Snake Eyes

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Those red fuzzy dice swung at me, almost sideways. I was beginning to wish I hadn’t hitched that ride.

“I used to want to be a race car driver.” That’s what she said. She spun the wheel with one hand and flicked her cigarette ash out the window with the other. Her nail color matched the dice. I wondered what man had given her that saying; it’s kind of a man thing to say.

“My daddy,” she said. A perfectly reasonable response, right? Except I didn’t say it out loud!

“What? Are you clairvoyant?”

“Clairaudient. That’s the word you’re looking for.”

“Yeah that. Are you?”

“It happens from time to time. Sometimes I just tune in.”

“Well don’t.”

I tried to block my thoughts. Ahead of us a tractor and hay wagon hogged the road. But she stepped on the gas and leaned forward. I wondered if she could even see.

We whipped around the wagon. Of course there was a car coming at us. She jerked the wheel back to the right without even looking to see if we had cleared the tractor.

I swore, I have to admit.

The lady just laughed, tossed her butt, and reached for another one. We were coming up to an intersection where the county road rose to cross the highway. Our road had a stop sign. She didn’t take her foot off the gas.

I could see a long ways, to the right. But a barn and some corn blocked the view on the left.

Are you crazy, I thought. Before I could help myself. The last thing you want to do is call a crazy person crazy; you don’t know how they might react. And of course she heard me.

“Crazy like a snake,” she said.

“C’mon, don’t be stupid!” I grabbed onto the dash. We took the slight rise at 70 miles an hour, at least.

Nothing was coming, thank goodness, or we’d’ve been killed for sure. The truck caught air and came down on the other side, fishtailing and tossing my bags around in back.

“Let me out,” I told her. I figured I could hitch another ride, or just walk to the Greyhound. But she wouldn’t slow down. Ahead of us, a sign warned of a double curve. I knew that the road wound around, then narrowed and crossed a creek.

I pounded on the dash. “Slow down!” She said nothing, and this look came into her eyes. There was drainage ditch lining both sides of the road. But a culvert had been put in, on the right, to make a drive into the field.

I didn’t like the look in her eyes at all. We must have been going 70, like I said. I could just see us crashing headfirst into the creek. I jerked the wheel hard to the right. We would have flipped regardless, but the tire hit the edge of the drive. That must have propelled us farther into the air. I don’t know. I blacked out on the first rotation, when I hit my head on the window.

* * *

This is part of it, somehow, so I’ll tell you. The next time I saw the crazy lady.

It’s like I opened my eyes in the hospital. She wasn’t laid up in a cast in the bed across the way though. No, she was dressed in neon green hospital scrubs, injecting a drug into my IV.

Her nails were still bright red. When I saw them, I immediately thought of the fuzzy dice, and our insane drive.

I said ... well, I cussed her. Except the words came out in German: “Du verdammte Hündin.”

“Was ist los?” she said.

I had no words. Or I guess I had no English words. I couldn’t figure out why they were coming out in German. But I didn’t want to speak again. It’s like something was automatically translating, a hidden Alexa or something.

“Stimmt,” she said. Whatever that meant. I felt myself calling from far away. It seemed like if I closed my eyes, I’d go back.

* * *

I woke up hanging upside down in the overturned truck. The lady was there, pulling at my seat belt. Thankfully I’d been wearing one. Still, I wondered how on earth we had survived.

“Bad luck,” she said, undoing the seat belt so that I fell to the roof.

My entire body hurt already, like it would in a crash. But all my body parts were in order. I don’t know how many times we flipped. We were a good hundred yards into the field, but the ground was torn up in only two spots. Other than where we slid to a stop.

The lady sat down against the front wheel well, cigarette burning. She looked across the field with a gleam in her eyes. I crawled out onto some matted soybeans. Then … well, I yelled at her.

“Were you trying to kill us! What the hell were you doing?”

It hurt my head to shout, so that’s all I said. She said nothing, just took a long drag on the cigarette. It’s time to get away from this crazy, I thought, not caring if she heard me. I wanted her to hear me.

I heard a siren. Someone must have seen the wreck. I stood up and looked around. In the back, the field rose into a hill higher than my head. Toward the road, grass hid the ditch, like the trees hid the creek where the double curve road crossed it. The siren came from somewhere on the far side.

She tried to stand up. Pressed the hand with the cigarette against the truck and reached the other arm out to me. I should have found my bags and run away. But I couldn’t refuse to help a lady stand.

Her hand was fragile in mine, like a bird. I looked at her. Her eyes met everything but mine. “We should get out of here,” she said.

I wondered why. “Are you sure you’re okay though?”

“There’s going to be cops,” she said.

Great, I thought, she’s crazy and some kind of criminal. That was the first time I had a good look at her, though, in her jeans and fringed top. She looked good. I remember wishing she didn’t smoke; her face already looked about twice as old as the rest of her.

The sirens were loud. It sounded like they were in the woods, just on the other side of the creek. I knew they would have to slow down to take the narrow bridge and those curves. We had a minute.

“What did you do?”

“It wasn’t my fault,” she said. “I heard what he was fixin’ to do, and I had to take him out.”

Take him out. That’s how she put it. I didn’t have to wonder long what she meant.

“I didn’t kill him on purpose. So there’s that.”

“Oh. There’s that. Yeah, murder on accident is better; you’re right.”

I didn’t want to know any more. She turned away to head up the row of beans, like she planned to disappear over the rise. I noticed that she had … well, murderer or not, she had a great butt.

I followed her up the rise, body aching, watching her hips sway as she walked. It looked exaggerated. Of course she knew what I was thinking. And she had me. I tried to stop myself, but I felt like I had a ring in my nose, attached with a silver chain to the base of her spine. There was no way I could turn around, or even look away from her.

The soybean field ended just over the rise. A rusted, woven wire fence sagged in knee-high grass. She flicked her cigarette in the last of the beans, straddled the fence, and looked at me. The hill just behind us muffled the sirens. We were alone. I still couldn’t look away. It was the first time our eyes had met since she picked me up. Her eyes were like snakes with gaping mouths.

Not that they looked like snakes; they felt like snakes. And I couldn’t look away.

But I have to, I told myself, without remembering she could hear me, and she smiled.

“My daddy used to look at me the way you do,” she said.

I felt disgusted by that, ashamed even. But I thought I could use it to escape her. Though I also wondered if she wanted me to be like that. There was no way I could have looked away from those eyes regardless.

I approached her.

She swiveled immediately, threw her leg over the fence and faced me on the other side of it. Her face was like a mask, and I don’t think, scared as she was, that she could have read anyone’s thoughts.

The fingers on her left hand fluttered. “I forgot my cigarettes,” she cried. “Goddamn it. Do you have one?”

“I don’t smoke,” I said, grabbing the fence.

Her arm swung out to her side. I remember it seemed like it writhed in the air. It moved against the way an arm with an elbow should be able to move. Then both arms turned shiny, and her red nails split in two. Her eyes turned green. Slit with black.

Her entire body burst apart. I wish I was lying. She burst into a mass of snakes. Snakes that billowed together in a cloud, then fell into the grass. And slid right through the woven wire.

* * *

“Did you get away, daddy?”

The man on the patio is silent.

The little girl in his lap fidgets. “Daddy?”

“Well … sure I did. How else do you think I’m telling this?”

“But those snakes were coming at you!”

“Yeah,” says the man. “But anyone can outrun a snake. Even after a wreck.”

The little girl leans back against his chest. Her blonde curls stand and wriggle against his chin. The woman in the yard strolls from the shed to the garden. She smokes a cigarette and swings her hips.

The man’s eyes, like a snake’s, never leave her.

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Cover image designed in Canva Pro, using a photo by Steven Lek, aka Tukka.

“Snake Eyes” began as a 153-word, 5-minute freewrite on April 3, 2020.