Constance Zimmer

As directed, she dropped the bomb into her bathwater.

The salts crumbled and hissed, and the snakes hissed back.

Gradually, the steam mixed with a muddy, vegetal smell.

She lay down in the water and propped her head against the tub, the snakes spreading and sipping until they fell asleep.

When she stepped out of the tub, the snakes didn't lift away from her scalp.

They didn't pull and writhe in 37 directions, didn't fill her head with their sound.

They lay limp as 37 braids, but heavier the way children are heavier when they sleep.

There followed a blissful period of lovemaking and spooning and driving through the countryside with the windows down.

The snakes draped over her headrest to give her hairline a break.

With her lover's encouragement, she put away her head wraps and entered a new phase of freedom and self-discovery.

As she grew infatuated with him, the snakes grew infatuated with the bath bombs.

She convinced herself that this was for the good.

I mean, weren't they always trying to escape the head wrap?

Especially Hector, her favorite, who was always futzing through a gap in the fabric, the first to wake in the mornings, nuzzling her eyebrow in an effort to wake her too.

These days, upon waking, the snakes were miserably hungover, hissing like 37 fuses until she took a very long bath.

In time, she and her lover developed an ease between them.

Occasionally, he got on her nerves, like when he wiped his face sweat on her bath towel and talked about fake news.

Or when he bought her a pull-up bar as a spontaneous gift, even though she'd never shown interest in doing a pull-up.

Sometimes she considered relocating to another town, eluding her lover and her assassin at once.

One evening, as she and her lover were watching a movie at her place, Hector fell out of her head.