- #ANGRY GIANT TORTOISE RELENTLESSLY HUNTS MAN DOWN SKIN#
- #ANGRY GIANT TORTOISE RELENTLESSLY HUNTS MAN DOWN FREE#
It is impossible not to scratch, day or night, during class, during dinner, going to sleep, waking up. It has taken residence in a fold of flab in your burgeoning belly. I am trapped in a prison of flesh.Īround tenth grade, your mother forces you to see the local doctor for a stubborn florid rash. One thousand times the following night, you score angry graphite grooves in a pristine exercise book you stole from school. To crush the seedlings of guilt, you tidy up and get out your homework. You pause and consider saving some for Mum but what’s the point, you’re in trouble anyway. The sweet-salty crunch is all you need, all you need to know. Leaning against the counter, you rip into the packaging, stuffing the digestives down, sometimes two at once. An unopened packet of chocolate biscuits, one of Mum’s latest pregnancy cravings. You climb onto a chair to get to the top shelf.
#ANGRY GIANT TORTOISE RELENTLESSLY HUNTS MAN DOWN FREE#
Once that’s gone, licking your fingers free of the sticky raspberry preserve, you hunt for more sustenance in the cupboards. Out comes the loaf of bread, butter and jam. But you pause and listen, just to be sure. Dad’s away on an oil rig for a few more weeks. Mum works four jobs despite being close to her due date. Your jumper is torn, and your shirt is missing buttons. When you get home, you throw your satchel onto the kitchen linoleum in a mixture of rage and relief. You feel a shove in your back which makes you stagger. Get it yourself,” you mutter quietly, mentally giving them the bird. One of the kids in your homeroom jogs towards you. A soccer ball hurtles past the bench where you sit reading a comic.
It is bliss when toasty fuzziness finally consumes you in its sweet chemical embrace.Ĭalling and screaming, clunks and scrapes of school shoes on tarmac.
Without bothering to towel off, you leave wet footprints across the floor and burrow into bed.Īfter hours of battling the blankets, you reach into the nightstand drawer for an old bottle of sleeping pills. It is way past suppertime but with no appetite, all you can do is shed your clothes and stand under a steamy shower until the water runs cool. A strange sensation pervades your guts - at once empty and full. You have never been so glad to see your peeling front door. During one of many rest breaks, an old woman shoos you off her garden wall with a gnarly walking stick. There is a sense of disconnection between torso and legs. The hour-long walk along the highway takes nearly two. “Whatcha say?” She follows your gaze, leans up against the glass herself. The young woman approaches slowly, noisily chewing gum. Only when the reptile keeper reminds you of closing time do you allow your hands to collapse to your sides like dead-weights. You feel slow and cold, as if the sun has gone out. You continue to regard this beautiful abhorrent aberration of nature, forehead pressed to the backs of curled fingers, but your mind is flying far away. The creature’s head is angled oddly so that you see one cloudy eye staring at nothing. There is drying blood where mouth meets tail, or where tail becomes meat.
#ANGRY GIANT TORTOISE RELENTLESSLY HUNTS MAN DOWN SKIN#
The skin around its mouth is so thin as to be translucent. The Mexican Milk snake’s jaws are stretched to perfectly encompass the circumference of its body. It dawns on you in an epiphany both giddy and sickening. You cup your hands to the vivarium glass to peer in more closely. A thick ring perhaps half a metre across, exquisitely patterned in deepest crimson with charcoal and cream bands. There is something, right at the back, partially obscured by a terracotta water bowl. Disappointed, you think: this one is empty.
They all deserve careful attention, and each one will be honoured. Tearing yourself away from each tank, you proceed to the next. Your dewlap extends and flares in warning when a toddler bangs her fist on the edge of your world. Your forked tongue flicks and flickers, your sinuous scaled underbelly slithers slowly over the rough pine bark and aspen shavings. Refusing to hurry – being with each specimen, inhabiting their primitive bodies. You gift your time and respect – after all, respect means "to look again" and so you do. Oh, but can you see that Fijian Crested Iguana! Low exhalations of awe. Those marked VENOMOUS reside behind a locked grille. But it is the next section you have come for.Ĭorridors of illuminated glass cases. The one-tonne saltwater crocodile and his neighbour - an octogenarian giant tortoise – impress the crowds. It begins with a visit to the reptile sanctuary.
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