Snake House

I was wandering through my old house, the one I grew up in. It was empty and abandoned, an unfurnished place stripped of furnishings and carpets, with bare walls and no curtains over the windows. Bedrooms which had once seemed crowded with clutter and toys were now empty, cavernous expanses.

My bedroom and my sisters' room were at the top of the stairs. My brother's room was a little further along the landing, and my parents' bedroom was right at the end.

Between the rooms was a corridor between the rooms, connected through a door at the far end to the doors at the top of the stairs, hanging unsupported between the rooms. That corridor was a sort of walk-in closet where both of us shoved our unwanted old toys.

Today, though, I found the toys from both my childhood and my sisters' childhood ... and something else.

A rattlesnake.

I think it had been abandoned somehow. It lived up in this connecting corridor, and had survived through feeding off vermin somehow. The snake advanced upon me and attempted to bite my arm. I held it by the back of its head, until it stopped squirming, and I held it gently but firmly, crooning and stroking the back of its head until it finally got the message that I was not a threat - and, in fact, I could free it. Wrapping it about my shoulders so it could share my body's warmth, I walked out of the house with it, into the sunlight and the fresh air.

This is not my first snake dream. Last time, it was a black mamba - this time, a rattler. Always, the snake is a venomous one, rather than one of the great big honking constrictor types.

I guess the next time, it'll be the big one. A King Cobra.