A HALF FORMED THING
/ A HALF FORMED THING 9 Anna
I was once young and carefree, that was soon after we were born, quite a number of us, myself, Joanna, Brianna, Dianna, Suzanna, and others whose names I cannot remember now. Then, we had the marshlands of the river to play, to bask, to hunt. My mother left as soon as we were born, but we still caught occasional glimpses of her as we played and hunted in the marshlands. She was very huge, much as I am now, and moving around on land was a bit of a drag, so she kept to the water a lot. At least it was easier there to move, even if the constant surfacing to breathe made it a bit stressful, but then, you can't have it all, can you? The people were respectful, reverent even. They always hastened to be out of the way when they saw us approaching, and on our part, we did our best to stay out of their paths. So clashes were few and far between, and on those rare occasions, we came out tops, due to our greater size and better understanding of the terrain.
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It was not always rosy though. Dianna—and I tell you, kiddo, you could not nd a sweeter girl than her, so charming and sweet, even her scales looked di erent. She had a way of pausing just so, with the water glistening on her body, catching the light. To know Dianna was to fall in love with her, yet she seemed so blissfully unaware of her physical allure. We envied her, we wished we could be like her, yet we could never hold it against her, such a sweet soul. Even the skin she moulted looked di erent.
She was in the water one day, just basking, and keeping a sharp eye out for prey, when suddenly, there's this sloth in the water. You know what a sloth is? Very slow animal, hardly does anything but eat and sleep-you ever wonder where the word 'slothful' comes from?
Ok, the sloth in the water, making its way across the stream with slow, leisurely strokes. So Dianna sees it and heads for it. Now a word about this here. We are very cautious hunters, and when we hunt, usually it is too late for the prey; long before the animal sees us, we sneak up on it, and well, it's not like it can ght back or anything, but you must understand, in the jungle marshes and swamps, you have to be next to perfect if you want to live. But that was the one day in all history when things went all wrong. She snuck up on it all right, had it in her coils, squeezed the life out of it, you could hear the bones breaking, and we knew she had gotten lucky. It was a good-sized sloth; she would probably not need to hunt again for a month or two. We carried on, each to her (or his) own, hunting, climbing, and the next day sees Dianna sporting this nasty gash on her mouth. It turned out that the sloth's claw ripped her a gash in the face. As she was swallowing it. It was dead, it didn't ght back, it didn't even twitch! Just as she was swallowing it, one of the claws on the sloth's feet snags her mouth, and ....'pow', she's bleeding. It's so wrong, I've seen a snake swallow a whole deer, hoof to horn, and the horns didn't snag anywhere, it went down whole. Then a claw, a tiny claw scarcely as long as my tongue goes and rips her a hole in the mouth. It got really bad, you see. It bled for quite a while. Outside water, the ies would hover and perch, picking and buzzing, and it just so happens that we have no limbs, so she couldn't drive them o , couldn't scratch, and shaking your head to ward o a million ies every ve seconds was just too much work. In the water, the leeches would get at it, and she'd have to hold her head up for days on end just to get them o .
At a point it got so bad she could not stay long underwater even if she wanted to; what's the point trying to stay silent if bubbles are constantly escaping from the hole in your mouth? It just got worse and worse. She couldn't hunt, bubbles from her mouth gave her away underwater, on the one occasion she managed to catch some small capybaras, she could hardly open her mouth wide enough to swallow it, all thanks to that wound. And we were coming of age, and mating season was approaching, and we had to stock up on food, boost our bodily fat reserves for the days ahead. It was so sad, and her such a sweet soul. I still get very sad thinking about her sometimes.
And as if that was not bad enough, I got captured. Bad timing, you say. I know, I tell myself that a lot. Last time I saw her, she was going deeper into the marshes, and in no time at all, I'm sure there would have been males aplenty at her beck and call. I feared that the stress of a breeding ball, and the gestation, would be too much for her in her weakened state, but she is back at home, and I'm here. The food is ok, they bring in people to check me over every now and again, but sometimes it won't do. I miss them folks, I really do, and I won't mind having some males around to form a breeding ball, really I won't. It's tough being in a place where no one understands you, but I guess I'm complaining too much. Just look at Dianna, she's probably dead by now, all that…"
"Brian!" The woman yelled. The boy turned from the snake pit and stared at the sea of faces, hesitant to take a step. The woman rushed over to her twelve-year-old son and hugged him.
"We've been looking everywhere for you. It was very good of you to just stand in one place, rather than go looking for us. Thank God, you're safe." And she tousled his hair a ectionately. Down's syndrome or not, he was such a sweet kid, and his calm, peaceful expression made it hard to be angry with him for long. As they walked away, he stopped and pulled her hand.
"—ummy," he called, pointing to the lone snake in the enclosure, lying there, watching the world go by.
"Anna! "
"No, Brian, not Anna, Anaconda." And they walked o into the crowd, while the snake icked out its tongue quietly, tasting the air.
Chapter end
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