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Well, corns are superb constrictors. Watch one with a live mouse or see one climbing almost straight up a pine tree in the wild, pushing the sides of it's body against the crevices in the bark.
I suppose if you had a full grown 5 foot snake weighing two or three pounds and the snake was exercised and strong it would be perfectly capable of putting away a child or possibly an adult. But that would only be if you did nothing about it and just let it sqeeze all it wanted around your neck. IF it wanted to, and IF you let it, I reckon you'd go unconscious and that change in your body might throw the snake into some mis-guided "kill" mode at which point it would not stop squeezing until all movement in your body was ceased for a while. It does not take long to knock a person out (seconds) if you cut off all the blood to the brain. Witness the furor over police use of choke holds a few years back--keep the blood cut off too long and cells start to die.
But I tend to agree with others, your snake is just getting a grip and hanging on. Or giving you a hug if you like.
If you ever are caught in the grip of a big powerful constrictor that seems bent on eating you, you should begin unwrapping at the tail. The muscles there are weakest and you can get the tail undone on most any snake. If you try to start unwrapping the head first, you will either hurt the snake or lose the battle.
When I was nine years old, there was a lady down the street who ran a "Zoomobile". She had an eight foot boa (Noah) and a nine foot python (Pretzel). She would get cases of laboratory chicks to feed them. Being such an animal lover herself, she did not like to feed the snakes and hired me to do it sometimes. Both large boids were in a custom plywood enclosure with a sliding vertical door. You had to hold one snake back, get the other eating, then make sure they both had a chick at all times lest they begin to fight over a chick. I noticed that Pretzel was almost done and I got a chick ready. When he swallowed the last, I opened the door and slung the new chick in. I must have been too fast because Pretzel latched onto my hand and exploded out of the cage when I yanked back. When I squatted down to try to get my hand back without pulling teeth, he threw coils around my arm and started putting the squeeze on me. My whole hand was now inside this snake's mouth and bleeding profusely. Noah came out and began marauding the box of chicks. Chicks everywhere, other animals in her basement zoo now freaking out. Ferret hopped over his dam and come to check stuff out. Well, Ava apparently couldn't hear my yelling so I go lumbering up the stairs with this snake wrapped around me now with a coil around my shoulder and under my arm squeezing my left chest as well as arm, just my thumb sticking from his mouth which was trying lustily to swallow my arm. It took a good five more minutes to get him off me, with Ava and her husband working on it. We picked out a few teeth and got me cleaned up. I did feed her snakes again, but never unsupervised. It would have seemed so simple to have had two enclosures at least for feeding. When we got back the boa had finished off all but a few chicks that managed to hide and he was trying to get in the cage to her two prized turtledoves which had flapped off a bunch of feathers. It was quite a day in my memory.
So I wouldn't worry too much about a corn snake. Even a big one.
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