Coiled

Hybrid power plants consist of solar farms connected to powerful battery storage system. These systems can generate mind-boggling amounts of energy that aren’t affected by short-term changes in generation such as interference by clouds or the long hours of the night. Power companies have begun to search for ideal locations where the land is cheap, and the conditions are right for high-yield solar power collection. The battery facilities they store energy in are filled with thousands of thick electrical wires roped together in multicolored cylinders of various sizes.

Although these power plants are more environmentally friendly than others, there are still many organizations that do not take kindly to their construction. Terrorist groups and even lone vigilantes target these facilities for a multitude of reasons. It was due to one such terrorist organization, which blew a hole in the side of a newly constructed plant in Brazil, that Max found himself in South America for the first time.

Max was fleeing what he considered another, potentially more dangerous, Ohio-based terrorist group known as the Macmillan’s. This group was primarily comprised of his now ex-fiancé, Jen, and her hyper-critical mother, Barb.

Max, who had even taken a few firearms courses over the past year, had always dreamed of going to a police academy. However, over time, Barb’s constant reminders of his inability to get accepted to any academy had driven him to the edge. 

Adrift in a haze of constant hen-pecking and other failures, Max applied online for anything that looked even remotely interesting, if only it would get him away from his current problems. When a job opened for an “exciting opportunity” around the Carajás mountain range, Max convinced himself that this was his chance at a new adventure, even if he was barely qualified for it.

He packed his bags and left on a red eye without telling anyone where he’d gone.

----

Max stayed in the outskirts of Parauapebas, a municipality of Pará, Brazil. The region featured a mix of tropical rainforest and savannah, with a diverse array of flora and fauna. Max considered if this was the reason for the attack on the facility – many people, especially the indigenous, loathed the destruction of the natural landscape on principal, despite its benefits. The locals hated the facility, although they would eventually rely on it. The entire village received free solar power as the power companies’ way of assuaging their complaints.

He rented a traditional adobe house constructed of sun-dried clay bricks. It was rustic, but livable. He couldn’t complain, different was what he wanted, and it was what he got.

There was a small local bus that took him straight to the job site, and an escort from the power company met him there on his first night. The guide spoke some English, so Max’s sloppy Portuguese wasn’t pressed into service so quickly. Max felt that the job would be easy. He was instructed to walk the entirety of the premises and keep a lookout for anything suspicious. He would be armed with a gun and a radio. There were three other men that would also be on third shift, though it was unlikely that I would see them often due to the size of the building. Each night, two men would patrol outside, and two men would patrol inside.

The company guide walked Max through the building an hour early, where he showed him all the need-to-know locations. The building had no windows, which Max found unpleasant. It was loud too, and all the men were provided with noise cancelling ear protection for when they patrolled inside. Still, the money was good, and the job was straightforward. Also, Max would gain experience as a guard, and hopefully even come across as worldly when he updated his resume.

The guide passed the massive yawning hole which still gaped in the side of the building where the recent explosion occurred. Caution tape wrapped around the outside and a few temporary walls had been erected. An unmanned construction crane was positioned outside, presumably for daytime repair.

“The facility needs to maintain a particular temperature range to prevent the batteries from overheating,” his guide explained. When they reached the breakroom, Max was thanked for taking the job and was then unceremoniously handed off to another man who he would shadow for the day.

The man’s name was Eric, who Max was surprised to learn was also from the States and had started only six weeks prior. It had been his day off when the explosion occurred. Eric had a bulbous beer gut and a ridiculous laugh straight out of a sitcom – a ‘huh huh huh’ that felt like a put-on, but was, unfortunately, genuine.

“Job’s about as easy as it gets. It’s staying awake that’s the problem. I’m not usually a third shift kinda guy. But, I’ve been on it for a few weeks now, so it’s a little easier. Place is a bit creepy though,” Eric said to Max as they walked out of the breakroom.

“Creepy how?” Max asked, donning his ear protection.

“Mind starts to play tricks on ya,” Eric explained loudly.

“Everything’s all the same. Same metal boxes, same wires coiled together in the same way. It makes my eyes cross. Sometimes I even get to the end of the building and I’m all, woah, how’d I get all the way down here? Ya know?”

“Er yeah,” Max said, although privately he wasn’t so sure.

“I think the hum is making me go um pouco louco,” Eric guffawed.

----

Max thought his first night wasn’t so bad, even if Eric wasn’t the most sophisticated company. At least he was friendly, and it made the night pass quickly. Afterwards, Max took the first bus to his small rental and fell asleep almost as soon as his head hit the pillow. He woke up 10 hours later, bleary-eyed and disoriented, arm aching. He’d fallen out of his bed and somehow not awoken. He stared at the dust bunnies under his bed, a clawing terror climbing up his throat. He felt like he had just climbed out of an abyss but couldn’t quite remember about what or even if he’d been dreaming.

His therapist, Dr. Stirling, and his ex-fiancé were the only people who knew that he had a persistent childhood phobia that something was going to crawl out from underneath his bed and snatch him. Dr. Stirling explained that this type of fear was often a child’s way of making sense of emotional trauma. Max’s parents frequently fought, which caused him to close himself up in his room and essentially dissociate. Dr. Stirling said that trauma can sometime manifest in unusual ways and that it was nothing to be ashamed of.

Jen, conversely, called him a chicken-shit.

----

That night when Max returned to work, he met Eric at the entrance who laughed his stupid little laugh and said, “You look like hell, bud.”

“Thanks, bud,” Max responded in a gruff tone.

Eric chuckled again and tipped an imaginary hat. He donned his earmuffs and disappeared into the facility. Max followed shortly after but took his own route; he would be on his own from now on.

Max’s second night was harder than the first. Not only was he alone for the first time, but he admitted to himself that he also felt uneasy about Eric’s comments the night before. He was tired too, despite having slept for 10 hours straight. As he paced, Max decided he needed to figure out a way to stay motivated and alert.

Still, his first week went smoothly. He never crossed paths with any of the men he worked with, though he saw their coats hanging in the breakroom. That weekend, he did a little sight-seeing and tried to settle into his new existence. He did not contact anyone from home, and he did not check his social media. He did however wonder, with wicked delight, how big of a meltdown Barb was having.

In his second week, he finally saw Eric again. At 3 am, Max rounded a corner to see him in one of the many hallways, staring into one of the large metal cabinets full of hundreds of electrical wires. He was standing silently, peering through the small vent holes in the side of the cabinets. At first Max thought he was playing on his phone – a company rule that was strictly verboten (but also generally ignored). But Eric wasn’t looking at his phone, he was holding his keys out in front of him as though he had considered unlocking the cabinet door but was now hesitating.

“Hey, man,” Max said loudly over the hum, but he might as well have shot a gun in the air, so high did the other man jump. 

“Jesus Christ, you scared the shit out of me,” Eric cried.

“Sorry, guess I should have said something from further away. What are you looking at anyway?”

He stayed silent for so long, Max wasn’t sure if he would answer. Finally, he said, “I saw something moving in there.”

“What like a mouse?”

“Yeah, maybe. Or something else.”

“Okay… well, I saw a box of traps in the storage room. Do you think we should put some out? Or is that, like, housekeeping’s job?”

Erik nodded distractedly, “Yeah, sure.”

Max peered into the cabinets for a moment but saw nothing. Glancing at Erik one last time, he left. Sometime later, traps in hand, he returned to find the hallway empty. Shrugging, he opened the cabinet and placed a trap inside. He stuck his head inside and looked around more closely, seeing no movement. Max set out a few more in the surrounding area, though he also wondered what good it would do since there were hundreds more.

A mouse infestation could be quite bad, with all the wiring, so he briefly considered whether to call an exterminator.

On one hand, Erik probably saw nothing at all. The guy was one loose screw away from a breakdown. And besides, the IT guys would probably find any infestation before I would, Max reasoned to himself. He could practically hear Barb needling him over not being proactive. Max grimaced as his wristwatch beeped. His shift was over.

Max walked towards the exit with his bag hoisted over his shoulder. He was tired, and his bag felt unusually heavy. He saw something strange on the ground near the exit that hadn’t been there when he came in. He approached it, mid-yawn, already thinking about dinner.

Well, I wasn’t expecting that.

 It was a small pile of bones. Disgusted by some kind of mid-sized animal skull, Max wondered if this was his coworker’s idea of a sick joke. He called for him over the radio but received only static.

Tongue clicking in annoyance, he left the mess for the day shift. No one had to know that he had found it, and clean-up duty was not in his job description. And if it wasn’t Eric, well, he didn’t want to think too hard about that.

----

That night, Max had another nightmare. In the dream, he and his ex were at their townhome that they had shared. Jen was yelling at him about something and instead of getting into yet another pointless argument, he stormed into their bedroom and slammed the door. In the dream, it was his childhood bed that he laid down on and he stared at the glowing stars that had appeared on the ceiling.

The dream subtly shifted, and suddenly it was his parents who were having another fight out in the kitchen. He covered his ears with his hands, but he could still hear a sudden terrible scratching noise coming from underneath his bed.

As it often was with dreams, there was nothing he could do to stop it when he crawled over to the edge of the bed. Exposed, and cloaked in dread, he leaned forward and peered over the side. In the darkness, he found a woman contorted strangely under the bed, eyes black yawning sockets, sickeningly long tongue sliding in and out of her mouth. In and out. It looked like Barb.

He screamed himself awake to find that he had fallen (crawled?) to the floor beside his bed while he slept. He was once more staring at the real-life underside of his bed, only now there was more than dust bunnies. A large black snake stared back at him, pink tongue tasting the air, eyes glittering with the daylight that peeked through the curtains.

----

When Max returned to work that evening, he felt like he had worked it all out. He was determined to tell his coworker what had been lurking underneath his bed. Was this what Eric had thought he’d seen when he peered into the cabinet? Could it have, what, followed me home? He wondered. Impossible.

Eric’s personal effects were in the breakroom in the same spot they were yesterday. Max hung his things on the neighboring hooks and radioed Eric. There was no answer.

Entering the facility, Max deviated from his usual route and periodically called out loudly for his coworker. Max thought the hum seemed louder today. He could see what Eric had been talking about now, how eventually it could make you um pouco louco.  

He turned another corner and stopped abruptly. The isle was blocked by some kind of rolled-up rug or possibly a tarp. When he approached, he realized that – there could be no doubt – it was an enormous snakeskin. Except… it was larger than any snakeskin had a right to be. Max knew that Brazil was home to anacondas, but monsters of this size were usually found in the Amazon which was a few hundred miles northwest from this region. He tried to estimate the length of the thick, rope-like skin. Thirty feet? Thirty-five feet? In the Miami Airport, he had read about a man had been swallowed whole by a 25-footer.

There was a snake in the facility. A huge snake. And now Max was sure that the snake under his bed hadn’t been a coincidence.

Could it have hitchhiked in my bag on the way home from work? He gulped. What a terrible thought. It rode with me on the bus. What if it had bitten me in my sleep?

Oh god, where was Eric?

Max shouted out again, now panicked.

“Eric!” He slapped a hand over his mouth. No, my first priority is getting the hell out of here. Then, I’ll call the authorities and they’ll look for Eric.

Barb, in his mind, called him a coward.

He took out his gun. If it had been men with guns in the facility, at least Max would have been somewhat prepared. At least it was within the realm of his imaginings. Man-eating reptiles and a suspiciously missing coworker? No, thank you, he thought.

Max was sweating bullets even before he started sprinting towards the exit. The hum of the batteries seemed to get louder the closer he got to escape. Then, as if stepping into a horror film, he turned the corner and nearly tripped right over a serpent so large it was otherworldly. It whipped its gleaming green head around and looked him in his terrified eyes, locking him into its yellow gaze. The snake’s head was larger than a human's head, its green scales shiny with a fresh shed. The dark omen under his bed this morning seemed suddenly cute in comparison.

Max stumbled backwards, tripping over his own feet as he finally noticed something other than the beast. The remains of a huge, regurgitated meal lay near the snake.

It probably realized that it was too big to digest…

A pause, as realization struck.

He heard an inhuman noise coming from somewhere only to realize it was coming from himself. Max’s gun slipped from his hands and clattering away as terror ripped through his body. The creature was only 8 or 10 feet away, far enough that he nearly wrote off the gun as a lost cause. He shook so badly that he didn’t think he could hit it anyway.

Still, I can’t end up like Erik.

With staccato movements, Max lunged for his gun. His hands were shaking, but he managed to snatch it from the ground. He turned while clumsily undoing the safety. The snake approached quickly, its reptilian body slithering efficiently towards him. He could practically hear the beast’s thoughts, ‘perhaps this one instead’.

The first bullet hit a cabinet to the left and the snake hissed. The creature was much faster than Max anticipated, and his second bullet also went wide.

In his mind, unbidden, Barb whispered that he couldn’t even shoot to save his life.

The snake lunged, sinking its fangs into the meat of Max’s thigh and he opened his mouth in a silent scream. It wrapped around his ankles quickly, and Max was unprepared for the sheer presence of the creature, the utter absurdity of the moment. He didn’t know much about snakes, but he acknowledged now that the anaconda must be a constrictor. The bite was just a sick bonus. It twisted further around his legs quickly, preventing escape, then around his hips.

The snake’s hisses blended with the hum of the batteries forming a psychotic susurration. Shaking his head with a singular determination not to die as he lived, Max pointed the gun one final time and pulled the trigger.

There was a lurch. And then…

The snake’s powerful body relaxed. Max saw that he had finally hit the damn thing somewhere in the middle of its long rope-like body. Hissing angrily one last time, the animal pulled away and retreated down the long isle towards the explosion hole. He shot at it again, but with less effort, until its tail disappeared around the corner into the abyss of the power plant.

With a great gulping sop, he sunk to his knees and muttered, “Suck on that, Barb."