David R. Dudley

The Python's Wife

     There was a python who had, he thought, married quite well. His wife was a sturdy human with thick arms, a thick waist, and long auburn hair which she wore loosely up in back as she went about the work of keeping their house. She made rather a uniform of her apron, and her face was plain. But the python cared little for appearances, unless for his own handsome skin of shining copper and black, and was well satisfied with wedded life. The best of it was the children.

     The python's wife produced the most wonderful children, in her own human image. They were plump, soft, and warm-blooded, and furthermore had no thick fur or sharp claws and teeth, and the python quickly discovered that they made an excellent meal. When the python's wife bore her first son she was horrified to see her husband seize the infant in his gigantic coils, squeeze the new life out of it, and slowly swallow it head first. Subsequently she had other sons and daughters, but the serpent ate them each time, praising his wife's noble womanhood and culinary expertise.

     Needless to say, the python's wife was dismayed at her husband's habit of snacking on their children. It struck her, quite reasonably, as a grave impediment to the raising of a family. However much she pleaded with him to stop, though, he would not. He said he couldn't help himself, that it was his nature, and that she was a wonderful wife.

     The turning point in their marriage came when the python's wife had twins. As usual, the snake gulped down the first baby when it came, then lay by the bed with his head raised a few inches off the floor, smiling appreciatively at the poor woman. Much to the serpent's surprise she was not finished, and a few minutes later she bore a second child.

     "What a beautiful little girl," said the python. "But I'm afraid I'm stuffed. I have no appetite."

     "Then you won't eat her?" asked his wife hopefully.

     "Oh, I couldn't eat another bite."

     "Promise me you won't eat this baby," demanded the woman.

     The python smiled indulgently and promised. Then, kissing his wife and daughter on their cheeks with the flickering, fork-tongued kiss of a python, he slithered out onto the landing and downstairs to digest his meal.

     The python's wife was overjoyed. Cradling her child in her arms, she thought blissfully of the happy days and years to come, watching her daughter grow, taking her for walks in the park and trips to the sea shore, reading bedtime stories to her, and on and on. For hours and days on end she wove her rosy dreams, and, after waiting so long for the chance to care for and pamper a child of her own, she didn't mind in the slightest the soiled diapers, the colicky nights, and all the myriad discomforts attendant upon the duties of parenthood. Her little darling girl was worth it all.

     But the poor woman's state of happy motherhood was not long lived. One afternoon several months after her daughter was born, the python's wife was in the kitchen heating up some milk for the baby's bottle when a sudden, instinctive fear came over her. She ran upstairs as fast as she could to the baby's room, and there by the empty crib she found her husband with a large bulge in his throat.

     "What have you done?" she cried.

     The python turned his head to look at her with his most innocent expression, as though her tone hurt him very deeply.

     "You promised you wouldn't," the woman wailed, helplessly clutching the hair above her ears.

     "It's been several months," answered the python, "and I'd got my appetite back. Darling, you know how my appetite is, how ravenous I get, and how tempting the plump, soft babies you make are to me. You understand, don't you? I couldn't help myself." He smiled winsomely and slid forward to give his wife a flickering kiss on the cheek.

     But as he approached she drew back her arm and smacked his fist-like head as hard as she could. He drew up short and reeled dizzily from the blow. He looked at her, astounded, and he would have blinked if snakes could blink.

     "You can make another baby, my dear," he stammered. "I'll try my best not to eat the next one. You have my word."

     "No!" she said furiously. "No more babies." And as she seemed to have closed the subject for the time being, the python crawled sheepishly away.

     The python's wife shed not another tear, but with a new and wild glint in her eyes went straight downstairs to the kitchen and began to bake.

     It was the beginning of a long campaign of baking. She started with cookies: sugar cookies, raisin oatmeal cookies, ginger snaps -- all kinds of cookies. She made cookies for days on end, and then she went on to cinnamon rolls and hot cross buns. At first the python didn't worry much about it. He knew that women had their little ways, and if it pleased his wife to go on a baking binge, he was content to let her. But as the weeks wore on and she showed no sign of letting up, he began to grow uneasy. She spent all her time in the kitchen baking, hardly taking time out to sleep. The python sat anxiously in the living room, his great coils heaped and wrapped over and around his plush armchair, trying to read the newspaper but glancing nervously at the swinging door to the kitchen. Through that door his wife occasionally came like an explosion, so that he started terribly and looked to see her carrying another tray or basket of pastries to some corner of the house. She had long since filled every available space in the kitchen, and was now gradually filling the rest of the house with her creations, wherever room could be found. There were biscuits by the thousand in the bedrooms, croissants in the closets, and petits fours in the foyer. An army of doughnuts occupied the guest room, while a growing population of apple fritters, sticky buns, and brownies thronged the stairs. Each new wave of baked goods was preceded by a delicious smell which would have made anyone else's mouth water, but which only made the python nervous.

     Finally one day, when his slow digestive system had entirely finished processing the most recent of his ill-fated progeny, the python summoned up enough courage to speak to his wife as she came bursting through the swinging door with two trays of hot, oven-fresh cupcakes.

     "My dear," he said hesitantly, "how long are you going to carry on like this?"

     The woman showed no sign of having heard him, but emptied the trays onto the sofa and strode back into the kitchen as though she hadn't a moment to lose in her labors there.

     "I'm hungry!" cried the snake pathetically. "Why don't you make me another baby?" At which the door, which had hardly swung back into place from the kitchen, swung violently out into the living room, and the python's wife came dashing forth with fire in her eyes and the rumble of thunder in her voice.

     "Have a cupcake?" she said.

     "I...I don't eat cupcakes," answered the python piteously.

     "Then perhaps a doughnut, or a danish?"

     "No, no! A baby! Make me one of your delicious babies!"

     "No more babies. No, sir, so sorry, sir, we're fresh out of babies." She cast one more ferocious glower at the serpent, then turned on her heel and marched back into the kitchen to continue with her baking.

     The python sank into a dismal stupor, surveying the ocean of goodies which now flooded his house. For a while longer he begged her, each time she burst through the door, to make him another baby. But in reply she only looked daggers at him and offered him pastries. In the end, the python gave up asking, and could only look forlornly at his wife as she hurried about her work. Besieged by baked goods, he wondered bitterly at the stalemate into which his marriage had fallen.

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David R. Dudley studied art at Oberlin College and creative writing and American literature at Temple University. His writing has appeared in various periodicals, and his drawings will illustrate Kirsten Kingdon's forthcoming novel Summer at the End of the World. He lives in Berkeley, California with his wife and daughter.

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