Constance Zimmer

He lay stiffening in her lap, his eyes tight as stitches.

She touched the stretch of skin he'd left behind on her scalp, smooth as if he'd never been.

The others went on sleeping.

She looked at her lover.

What have you done?

What you wanted, he said, shrinking into the couch.

Right?

She closed her eyes and felt the ancient trembling in her chest, the blood ticking in her ears, the living snakes beginning to stir.

Get out, she said.

Her lover left in a hurry, taking the pull-up bar with him.

For a long time, she did not move, only held the snake in her upturned palms.

In the morning, the snakes that remained jerked her toward the tub, uninterested in the pain they caused her, selfish in their dying.

If they had to die, they wanted to die in the tub.

By the third day, all the snakes had fallen out and turned to bone.

She buried the bone snakes in her garden.

In the night wind, her head felt cold and exposed, and though the snakes were gone, she could feel a twitching from the inside of her scalp, a phantom warning to flee.

But what was the point?

Her power had fizzled out, her scream gone silent,

So she began to leave her doors unlocked and windows open day and night, waiting for the end.

Years or months later, she'd lost track of time, she was lying in the tub when her assassin edged his way past the bathroom door, his sickle raised, careful not to look her in the eye.