2
Across the street, below the flash of curly blonde hair on the mansion’s highest floor and the expansive walk-in closet where the lady of the house prepared for the gala, sat a mammoth cellar. Stretching from one end of the palatial estate to the other, the basement hadn’t been decorated in all the finest trimmings like the rest of the house had, left instead in the exact state it had been when the home had first been built, hundreds of years earlier. The stairs against the farthest wall boasted its original dull oak wood, its body crying out against the white porcelain tiles that lined every wall. Black floors gave the feel of a cold, empty warehouse and stretched the entire length of the basement. Exposed metal air conditioning tubes lined the walls, their vents sending a steady stream of cool air gushing into the humid space.
In the middle of the basement, so far removed from the only entry it would take five minutes of walking for any entrant to come upon them, sat two tall, black steel cages. The kind used to transport lions and elephants traveling with the circus. A dull light overhead hummed down onto the cages, casting a yellow spotlight around them in the otherwise pitch-black cellar. The steel enclosures sat side by side, connected by a latch at their bases.
Inside one of the cages, a naked man had curled his trembling body into the farthest corner of the confinement—his knees pulled deep into his chest. The chatter of his teeth filled the quiet basement, and his damp black hair was glued to his gleaming forehead. The light shining overhead made his pale sweat-slicked skin appear almost see-through. With unblinking gray eyes, so wide they seemed to be glued permanently open, he looked upon the cage directly beside his, where a python sat in wait.
The snake had curled its twenty-three-foot body into a cone-shaped pile in the middle of its cage, the tip of its snout barely visible from where its head poked out from the top. Its forked pink tongue darted out to lick the air, hissing intermittently. Though its vision was notoriously poor, the snake seemed to look dead at the naked man in the cage beside his. As if it could smell his fear. Its head and neck slithered, almost in delight, causing a ripple effect along the smooth dorsal scales that covered its entire body. The geometric black and gold pattern rolled as the muscles moved slowly under its skin, making its body sway as smoothly as a belly dancer’s, distorting the diamond shapes of the scales that pitted its frame.
Between the two cages was a hatch—a small metal door—just big enough for the python to fit through in the event it was ever opened.
The man’s wide eyes flew away from the snake and landed on the three men standing outside the cage.
“Mr. Mayor, please. Malik,” he cried, making a last-ditch attempt at congeniality by using his captor’s given name. “Please. It wasn’t me. I would never rat. You have to know that.” Nothing but blank faces looked back at him, and his pleas moved to sobs—every word more indecipherable than the last. “You have to know that…”
Outside the cage, Malik Ali blinked slowly, running the beds of his slim fingers along his plush pink lips. Silence dominated the basement as he moved his touch along the baby-smooth skin of his chiseled jaw, over his high cheekbones, and along the bridge of his nose. He took the time to sweep his steady fingers over both of his thick eyebrows, the same jet-black color of his perfectly styled hair. Unlike the quivering man before him, Malik’s dark brown eyes were wide by nature—not out of blind fear—making him look perpetually excited or surprised. Sometimes his eyes bulged at random, making them expand almost cartoonishly, an involuntarily flinch that he hadn’t been able to control since childhood.
Malik’s eyes bulged right then as he smoothed the black tie of his suit, the silver band on his ring finger gleaming under the dull overhead light. Two men, twice his size, stood behind him as the hiss of the python continued to waft into the air. Malik lifted his hand, the overhead light flashing across his silver wedding band as he did, and gave a swift snap of his finger.
The snap prompted the man on his left, dressed in all black, to step forward, approaching the cages and seizing the long black stick leaned up against them. Stick in hand, he approached the area where the two cages were latched together, bent down, and stuck the stick inside the metal bars, pulling open the small hatch that separated the cages.
“No!” Tears spilled from the man’s beet red eyes. “Malik, please don’t do this. I didn’t rat. I didn’t rat…” He pushed himself deeper into the rails as the python began to unravel its tightly coiled body, but he was already as far into the corner as he could get.
Malik’s voice came, conversationally, his British accent a stark contrast to the weeping American before him. “Did you know that most snakes who use constriction to kill their prey are non-venomous? I always found that quite interesting.”
The caged man didn’t seem interested, too busy sniveling as the python uncurled itself, the weight of its body hitting the floor so heavily it made the pen rattle, and began slithering toward the small open door that separated them.
“This one here…” Malik continued speaking as if nothing was out of the ordinary as he motioned to the snake gliding toward the open door. “She’s called Princess.”
“Oh, Jesus,” the man wheezed, clawing his nails into the concrete floor of the cage, still kicking his long legs as if that would somehow help him climb out.
The python’s head jutted inside his cage, and he leaped to his feet with a wail, taking the railing behind him in a grip so tight his knuckles whitened.
A slow smile grew on Malik’s lips, giving his face a charming glow that made him look decades younger. “Princess is the second largest snake in the world. Did you know that? Twenty-three feet. Three-hundred-pounds. We captured her with a fully-grown antelope in her belly. A right monster.”
As if co-signing Malik’s story, almost taunting the man before her, “Princess” lifted her head from where she’d paused on the opposite side of the cage. Long after she’d slid her entire body inside, her head continued to rise until it was at a forty-five-degree angle, until it appeared she was looking the man dead in the eye. Her head recoiled back, slowly, sending a domino effect down her neck and the rest of her body until she was curled into several S shapes, warning of a strike.
The man seemed to heed that warning because he raced from one end of the cage to the other, appearing shaken when Princess’s eyes calmly followed his every move, her body winding across the floor to follow him, all the while moving closer. He sidestepped her and raced across the cage again, his flaccid penis bopping through the air as he jumped over her body, his bare feet narrowly missing her tail.
Malik clicked his teeth. “Now, now, try not to get too excited, or you might accidentally step on her. Princess is known to bite when she’s bothered.”
“Oh God…” the man collapsed onto the corner of the cage, sinking to the floor as tears spilled down his rosy cheeks.
Malik clicked his teeth again. “I’m afraid calming down won’t help much either, seeing as she’s got sensors on her snout that detect the slightest movement. All the way down to every pathetic pulse of your beating heart.”
“I didn’t rat. I swear I didn’t rat. Please…” A stream of drool dripped from the man’s downturned lips as Princess swirled to face him once more, her writhing body closing in.
“Did you know pythons can go up to two years without food?” Malik motioned to Princess. “I’ve only starved Princess here for a little over six months. Didn’t want to risk killing her. Just readying her for a special occasion, is all. Ensuring she was hungry enough to eat another antelope once the time came to put her to good use.”
The man pleaded again, but this time, his lips, shining with his saliva, didn’t make a sound. Nothing but a hoarse gasp left him as his wide eyes remained locked on Princess, who’d reared her head back once more.
Then, without warning, Princess struck, leaving him not even a second to scream before her razor sharp teeth were locked around his neck. His screams moved to howls as two heavy streams of blood dripped down the pale skin where Princess had bitten in deep, his body writhing under what was undoubtedly a breathtakingly painful bite.
“Most people make the mistake of believing a snake’s greatest weapon is their fangs, but nothing could be further from the truth. Pythons don’t have fangs, actually…” Malik drew in a sharp breath, eyes bulging as Princess began to wind her body around the screaming man, beginning an ominous loop, not relenting until she’d wrapped every inch of her extensive body around him, leaving only his pale feet and dark hair visible once she was done.
Then, Princess clenched.
Malik licked his lips. “Most people don’t appreciate Princess’s true power until she deploys the real weapon—bondage.”
The crack of bones filled the air as Princess squeezed tight, and soon, the man’s pleas for mercy quieted, leaving nothing but the noise of his shattering ribs alongside her hisses of delight. He wheezed, desperate for air.
Malik’s chest rose, his voice breaking. “You see—every time you take a deep breath, you only help her to squeeze tighter.”
Unable to heed the warning, the man gasped for air again. The muscles under Princess’s scales pulsed in return and undulated down her body.
Malik’s breathing moved to soft gasps. “Every breath you take helps her kill you a little faster. Every breath, more shallow than the last…” He held his breath as the man gave one last, gasping heave before going limp under Princess’s powerful clutches. “Until you finally suffocate.”
As if his prisoner could still hear him, Malik continued, his voice now strained as he spoke through a heaving chest, licking his parched lips once more as Princess opened her mouth wide over the man’s head. “Contrary to popular belief, constrictors don’t swallow their prey whole by dislocating their jaw. The jaw is actually divided into several moving parts, allowing each tendon to operate independently so it can inhale prey three times the size of its head. Stretching so wide it seems nearly impossible to break. Like a giant rubber band. No chewing required, of course.”
As Princess engulfed the man’s entire skull in seconds, Malik watched with enraptured glee, his dick swelling against the zipper of his black slacks, begging for freedom.
His eyes bulged again. “See, it’s the flexibility of the jaw that allows Princess to glide over her dinner with such ease. Like a condom over a hard dick.”
As if she could understand every word he was saying, desperate to please him, Princess did just that.
Unable to speak another word past the lump that had taken up residence in his throat, Malik drank in the rest of the vision before him in silence, covering his erection with trembling fingers as his tongue darted out to lick his parched lips once more.
As he envisioned the acid inside Princess’s stomach, powerful enough to dissolve that rat’s bones in less than two weeks, he tightened his fingers around his hardness and drew in a sharp breath through his tightly clenched teeth.