Chocolate Bayou

There are things in the swamp that you do not want to know about. Some slither, many crawl, and most are harmful to bumbling humans who wander amongst them, unaware. We don’t need to add monsters, or the supernatural effects that our minds come up with just to scare us; there is already enough there to do the job. For example…

Down along Chocolate Bayou, Bubba Whitehead kept a hunting shack that he and his pals liked to use from time to time. For years they had been coming there to party, mostly. When Bubba’s granddaddy passed away during his senior year in high school, Bubba had inherited the small acre and a half situated right along the dark waters of the bayou. The weeds grew wild and tall around the place, none of the boys had ever been motivated to do any landscaping, and Bubba’s wife, the stripper formerly known as Sassy, in her hay-day, took even less interest in the place. She had never seen it.

On the evening in question, the night the Bubba disappeared, he sat out on the screen porch, nursing his buzz while contemplating his life. The boys were all inside; they had talked a couple of the girls from the topless club into coming down after hours. Like most times, it was a pretty wild scene in there, but Bubba was not interested, at the moment.

Eloise, that’s Sassy’s real name, had left a message on his cell phone that he had only just listened to. “Hey, Bubba, by the time you get this, I’ll be long gone. I’ve had it, Bubba. I don’t love you no more. You’re too fat and you don’t give a damn about anything I care for. I’m outta here…” had been the gist of it.
With all the trouble they had been having, constant arguments and bickering over just about everything, he had begun to think about how he could get out of the marriage. It had started out as a drunken joke anyhow. But a plane ride to Vegas, and a bad, two-day hangover had ended with them hitched together like a badly paired set of mules.

He had been proud to have such a pretty wife. She was all fixed up: breast augmentation and lots of other procedures, most of which he had paid for, to turn her into a living, albeit plastic sex doll. It had all been like a wild fantasy come true, for Bubba. At first, he had spent a lot of time counting his lucky stars. Then the bitching had started, not long after he had sunk himself into a heavy mortgage to go along with the payments on new pick up trucks as well as his tournament caliber bass boat. He did not care so much about the financial strain; hell he had money to burn.

She had insisted on top-of-the-line furnishings and was always buying new clothes. Whenever he pissed her off about something, which was pretty much all the time, it usually took a few grand to smooth things over. As long as it got him laid, he really did not care all that much about it. When it got too rough, he could always come out here and listen to the swamp at night: the gators croaking, the crickets and cicadas chirping.

The voice mail had left him feeling low. The fact that he had been trying to figure out just how he could get out of the relationship played no part in his feelings. That Eloise had made the move first, is what bothered him, but he had no reason for it that he could think of. Thinking, for Bubba was not much fun. Hard thinking, anyhow.

Now, his head was hurting, and surprisingly, his heart did too.
~
It had been a perfect day, for a snake...

The moccasin had grown fat over the last two years. Eight inches around its middle, it had grown thick on nutria rats and squirrels. The little nest of red squirrel babies that it had consumed that afternoon had left it glutted, languid and docile. The reptile had drawn itself out onto an overhanging limb to sun, and now that the wee hours had come, the cool of the evening was forcing it to find someplace warmer to finish out the night.

The snake let its senses feel the area around him, perking when it noticed a large area of warmth just below the limb. That the warmth came from Bubba Whitehead’s vintage ’71 GTO, the snake could care less. It hated to plop that far down. Ever since it had grown so large, plopping tended to hurt. But, growing cold hurt more, so plop it did, right onto the vinyl roof; its head dangled over the side, where it found an open window. It was very warm in there, heat radiated nicely, so the snake slid through, moving down to the floorboards, which were so warm is was down right perfect. It rippled and coiled, pushing under some beer cans and other human stuff under the seats. In no time at all, the snake went into his sleep mode, with his auto-sensors probing the air around for anything moving, or interesting to eat.
~

Despondent, Bubba left the shack and walked out to his car. He had decided to just ride on back into town. More than anything else, he wanted to see if Eloise was really gone, of if she was just trying to pull his chain again. It was not the first time she had threatened to leave.

His GTO sat where he had left it. Looking at his parking job made Bubba wonder at just how drunk he had been when he parked it there. The car was wedged between some of the trees out front; he had apparently had to make a few turns to wind his way down in there, ignoring his sandy drive and parking area where everyone else’s vehicles were.

In the dark, he walked around his baby, checking here and there to make sure he had not sideswiped anything, letting go a sigh once he was satisfied that it was still pristine. The Pontiac had taken him over two years, and quite a lot of money to restore to showroom quality. He planned to keep it that way. At least the car was not about to call him and leave any voice mails about how she no longer wanted him to drive her…

As soon as he sat his three hundred forty-six pounds into the front bucket, Bubba thought he smelled something odd in the car, something foul, almost stale. It was the sort of smell he had come to associate with water moccasins when he and the boys were out frog gigging. But that, he reasoned in his still drunken state, was a ridiculous idea. It had to be something one of the guys had spilled, or even something one of the strippers had brought with them. He figured he would take it to be detailed later.

The GTO started right up, as she always did. The dual exhaust throbbed as he gunned the 350 a couple of times. Then, he closed his door and put it in reverse. Looking in his rearview, he could not tell just how he needed to back out. Using his side mirrors, he could see how the little ally between the trees seemed to cut away to his right, so he slowly reversed and once he was at the turn point, he cut the wheel, a little too hard. His right-side mirror almost swiped a tree trunk. He made a fast suck of air as he realized what had almost happened. Then watching through that mirror, he proceeded to back out and turn, at which point he smashed the other mirror and dragged a sickening, screeching gash down his passenger-side fender and door panel. “Dang!”

He did not even want to get out and look. It had sounded bad enough; like another two thousand bucks worth of repair work for his buddy Manny, down at the shop he had used to restore the car. He popped open the tallboy beer can he had been holding between his legs and took a long pull. “What’s done is done…”

He backed on out, finally reaching a point where he could cut and turn around to head off of his property.

The road was still pretty rutted from the last big rainstorm. His tires bumped and made the whole car throb and vibrate. He heard something hiss, but had just cut on his stereo. Kenny Chesnee was blasting out of his speakers. Cutting down the volume, Bubba listened closely, trying to determine what had made the sound. When he sped up again, he heard it again. When he slowed, it did not happen. “What the hell?”

Since he already had to take the car in for the big dent he figured the hiss was not going to stop him from driving, so he gunned it. The vibrations returned with the bad road surface, but that would only last another mile or so. He knew once he had crossed the little wood bridge over the small bayou, he would be back on gravel, then the pavement would pick up after a mile or so of that.

The hissing got louder. Bubba tried not to pay attention to it as he blasted down the road; a rooster-tail of dust flew up behind him, it shown red in the wash from his taillights.
~

The snake was confused. For all of its life, it had kept away from human stuff. Had it not been for the warmth it was in, it would have exited as soon as it sensed the beer cans and other crap under the seat. The big human had squashed the seat down pretty well, but had not bothered the snake to that point. It was willing to live and let live, so long as it was not further disturbed. But, when the vibrating started again, the snake started to give out its warnings.

~

Bubba heard the hiss again. He had his beer to his lips, trying to drain it and watch the road at the same time. It was in this position that he heard the hiss and realized that it sounded a lot like a snake. But a snake in the car? That was awful preposterous. He finished his beer, crushed the can and dropped it on the floorboard behind his right foot, then he took his foot from the pedal and shoved the can back under the seat. That was when he felt the pain.

~

The snake had no choice. The human had not only disturbed it again, but had invaded its space. It struck out at the leg of the human, catching its fangs in the fatty part of the calf, sinking them deep and retracting in a fluid, seamless movement. Quickly it coiled and readied, probing the air around it for another attack to defend against. When the vibrations became worse, and the human’s legs began to kick wildly, the snake waited for the best time, took aim at the heat-signature of the human’s leg, and struck again, this time painfully loosing one of its fangs in the leather at the top of the human’s boot.

~

Bubba was going out of his mind with terror. The suddenness of the attack, from under his very seat, had redoubled his panic over snakes in the first place. He did not mind them so much, out in nature. But, when one surprised him, his first reaction was one of horror. This was his worst nightmare coming to life right under his feet!

“Oh god!” He swerved wildly to the right, lifting his feet up, as best he could. His enormous bulk prevented much wiggle room, even with the seat so far back that few could sit behind him. “Oh god in heaven!”

His panic was so intense that he felt his heart trying to jump out of his throat. The burning in his leg was like he had just dropped a hot coal down his pants. He tried to reach down there and touch the bite, but then remembered the snake and drew back. That’s when he felt the second strike hit him, just below the first, right at the top of his boot. Now the pain swirled through him like mad. His vision blurred and his head began to pound.

Suddenly remembering that he was also traveling at a high rate of speed down a tiny, poorly surfaced dirt road, he looked up to see where he was. He had to yank the wheel hard to his right, avoiding the bar ditch on the left. But that caused the GTO to fishtail.

The attempt to correct his steering only managed to force another severe slide, this time to the right. Up ahead, the tiny wood bridge funneled the road down to a single lane. Looking down at his speed, he saw that he was doing seventy, and was still too far right to make the bridge. He slammed on the brakes. Too late, the GTO slid, then went airborne off the right side of the structure.

Bubba screamed like a little girl as he flew into the darkness, over the mangrove trees that crowded either side, then down through them in a nearly silent splashdown.

When the dust settled on the road again, there was no evidence that a car had just careened off. Even the mangrove trees rebounded after the passage of the car. To the casual observer, all appeared perfectly normal. It was all just swamp after all.

~

The pain woke him up. Bubba screamed when the flare of realization struck him. He was still in the car, but he had been tossed to the passenger side, where he was wedged between the dash and the seats. He could see his right leg was twisted, in an unnatural position, over the console and back under the steering column. The shift knob had stabbed through his fat thigh and blood pumped from the wound.

His other leg was sticking out of the diver’s side window, but when he went to move it, he realized that his back must be broken; because the pain there was so bad he almost passed out again. Then he saw that his protruding leg was broken as well, the bone poked out from his jeans and there was blood everywhere. He whimpered and saw that in addition to all else, the car was sitting at a severe angle, and in water, which was filling up around him. The only thing keeping his head above water was the position that his wedged shoulders left him in; his head was pressed against the window frame of the other door.

“Oh my god…” He said again, not liking the way his voice sounded. It was distant, hollow, broken, like everything else. “Oh Jesus help me…” he offered up the plea, but knew he had no right to ask god for help now. He had avoided god and all his exuberant followers for most of his life, even laughed at the idea of sitting in church on Sunday when there was perfectly good fishing to do instead.

Still, he wanted god to at least send him some help, because he knew, without a doubt, that he was beyond helping himself. No sooner had this thought run through his reeling mind, than the snake that had bitten him slithered out from under him. It floated on top of the murky, smelly water and stared at him, and then moved close; close enough to rest its reptilian head on his chest.

Bubba whimpered harder. He could swear that his heart was beating fast enough to make the water vibrate. He could still move his left arm, a little. Weakly, he tried to push the snake away, and received another bite for the effort. Bubba screamed and tried to wiggle. The pain flashed again, warning him that he could not make such maneuvers. But, the snake drew back this time, and slowly turned, then swam over his broken legs and out of the window.

The car shifted.

It sunk a little more. The water level rose to Bubba’s chin. He could not see his right leg anymore, just the top of the steering wheel. His left leg, with the broken bone sticking out and showing a hideous white, bobbed as the blood continued to pour out. Bubba’s breath was coming in rapid, ragged blasts. His mind raced to think of what he needed to do next. But it was not coming up with any answers.

Before he could fully sink into a stupor, he heard the croak of a gator, somewhere behind him. That really got his heart to pounding. “Oh, god no, don’t let me get et by that thing!”

He thrashed around, hurting even worse for the effort. Forcing himself to stop moving, despite every nerve in his body telling him to keep trying, Bubba worked to calm himself down. He noticed that the more he moved, the more blood pumped from around the bone sticking out of his leg. As he stared down at it, he saw a gaping maw rise just to the right of his foot. It was beaked, huge, hard and black as the night.

He knew what it was. But his mind refused to believe what he was seeing. A giant snapper, what he had been taught to call an alligator snapping turtle, came up, obviously attracted by the blood and the disturbance of the wreck. The thing did not so much as pause. It simply snapped, locking on his leg, then easily tearing it away. He saw his sixty-dollar boot stick up for a moment before it all went under.

The sound Bubba Whitehead made then did not even sound human. His thoughts could not form patterns in his brain. His heart was drumming hard as he became certain that death was just around the corner now. Over the noise of his pounding chest and his ragged breathing, he heard the bull gator behind him as the leathery skin raked down the side of the GTO. The gator croaked again, and it sounded to Bubba like it was going to whisper in his ear. He felt his bowels release, then his bladder. Then everything went completely black as the gator’s jaws closed over Bubba’s head.

~