AUTOPSY ROOM FOUR
Page 15 of 15
(“Paralyzed Man Escapes Deadly Autopsy,” the headline read; at one point I was quoted as saying I had been “Scared stiff”) broke in the press.
There was a snake for every cage in Kerr’s basement menagerie . . . except for one. The empty cage was unmarked, and the
snake that popped out of my golf bag (the ambulance orderlies had packed it in with my “corpse” and had been practicing chip shots out in the ambulance parking area) was never found.
The toxin in my bloodstream-the same toxin found to a far lesser degree in orderly Mike Hopper’s bloodstream-was
documented but never identified. I have looked at a great many pictures of snakes in the last year, and have found at least one that has reportedly caused cases of full-body paralysis in humans. This is the Peruvian Boomslang, a nasty viper that has
supposedly been extinct since the I920s. Dupont Street is less than half a mile from the Derry Municipal Golf Course. Most
of the intervening land consists of scrub woods and vacant lots.
One final note. Katie Arlen and I dated for four months, November I994 through February of I995. We broke it off by mutual
consent, due to sexual incompatibility.
I was impotent unless she was wearing rubber gloves.