The Serpent

Liar Liar

"Bullshit!" I screamed at him through the receiver, clearly aware of the hairs rising up on the back of my neck.

"Excuse me?" He growled; his voice deep and low in a way that should have left my knees quavering but instead only made my blood run cold.

"You heard me!" I tried to hide the squeak in my voice. "It's bullshit. You know what? I don't even care! I hope your car breaks down!"

"I assure you, it is a valid assignment. Believe me, I am not pleased about it either, but as you know…" He paused to suck on his teeth, making a hissing noise with the air that pushed between them. "There are certain protocols."

"Fine. Fine." If my blood could have boiled, it would have.

The thing was, I hadn't seen Eric in weeks. Too many weeks had piled up on top of each other and still, he'd stayed away. I was having one of those all too familiar moments, imagining Bill tuning me out like yesterday's leftover chicken. Now it was happening with Eric too, and frankly, I'd had it up to my eyeballs with vampire crap. If he didn't want to see me, didn't want to be with me, he could just come right out and say it! I could take the rejection if he was decent about it! Sure, he'd be a lying liar with a cottonmouth snake's forked tongue, but at least he'd be a nice person about it. I found myself thinking, Well, that's vampirism for ya'! They get sick of you and they just move on. Next please! I think I'll take a brunette. I'm tired of blondes.

I cringed and hung up the phone.

It rung back almost immediately, but I just stared at it. The answering machine came on, one of those old ones with the cassette tapes. I watched the tape go and heard dead air over the line. Eric cleared his throat, though the gesture was unnecessary. He always sounded like sex on a hot summer night. I would have turned to jelly if I wasn't so damn angry.

"Sookie," he sighed. "I will be back. Soon. I…"

The machine clicked off. The line went dead. Whatever he was about to say, an apology or a declaration of love or whatever-I didn't get it. Part of me wanted to call him back, ask him what he was going to say. But the part of me that wanted to ring his pasty pale neck won over. I unplugged the phone from the wall and went to sulk in my bedroom.

Amelia paced upstairs. I could hear her footsteps, shuffling echoes, on the ceiling. She had trapped herself in her room for hours, turning left and then right, doing god only knows what. I thought about yelling at her, or poking the ceiling with a broom. I didn't want to be one of those roommates, one of those people that whined and complained about normal activities. Pacing was pretty normal for Amelia. I shut my eyes and tried counting to ten.

I got to five.

"Amelia!" I yelled at the ceiling. The movement stopped. I heard a muffled voice, but I couldn't make out the words.

"What?" I yelled at the ceiling, trying to carry on a conversation with the stucco spirals.

"Spell!" I heard, or at least, that was what I interpreted out of the mess of words that trickled through the floorboards. Something about a spell that had her pacing. Maybe it was a requirement of the spell or maybe she was confused by it? I had no idea.

"What?!" I yelled again, as if that would improve matters. It didn't. The same string of words came through the floor like hard butter pushed through cheesecloth.

I got off the bed to notice the light blinking on my cellular phone. I had a text message, and there was only one person I knew that sent text messages. I stared at the phone for a minute, then picked it up and stuffed it in my pocket. I passed the stairway on the way to the front door. Amelia could have the house and the spell to herself. I needed to get out of the house.

I grabbed a jacket off the hook by the door and swept outside, slamming the screen behind me. It was just past dusk, and the night was alive with the sounds of crickets and frogs, cicadas and the occasional owl. My sandals crunched across the gravel driveway, softened under the smooth damp grass. Across the cemetery, I could see Bill's living room light on. Over the din of September twilight, I could hear the sultry melody of an old piano tune.

Bill Compton, another liar. If I'd eaten anything for supper, I might have felt sick. Instead, I stomped past the turn-off to his house and crept into the woods past the graveyard.

My mind was a rush of lies and vampires, two entities that seemed to go hand in hand. It was easy to separate the human liars from the honest folk. Their eyes twitched and they couldn't look you in the eye. Jason would squeeze his fingers when he wasn't telling the truth. Amelia would stare at the floor like a child. But vampires? Vampires could look you right in the iris and lie to your face. And since I couldn't read their minds, I had no idea they were lying until it was far too late. I was in too deep and I was already a victim. I didn't want to read Eric's mind. I just wanted to know what he was thinking.

The woods seem to quiet as I crept deeper into the old gnarled oaks, their limbs spreading out like the arms of some ancient beast. Cicadas folded their wings and the chirping of tree frogs faded. I could hear only the crunching sound of my feet on a leafy carpet. An owl hooted gently to my left and I turned to watch wings stab the air in flight. Her tail feathers spread like a fan, and I was mesmerized by her almost silent beauty.

I was so mesmerized in fact that I didn't notice the snake slithering out from beneath an old limb. I yanked my leg back with a panicked scream. Two drops of blood dribbled down my ankle, and pain shot up through my veins like lightning bolts. It sat there under the last pink wisps of the setting sun and stared at me, as though waiting for its venom to take effect. It was a red snake with green markings, a vibrant breed that would have been beautiful if it hadn't just bitten me.

"Eric!" I screamed, more out of shock than any sort of real hope. Eric was on his way to Dallas, catching a flight to Vegas. He certainly couldn't get to me, not in time to pull me away from the clutches of a very large predatory animal. I couldn't feel my toes, and I started to freak out.

Okay, like you wouldn't freak out too!

"Bill!" I wailed, clearly panicking. He could still hear me, right? He'd fed from me. Did that connection ever really go away? "Bill! Bill!!"