Chapter Text
When Jeremy was eight years old, he saw a snake on the pavement, just lying there in the hot summer sun. There was a clean cut in its stomach. Its guts were sprawled out beneath it. Surely it was dead, Jeremy had thought. Surely. No creature could survive that. So he crouched over to view it from up close. Though his hands shook, he reached out a finger to poke at the snake's tail.
The snake suddenly twitched its head to look him in the eye. Jeremy jumped back, shocked. And the creature hissed. And hissed. But it sounded more like a faint blow of the wind. It trembled, pathetically trying to move away and out of the sun, but being held back by its slowly drying entrails which were almost glued to the asphalt below it. The boy covered his mouth with a hand. He trembled. Thoughts streamed through his head. Then, seemingly having come up with a brilliant idea, Jeremy ran, the thing he'd always been so good at.
He came back to the snake with a newspaper he had found in a garbage can nearby. Gently, he slid the paper underneath the snake, careful not to touch the critter's innards any more than necessary. He kept his fingers away from the snake's mouth as he picked up the paper with it on it. "We're goin' to Ma," he said, putting on a brave face. "She's gonna sew you right up, she is. You'll be slithering back 'n forth in no time!"
And with that, he ran back home, snake in hands. He had rang the doorbell with his elbow. "Ma!" he shouted as loud as he could. "Ma, come quick!"
His Ma didn't open the door. But Jimmy did.
Jimmy, one of his brothers, was a tough kid, six years older than Jeremy and twice his size. Jeremy'd always looked up to him, but he knew that he wouldn't know how to fix up a sickly snake. You won't need any medical mumbo-jumbo if you just punch 'em before they punch you, was something he'd always say whenever Jeremy would get scuffed up from a fight with a bully and needed to get a bandage from Ma or Steven, the oldest brother.
"Whaddaya need?" Jimmy said, leaning against the doorpost. He looked his little brother--- and what he was holding ---up and down, then grinned widely. "Wicked! Dead snake!"
"It's not dead, shut up! Where's Ma?"
Jimmy took a step towards Jeremy and reached towards the snake. Jeremy protectively brought it closer to his chest by instinct. The snake writhed, but couldn't do much at all. It hardly had the strength to even lunge, let alone bite. "Ma's away. Said she's got important business to attend to, whatever that's supposed to mean. Say, why don't you give me that little fellow over there before you get a boo-boo?"
"You're just going to hurt it! Go away!"
"Hurt it?" A laugh. "The thing's basically dead already! Breaking its neck would be a mercy!"
Jeremy jumped back as Jimmy inched closer. "Get away from me! It's not dead. And it's not goin'---"
A voice came from the hallway, interrupting the two. "What's all this ruckus about, huh?" Steven stepped out onto the tiny porch, gently pushing Jimmy away. Quietly, he glanced at Jeremy and the snake in his arms. A brief hint of nausea marked his features. "Oh, geez."
"Steven, do you know how t' sew it back up?" Jeremy asked excitedly. "Y'know, like they do in the movies!"
There are fourteen types of snakes in Massachusetts. Two of them venomous. A snake's got guts. A snake's got weird looking bones. A lot of them. Steven knew all that stuff. He'd always been the smart one, the one his younger seven brothers could come up to, to ask all their dumb questions whenever their mother was away. The one to help. He knew how to apply a bandage. He knew how to tell all about the way man picked himself up from the ground to rule over the world in a fantastical way that kept all the kids entertained. He knew how to subtract, and divide, and multiply, and count, and matter.
He didn't know how to explain this to an eight-year old.
"Um, buddy..."
"Ugh, you're such a pussy!" Jimmy groaned. "Just tell 'im that the snake's not gonna make it already. He won't believe me."
"No, it is! C'mon, Steven, tell him!" Awkwardly, Steven backed away, glancing from one boy to another. He mouthed some words to Jimmy, but couldn't seem to get out what he wanted to say without Jeremy overhearing. He chewed on his bottom lip, lost in thought.
"Your brother's right, Jeremy." He eventually relented, shoving his hands in the pockets of the washed-out jeans he always insisted on wearing. His voice was soft and uncertain. "Hell, I'd even say it's better if we just kill it now. All we're doing now is forcing it to be in pain for even longer."
"But---"
"There's no point in keeping the little fellow alive. The only reason we're keeping it alive right now is 'cause it makes you feel better. Life's nothin' good for the snake itself right now." Steven breathed out through his mouth. "Jim, there's a bunch of stuff good for hitting around the house. Bring one of them, and a big cloth for underneath, or something. We don't want snake brains all over the porch when mom gets home."
Jimmy had shown up with Jeremy's old baseball bat and a bed sheet. Steven sighed. "Ma's gonna be pissed." With little resistance from Jeremy, Steven took the snake and placed it down on the thick white sheet. It was hardly alive at that point, only slightly reacting whenever something brushed past its head. "Out of the way. Please."
The bat got thrown in Steven's direction, and the young man caught it with ease. "I'm really sorry about this, Jeremy," he muttered, as he motioned for the other two to get out of the way. He stood above the snake, bat in hand, as if he were a guillotine. And then he began to hit. And hit. And hit. A horrific squelch came from the snake's head as its skull caved in. Blood squirted over Steven's washed-out jeans and shoes, and over the bed sheet that had been so carefully laid over the floor as to not cause a mess. Steven stopped and panted as he looked down.
"Is it dead?" Jimmy whispered. "Like, dead dead?"
It was eerily quiet as Steven bent down to get closer to the snake. He dropped the bat. Seconds passed. "Its eyes ain't moving anymore."
Jimmy looked at the snake's corpse in a combination of horror and awe. "Wicked."
Jeremy wasn't sure how long the three of them stood there. It could've been an hour, or ten seconds, or forever. Time had felt like it didn't even exist in that moment. It was just them, and the snake that wasn't there anymore and never would be again. He only knew that he himself snapped out of it when Steven cleared his throat. "Well, we gotta get rid of this all before mom gets home. Bat may be salvageable." He began to wrap the snake in the sheet it was lying on, then swung the makeshift bag of corpse over his shoulder. "Come on, Jeremy. Let's dump this junk somewhere where Ma won't find it."
Jimmy had made a noise of disagreement at that, at which Steven waved him off. Stomping his feet, the teenager went back inside, muttering something along the lines of wanting to hold the snake himself. Jeremy worriedly looked at Steven as the two of them walked away from the house.
"Don't worry, I'll toss it out. Just, uh. Wanted to tell you that this really was for the best." Steven mumbled. "It's at peace now. No more pain or worries for that fellow. Ever."
"We could've--"
Steven cut through with an uncharacteristically stern voice. "It would just have prolonged its suffering. The snake was going to die no matter what, in the end." When Jeremy frowned, the young man put his hand (the one that he wasn't partially using for carrying the snake's corpse) on the boy's shoulder in an attempt at comfort. "Hey. At least it went out in a flash, huh? At least it didn't pass on all by its lonesome."
"...Yeah."
When Scout was twenty-three years old, he met up with Death himself eye-to-eye for the first time.
It had been his very first day on the job. Shoot clones. Stay out of sight. And run. Run as fast as you could. That's what got droned into his head at the start of that morning. There had been eight other guys on his team, though they all seemed quite a bit older than him. He awkwardly tried to chat with one of them right before their first match started.
"So, uh, you come around here often?"
"No."
"Cool! Y'know, it's actually my very first day on the job. I'm gonna be the Scout!" Expectantly, Scout stared into the eyes of the giant man sitting right beside him.
"...Heavy Weapons Guy."
"Sheesh, what a mouthful. You got a nickname or anythin'?"
A loud voice came from the other side of the room, cutting through Scout's attempt at conversation. "Alright, maggots!" With those words, a guy wearing a helmet several sizes too big for him stood up and walked to the very middle, making himself clear to all other men. "You're all going to be walking out of this very room with confidence. We're going to be proper American men and charge right at the enemy. No pansies allowed. Got it?"
Scout gulped, but put on a big grin. An alarm. The game had begun. The door at the end of the room opened widely, and the entire team immediately flooded out. Scout hurried forward and started to talk with a lanky man wearing sunglasses indoors, for some odd reason.
"Hey there, fella! So, you got any tips for me?"
"Mate, you gotta watch out."
Scout laughed. "Watch--?"
Then, Scout's face got blown off.