Danocrates discusses stories

In 1992, I was drained. Why? I was nineteen and carried a full course load of freshman engineering classes at Texas A&M, worked a full-time job as an assistant manager at 7-11™, served the Air Force Reserves as an Air Transportation Specialist in San Antonio, and donated plasma every week for extra cash. Sometimes I would go for two months without a day off. This particular night was the tale end of four fortnights of school, labor, military and loss of precious bodily fluid. Simply saying I was “exhausted” would be like describing a Titanic survivor as “wet” or Pinochet and Hitler as “very assertive and proactive.”

I had just driven back from my monthly reserve duty Sunday night. Texas A&M was located in College Station and Kelly AFB was about 180 miles away in San Antonio. Monday, I had Calculus, Political Science, and Chemistry 101 from 8am to 1pm. Donated some plasma from 2pm to 3pm, then went home for a nap. Woke up around 8:30pm and went to work at 7-11 for the graveyard shift.

I got back to my studio apartment at six o’clock Tuesday morning. My vision was cloudy and my body felt numb. It was crucial that I go to sleep immediately because I had an eleven o’clock Engineering Graphics class. Except I had overdosed on chili cheese dogs, nachos, chimichangas, Cherry Coke Slurpees, and Funyans and my stomach was killing me. Instead of passing out onto my twin size bed, I bee-lined it toward the bathroom.

My digestive system impatiently sent repeated signals to my brain requesting immediate action to alleviate the situation. My brain responded by quickening my pace and shoving the bathroom door open. There seemed to be an obstruction behind the door, possibly a wet towel that had fallen off the hook. The amount of force being delivered was not sufficient enough to overpower the static friction produced by the damp cloth and the tiled floor. My digestive system pushed the “For Emergency Use Only” button and my arm received a surge of unparalleled strength. I slammed the door against the wall, almost puncturing the door knob through the drywall. Fortunately, the towel was there to absorb the wooden tsunami and acted as a buffer. In a one sweeping motion, I flipped the light switch on, pulled down my pants and sat down on the toilet.

As tired as I was, it was a magical moment of peace. Similar to Siddhartha’s revelation with the river, I felt relaxed. I sighed, placed my forearms on my knees, and looked to my right for a magazine. I found the magazine next to the “towel.” But the “towel” was not a “towel,” it was a coiled snake. A five-foot ball python named Houdini, to be exact. He was named Houdini obviously because he could escape any enclosure. I had him in an aquarium with a lid laden with encyclopedia books, volumes. He had somehow used some ancient technique to miraculous raise the cover stacked with Britannica’s volumes A through M.

An ordinary person unaccustomed to serpents would have freaked the fuck out, but it was a weekly encounter that I had with him. I found him in the most unexpected places: On top of door jams, in my plants, under the couch…etc. My seventeen year-old brother Chris had asked me to baby-sit Houdini because our mother had threatened to kill it if it escaped one more time.

I agreed because ball pythons were renowned for being timid hence the name “ball” because they usually curl up into a scaly sphere out of fear. Up until this night, Houdini had never scared me and we had cohabitated in harmony. But let’s reenact the episode from his point-of-view. He had probably slithered to the bathroom because it was dark and damp, a perfect python environment. Through his tongue, he could sense the vibrations of me opening the front door and walking quickly in his direction. Again an ordinary snake would have scurried off, but he was also familiar with me. His next reaction was completely justifiable. Doing nothing more than resting his belly, he was mortified when I callously slammed his body against the wall and turned on the lights, torching his eyes lacking eyelids.

Houdini acted like a cobra being hypnotized by a Calcutta snake charmer’s flute. His head rose slowly while his neck stiffened. His head rotated in a small circle. I’ve never been this close to a snake in strike mode, especially with my pants down. I tried to reason with him, “Houdini, think about what you’re doing. I didn’t mean it. I’m sorry. For Christ sake, come on—let’s just settle down.”

He couldn’t hear me, the Dark Side was flooding his senses with Fear and Anger. Since I couldn’t reason with him, I started to yell, “I swear to God, if you draw blood, I will kill you. Do you understand me? You will die!”

His head stopped revolving, springing back a fanged mousetrap. I was petrified. How could this little bastard turn on me? Did I not feed him mice every week? Clean his cage? Save his life from my mother’s death threat? His ingratitude hurt my heart. I realized I had to put the emotional damage aside and deal with my imminent peril. I kept shouting, “Don’t! Don’t! Don’t…”

He lunged at my calf. I jumped up and to the left into the bathtub. I grabbed the shower curtain to keep myself vertical. Defying physics, the three-dollar plastic curtain seemed capable of bearing my weight. I started to lose my balance and grabbed the curtain with my other hand and the extra weight ripped it from the first shower ring. The second ring sustained me once again for the same amount of time as the first, giving me a false sense of security. Once the third ring failed, the others rings popped off like the buttons of groom’s tuxedo shirt on his wedding night. I came crashing down into the tub. Houdini wasn’t content with just scaring me—he wanted to taste my flesh.

I threw the shower curtain on top of him and dove head-first through the door. Somehow I phenomenally managed to roll into a somersault, stood up, did an about face toward the bathroom and slammed the door shut, all in one fluid motion. I was trying to slow my breathing down because I was hyperventilating, forcing myself to breathe through my nose and out my mouth in a steady manner. My heart felt like a rat trapped in sealed in a Tupperware® container. My right hand still gripped the doorknob and my left hand pushed on the doorframe sealing the door. To an outside observer, it would have been ridiculous to assume Houdini would have been capable of opening the door, but they had never been attacked by a five-foot python while sitting on a toilet.
My winter trench coat was hanging to the right of the door on a hook, so I grabbed it and threw it down on the ground to block the ½-inch gap between the door jam and the bottom of the door. Feeling a little safer, I let go of my white-knuckled grip and stepped away from the door. I felt a bit of chill and my body shuddered uncontrollably. I realized my pants were still down around my ankles. I reached down, pulled them up, and buckled my belt.

I went to my closet, grabbed my .22 caliber rifle and a box of .22 long shells. I unlocked the loading tube, unsheathed it from underneath the barrel, filled it with 17 rounds, inserted it back into the hollow cylinder, and locked it back into place. I grabbed the cordless phone, a pack of Djarm® clove cigarettes, and a lighter. Placed a chair about seven feet in front of the door, lit a clove, and called my little brother in San Antonio.

My mother answered, “Hello?”

“Mom, it’s Dan. Can you wake Chris up?” I said.

“Honey, are you alright? It’s six fifteen in the morning,” she asked, “Are you okay? Do you need me to come get you?”

“I’m fine. I’m fine. I need to talk to Chris,” I said, “it’s about his snake.”

“Houdini!” she screamed, “Kill that motherfucker! Oh, sorry about the cussing, but I knew it. Kill it, you have to kill it.”

“Mom settle down!” I said, “Just get Chris on the line.”

I heard her fumble with the phone and yell, “CHRIS!! CHRIS! Houdini just try to strangle your brother. WAKE UP!”

I had the rifle trained at the door jam, resting on my lap with the stock underneath my armpit and my finger on the trigger. Chris finally stumbled to the phone in the kitchen. “What’s goin’ on?” he said wearily.

“I just wanted you to know that I’m going to shoot your snake,” I said calmly.

“NO! You can’t! I’ll come up and get him. Please don’t shoot him,” he cried.

“Then Mom will kill him. Either way he’s going to die,” I said.

Chris started to cry and begged me not kill him, “Pleeeease, don’t kill Houdini. Pleeeease…” he sobbed. It hurt my heart, I felt like I was telling Timmy that I had to shoot Lassie in the head because he tried to bite me. I then said, “I’ll call you back,” and hung up the phone.

I put the safety “on” and leaned the gun on the wall next to the door. Lit my clove cigarette and inhaled an intoxicating drag of spiced flavored smoke. I held it in for four seconds and felt my brain being massaged with narcotic stimulation. Once relaxed, I realized that I had initiated the confrontation and he had only reacted defensively with the primal instincts infused within him from a million years of evolution. It wasn’t personal. In fact, he had probably already forgotten the incident since reptiles lack memory. They only have RAM but no hard drive.

I smoked the rest of my clove, unloaded my Remington, hung up my coat, and went to bed. I couldn’t kill Lassie. Houdini was truly an escape artist and this time he had escaped death.

I went on my first road trip when I was sixteen years old with my friend, Tom McDonald. We left San Antonio in my Mom’s borrowed car and headed northwest for Fredricksburg, a small, quaint, German village in the hill country. An anomaly in Texas. Its claim to fame was The Enchanted Rock, a cluster of large granite domes. They were great for spelunking, hiking, climbing, and getting drunk underage. We felt like Lewis and Clark setting off to discover America.

This was in the pre-wireless era, so we felt free of any supervision. If you have ever driven on a desolate, Texas highway, you can understand the amount of self-discipline you must apply to limit the velocity of the 2000 pound metal wagon you controlled. I kept the speed around 75mph, which wasn’t bad because the speed limit was 65mph. We saw the exit signs for Fredricksburg, so I took my foot of the accelerator and I veered to the right.

At the bottom of the exit ramp, I noticed the speed limit lowered to 55mph. I read some where that it was better to naturally let the car decelerate, so I decided not to tap the brakes and let Newton’s Law of Momentum, friction, and gravity slow us down. Unfortunately, behind a “Don’t Mess with Texas” billboard was a state trooper in a brand new, black Ford Mustang who had set a speed trap. The speed limit had dropped to 35mph in only hundred yards from the highway and we were going about 57mph. He hit the sirens, sprayed gravel from his tires, and launched onto the pavement. I grew up on Dukes of Hazzard, so my first instinct was to tell Tom to get the compound bow from the backseat and light some dynamite-laden arrows. I’d look for a very conveniently concealed ramp that would miraculously shoot us over a river or ravine.

However, the coward in me knew that this was my Mom’s 89’ Chevy Corsica, not a 69’ Dodge Charger named General Lee. Also I couldn’t imagine me in prison, a six foot six, 138 pound virgin with a faggy mullet. So I decided not to out run Rosco P. Coltrane, tapped the brakes and gently brought the car to the side of the road.

The state trooper took his sweet time and moseyed up to the driver’s window. Officer Garcia was in the stereotypical battle gear: Smokey the Bear hat, mirrored aviator glasses, tight pants, and knee-high Nazi boots. Tom and I almost pissed our pants, because we had a twelve pack of Bud Dry in the trunk. The closest we had ever come to authority was when our Dungeon & Dragon characters were falsely arrested at the Red Dragon tavern by town guards for assassinating a guildmaster.

Three words—we were pussies.

Officer Garcia then said, “License and registration.”

It was a hot, Texas afternoon. Sweat dripped off my nose, I lowered the sun visors, looked under the seats—nowhere to be found. I kept apologizing to Officer Garcia, who just stood there stoically, unflinching, like he had just gazed at the gorgon, Medusa, yet still retained his flesh instead of stone.

An alien that didn’t sweat—I truly believed that he sprayed himself with Scotch-Guard® every morning to inflict subtle psychological mind games on his victims. Finally, I reached over to the glove compartment to open it, but when I did, it was locked. So I fumbled the keys out of the ignition, inserted the key into the lock, and turned it to the right. Tom and I both sighed with relief, because we could show the cop what he needed and we could finally be on our way.

Had I possibly known the fatal consequences beforehand of what was in my Mom’s glove compartment, I would have never opened it. But I wasn’t a clairvoyant, so I did.
Time normally flows forward like a river, but once I opened Pandora’s Box, time thickened to viscous, gooey lava. The next five seconds oozed by over a span of hours. My mother’s glove compartment contained: a small package of Kleenex, lottery tickets, Wet-Naps, a map of San Antonio, a mini flashlight, and a .357 Magnum with a six inch barrel.

Tom and my eyes widened. We tried to keep our eyes on the gun, look at each other, look at the cop, and not move a single muscle, all at the same time. Our bodies were twitching with an overwhelming desire to flee for the cotton field to the right of us. Officer Garcia went pale and immediately put his right hand on his 9mm, which was holstered.

He started to clench his jaws, ripped off his sunglasses with his left hand, and barked out, “Grab the gun by the tip of the barrel! Slowly, very slowly!”

I followed his instructions and inched my hand towards Dirty Harry’s weapon of choice. My mind raced with images of Officer Dickweed emptying his 16 round magazine into two geeks from the city. Then I became enraged at my mother for not telling us about her new gangbangin’ lifestyle. San Antonio could be dangerous, but the last time you needed to carry a revolver was in 1836 when 186 glorified outlaws defended the Alamo against Mexico because they thought it was their Divine Right to own slaves. Why the fuck would she let her sixteen year old son borrow her car with a .357!

My hand crept towards the tip of the gun. I braced myself for the cold, hard feel of blue steel and the heavy weight of the weapon, but when I touched it, it felt like a warm whiffle ball bat on a summer day. I pinched the barrel with all of my fingers and was surprised how easy it was to lift the featherlike mass. My synapses and neurons were firing back and forth information like a Cray supercomputer. In nanoseconds, my hypothalamus in my brain analyzed the tactile data and cross referenced it to my memory bank. My mind immediately deduced that this was my little brother’s toy gun, and not a real one. Every department in my head started to chant, “It’s fake, the gun is fake!”

Euphoria set in, endorphins flooded my body and I felt the happiness you experience when your computer crashes, you think you’ve lost everything but are fortunately able to recover your entire hard drive. Elated, I forgot Officer Garcia’s request to hold it by the tip and grabbed the gun by the handle. To recap on time, this all transpired in a duration of two seconds.

Tom shrieked like a little girl, and frantically tried to unbuckle his seatbelt and unlock the passenger door. Officer Garcia still hasn’t managed to unholster his gun. He’s hysterically trying to free his sidearm from its leather confines with both hands.

He was screaming, “BY THE TIP…BY THE TIP!!”
I kept saying over and over, “It’s not real, it’s a toy, its fake….”

Inadvertently, I pointed the gun at his chest. His eyes bulged out of his sockets, and his body went into an epileptic seizure. We thought he was going to shoot himself in the foot. It looked like someone had played a practical joke back at the police station and had super glued his gun to his holster. He was just another citizen of Camelot unable to unsheathe the sword from the stone. Another second passed, Rosco P. Coltrane finally drew his sidearm while simultaneously I threw my brother’s toy gun to the ground. It hit the ground producing the distinct sound of plastic striking asphalt.

He shoved his Beretta 92FS in my face and yell, “Don’t move!” Tom had managed to get his seatbelt unfastened, but didn’t dare open the door in front of this trigger-happy trooper. He kept the sights on my head while he crouched down to pick up my brother’s gun.

Tom and I had tears rolling down our face and pleaded, “Don’t shoot us…please…don’t shoot us…”

Officer Kid-Killer finally picked up the “firearm” and was even more enraged when had the same revelation I experienced only four seconds ago. He threw the gun over the roof of my mother’s car into the cotton field. Before it landed, a gust of wind blew from behind and took the gun with it. Officer Garcia finally took in deep breath and lowered his Beretta. He had the look of someone who had just been exorcised of a demon.

Tom and I nervously sat there waiting for a verbal lashing and handcuffs, but we didn’t.

Officer Garcia simply said, “What the fuck were you boys thinkin’? You know if this was night time, I would have shot both of you.”

In my head, I disagreed.

“Actually, Officer Garcia, I had the drop on you. You’re the lucky one.”

But of course, I didn’t say that.

I just said, “We’re sorry, Officer. It’ll never happen again.”

Tom and I drove off without a ticket, a sense of our own mortality and a luke warm twelve pack of Bud Dry in the trunk.

Everyone was down, bleeding to death. The Mage, the Cleric, the Thief, and the Bard. Since my sword was broken because I fumbled earlier, I switched to my Elven Long Bow +1. However, the Dungeon Master told me that my quiver was empty and I couldn’t shoot the remaining troll without any arrows. Running out of options, I announced I was going wield my magical bow as a club and attack the ambushing bastard.

The DM said he didn’t know what kind of damage that would inflict. He sank below his divider and analyzed his charts. We all waited patiently, until he made his official ruling by utilizing a mixture of calculus, intuition, and weapons lore. He decided that the damage would be 1 to 3 points plus magical and strength bonuses. My strength was 18/80(+4 to damage), which is the equivalent of Hulk Hogan from late eighties, so the minimum amount of damage would be 6 points and max would be 8 points.

Fuck, this didn’t look good.

The troll had 63 hit points left, and I had only had 6 left. Meaning—I would have to make eight or nine successful hits, while managing to evade all of his attacks. Fucking impossible! I rubbed my face with both of my hands, took a sip of Dr. Pepper, scooped some bean dip with a Frito-Lay corn chip, and savored the salty, crunchy goo for encouragement. I then clasped my hands together rubbed them together also, and then cracked my knuckles, rotated my head from side to side to loosen up. I shook my hands vigorously and let out a deep breath of air.

Let the battle begin, mother fucker.

I slowly picked up my battered, 20-sided die, but the Bard (Tom) stopped me and produced a Merlot-colored velvet bag. He carefully poured out a blue, iridescent, 20-sided die. I took the die and nodded with understanding, and placed my left palm on the table to brace myself. I cupped my right hand upwards and rotated Tom’s die in a circle on my palm. I closed my eyes and cleared it of everything, and clenched my right hand into a loose fist. My fist transformed into a muted maraca, and I became a fierce mariachi, a Desperado, waiting for battle. I could feel the die rattle around, building up energy.

At last, I unleashed the die. And by the glory of Odin’s Shaft, I rolled a twenty, the maximum amount. Double damage(×2)! The DM allowed me to roll again. Another twenty appeared on the twenty-sided die. Quadruple damage(×4). The odds of rolling two twenties in a row were supernatural. I felt like I was in Vegas at the craps table on a good run. All eyes were on me. Everyone wanted me to roll another twenty, even the DM. Time stopped for a moment, I could hear my heartbeat, my mouth was dry, I couldn’t hear anyone—I could only see their mouths moving. My vision was clouded and sweat dripped from my forehead.

We entered into uncharted territories. What happens when you roll consecutively three twenties? The DM said if I did roll another twenty that I would inflict eight times the normal damage (octuple?? damage)(×8). I couldn’t feel my legs.

I closed my eyes again, and envisioned every form of twenty I knew:

The Roman numeral, “XX”.
The word, “Twenty”.
The Spanish word, “Veinte”.
10+10, 4×5, 10×2, etc…

I felt like Luke flying in his X-Wing through the final corridor after Red Five went down, his weapons system were malfunctioning, and the entire Rebel Alliance depended on him to fire his two Proton Torpedoes® into the exhaust shaft of the Death Star creating the chain reaction to destroy it.

I rolled the potent, plastic polyhedron and let fate take over. It felt like hurling a grenade. I didn’t know if it would explode or be a dud. Once the die stopped, our actions were suspended in slow animation. Everyone leaned in to see if we lived or died. I will always remember that moment for the rest of my life. Everyone started to yell, “Holy fucking Christ, you rolled another twenty!” The DM brought the frenzy to halt, when he instructed me to roll for damage.

Remember that the troll still had 63 hit points left, so if I rolled a one or a two the troll would still live and kick the living shit out of me. I still needed to roll a three. I thought I was going to throw up. It felt like getting the checkered flag at the Daytona 500, pulling into Victory Lane, getting champagne poured you’re your head, and then everyone starts shouting that you need to get back in your car and finish the last 50 laps or Jeff Gordon, the Rainbow Warrior is going to beat you.

I was empty, drained, confused. My body was on autopilot. Feebly, the die came of my hand. I did it. 64 points of damage. Miraculously, my pathetic, slender, make-shift bludgeon tore threw the neck of my hairy assailant, decapitating him with a strike aided by Zeus, Henry XIII, “Hacksaw” Jim Duggin, and Jeffrey Dahmer.

“Take that, you sweat from Osiris’s balls! I am the Trollslayer!”

I must add that this “moment” was trumped by the post-virgin time I was blown by an aerobic instructor on the train in Tomorrowland at Disney World five years later.