A Bed Time Story Except It’s Three O’clock in the Morning: Another “My Son, the Snake and Me” Tale

I hope you will find this a fun lazy Sunday reading….
My son owns a ball python, and
although he lives away at college,
he brings the snake home with him when he’s on break from school.
This is the second snake installment in the snake tales
The first was entitled, “My Son, the Snake, and Me”
You can click here to read the first story

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

A Bed Time Story Except It’s Three O’clock in the Morning
 
He did it again, waking my wife and me up at three o’clock in the morning, while we were dead asleep, yelling, “Mom. Mom. You got to come into my room. There’s some crazy noise coming from somewhere in there. Get up.”

Now this “kid” who’s yelling is no kid at all. He’s 19 years old and has been living at college with a roommate for the past year. Who the hell does he wake up at school at three o’clock in the morning when he hears some noise? And what the hell is he doing back in my home yelling at me and my wife? I understand that he did this when he lived here before when he was a kid but he ain’t no kid anymore, so what the hell?

“She” is stirring to his demands. I will myself to go back to sleep, half listening because I’m curious; although I’m sure because of all the times in the past after having been woken up in the middle of the night that it will turn out to be nothing.

His screaming has my wife annoyed, and nastily responding, “Okay. Okay. I’m up. I’m coming.” So knowing she is up with him, no doubt in my mind that that she was going to be one to respond anyway, I drift back off, still slightly aware of what might be going on, just in case they might need “the man of the house.”

They are in his bedroom mumbling about where the noise might be coming from and what he thinks he might have heard. He’s trying to describe the sound to her. I doze, intermittently waking up, like the twilight sleep of surgery, hearing snippets of dream-like conversation. Nothing serious yet.

       Are you sure you heard it in your room? It could have been outside.
       No, it was here in my room.

I doze back off. Okay, I think as I drift downward, it wasn’t a burglary. No windows or doors broken.

       Mom, do you hear that?
       Shhh, Gabe. Let me listen.

I drift back off as I can’t hear anything. No one speaking.

       There. That.

I come back up to slight consciousness.

       That scratchy sound?
       Yes. Is it in the walls?
       EEK. I hope not.
       There it is again.
       Gabe. Shhh. Let me listen for it again.

I drift. I think I’m smiling as I drift off glad it’s not me there in there with them.

       Gabe, where are the mice?

Mice. I see them in my dreams. Little baby mice. My son calls them “pinkies.” He feeds them to his pet snake.

       Gabe, WHERE DID YOU PUT THE MICE?
       Oh shit, Mom. I left them on my bed before I went out tonight.

Oh shit, I think in my dream state.

       Oh shit, my son and my wife are yelling at each other at the same time

I dreamily listen to noises. I dream that blankets are being thrown through the air, sheets are being ripped off the mattress, and pillows are being flung everywhere.

       I have the box here mom. There’s one inside. That means there’s one missing.
       EEK. I see him Gabe. He’s in that sheet. I’m not grabbing him.

A-holes, I think, laughing to myself in my sleep.

       I got him. No, he’s slipped through…
       There. Gabe over there.
       Mom, get out of the way…
       Okay, now, Gabe. Get him. Yes.
       Got him!

This dream is funny as all hell. I’m actually laughing in my sleep. They’re laughing, too.

       My heart’s in my mouth, Gabe. You stupid little…
       Don’t say it, mom.
       I’m going to kill you.
       I know. I know.

They’re both laughing loudly now. Both out of breath. I imagine tears rolling down their cheeks from laughter,

I’m smiling in my sleep too, like an idiot, thinking that they’re both idiots. I drift back off to sleep again.

       Look, my wife says to my son as she re-enters the bedroom. Dad, as usual, has slept        through everything. It’s a good thing we weren’t being robbed.

I imagine Gabe shaking his head side-to-side, as he usually does to demonstrate his disbelief

I start to snore.

“She” gets up from the bed and goes to another room to catch a good night’s sleep.

I hear my son whisper, “Sorry, mom.” I imagine her shaking her head from side-to-side at him now, showing her disbelief. I am dreaming that I am shaking my head at both of them in disbelief…
 
Randy Mazie