Since childhood, Liza had always had a strange affection for animals.
While other kids begged their parents for a kitten or a puppy, she dreamed of having a snake.
To her, they seemed mysterious, wise — as if they knew something people didn’t.
Her parents would wave her off: “A snake? Are you crazy?”
But one day, her father happened to see an ad — a friend was selling a young python.
And Liza won.
A new pet entered the house, and she named him Sam.
At first, her parents were horrified. The huge terrarium took up half the room, and Sam grew fast.
But Liza cared for him so gently that no one dared to take her friend away.
She fed him, cleaned his glass walls, talked to him as if he could understand every word.
Then something stranger began: Liza started taking the snake to bed with her.
Her parents scolded her at first, but eventually gave up.
After all, the snake was quiet, calm, almost affectionate — if you could say that about such a creature.
Liza fell asleep with the cool scales pressed against her skin and told her friends at school:
“I have the best friend — he’ll never betray me.”
The neighbors only shook their heads.
“That’s not normal,” they whispered. “It’ll end badly someday…”
But Liza believed she and Sam shared a special bond.
Years passed. The python grew enormous — over two meters long.
Sometimes her parents would wake up at night and peek into her room.
The scene was always the same: their daughter asleep, and next to her the snake stretched out — head near her face, tail near her feet.
As if he were measuring her length.
“It’s scary,” her father would whisper.
“But he loves her,” her mother would reply.
Liza just laughed and said:
“He’s always with me. He protects me.”
Then one day, they noticed the python had stopped eating.
Before, he would swallow a rabbit or chicken in seconds, but now he refused food for weeks.
Liza was worried — she stroked him, whispered to him, begged him to eat.
But Sam only stretched out beside her, silent, unmoving, as if waiting.
Frightened, her parents took the snake to a vet.
The doctor examined it carefully, asked where it slept, what it ate, whether its behavior had changed.
Then his face grew serious.
“Listen,” he said, “you need to separate your daughter from this snake immediately.”
“But he’s never hurt her!” the mother protested. “He’s tame!”
The doctor sighed heavily.
“That’s exactly the problem. The snake isn’t eating because it’s not sick — it’s preparing. It lies next to your daughter to measure her size and keeps its stomach empty to make room. It’s getting ready to swallow her whole.”
The mother turned pale.
The father shook his head in disbelief.
“You must be joking.”
“No jokes,” the doctor replied coldly. “I’ve seen this before. It’s instinct. You’re playing with fire.”
That night, for the first time, her parents forbade Liza to sleep with the snake.
She screamed that they were lying, that her friend would never hurt her.
She cried, begged, even tried to sneak into the garage to see him.
But fear won. The terrarium was moved out, and the family started looking for a place to take the python.
Liza withdrew.
At school, whispers followed her: “That’s the girl whose snake tried to eat her…”
She felt betrayed — as if someone had stolen her only friend.
But at night she dreamed strange dreams.
She was lying next to Sam again, and he was looking straight into her eyes.
There was no fear in those dreams — only warmth, and a bond that couldn’t be broken.
The neighbors talked about it for a long time.
Some said the parents had saved their child just in time.
Others dismissed it: “Nonsense! The snake would never have touched her. Just a scary story.”
Liza grew up. She never kept snakes again.
But every time she saw a python at the zoo, that familiar feeling stirred — a mix of fear and longing.
And only she knew:
deep down, she still missed those nights when beside her breathed the one creature she had trusted more than any human.
