Free Spiral by Kôji Suzuki

in time to see its corpse float away. At that moment, he'd felt the same gaze upon him that he did now. It hadn't been the dead snake's gaze, but rather that of a bigger snake that lay in the grass watching him. Its smooth face betrayed no expression as it entangled him in its insistent, unwavering stare. Ando had been shaken by the malevolence of that gaze. If the little snake he'd killed had been the big snake's child, some catastrophe would befall him for sure. The big snake was laying a curse on him: that was the purpose of the insistent stare. His grandmother had told him many times that if he killed snakes something terrible would happen to him.
    Repentant, Ando pleaded silently with the snake, hoping it'd understand that he hadn't meant to kill.
    That was more than twenty years ago. But now, Ando recalled the incident with startling clarity. Snake curses were nothing but superstition, he knew. He doubted reptiles even had the ability to recognize their own offspring. Yet… the alarm kept on ringing. Enough! Stop thinking! Ando cried voicelessly. But still the image of a baby snake, white belly upturned, floating away in the ditch, parent snake swimming along behind, continued to pester him like threads that wouldn't come untangled.
    I was cursed.
    He was losing control of his thoughts. Against his will, he could see the chain of karmic cause and effect looming before him. He couldn't shake off a vision of the murdered baby snake getting caught in the tangled vegetation lining the sides of the ditch, of the parent snake catching up with it and entwining itself around it, the two of them floating there… The image reminded him of DNA. The DNA within a cell's nucleus, he realized, looked like two snakes coiling around each other and flying up into the sky. DNA, by which biological information is transmitted endlessly from generation to generation. Perhaps a pair of snakes perpetually ensnared humanity.
    Takanori!
    His silent call to his son was filled with misery. He was afraid he wouldn't be able to hold himself together for much longer. Ando lifted his head and looked out the window. He had to distract himself, to interrupt this chain of associations at once. Through the windshield he could see the bright red Keihin Express train go by, slowly. With Shinagawa Station right ahead, it was moving no faster than a slithering snake. Snakes again. There was no way out. He closed his eyes and tried again to think of something else. The tiny hand grabbed at Ando's calf as it slipped away into the sea. He could feel the touch again. It was the snake's curse, it had to be. He was about to let out a sob. The situations were too similar. The baby snake, its head crushed, carried away by the flow. Two decades later, its parent's curse had manifested itself. Takanori was close by, but Ando couldn't save him. The beach in June, before the season had officially opened. He and his son, paddling out to sea, holding onto a rectangular float. He could hear his wife, back on the shore, call:
    Taka! That's far enough. Come back!
    But the boy was too busy bobbing up and down and splashing about. Her voice didn't reach him.
    Honey, come back, okay?
    Hysteria was beginning to tinge her voice.
    The waves were getting taller, and Ando, too, thought that it was time to turn back. He tried to turn the float around. Just at that moment, a whitecap rose in front of them, and in an instant overturned the float and threw both him and the boy into the sea. His head went under, and it was then that he first realized they were so far out that even his own feet didn't touch the bottom. He started to panic. When his head broke above the surface again, his son was nowhere to be seen. Treading water, he turned around until he could see his wife running into the sea toward him, still fully clothed. At the same time, a hand grasped at his leg. His son's hand. Ando tried hastily to turn around towards the boy to draw him up, but that had been the wrong move.