It was heaven when I first moved in
but soon in the night I heard it slithering and shedding its skin in a pile on the bedroom floor for me to step on in the early morning. Small fetid bones, teeth and hair left on the porch and once a half-digested rat tail on the kitchen tiles, said I had a snake in the house.
I dreamed of my old landlord, the one who let himself in to riffle through drawers, his grubby fingers leaving marks on the silk of my underwear. His rasping scales moved across the floor to the bed and he reared up to wobble his head at my face. Sweat-soaked sheets were wound tight around me when I woke. The air was tainted with the smell of crushed bones deposited under the bed.
“The bigger the scat, the bigger the snake,” said the vermin man. “At least you’ve no rats.” he said, “If you decide you can’t live with it, call me back and we’ll discuss capture.”
That night the landlord slithered under my bed and flicked his tongue up into the mattress and asked for my deposit, waving his rent book. I drew up into a foetal position and howled into the night, he laughed at me and a tearing shuddered along the bed as he tore himself away, leaving scales behind.
I asked the vermin man back, and with the offer of a homecooked meal and good wine, I enraptured him, and now we live together with the snake. My vermin man has sealed up the gaps under the doors and blocked the holes in the drains. But still on some nights when the moon is hidden, my landlord sneaks back to rummage through drawers and leave ripped up rent books in my shoes.
Joyce Bingham is a Scottish writer whose work has appeared in publications such as Flash Frog, WestWord, Molotov Cocktail, Raw Lit, and Sci-fi Shorts. She lives in Manchester, UK. When she’s not writing, she puts her green fingers to use as a plant whisperer and Venus fly trap wrangler
Wow and yuck, Joyce! Well done.
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