Snakeskin

Snakes are cool creatures. They do not betray what they feel. Other animals, you can see their joy or sorrow on their faces or in their body language. Snakes do not have the tenderness of apes that patiently pick flea-after-flea from a comrade to show affection. Snakes have no comrades. They are solitary creatures who move about their worlds with seeming indifference seeking warmth or the coolness of the dark, depending on the needs of body temperature. Mother snakes do not comfort their young and their young slither way without a goodbye or a returning thought to her care. They are indifferent to fear and unaware of their beauty. Snakes do not study their markings or seek ways to improve their design. They are not vain nor do they have a concept of what vanity is. They do not look at nature with admiration. They accept it as it is and use it to survive. Snakes do not shrink back from killing nor do they show fear at the imminence of their own deaths. Their eyes do not narrow or widen as they breathe their last breaths. They are what they have always been since before Eden and onward to eternity.

She didn’t know why she felt the need to display her blood for the world to see. She hadn’t loved him and had only allowed him to touch her to see what it was like. It hurt, but beyond that it was nothing but an experiment.

There was no passion, only the grunting indifference of his pleasure quickly sapped. She thought her crossing from the tiny mesh that separates girls from women, would be momentous, but it wasn’t. When it was over, there was nothing left to say, but “thank you,” as she turned away dismissing him into darkness. It didn’t matter if he cared or if he left or did anything at all. She was asleep before he closed the door.

Before it had just been the two of them, she and her father so far out in the country that they had to generate their own electricity, with no one else save the mailman ever stopping by. Now that she was older, and others had come in hopes of tempting her to take bite-after-bite of forbidden fruit until everything that was joyous suddenly turned foul. She had refused them all until now.

Why him? No reason. He was there. He was interested. He was a means to an end; a cat-killing curiosity. She had killed something too, but it was deeper than a question or a crossroad.

Daddy hadn’t told her the truth. He hadn’t prepared her for the fact that their life wouldn’t last forever. That’s all she wanted. Now he had invited others to their door in hopes of forcing her to grow-up, even as he clung to his “little girl.” She spent more and more time walking through the woods collecting treasures from the forest floor. Her father had taught her the names of all the flora and fauna that gathered and grew on shadow spilt darkened green, but he was dying; something was dying and there was nothing to do but wait and watch.

Now she watched her father crying as he stood in front the bloodstained sheet. Emotion had overtaken him until it bent him forward like a marionette with freshly cut strings. He was not himself. This was not daddy. Daddy never cried and now he looked like he would never completely stop. A puddle of teary snot ooze saturated the place where he stood. He picked up a falling branch and began wildly swinging at the air.

He didn’t see her, but she didn’t care if he did, at least that’s what she told herself as she walked away. Instead, question upon question formed, rose and fell as her father’s odd actions comingled with her own. There were no answers, at least not now. Perhaps they would come later.

She thought about going into the garden to see if any her father’s tomato plants were big enough to squish, but instead released the snake she had caught just the day before and watched it slither away until it was gone.