Flash Fiction by Carrie Redway
Old Severed
My father killed black snakes that slithered around our property when I was a child. He was concerned they would find their way into the basement of our house, as had happened several times before.
We had an old tree in the front of the house where the snakes liked to gather. It was below my bedroom window. The earth around the tree had been dug out and the hole reinforced with wood blocks creating a square pit with the tree in the center.
I thought the snakes waited for us there. I saw them coiled up in the pit from time-to-time. It was one of the few shady spots of the yard. Sitting outside in a Kansas summer was sitting in a sauna without the cedar smell.
Once, a snake slithered up and swung on the porch swing. It peered in our house--at us--through the windows surrounding the front door. Our couch faced those windows. It was unsettling to make eye contact with a black snake with every swing sway. We got rid of the porch swing.
I felt guilty for the snake deaths, but I disliked being monitored even more.
I watched my father kill a snake in the pit from my bedroom window. It was late summer. My father took a shovel to it. Stabbing down into the pit while the snake recoiled and jumped at his feet. The shovel hit the snake several times, severing it into pieces. The first was at the tail and when that part came off, the severed piece still jumped around like water drops on a hot skillet. It wasn't until my father severed the snake's neck that it stopped moving. He picked up the five or so pieces with the shovel, walked over into the forest line on the side of the house, and tossed the body into the trees. I watched the snake fly in various directions.
*
Later, I went searching for the snake pieces and when I couldn't find them, I went to my favorite spot in the woods: a small circular clearing. I laid down in the grass with my head against the roots of an old crab apple tree. I peered at the sun through the lattice work of tree branches above, and then closed my eyes, breathing in the sweet air around me.
I wanted to be buried there.
Unmarked.
Just me in a poorly constructed pine box, surrounded by the dirt so that my skin would wither with the worms, and the snakes.
I opened my eyes and saw another black snake lowering his body from a high branch of the crab apple tree. His coiled form unraveled, stretching long for the ground near my forehead, and the tree roots. My hands reached up toward his dangling head to strangle him, but his black bead eyes melted me. His skinny, thread tongue wiggled closer.
And for a moment, I felt like Eve.
My father killed black snakes that slithered around our property when I was a child. He was concerned they would find their way into the basement of our house, as had happened several times before.
We had an old tree in the front of the house where the snakes liked to gather. It was below my bedroom window. The earth around the tree had been dug out and the hole reinforced with wood blocks creating a square pit with the tree in the center.
I thought the snakes waited for us there. I saw them coiled up in the pit from time-to-time. It was one of the few shady spots of the yard. Sitting outside in a Kansas summer was sitting in a sauna without the cedar smell.
Once, a snake slithered up and swung on the porch swing. It peered in our house--at us--through the windows surrounding the front door. Our couch faced those windows. It was unsettling to make eye contact with a black snake with every swing sway. We got rid of the porch swing.
I felt guilty for the snake deaths, but I disliked being monitored even more.
I watched my father kill a snake in the pit from my bedroom window. It was late summer. My father took a shovel to it. Stabbing down into the pit while the snake recoiled and jumped at his feet. The shovel hit the snake several times, severing it into pieces. The first was at the tail and when that part came off, the severed piece still jumped around like water drops on a hot skillet. It wasn't until my father severed the snake's neck that it stopped moving. He picked up the five or so pieces with the shovel, walked over into the forest line on the side of the house, and tossed the body into the trees. I watched the snake fly in various directions.
*
Later, I went searching for the snake pieces and when I couldn't find them, I went to my favorite spot in the woods: a small circular clearing. I laid down in the grass with my head against the roots of an old crab apple tree. I peered at the sun through the lattice work of tree branches above, and then closed my eyes, breathing in the sweet air around me.
I wanted to be buried there.
Unmarked.
Just me in a poorly constructed pine box, surrounded by the dirt so that my skin would wither with the worms, and the snakes.
I opened my eyes and saw another black snake lowering his body from a high branch of the crab apple tree. His coiled form unraveled, stretching long for the ground near my forehead, and the tree roots. My hands reached up toward his dangling head to strangle him, but his black bead eyes melted me. His skinny, thread tongue wiggled closer.
And for a moment, I felt like Eve.
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Carrie Redway is a writer in Seattle, WA. She is inspired by myth, folklore and ritual. Her work has appeared in Sick Lit Magazine, Five:2:One, Rust + Moth, Occulum, Spilled Milk and others. She is online at carrieredway.tumblr.com and on Twitter @carrie_redway.
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