Snake Tale

Part One: Girl / Dreams
Once upon a time there was a young girl who dreamed about snakes. Not that she liked snakes very much, you understand. It was just that her sleeping moments were filled with the rustle of cold scales shimmering pearlescently in the golden light of subterranean fires. She used to draw them in her waking, and they were not nightmares but, as she explained to her parents, looker-afterers.
But once upon a time is a subjective concept, and so, over the years the young girl became a young woman with a job, and a flat full of things she never needed to buy, a memory full of things she wished she’d never done and an imagination full of things she wished she had. Worst of all, in the fullness of time her dreams were swept away into the dull banality of everynight sleep, and cold reptilian eyes no longer watched over her in the darkness of the night.
Part two: Kate / Mirror
“You are a strong and self confident young woman.” Kate told her reflection, even though she knew it didn’t believe a word of it.
Her reflection stared back at her from behind the soap flecked glass; her hair pulled back too tight, eyes too big and skin too pale under inexpertly applied makeup.
---liar--- it said.
Kate washed her hands in painfully hot water and plastered a smile to her face without looking herself in the eye,
---fake--- said her reflection. ---not really real really---
then walked into the summer heat of the inner city bar.
“So, uh, as I was like, saying…” began one of Kate’s colleagues, gazing vacantly from underneath heavy mascara. Kate caught her reflection’s eye, twisted and warped by the curvature of a wine glass. It mouthed a word ---idiot---and stuck out its tongue. Tasting the air, thought Kate.
“K? You alright hun?” Her boss. Kate started guiltily, caught with her tongue out. She smiled guiltily and shrugged. Just being the weird kid, her shrug said. Don’t worry about the things I do. Her boss grinned and stared at her tits. All he ever did.
Part Three: Kate / King
Hours slid by on a slick of dry white and deafening boredom. Slowly the volume of the driving bass grew to beyond the volume of conversation and people began to drift onto the dance floor. Kate stayed put.
---nothing to shake--- her reflection muttered snidely. Kate ignored it. She had felt a prickle on the back of her neck, like ice sliding down her back. There was a man sat in the corner of the club, watching her. She looked away. Tugged nervously on her ponytail. Breathed deeply for a moment, and then slowly twisted in her seat to look again. The man was gone. Kate sagged in her seat as her reflection crowed with laughter.
“Um…excuse me.” The voice was low, cultured and undeniably male. It cut through the noise of the club like a
---snake bite---
hot knife through butter. “Would it be dreadfully rude of me to ask if I could buy you a drink?”
Kate looked up into dark eyes set within a pale face, partially obscured by a shock of tousled hair. And a smile. It cut the man’s face in half , a slash of pure radiant humour in an otherwise normal visage. Kate felt her stomach flip.
---talk to him you dozy bitch--- her reflection was shouting. She barely even heard it.
“Ahh…yes.” No. Shit. The blush started at her neckline a crept up towards her cheeks. “I mean, yes I’d love a drink.”
“Oh thank god for that. Usually people just say yes, and I have to walk away before I insult them. He shrugged self-depreciatingly and thrust his hand out.
“Name’s Rex. What’s yours?” Kate took his hand and looked at it. It was smooth and pale like his face, nails bitten short. His veins stood out like a roadmap.
“Kate.” She had to shout over the music. It was worth it to see him smile again.
The drank White Russians and stood outside to smoke and talk. Found things in common. Swapped numbers. Smoked again. He even persuaded her to dance, while her workmates looked on in barely disguised shock.
Then, when the night drew to a slow close they kissed for a long time and walked away in opposite directions.
Kate danced up the street, head fogged with alcohol and excitement. She never heard the footsteps behind her. Felt the world grow cloudy as her mouth and nose filled with cotton and chemical. Her knees buckled and her eyes locked shut. Then, nothing more.

Part four: Kate / Bridge
“Until I woke up here”. I watch the man with two mouths. It’s not too hard to deal with for us. Me and my reflection, or course. I’ve been here for hours now, sat on a cushion on the floor, listening to strange musical chimes and stranger stories. Here is a stone room, every surface elaborately carved. My reflection has been in this place for years. She still stares at me with bitter contempt. The man with two mouths - the keeper, he calls himself – looks at me with a parent look. Like I’m a favourite child with a bellyache. A mixture of sympathy and resignation.
“You said you would send her back!” My reflection is acting up. She doesn’t want me to be here. I’m less of a weakling in the flesh. One side of her face is red from where I hit her. I have wanted to hit her for so damn long. But she is right. The keeper said, in his strange harmonic voice, that he would send me home. I have never felt so tempted to click my heels.
“ Yes.” The keeper nodded, and pointed towards a door that I’m sure wasn’t there before.
“Outside…” my reflection breathes. There is wonder in her voice.
“Find the bridge. Find the book. Go home.” Then the keeper goes. Just like that. He leaves me standing with my reflection staring daggers at me. We go outside, and I drop to my knees.
It’s a city. Stretching for miles and miles. I can’t see the end of it. And it’s made of bridges. Small rope-built ones spiral over and under like a thousand spiderwebs. Metal ones, glass ones, some made from rainbows and cloud, others from the same stone as the room I was in only moments ago ( to which the door, I notice, has disappeared).
I stare up at my reflection. She is still lost, watching the bridges. Slowly she looks down at me.
“Which bridge?” We both say it at the same time. It sounds a lot like the keeper.
It takes us what feels like days to find the bridge. We walk, and climb and slide until one of us feels a tug in one direction, that strange prickling feeling on the back of the neck. Then we start to go that way. Sometimes we sleep. The second time we do so my reflection curls up against my back. She is warm and welcome.
Eventually we start to see a pattern. The largest bridges emanate from a central point. We aim towards it. The final bridge we cross is cool to the touch and muscular, organic and strangely cobbled. I still have no clue what is happening, but my reflection has stopped bitching at me.
There is a lectern on the bridge. A book on the lectern. I open it to the first page.
Once upon a time there was a young girl who dreamed about snakes. Not that she liked snakes very much, you understand. It was just that her sleeping moments were filled with the rustle of cold scales shimmering pearlescently in the golden light of –
I stop reading. I know this now.
- subterranean fires. She used to draw them in her waking, and they were not nightmares but, as she explained to her parents, looker-afterers.
But once upon a time is a subjective concept, and so, over the years the young girl became a young woman with a job, and a flat full of things she never needed to buy, a memory full of things she wished she’d never done and an imagination full of things she wished she had. Worst of all, in the fullness of time her dreams were swept away into the dull banality of everynight sleep, and cold reptilian eyes no longer watched over her in the darkness of the night.
I could cry. My reflection is gone. Then I am.
Part five: Kate / Ophites
Kate opened her eyes in the darkness. She was sat in an armchair, red fabric and exotic scents.
Rex sat opposite her, his slash of a mouth serious and drawn.
“I’m sorry. I needed you to know.” He grimaced and looked at the carpet. Kate looked too. It was green.
Then she looked up and smiled at him, her eyes shining. “I know,” she said, standing up and stepping out of her skin, “I know.”