Police aren’t here yet. They say any minute, but I don’t think it’ll matter. I can hear the operator on the phone, but it’s just noise.

Snakes, thousands of them – how could he keep so many in there?

Dad, this is for you, for everything you taught me, everything you shared. I need you to know what happened and I know you’ll believe me. Don’t blame yourself for not answering the phone. It’s not your fault. It’s not your fault.

The other room, the one the squirrel escaped to, the one I’m in now, it’s a sort of makeshift CCTV office, just a storage closet, really. All the cameras show the shop interior. Just after I caught the damn thing, when I was about to head out, something caught my eye. On the screen. I wasn’t being nosy, I promise, it was just there, I couldn’t help but notice.

The client, the guy who owns the shop, he was reaching over the counter, grabbing at a customer while their daughter stood crying nearby. I recognised the girl, or at least the toy gosling she was holding, remembered how she looked at her dad when I told the two of them to wait outside.

It reminded me of us.

It’s – selfish, how I wish you were here now, Dad.

When I unsealed the shop floor, the shopkeeper seemed obsessed with continuing his sales pitch to the pair. He was adamant that they purchase a snake and pretty much ignored me entirely. It made me a bit uneasy, so I hung back to watch. Thinking back, I should have noticed he was… off.

As I watched the monitor the shopkeeper suddenly lunged forward, clearing the desk, smashing the glass on his way with a crash I heard even through the closed door, leaving him sprawling among the crickets previously boxed on the shelf behind him. They were jumping, flowing, twitching, thousands of them, just juddering pixels on the monitor, but the noise was palpable, punching through the wall like a fist. I grabbed my phone and called the police. I-I should’ve gone out there and helped but – but I was scared. I just – couldn’t.

I started to explain over the phone and they said something back, but I wasn’t listening. On the screen I could see the customer had scrambled to his feet and he and his daughter were nearly out of the entrance. The shopkeeper lunged one last time and that’s when I noticed he’d… started to change. He was bloated. Swollen around the neck.

The door slammed in his face and as he stumbled backwards, something fell from his mouth. I couldn’t make it out, though. The screen was so fuzzy and it was just a blur.

Moments passed with no noise except the screaming crickets and my own thudding heartbeat. The shopkeeper lay completely prone, he hadn’t moved at all, and I wondered if the fall had knocked him out, cracked his skull or something. Then there was movement near his head, and he began to twitch and spasm. I thought it might be a seizure but then – his mouth began to open, wider and wider, impossibly wide, his jaw bones snapping with the strain. And then a horde of slender shapes slithered out.

Snakes, Dad. Thousands of them. All from inside him, pushing up through his deflating throat. The floor was lost beneath the heaving, writhing mass of them. I could hear the scrape of their scales on the linoleum, but they made no other sound.

Then the owner’s body began to slide across the floor towards the closed door between us. It took me a moment to realise his body was being pulled over the broken glass and debris, carried on the creatures’ backs. Towards me.

I got the door locked just in time. This room, it’s a mess. Printouts, delivery notes, a bunch of rejection letters from some institute he pinned to the wall with a kitchen knife. And it’s hot in here, Dad. Too hot.

Oh god. I can feel it. My throat is swelling and it – itches. I can still hear all the snakes brushing up against the door and… in the walls, I think. Christ, they’re in the walls…

Oh god. I forgot about the hole.

I love you, Da_