Snake Pit
A short story
Deep in a Vietnamese forest, surrounded by a thick leafy barrier, a small building stood in isolation. It had been extended over the years. New rooms added as the seasons passed.
A family of five lived in the western part of the building which consisted of two rooms and a small kitchen. Father, mother, two teenage daughters and a seven-year-old son called it home.
For visitors who could find it, the building was a hotel, a palace. Its courtyard garden was a microcosm of the jungle. It gave the impression of being wild and overgrown while, in reality, being neatly trimmed and carefully kept in order.
In the middle of the courtyard, a swimming pool. No longer filled with water, inhabited by snakes. The snake pit. The main attraction.
It was the quiet season when the pale stranger in a shabby linen suit appeared with his luggage in tow. The eldest daughter was sitting reading in the hotel entrance when he arrived. She hid her book and stood to attention.
The strange man had an unpleasant complexion. He looked like he had awful breath, she thought. She noticed his cane tucked under his arm which was topped with the carved head of a viper. Don’t get too near to him, she thought.
Two boys from the neighbouring village had dragged the man’s luggage up to the steps where the hotel owner’s daughter was standing. The man waived the boys away but, after they had lingered, he offered them a coin each. They accepted the coins dispassionately. Useless metal tokens.
Rather than expectant of a handout, they had simply been exhausted.
The daughter recognised the boys from her single year at school when she was younger. They maintained eye contact only with the ground as they slowly made their way back into the deep green.
The man began speaking in a strange language and pointed to his luggage with his cane. The daughter called her sister and father. She had dragged one of the trunks halfway up the hotel steps before her younger sister appeared at the summit. Their father appeared soon after and offered a forced smile to the out of season visitor who stood expelling a fierce stench from his nostrils, cigar clamped between yellow teeth.
The father felt regret at not telling his daughter about the visit of her new husband. But he was not ashamed at having made the arrangements. She would be taken away from this snake pit to a life beyond the barrier. This was all that mattered. It mattered more than family.
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