Here was a little known fact about me: snakes terrified me.
It was a stupid fear left over from childhood after a bad run in with a garden snake my grandma kept fed in her herb bushes that one day crawled up my leg and into the cuff of my shorts and left quite a nasty bite behind before I could scream loud enough for my dad to come rip it off of me.
Since then, I’d steeredveryclear away from the things.
“Yeah, so. What happens if they start crawling toward you?” I asked, noticing the own rising octave to my voice.
Unfortunately, Elaine was far too busy with finding us the eagle nest to pick up on my impending terror. “Staying still is what I’d suggest. Not many copperheads up this way, though. The most we’d run into up here are Western Terrestrial Garter snakes.”
Okay, whatever the fuckthatwas. The longer the name, the more venomous in my opinion.
Who named a snake with more than two words?
“Elaine...”
She gasped. “There it is! And I think they have babies in the nest!”
“Yeah, okay, great. Maybe we should move, though.”
Holy fuck, it was coming closer.
The snake’s head reared toward me as I shifted my weight, its tongue darting out. It was long and fat, clearly well fed up here on whatever it was hunting. It’s beady eyes focused on me, tongue darting out one more time before it slithered forward andright to us.
“Oh, fuck!” I shoved her back toward the rest of the group.
She stumbled and caught her footing on a small divot under her foot, her heel stopping her from moving back any farther while her body shot back. Recorrecting myself in order to keep her from falling right back onto her head and cracking it open on the rock, I snagged her arm and quickly tugged her forward, righting her suddenly.
“What the?—”
“Snake,” I hissed, pointing.
“Marlow.” She laughed. “It’s okay, it’s just a garter?—”
She didn’t get to finish her sentence as the world around me suddenly began to shift, falling away and growing smaller while my body pitched backward. Belatedly, I realized I’d stepped far too close to the edge of the rock shelf when I’d righted her posture, the pieces under my feet crumbling and giving way before either Elaine or I could quickly move away from it.
Time slowed.
Her eyes widened as she registered what was happening, her hand snapping out far too late to try and catch me back, my body just out of reach.
In the back of my mind, I knew I was already dead. This was simply the build up to that untimely demise I was always staring down the barrel at but had no way of predicting when and where the final nail in my coffin would finally rest.
What a terrible fucking way to go.
“Marlow!” I heard Elaine scream.
That was the last thing I heard right before I plunged and hit the ground below.
CHAPTER 22
Marlow
Voices fadedin and out along with my consciousness—hard to understand through the sharp pounding in my ears, making everything seem like I was underwater.
Light danced on the inside of my eyelids, strange shapes twisting into odd figures that almost looked inhumane the more I tried to focus on them. I parted my lashes just long enough for the shapes of the trees to come into view overhead, a cool breeze rustling the leaves to allow for sunlight to peek through in speckled moments.
And then once more, it all faded away. Gone again to return me to that inky blackness.
There wasn’t much in my life I regretted up to this point.
