Eater of the Palpitating Diamondback Heart

Eater of the Palpitating Diamondback Heart By Matt Mitchell I wasn't sure what he wanted me to do. He just stood there behind the bar smiling; a bottle of rum in one hand and a real, living five-foot rattlesnake in his other. "You asked for the special, Mac," my friend, Jeff, said, and all I could do was shake my head. A crowd of people had formed around me and the din was evolving into a chant that I could scarcely distinguish; it came out as a loud murmur. Above it I could clearly hear the rattlesnake’s rattle, a signal of warning if ever there was one. It didn’t come in spurts—there were no gaps in the sound. It just trembled on and on, steadily speaking to that instinctual lump of my brain, the part connected through the base of my spine to my feet, telling me to stop and back slowly, slowly away. But here we all stood, staring at this dangerous thing, ignoring our flight instinct as the mad bartender clutched its head in his hand, rendering it as less than impotent. It was as good as dead. Its tail writhed and wound around his arm as it struggled to escape and maybe bite a few of these idiots on its way back into the night. My mouth flooded with saliva and I could taste a coppery hint of blood. The mad bartender swung its long body up onto the bar and stretched it out between his hands. He said, "It's come-alive night for you, friend, if you're game." His smile was a little less than maniacal, but still far beyond sane. Jeff drank his bourbon, wiped his mouth and slapped me on the back. "Fuck it," he said. "You only live once." Of all the things that could have ran through my mind at that moment, all I could think was, "I wish he would leave the clichés alone." Then I somehow nodded my head, and the sick feeling in my stomach multiplied as the crowd cheered and the bartender's grin grew beyond maniacal to macabre. He pulled out a bone-handled knife and cut off its head, draining blood into a shot glass and then, with a few wicked twists of his wrists, flayed the skin back around its neck. Then he reached in with his fingertips and pulled out what might have been a vein, or a gut, I'm not sure, but he pulled it in one direction and the body in the other direction, which effectively stripped the snake's body open from its chin to the tip of its tail. He scooped out a little red oyster-looking morsel and put it in a small porcelain dish. He thrust the bowl at me, along with the shot of blood and the bottle of rum. I took the little dish and the blood shot amid the chants rising around me, becoming clearer, "heart-beat, heart-beat, heart-beat..." My heart was pounding and my nerves were buzzing and I looked into that dish and there the oyster lay--thump-thump, thump-thump--it was the rattlesnake's heart, and it was still beating. "Kill it!" I heard Jeff say amid the cacophony that had risen from the crowd. The bartender just stared with that crazy smile. I shook my head and, with a toss of my head, slurped it down. Trust me, it was only in my mouth for an instant, but as I swallowed it crept, still beating, down into my stomach and for long moments I felt an energy I'd never felt before. I don't know if it was my upbringing-that Judeo-Christian myth or ethic that reinforces snakes as the earthly face of evil--or something else, but it was electric, and it was good. I downed the blood-shot and then, after a moment of stark fear that I was about to hurl it all back up right there on the bar, turned up the rum bottle and took a long pull. Then I set it aside, shaking my head. The crowd had quieted and were patting me on the back and milling back to their own tables. The bar staff cooked the rest of the snake into several different dishes and Jeff and I ate all of it. It was all delicious and strange, and it was all served on a platter of electric high buzzing in my brain, my stomach, my loins. As we were eating the snake, the bartender walked over and laid the rattle beside my plate. I picked it up and shook it a few times. “That’ll make a nice keychain,” the bartender said, and I nodded, thinking there

was no way I would use this for a keychain. This was a symbol of danger, of nature, of rebirth, of so many things I couldn’t count. It would be enshrined somehow, to mark the night. The bartender leaned in and, speaking in conspiratorial tones, asked, “So how did it feel?” I thought about it for a moment and replied, “I still feel it. It feels like when you’re walking in the woods alone. When you don’t know what’s up ahead and you’re kind of nervous, but excited at the same time.” The bartender nodded and straightened. I figured my reply must have been good enough. He nodded knowingly, and then walked back to the bar. I asked Jeff after we left if he’d ever done that. “No way, man. I don’t eat crazy stuff.” Although I know for a fact he eats oysters, creatures that can live off shit and can rot your liver out in a week or less. Additionally, I also know for a fact that he has a debilitating fear of tomato flesh. But I didn’t say anything, I was glad to belong to a group as elite as the Eaters of the Palpitating Diamondback Heart.