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The flame engulfs your mind. The mind crumbles under the weight of visions of that awful thing. The way the crimson flower slithers. The way it latches into your marrow. The way it blossoms into the palm of your hand, bursting through flesh and breaking bone. You want to scream but you’ve already forgotten how.
“I want to live. I want to love,” she’d said.
You believed her. Nothing wrong with that. After all, she’d spoken only the truth. This is what you learn as you die. A snake has no reason whatsoever, to lie. Do you remember now? It hunts, it embraces, then it kills. It does so with the most frightening grace imaginable.
Swelling capillaries make your eyes run red and as your vision abandons you, the beautiful beast uncoils. It detaches from the useless shell it’s made of your body. It crawls into the palm of her hand. It furls into the shape of a flower-bud there and goes to sleep.
“Don’t blame me for your mistake. You were the one who got the order wrong,” she admonishes gently. “I said that I wanted to love. Then I said, I want to live. The order of these things is important. You understand that now, don’t you?”
Her soft laughter skips across the quiet room and is absorbed by the ambient romance suffusing the air. No, not yet! You think. The evening’s still young, isn’t it?
The night is just darkness that falls from the sky and seeps into the ground. Illumination gradually becomes the the most distant object from your wretched being. Her cruel cant is a low whisper counting backward, matching the slowing cadence of your ruined heart.
“Five-four-three-two... one.”
There’s dark. There’s cold. Your breath hitches, then it’s gone.
