The Ophidiomancer

When Shaun Goldberg breathed fresh cool air for the first time in his life, he was nearly brought to tears. The grass underneath his bare feet felt softer than a kitten’s fur coat. The wind massaged his wounded body with every heavenly blast. For a minute, he thought he actually was in heaven. Then again, even a public bathroom would have been heaven compared to the blood-and-shit-covered cage he was locked in from childhood to his current thirty years. Bending those bars in half and running away gave him a warm fuzzy feeling inside.

With only a sheep mask and a pair of blue jeans to cover himself with, Shaun ventured out into the countryside plains looking for…god knew what. He had no idea what the hell was supposed to be out here. Would the strangers of this new land treat him just as badly as his mother had? Pushing that possibility out of his mind was like fighting with a schizophrenic ghost. The visions of his mother beating him with a belt and setting him on fire caused him to clutch his head so tightly that his ears bled. He had scars and slashes all over his chest and back because of it.

When the traumatic nightmares fought harder and harder to make Shaun’s head explode, he ran across the wheat field with no destination and a freakish cry in his lungs. He could only run for a short distance since his exhausted legs gave out on him. He crashed to his knees and bawled like a baby. He screamed like a wild beast and flailed his arms like morning stars. What good was having freedom if he had nowhere to go, no education, and nobody to talk to? Was he only delaying the inevitable? Was his thirty years on earth just one miserable hellhole?

Shaun’s traumatic voices were interrupted by religious chanting off in the distance. That baritone voice. Those Latin words. The hisses of poisonous snakes. Could he really be out here? Shaun picked his head up and stared languidly at the ritual going on before his very eyes. Yes, it was him! Reverend Carlos Pierre, the televangelist his mother used to watch on TV all the time. With such charisma in the preacher’s voice and a strong presence, surely Mr. Pierre could help Shaun find his way again.

When the masked giant approached the snakebite ceremony, he looked down on the ground to see several of Carlos’s followers rolling around and coughing up venom. The preacher smiled down at them and spoke in tongues while sprinkling some kind of dust on their bodies. With a blue Hawaiian shirt, white trousers, and sandals with black socks, Carlos looked more like a casual slob than a legitimate cleric. But what would Shaun know about fashion? For all he knew, Reverend Pierre was the real deal.

The priest gazed up at Shaun with his thousand mile stare and said, “You’ve come to the right place, my son. We were just in the middle of a ritual. You’re welcome to join us. Heck, it was probably destiny to begin with. The gods have brought you here, my friend. I know that you’re lost and you don’t know what to do. Kneel before me and all will become clear.”

Shaun was shivering with nervousness at the possibility of finding out what his true purpose in life was. He couldn’t have been a punching bag all these years. There was more to it all than that and he was sure Carlos was going to show him the way. With shivering legs, he got down on one knee like they did in the telecasts and bowed his head.

“Very good, my son. You should know by know what’s coming next,” said Carlos with his devious grin. From the crumbling stone well next to him, he pulled out a brick compartment and opened the hatch to release a hooded cobra from its resting place. He picked up the little bastard and petted it like a newborn puppy. “Hello there, little guy. Who’s my handsome little man? You are, my friend!” The Reverend kissed the cobra on the head before holding it like a whip and approaching Shaun while speaking in strange tongues.

The seven-foot tall giant lifted his head for a slight moment and leaped backwards while screaming like an infant. He remembered seeing these kinds of snakes all the time around his cage. He would cry out in the middle of the night and his mother wouldn’t help him. He got bitten and traumatized by these little hellions and his intense whiny breathing said it all: it was going to happen in adulthood.

Carlos wagged his finger at Shaun and smiled before saying in his smooth jazz voice, “Now, now, my son. You want to be healed, right? You want all of those scars on your body to fade away? You want to meet your savior and creator? You must go through with this, my friend. There is no other way to salvation. If you can’t trust this million dollar smile, what can you trust? Do me one other favor, my boy: take off that silly mask.”

“I…I…I can’t, Mister Reverend Sir. She won’t let me! That bitch won’t let me!” panicked Shaun with his hands defensively over his face.

“I’ll let that burst of foul language slide this time around, but if you do it again, you’ll find yourself in a fiery pit by the time this ritual is over. You don’t want to go there, do you? You look like that’s where you’ve been this whole time. Whoever this woman is you’re referring to, she can’t hurt you now. Nobody can hurt you now. The snakebite is all but a heavenly sting. And then the juices will release you from your worst nightmares. Now do as I say and take that mask off,” said Reverend Pierre in a firm, but polite voice.

Shaun slowly let his hands down and said, “I’m sorry, Mr. Pierre. I can’t do it. You don’t want me to. I’m just going to be a sinner if I do.”

Like the animal he held in his hands, Carlos struck quickly when he yanked Shaun’s mask off. The preacher’s expression changed from polite psychosis to pants wetting fear. “Holy shit!” he whispered when he backpedaled and held his cobra out like a sword. The reptile hissed and flicked its tongue in Shaun’s direction.

Both the sheep mask and the gloves were both off. This man was not a preacher. He was a con artist not unlike a certain matriarchal parent. Shaun’s face was covered in blood and looked like a bare skull with a holy cross tattooed on his forehead. The face of a heavyweight boxer looked more pristine after one of his fights than Shaun’s did after thirty years of torture.

The savage giant stood up on both bare feet and slowly approached the frightened ophidiomancer. The cobra in Carlos’s hand would snap and hiss while the preacher himself kept chanting, “Get away from me! You’re nothing more than a foul beast! Be gone, sinner! Be gone!”

When Shaun got too close, the cobra finally struck. The little creature would have sunk its razorblade teeth into the giant’s chest if Shaun hadn’t instinctively grabbed its head and squeezed with all of his angry might. “Let him go!” shouted Carlos as he tried to pull the snake away. “He hasn’t done anything to anybody! He’s just an animal! He’s innocent! He’s the gateway to heaven!”

Carlos pulled too hard and snapped the snake’s smashed up head off. The goop, blood, and venom in Shaun’s hand was shaken off like a common stain. The preacher backed up until he was cornered against the stone well. Shaun lifted his hands offensively and smiled a devilish smile at his prey. When he reached down for his opponent’s throat, Carlos sprang back up and started punching and elbowing Shaun’s already bloodied up face. Sprays of thick red gunk splashed all over the now dead corpses of Carlos’s followers. After one too many strikes, Shaun fell backwards like a domino and snored heavily.

The ophidiomancer looked down at his victim with a wicked grin and laughed like this whole encounter was one big joke. He had life juices all over his arms as he held them to the sky and laughed like a maniac. “You see that?! I told you I was the one who was going to send you to heaven! But did you listen?! No, and that’s why you’re rotting in an eternal hell!”

Shaun sat up and glared at his attacker dead in his now frightened eyes. “No…no! How can you?! You’re just a demon! You’re a common sinner! You’re a fool!” shouted Carlos.

The giant nipped up to his feet and bull rushed Carlos back first into the stone well. While the preacher was struggling for air as Shaun held his throat, the giant said, “Truth is, Reverend, the only hell that exists for me is miles back there! If you want to know what a real fire pit looks like, I’ll be happy to show you!”

While Carlos was shouting “No!” repeatedly, Shaun reached into the well and pulled out yet another poisonous snake. With one hand firmly wrapped around the creature’s neck, he wrapped the body around Carlos’s throat and strangled him with brutal force. The preacher’s legs were dangling as he was being hoisted in the air by this ogre-like nightmare of a man. Oxygen only lasted for so long, but Shaun Goldberg’s newfound smile lasted forever.

The beauty of the afternoon passed into the chill of the night. The Goldberg family residence was little more than a beat up trailer with a shit-stained farm out back. Bursting the door open with a slab of red meat was a corpulent woman dressed in a pink bathrobe with bunny slippers. “Shaun! Rise and shine! It’s dinner time, you sack of shit! You’d better be up and awake before I bet your ass again!”

The matriarch of the Goldberg family kicked open the barn door and burst into tears at what she saw. It wasn’t her precious little boy in the bloody cage. It was her dear and beloved Reverend Carlos Pierre hanging by his own snake, lifeless as the corpses he collected that day. The mother sobbed and wailed as she waddled over to the dead body and hugged it tightly. “Oh, Reverend! I’m sorry my bastard boy did this to you! I know now that you’re in heaven!”

“Hello, mother dearest!” said a familiar gravelly monster voice. The bitchy mother slowly turned her head and saw that her “bastard boy” Shaun was standing in the doorway covered in live poisonous snakes. The mother dropped on her ass and continued to shed pathetic tears. The son? He had only one question: “What’s for dinner, momma?”