” Boar chuckled, lowering their tusks just in time to block the darting Snake’s head from arriving at the promised land of soft flesh that was their belly. “But see, I’m going to do something now that’s going to hurt you as much as me but also really aid me. I hope you don’t hold it against me.” Boar then did a series of complicated manoeuvres that resembled a bundle of sticks come to life and attempting to dance, managing through them to break off the right fang of Snake, which was the size of the diameter of a serving plate, and swallow it whole.
Harpocrates had something new thrust into it that shadowed the semi-shadowed semi-shape of it like a drop of blood in water and it was pain, physical and emotional, because they had lost a something of what had been theirs in the shape of the once standing but then fallen citizen who, even after Snake had left them be, was making their sounds, humming as they went on with their otherwise entirely normal day, stepping around the monstrously large animals like they weren’t what they were but what they weren’t, mere piles of excrement, and strolling towards a coffee shop; Harpocrates felt the new thing being thrust in like its shadow shape was a well a bucket was being repeatedly dropped into, and it didn’t like feeling that so, as it fragmented more, tried through a will power it had never possessed before to force the silent ones it still cloaked to notice the scene and then mimeishly react and force a semblance of itself onto the violently loud scene; the willpower Harpocrates had never possessed before didn’t become possessed in that moment, rather Harpocrates did nothing and nowt to enforce those it cloaked to notice anything, silently or not, and in fact at the very moment it tried Snake constricted around Boar and toppled them and they both hit – and robbed from Harpocrates with the hitting – a crowd of three who had been inaudibly blowing bubbles and laughing.
“Good God, that’s a tight hold chum! I can feel my ribs creaking and croaking. That fang I swallowed is pressing against my skin… ahh! Ahh! Ahhh! It’s popped through the skin!” Made audible with the collision, the crowd of three immediately got up and carried on their ways, separately, throwing down their bubbles but not their growing laughter and heading independently to the barbers, the fish mongers, and the pub while Boar wrestled out of Snake’s grip with a shake of the head. “But it’s a flesh wound so look out, because I’m coming for you now.” Boar stamped and caught a large chunk of Snake’s body that was lying in an unfortunately easily stampable position after having been removed mid-constriction. “Stamp stamp stomp.”
“Gahh, my middle! Gahhhhh,” Snake hissed with a twinkle in an eye that suddenly was not in its skull because the force of Boar’s stamps was building pressure within its body and, pop, out it flew like a fleshy cannon ball, causing sound to come from all the cloaked ones it brushed on its journey to the end of momentum, ripping them out from under the rug of Harpocrates but, like cars on a track, keeping them still in their daily routines. “But ohhh, though it hurts I’ll give you something that maybe will aid you in the pain you must be feeling from the wear and tear I’ve inflicted throughout the battle and it’s that that you’re removing years of backpain even though you’re killing me so thanks, thanks, thanks. I say thanks and I mean thanks even though I’m screwed now. Oh well and oh no.”
“Before you go, please,” Boar paused their final stomp before the vital spot that was the head of Snake, hoof hovering in the air and swinging lightly from side to side from the weight of it, toying with the flesh. “Recite me something, something from you Snake, something original and new, loud, let it ring around and lift from me the pain of the killing blow that surely will be like receiving a hug given too hard and too swift for it to be remotely comfortable and comforting.”
Snake tongue did flicker.
“THINGS THAT FEEL GOOD ON MY SLITHERING BELLY: grass; sand; gravel; glass; shadows; light; heat; cold; rocks; skin; deer; frog; ant; woodlice; earwig; cellophane; foil; paper; cracks; blue; green; yellow; hair; fur; music; cream; milk; udders; scarfs; coat; horses; whispers; mountains; cliffs; water; salt; pepper; Mexico; Uruguay; Chille; York: Sherwood: reefs; shrink wrap; lamination; resin; oak; pine; tile; marble; plank; chip; crisps; hearts; liver; kidney; Poughkeepsie; Boulder; boulders; buses; leather; alligator; teeth; bone; toes; hats; velvet; teats; donkey; magnifying glass; books; corduroy; denim; bark; plasma; radios; wire; steel; titanium; butter; flour; eggs; pepper; souffle; laces; polyester; you.”
Harpocrates had something else new shoved into it and that was fear and fear changed its shadowed shape into a reddish-white cloud barely material while Boar, who’s great head hung close to the floor with the weight of something aware of the machinations of mother earth when, really, such machinations were unknown to it and its head was just really heavy, laughed and wept in perfect synchronization; Harpocrates, in sheer desperation, began to stretch out as much as physically possible to spread its consciousness and increase the parameters of its influence, but the sounds emerging from even those it still theoretically cloaked weakened it to the point that it didn’t get very far at all because there are levels to weakness and, in the manner of a fish getting clenched far too tight in a triumphant fisherman’s fist and so reaching the peak of what its scales could hold in, it had reached one in which it could no longer hold any sort of large or small shape and so dissipated and poofed away before the great ocean approaching from underfoot, a rumbling of noise that came from the movements of the former cloaked going about their days without a single one casting a single eye in the direction of the spectacle of Boar finally bringing their trembling hoof down and roaring like a sigh – a great tear welling in their great eye and falling a great distance to an already squashed part of Snake, landing, beading, turning the muddy colour of thickly flowing blood – “Ahh! You’ve done me a great service Snake. I shan’t forget. Never. Now goodbye, goodbye.”