We walked for a little while longer, and the whole time, I allowed my grip to be limp as Jack swung our hands between us. We stopped every couple of steps to admire a new animal and read their signs, and then Jack would be in awe of the creature, rambling about how cool the claws were or how he wondered how killer the animal would look while prowling the Savannah. He paused whenever we came across a new animal, then he would ramble about how he felt about it after I’d my chance to read off its plaque. This was the pattern until we stopped at the elephant enclosure. 

Jack detached his hand (and instantly I missed his warmth and clenched my fingers into a yearning fist) and from his pocket he procured a small camera. It was one of those small Polaroids - one so nice that there was no doubt in my mind that he’d stolen it.

“Jack, what-” I started, but was cut off when Jack approached an older gentleman that’d been accompanying a group of six or so children that looked no older than ten.

“S’cuse us, sir, but could you take our photo real quick?” He didn’t even wait for a response to yes or no before extending the camera to the man. “Quick, while we got one of the big guys in view!” he added, pointing to an elephant that’s trunk was suspended high in the air as it reached for hay from a feeder atop a metal pole. Ivory tusks gleamed pale and dangerous.

The man, obviously tired, gave a contrived grin before taking the camera. “Alright, now get close,” he said, bringing it to his face.

Jack had trotted back to my side and pulled me closer to him by wrapping an arm across my back until it settled against my hip. Heat blossomed there, settling in my belly, and I tried my best to focus on the camera with my face pulling into a smile. But all I could think about was Jack holding me so tightly - and how I never wanted him to let go. 

The camera flashed and shuttered before sputtering out a single photo. Jack hurried to the man, nodding him a quick thank you before taking it. He removed the photo, lightly blowing on it and waving it so that it may develop quicker.

“It’s nice out,” he remarked as he continued to wave the photo. He peered at me over the rims of his sunglasses with a knowing smirk. “Beats sitting in the store all day, don’t it?”

I nodded, finding that I needed to admit he was right - and also come to terms with how grateful I was for him pulling me away from those tethering responsibilities. “It does beat it, yes. I… Thank you, for taking me out today.” I said, fingers busying themselves with the headphone wire. Thank you for showing me this freedom.

“Nah, don’t mention it, Temp. Like I said, I like hanging out with you - and I like you. I don’t want anything to change that,” he watched me for a long moment with that frightening sincerity, then paused his photo-waving to give it a look. “Awe, lookit,” he cooed and held up the photo. It showed the two of us together while an elephant roamed in the background. 

In the picture, he was smiling broadly, and I was lacking one - when I could’ve sworn I was smiling, not grimacing like I was in the photo. Compared to him, I looked like a ghost, with my near-white complexion, hair, brows, and lips. I wanted to take the thing from him and rip it apart. Why did I have to look so sad and unpleasant? I didn’t feel that way! I was rather happy, and Jack should know it!

He wrapped an arm around my back in a possessive embrace. “Thanks for taking a photo with me, Temp. Now I got a souvenir to remember this day by.” I shuddered as he, once more, spoke with the intonation of a man  that was to die tomorrow. 

He pocketed the camera, then pulled out his wallet where he started to stow away the Polaroid. For a heartbeat, he took a pause, lingering on the photo and running a clawed thumb over our faces before he returned the wallet to his jacket.

Our hands found themselves linked again, and then we walked until we came to the zoo’s reptile house.

The inside of the reptile house consisted of one large dark room that was almost circular in shape. Its outer walls held glassed-off enclosures of snakes, lizards, and amphibians while in the room’s center was a massive aquarium tank filled with various fish found in Wisconsin waterways. Dark and muggy, the only sources of light came from the enclosure’s heat lamps and the aquarium

Kids were still swarming the building, though it wasn’t for long. But it was long enough to see them observe the snakes, and then run away with little squeals whenever the snake started to move.

I felt Jack tense beside me. Why does his grip tighten? Why does it begin to shiver?

We stayed towards the outskirts of the room, looking at poison dart frogs (specifically Dendrobates leucomelas, or the yellow-banded poison dart frog) while we waited the kids out. 

“Is it true that things kill you?” Jack asked, but with how he spoke, I knew that he was distracted by the number of kids in such a small space. Did he ask this out of genuine interest or to distract himself?

“Depends on how long you hold them,” I explained, wanting to distract him because seeing him in discomfort made me feel uneasy. “I certainly wouldn’t want to eat one. They’ve a neurotoxin they get from eating other poisonous critters.”

He didn’t say anything, only shivered his head in a nod. He watched the frogs intently with his brow set in a firm line as his throat bobbed with a swallow. His new fang peeked itself from beneath his lip, I noticed.

When the children finally left, I felt us both release a low sigh, and we felt more free to explore the darkened room - until we came to the walls housing only snakes.

Beside me, Jack went still, staring into an enclosure containing a forest cobra - Naja melanoleuca. He grew silent, his throat glistening with both sweat and burgeoning rashes as he swallowed.

“They like climbing and swimming both,” I whisper, cautious, afraid to startle him. “They’re one of the few cobra species unable to spit venom.”

He never acknowledged me. He was locked beneath the snake’s beady stare.

Jack approached the glass, lips set in a firm line and brow furrowed. His reflection in the glass was crisp, and I watched him intently while my hands fretted with the headphone wire. He raised a hand and braced his fingers against the glass, his nail-claws tapping against it with a sharp TINK sound. The nail polish he wore appeared to be flaking away near the nail bed - as though the claws had grown longer during our time here.

He rolled up his sleeve, revealing new growths along his bare forearm, some horrible amalgamation of infected scab and scale, and looked between his mutilated arm and the snake that stared back at him. Its black tongue flickered, almost as if in knowing.

Something worked in Jack’s eye, and I, too, looked between him and the snake. The scabs looked more like scales than what I last remembered, but even when the snake’s scales possessed more beauty. For one, the snake wasn’t uncanny or wrong in the fact it looked serpentine. 

A dread began to fill me, a kind of dread that I knew not how to relax or beat into submission. It made a bile rise into the back of my throat, and then there was frustration. What was this infection? And why Jack? It had to have just been some freak disease… just a disease, that’s it… there would need to be a cure. It just needed to be found. I didn’t want to think about whether such a thing would be fatal.

Hanging from Jack’s forearm was a thin flap of skin that’d become dislodged as he rolled up his sleeve, and beneath it revealed more budding scales. I began to doubt that a cure could ever be discovered.

As moments began to turn into what felt like hours, Jack’s silence had become terrifying, and I worked to swallow the bitterness writhing in the back of my throat. I hadn’t realized I’d been chewing on the corner of my thumb until I reached a hand towards him.

“Jack…” I whispered, and touched his arm. He jumped beneath my touch and I raised my hands in defense. There was a tear in his eye, and I added, softer than before, “Why don’t we just go?”

“Yeah, yeah…” Obviously distracted, Jack nodded, looking back at the snake, and pursed his lips. “Yeah, we didn’t get to see the penguins, yet, did we?”

“No, we have not.”

We left the reptile house in a hurry, our hands kept apart and in pockets. Jack walked with a hunched posture, shoulders arched and tense. He never even looked at me, and I hated the rigid, stern mask he wore at that moment.

I let him be, suddenly fearing that I’d fucked up, that the shift in mood had for some reason been my fault. I just didn’t know what or for why.

We walked past more school groups, the aviary, and other enclosures we didn’t even bother to look at, and, without speaking to one another, I knew that we were both terrified and lost.