Snake Bite

MORNING OF OCTOBER 30, 2008

I was in a church service in a completely fictional location, with completely fictional people. Suddenly I noticed a snake crawl up onto the steps near the pulpit. It wasn't one of those wacky "snake handling" churches you hear of; I clearly knew the snake was not supposed to be there. However, it seemed no one else on the platform or in the congregation noticed it or payed any attention to it.

Somehow I decided it fell to me to go and stop the snake before it got anyway, and for some reason I wasn't even scared of it (beyond just a little adrenaline at the anticipation of picking it up before it could strike or crawl away). I just walked up to the steps and quickly grabbed the snake--a rattlesnake--into my hands. It quickly maneuvered it's head and bit into the side of my right hand. I could very realistically feel--can still feel--the pressure of it's jaws and it's teeth sinking into my flesh.

I shook my hand, trying to get the snake free, and finally succeeded in flinging it off, and it went crawling away. My parents were somewhere around and I went and asked them if I should go to the hospital (um...duh). But my mom suggested I just wash the wound out so it wouldn't get infected, and then wait and see if I felt sick before going to the hospital about it.

So I went and washed the wound thoroughly (it didn't even hurt much anymore). Then I remember I saw my friend Eric and we went outside. The next thing I know where were walking down a dirt road in the woods--it very much looked like a dirt road through the woods that existed in an undeveloped part of a neighborhood I lived in during my teen years. Occasionally I would remember that a snake had bitten me earlier, and think, "Well, I'm not sick or dead yet, so maybe I'm going to be OK."