Chapter 5 postscript

It has been a year since the experience in the fourth dissection room, and I have fully recovered, although the coma was both incurable and frightening.It took a whole month for my fingers and toes to move flexibly.I can't play the piano yet, of course I never did, it's just a joke, I have nothing to feel guilty about.During the first three months after my misadventure, I learned from my gags that there is often only one step between sanity and some form of insanity, but it is difficult to bridge.You won't know what I mean until you actually feel the sharp point of the autopsy scissors that are going right into your belly.

About two weeks after her latest visit to the hospital, a woman who lives in Durham Street complained to the Derry Police about a "rotting stench" from the house next door.The house belonged to a single bank clerk named Walter Keira.The police found the house to be empty...that is, unoccupied.In the basement they found more than sixty snakes of various kinds, about half dead—for there was nothing to eat and water to drink, but many others were very vigorous and very dangerous.There are several snakes that are very rare.Experts on reptiles were consulted and they reported a snake belonging to a population thought to have become extinct by the middle of this century.

Kayla did not show up for work at the Derry Community Bank on August 22nd, the third day after I was bitten by the snake, and the day after my story was published in the newspaper with the headline: "The Unconscious from the Horrific Autopsy Room Narrow Escaping".The article also quotes me saying that I was once "paralyzed". In Kayla's zoo-like basement, each cage holds a snake, only one is empty.No tag on the empty cage, from my golf bag (had been used by the cleaner in the ambulance to hold my "body" and he's been practicing golf throwing the bag into the ambulance parking lot) The snake that emerged was never found.The toxin in my blood—the same toxin, but to a much lesser degree—was found in the blood of cleaner Mike Hopper, who had been documented but never diagnosed.Over the past year I've looked at a ton of pictures of various snakes and found at least one that has been reported to have caused general paralysis in humans. The 'Peruvian African Tree Snake', a disgustingly venomous snake thought to have become extinct in the 1920s.Durham Street is less than half a mile from the Derry Municipal Golf Course, and the distance between the two is mostly scrub and clearing.

Make a last note.Katie Allen and I have been dating for four months.From November 1994 to February 1995, because of my impotence, we broke up by mutual agreement.