Reptilian

Five of Five

 She watches over him as the minutes drag by and his body shakes in struggle.

It spreads fast, like frostbite consuming limbs until it reaches the heart. The King Cobra neurotoxin compound goes straight to his central nervous system. His mouth starts foaming and drooling past his lips, and he blinks heavily. Other symptoms of the venom. The toxin compound makes the paralysis take over faster than just the venom would, rusting his joints and tightening his muscles. It reminds her of rats inside their cages, shaking their paws in and squirming after she injects them with the venom. Trying to escape something already crawling inside their blood.

He watches, wide-eyed, as she walks around him. Her steps are slow, almost casual, watching him try to reach out and grab her ankle. But his arm shakes uselessly, unable to bend at the elbow.

She walks back to his cabin, feeling her bruised throat, wiping the sweat off her face with the sleeve of her shirt. Inside, she finds a broom and bleach. She cleans the pieces of broken mirror on the floor, wipes the drops blood, rearranges the fallen furniture. She takes Esther's glasses from his bedside table, sliding them into her jacket. She picks up the syringe from the floor where she dropped it, still half full.

In the bathroom, she cleans her bleeding forehead with cotton balls, arranging her hair to cover most of the cut. She could come up with some explanation for Arnold. She could apply layers of concealer to her tender neck and wear a scarf. It is getting late, and Arnold could be coming back soon. But he would believe if she told him she went out to buy painkillers for a headache. By the time the man's body is found, they would be long gone.

When Arnold returns, she'll be wearing his engagement ring. She'll tell him she wants a quiet wedding upstate, only close friends and his family. She'll tell him she'll invite her sister Eleonora, and, for a moment, she even considers it.

But she brushes the thought aside, as she and Eleonora have long stopped being sisters.

She walks back out, inhaling the crisp taste of pine trees in the air. The man is where she left him, frozen in place. But when she looks down at him, his pupils follow her movements. She crouches next to him, finding the spot on his neck where she hit the needle the first time. The clumsy and aggressive way she injected him with the venom left a small opening, a line of blood dripping down. Just as well.

She inserts the needle again a few inches next to the first mark, hard enough that a small grunt escapes his lips, and blood trickles down his neck. She pushes the barrel down until there's nothing left inside the syringe. A herpetologist like herself would be able to tell the difference, but most people would assume the marks indicate a snake bite. Especially an incompetent sheriff's office, and an unexperienced mortician who likes to spread gossip. It doesn't matter that the King Cobra is not common to this region, or that it couldn't jump high enough to bite his neck first. She knew this town and its people. She knew they would accept a strange man's death without asking questions. No one in that town ever asked the right questions.

"The poison will likely kill you in a few minutes," she tells him. She wants him to know what will happen. "Probably respiratory failure."

He breathes heavily, eyes flashing with fear.

"It will hurt," she adds, softly. She leans in, caressing his face with her fingertips, and whispers, "But not as much as you hurt Esther."

She should get up and leave. The night glides by, and the longer she stays there, the more at risk of being discovered she is. He will die, which should be enough. It should, but it isn't.

When she returns from the car with the scarf she wore at Esther's funeral, she thinks about the snakes she studies, their soft flesh of scales, their curling bodies and elegant movements. She curls her scarf until it resembles a black string, coiled tight. The man grunts in despair as she slips the scarf around his neck.

She thinks of the snakes she watches inside glass tanks attacking their prey, biting and squeezing their muscles taut. How their whole bodies become a rope and their tongues taste the air for the prey's fear. The man sweats under her, struggling to move, his mouth opening. She sees his throat strain with effort.

"Ple..." He chokes out. His voice sounds like sandpaper, a rough whisper. "Ple—ase— E—"

Her fingers tighten around the scarf, her eyes stinging with anger. She doesn't know what she will do if he says Esther's name if he dares it. Why her? She wants to ask, why her?

"Pl—ease—Eh—" He tries again, barely able to breathe, face crimson with effort. "—Lyn. Eve—lyn."

Her fingers still around the fabric and she watches him silently. For a moment, the stifling presence of the town sticks to her skin like a blanket of steam. Yates girls don't have names. The manipulative whore. The arrogant scientist. The innocent girl.

"Evelyn." He tries again in a grunt, seeing her pause. His eyes are full of hope, of despair.

Her name sticks to the corners of his cracked lips like stale saliva. He had only moved to that town two years before, living in isolation from others. She had been gone for nine years. He only could have known of her, who she was, from one source.

Esther's own lips.

She wonders whether Esther told him about her the night she came over. While she pulls the sides of the scarf tight around his neck, she imagines polite, innocent Esther, telling a strange man of the sisters who left her behind. As his face grows purple and swollen, she pictures Esther asking that man to preserve Lady, the dog she loved. Her arms ache with the effort, sweat gathering above her lip, her palms burning against the fabric. She thinks of him choosing which knife he would use to cut her sister.

When she is sure he stopped breathing, she uncoils the scarf from his neck and considers the marks. The deep bruises could pass enough for some local cottonmouth or rattlesnake. His eyes bulge out, lips swollen and turning blue. Not a pretty image.

She unfurls the scarf and the cold night covers her like a cloak. She gets up, brushing the dried leaves from her knees and walks back to the car. For a few moments, she simply sits at the driver's seat, hands on the steering wheel, staring ahead at the cabin. The wind rustles the leaves, shaking the pines like a shiver.

She decides, driving back to town, that she will take Arnold's name after all. She'll start going by Eve, as Arnold fondly calls her sometimes. A softer name, kinder. She will be kinder and softer, too. She will bake pies for neighbors, decorate her house in elegant wallpapers, have children. She will tell people she is an only child. She will tell them her parents are dead. She will speak of her childhood with nostalgia, like a dream.

Alongside the body rotting in the woods, she will leave behind the corpse of Evelyn Yates.