No Human Being Is Illegal You Idiot
It’s December and it is really cold where Johanna lives. Brrrr wow yes very freezing cold.
“Get me heck out of here!!” Johanna yells at her large front door, but it doesn’t budge, in fact it doesn’t even reply at all.
“Are you seriously giving me the silent treatment?” She asks the door but it still doesn’t answer. “Wow okay very mature fine in that case you leave me no other choice!”
JOHANNA WALKS INTO THE HALLWAY OOPS CAPS LOCk is on sorry and in the hallway she turns the thermostat up to 120 degrees. The heater makes the sounds of a heater heating up, but instead of warm air coming through the vents there are snakes!! Hundreds and hundreds of snakes!!!
“Omg!!!” Says Johanna. “This wasn’t supposed to happen!!”
Before the snakes can reach Johanna, the front door rips itself from its hinges and sprints to Johanna, sweeping her into its arms and fleeing from the house.
“I am so sorry Johanna,” the door says in an Australian accent. “I never meant for any of this to happen.”
The snakes flood out of the house and are close behind Johanna and the large door. Johanna and the large door both think the snakes are chasing after them and are scared of what will happen if they catch up, which is a fair assumption and valid fear considering their view of the situation.
But these snakes truly do not wish to do them any harm, they are just so happy to finally be free! But they’re also scared by how big the world they are now in is; most of these snakes have never been outside the air vents where they had been stuck. They are unsure of what to do now that they are out, and since Johanna is the one who freed them, they assume she knows exactly what she’s doing. They’ve decided to follow her because they think she’s showing them the way to wherever it is they’re supposed to be.
Johanna and the door come to a large and steep hill that looks very dangerous. There’s a sign next to the hill that says “killer hill” in all capital letters. Without hesitating, the large door leaps into the air and does most of a front flip, landing on its back, and Johanna rides the large door like it’s a large sled.
And it’s working! They’re moving farther and farther from the snakes! But now they’re at the bottom of the hill and they’ve picked up too much speed and aren’t able to stop themselves before flying over the edge of a short cliff and landing in a river.
The large sled is now a large raft. The river is running at a good speed, but it’s slower than the speed they had been running at before and the snakes have started catching up. The snakes dive into the river and they are actually pretty good swimmers wow I always thought that only certain types of snakes could swim but maybe all of them do. The snakes all get onto the large raft and at first Johanna is very afraid, but the snakes are radiating their thankfulness and almost immediately Johanna knows there’s truly nothing to fear.
For a long time Johanna and the snakes lived on the large raft and floated down the river together. They lived there for as long as it took for each snake to figure out what it wanted to do with its life. Some decided quickly and left the large raft within a few days, but others took more time. No matter how long it took, Johanna never became impatient or rushed any of them. She understood how important this decision was for each of them.
And Johanna was so proud of what the snakes went off to do! One went to work at NASA to study the effects of climate change on smaller nations and how the countries who contribute to global warming the least are the ones who suffer most from it. Another accepted a position as the social media outreach coordinator for No More Deaths, a humanitarian organization based in southern Arizona focused on ending the death and suffering of migrants in the desert regions around the Mexico-US borderlands by providing food, water, and medical aid. A few others went off to volunteer in Puerto Rico to help rebuild the necessary infrastructure to return electricity to the entire island, which, now six months after being hit by Hurricane Maria, still has more than 450K homes without power.
Once the last snake had left, Johanna and the large raft went back to their house. By this time the raft was very tired and Johanna helped it back onto its hinges and it became a large door again.
“I’m so proud of all of our snake friends,” said the large door. It no longer had an Australian accent. “They’re going to do such great things in this world.” The door soon fell into a very deep sleep and Johanna watched it for a little while but then Johanna fell asleep too.
The end.
Joseph Parker Okay lives in Tucson, AZ. His work has been published by The Art Institute Of Chicago, Hobart, Witch Craft Mag, and elsewhere. He is the author of “Every Time I Park My Car I Feel Like I’m Doing Something Wrong” (a winner of Nostrovia Press’s 2017 chapbook contest), “Every Dog I Pet In 2016” (Maudlin House, 2017), and “My Phone Is About To Die And I Hope It Takes Me With It” (2F2H, 2016). All of his work is available for free at gumroad.com/josephparkerokay. He tweets @verysoftlake
