There is a snake. Waiting in the basement, or maybe just lying there. Around the countless corners, oddly shaped rooms, paths that lead nowhere. Dark with eyes, coiled around itself. For company - a persistent odor, neither pleasant nor disagreeable, just everywhere. Dampness and darkness and time weigh heavy in this air.
You do not know how long it has been there. You do not even know why it came in the first place. You have gotten used to seeing it there, or maybe used to ignoring it.
What do you do when you realize the snake is in you?
You lean in, foolish and fearless, and try to hear what's behind the hiss.
6 comments:
This one has me really scrambled. I compliment you on the first sentence. Suspense! I'd start a short story or a novel with that sentence. Well, I will.
I want to talk about the dream I had the other night, where there were two very fast white snakes whose bites caused brain tumors. After a lot of running, in the end they bit me (on the arm, not in the end).
As for what you've written, my concern would be whether the impending snakebite is poisonous or merely painful. No way to know until the bite and the wait thereafter.
JMH - Are you mocking the 4 days it took me to write that first sentence (each one from my word-a-day calendar)?
Your dream - makes me think of the French word - ressasser. Maybe it's all those [s].
As for what I wrote, this snake doesn't bite.
The snake in our house is always the next trap, unseen, leading to some form of irritation. It's more within me than anywhere else, but am trying hard not to be so easily annoyed. And all the while, my teenage daughter just laughs, seemingly finding new ways to stretch my patience beyond the previously defined limits. I'll feel a lot better once the strong-willed-teenager stage has passed.
Kevin - I don't believe it! Her face is angelic and your patience is infinite, I'm sure of it.
February 25: is 3rd pers. sing. pres. indic. of be.
Ressasser? Is that to brainstorm?
I'll have to work on what sort of snake does not bite. One who has been fed...
JMH - we have the same calendar?
Ressasser - no it's more like to turn something around and around and around in your head, to just keep going over and over it. Ressasser le passé for example.
One who waits and watches and knows.
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