Chapter Five

Confronting a Serpent

Dinner was tense as Lea had stared her mother down, the twins eating a fruit salad and cheese sticks for a meal once the woman came home around midnight with their father. Her father went straight to work, saying hi to her and hugging the twins before leaving.

It was hard for her to face them as her mother tried multiple times to start a conversation, her gaze always settling on her daughter’s injured hand instead of her face. She despised the way her mother had started to look at the girl in the eye, as if she was too uncomfortable to face her.

"Lea, the center called to apologize earlier today. I went to speak with them and I feel like you would be safer staying home for the time being." Her mother sighed with a tired look on her face that made her appear twenty years older.

'They apologized?' Lea's attention grew as she heard her mother utter the words. 'They have to believe me now.'

"I don't want any of the other patients asking you questions about what happened," Her mother continued reaching a hand out across the table to touch her own. "And I don't want you coming into contact with that girl again, even if you were cutting I still don't believe you started the argument."

Still her mother believed that she had harmed herself. It felt like getting stabbed in the back with a knife made of hot iron. Tears brimmed in her eyes impairing her vision briefly before she wiped it away with her arm.

"I never cut myself mom you have to understand that right?" Her voice sounded alien in her ears, it was too tiny to be her own. "She kept screaming at me to look at it and then I did. There was so much blood it came out of nowhere."

It was all way too much. How could she even think that the thought of grabbing a razor and bludgeoning herself would ever come into her mind. The thought of it was painful, it burned throughout her body like a pit of endless fire. And no matter what she said or how much she silently cried to herself in her sleep it would never go away.

"Honey please don't cry, everything's going to be alright. You are never going back there. We are going to find a virtual therapist from now on." Her mother said attempting to reassure her the best way she could with the situation at hand.

"I'm not going back?" Lea felt lost, more desperate than before."Did they say I was bann-"

"No honey, you weren't banned from the center. I just don't want you in harm's way ever again." Her mother interrupted sending her discomfort and she got up from the table to come and hold her.

The older woman held her tight, stopping her from trying to figure out what had happened. Her mother's face was cold and wet, she had been crying. Her entire body felt tense so when she wrapped her arms around her, it felt like the woman was trembling from the effort. Lea didn't hug her back at first and just sat in place letting her mother hold her. Overwhelmed, she thought about the conversation they had just had and how convoluted everything had become.

The one thing that was the most prominent in her mind was the fact that her mother still believed that she had butchered her own hand. So badly, that the first few days she wasn't able to move it without bursting into tears. The first night after the nightmare the wound was still bleeding. The doctor they visited stares at her like a charity case. She just wanted her mother to take her side and say she never hurt herself. And the center and it's staff called to apologize about what had happened.

So why, Lea moved away from her mother with her blood pumping hotly in her ears, why couldn't she take her side.

"Mom." Her voice was frail with her heart beating too loud in her chest for her to handle. "I never hurt myself please, I've told you a million times already."

Her mother looked as if she didn't know what to say. "Lea it's okay to admit that you did it. You've always been easy to startle as a child and I should have seen the signs that you would take out your emotions onto yourself." Just uttering the words made the woman's voice hot with tears as she held onto her daughter's non injured hand.

Punishing away, Lea shook her head at her mother's words. Easy to startle? She should have seen the signs? Her gaze became tainted with her avid emotions of anger and pain as she stared heatedly at her mother. She was trying to help but also she made everything worse. Her mother only could see her as fragile and broken, that she had failed in some way to protect her. But it wasn't true and had never been true, so why couldn't she just listen to her for once?

"I don't want to talk about it anymore." Hollow. Her voice sounded hollow coming out of her mouth which itself was aching and sore.

Her mother tried to protest but stopped from the look on Lea's face and let her go. The woman was hurt from the way she held herself, forcing herself to look away from her daughter's accusatory eyes.

Full of raw emotion, Lea practically ran into her room and screamed into her pillow. She felt suffocated against the once fluffy bed that had given her comfort hours before. Her skin felt sticky with the amount of sweat on her body from the blankets tangled against her. In her rage she threw every piece she could away from her, not caring that it knocked into anything. Not paying attention to the fact her arms were covered in angry red markings that simply appeared out of nowhere.

The teenager's desire and drive to care about anything had disappeared in that moment. It all came pouring out of here as she let out cries of frustration at not being believed, at what she had seen and most of all about that stupid card. If she hadn't found the card none of this would be happening. She wouldn't have witnessed that horrifying sight of that woman's skin turning into a mess of convoluted words and flesh crawling actions.

Her heated stare drifted to the card in question and she moved without realizing it. Her body felt as if it wasn’t her own, she was acting out some sort of autopilot set wihn the crevices of her subconscious without her knowledge.

Unconsciously, something was shifting, something alien that pumped throughout her body and took its place as the very blood cells that helped keep her alive. Like a feral animal she ripped the contents of the bookshelf off of their designated shelf with her mind captivated by the idea of getting rid of the card once and for all.

Lea held the card in her hand, blood running down the side of her arm unnoticed out of seemingly nowhere. The blood was dark in color while still being resemblant of the typical red color you saw in tv shows and blockbuster movies. She didn’t pay attention to it or even realize that she had injured herself with her chest heavy with confliction. The card felt like a weight ready to be lifted off of her shoulders as she began to tear it apart. A burning sensation spread, coming forth from the pit of her stomach inching closer with each tear until it bursted free.

***

“The black mamba is the deadliest female in the world, her rage is untamed as she prowls throughout the night demanding men and women bow to her power. Like a demon king awakening, the blak mamba’s lust is for their own beauty and success above all. Her tongue forked and bitter to taste reminiscent of the first bite taken out a raspberry stains your forever red.”

“Powerful unlike any other woman, the black mamba doesn’t like any comparisons. She is a bitter woman from endless betrayals and tribulations desiring nothing but the absolute decay of her enemies. Faceless sutors flurry her mind in the place of her dreams and nightmares, the bitter fruit of the never-ending pit in her petite and perky stomach.“

“Her roar comes from within it, for within the pit lays all of her true emotions unable to be properly depicted by men. For their feeble minds can never appreciate the true beauty and otherworldly being that the black mamba is, leading to her growing misery.”

***

The vomit left Lea’s mouth with a bitter aftertaste being left in her mouth as she panted over the toilet bowl in her family's bathroom. Her body burned with the sign of a high fever being evident with sweat glistening on her bare back. The night before had continued to fall apart after she had ripped apart the card until it’s pieces were too many to count. Her father had heard all the noise as had her mother but both had been hesitant to enter the room.

When her mother argued they had given her enough time alone and entered her bedroom she was met with a frightening state. Lea was asleep in her bed with her body red with a fever raging throughout her, a thermometer stated she was close enough to need to be hospitalized from how hot she was. All the teenager could remember was the disappointment she felt towards her mother and the feeling of having lost control due to the way everything turned out.

From outside the bathroom she could hear her parents arguing about what to do about her. Her mother was suggesting that maybe she had caught some type of stomach bug and that's why she had been acting so unnatural. Lea doubted it as she moved her hair out of the way to throw up again, her throat feeling like it had torn in half each time she reached. In contrast her father sounded more monotone and defeated, saying that he thinks her poor health is returning due to his absence.

The couple were at their wits end with their conversation getting louder by every word said. She could hear the twins tv being turned up louder by her mother before she really let loose. Sitting on the cold marble floor of the bathroom floor, she had no idea what to do. Her family had been doing better with her health finally healing permanently and her grades becoming the highest they had ever been. Her parents never argued this much, not even when she had to be hospitalized briefly.

Panting, she stared directly into the bow stained toilet bowl. She didn't know what was happening to her body. Along with her mind playing tricks on her, she was sick whenever she was at home with her family. Previously it had just been the desire not to eat much but now it was more. She felt like her entire stomach was being purged unt nothing was left, not even it's lining with the taste of bubbling stomach acid still fresh on her lips.

Her hair felt like brittle, it's normal oily sheen gone with the rest of her good fortune. She felt exhausted beyond belief as she flushed the toilet for the last time and leaned back with a shallow breath. Her dreams had more or less the same with the woman from before present in them. With a body that reminded her of some eldritch creature, the woman would appear on top of her every single time. The cruel look in her eyes stayed with her with every hoarse, empty scream leaving her as she woke up unable to speak.

The woman was deathly pale in a way that would worry her if only she hadn't faced the woman's actions so many times in her dreams. In her subconscious the woman would touch with cold, corpse like fingers and bring her pain. And just like Momo and the card this mysterious woman wore the familiar yet alien language she had thought that she had hallucinated. It was on her chest plain with her skin moving just like Momo's but only worse this time. Even more unnatural to see, it bled as she moved and dripped onto her lithe body.

Other times, she would find herself dreaming about not only the woman but the encounter with Momo. It would be in a different perspective with it becoming an out of body experience. She was suddenly watching from the sidelines as the woman pressed against her with an animalistic rage she'd never seen before.

I n these dreams Momo's eyes were different too, with the pupils blown out wide and her irises shaped like a demonic creature's. Just seeing it made her wake up in a ball, curled up with her head above her head in a form of protection.

When her mother had come across her frail body she had been entrapped in a never ending nightmare. It was hard to remember now as she stood up from the stained toilet and fell against the bathroom wall. But she could still see flashes of what had happened when she closed her eyes. Long wet hair had leaned over her paralyzed body, the owner's face disfigured so she couldn't put a name to it.

They opened their mouth as if to speak to her but with each parting of her lips, she was only capable of focusing on the endless rows of sharp teeth. Their hands felt cold at ice to the point it burned her skin staining it a red color when they finally let go of her.

Awakening she had coughed and vomited onto her mother causing the woman to scream. The next few minutes were a blur of her body being halfway dragged to the bathroom with her mother talking in half intelligible screeches.

Soon she was here, her body laying like a bag of rags against the wall with her chest heaving weakly. From outside the room she could hear her mother rummaging through her bedroom sniffling as she tried not to cry loud enough for them all to hear.

"She's staying home from now on. I don't care if we have to lock her in her bedroom from now on, she's staying here." Her father said as he came near the bathroom only to turn back.

"We have to get a doctor. There's someone who can help us right? There has to be." Unable to finish speaking, her mother began to choke up as another sob left her mouth.

The house went quiet afterwards as the two talked lower, her father attempting to comfort her hysterical crying. The hopelessness and confusion in her mother's voice cut throughout her body like it was hot iron, she could barely take it. All she could do was try to drown it all out as her parents helplessly tried to figure out a way to help her. Lea felt pitiful as she tried to find out what was happening to her mind as she gave another labored breath into unconsciousness. She welcomed it's cool embrace as her mind came to a stall and entered oblivion.