It would be impossible to go back now. Everyone was pushing forward for a glimpse of her and the stage was so close. The crowd made him think of a giant boiling caldron, with each body hot and sweaty under pressure pushing for the surface. Thrusting upwards. Twisting.

"You're not going anywhere," he mumbled to himself, but his inner voice was doubtful, like the weather on a September afternoon. "If I could forget her," he sighed. The thought however scared him worse than the pain it came with it. How to forget her? He could not, did not want to lose her image. It was tattooed on the inside of his corneas and that certainly was the way he wanted.

Same as not being able to eat or sleep meant nothing to him, so did patching the deep cuts she carved in his heart each and every time. The serpent woman was always somebody else’s lover, never his.

He fought alongside to get closer to the stage without being trampled. Being used to this already he succeed.
It always happened.

She did not make an appearance until the crowd began chanting her name, screaming hysterically. And when she finally emerged on stage, with the snake coiled around her neck like a scarf, as if by magic, the uproar stopped.

Stepping closer to the edge, like coming out of a veil of artificial fog, her figure slid slowly toward the reflectors. In the silence that hung, the woman floated in the light, the snake on her shoulders, a true queen of the jungle. At every turn, her black hair shining in the air drew arcs and coils of dark night. From the dim room, thousands watching became subjugated.

The serpent descended slowly along her arms and hugged her belly sending a wave of voluptuous dizziness through the viewers. Then the snake slid up to her breast, its head approaching it and smelling it. A single bite would be fatal.

With the snap of two fingers followed by a bewildering silence, the reptile descended to the floor and creped away lascivious but obedient. The same snapping fingers could have the room around her feet.

Strangely, most only remembered the feel of danger that hung in the air, followed quickly by desire, fear, and insanity. Exhaustion. Incomplete or mixed feelings, but they brought a delirium-like state.

Her red lips touched the reptile head and kissed it.

After the show, men crowded, as usual, in front of her changing room. With a large bouquet of red roses and hundreds of faces around him, eagerly desiring the same private experience as everybody else waiting, the scrawny man also targeted the door to her room.

Using his elbows to advance the short distance, he looked over the heads of others, full of emotion, like he remembered his first time. If it were possible to make one wish ... only one, only once, he would not want anything else but the serpent woman.

But what could he offer to a woman who had everything? How to convince her they should be together? There must be a way.

She took the flowers and kissed him on the cheek. His knees changed their structure and molecular constitution, turning into quivering jelly.

She told him softly to stop looking for her. With her green eyes, a perfect continuation of the snake skin lingering on her shoulders and through her never-ending bating lashes she looked at him with pity.

“Understand there's no use, I will never choose you, and it will never be anything between us.”

He saw her red lips moving, but did not hear a thing. Her scent made him delirious.

He wanted to say something nice, some words that would pierce her armor of ice, but it was difficult to articulate any sentence in her vicinity.

The snake hissed a few times. She was silent.

Tonight's chosen man was tall and well built.

Looking puzzled behind them as they walked away, his mind tried to decipher the good luck seemingly hitting every man but mysteriously eluding him. Whenever she left at the arm of another man, his heart bled. And the nightmare did not seem to end. She never seemed to satisfy her hunger for men.

A sudden lightning and then rain started staggering the two in their path.

Happy as a child because he had his umbrella, he ran up and held it up above her, ignoring his rival. She stopped and uttered the words he always hoped to hear:

“Come."

The other man looked dead as he stood abandoned in the rain, like a chair forgotten outside.

She seemed absent for a while. There were no words to articulate. The Snake broke the silence hissing.

She caressed it and laughed:

“Did you know he does not work unless fed?”

“No, “ he admitted.

“I feed him only after the show. As a kind of reward, right?”

He understood only that he was closer he has ever been to her now and that was all it mattered.

The creature’s scaled head moved slightly changing its position, sniffing him. The man’s body had an involuntary reflex to pull back.

“It only attacks when hungry, the rest of the time it’s pretty predictable,” she spoke clearly amused by the situation. “If you're afraid, you can go.”

He strenuously denied. He’ll not go anywhere, no matter what will happen.

She smiled devilishly and continued talking, mostly about former lovers. He no longer cared, now they were together.

Saw him suffering, but did not stop talking. He could bear anything; endure all the merciless details about those who had passed through her bed because tonight he was chosen.

She was cold to the touch, it made him shudder. She switched on the light and the tension in the air, a certain pressure, a strain, totally puzzled him. He wondered what was to come.

“Kiss me,” she asked.

He obeyed and feeling drunk with ecstasy, forgot all about the creepy snake still lingering between them.
She seemed so small, so cold, and the man felt he must protect her... but she asked him to lie down instead so he immediately obeyed, his whole body tottering.

Very happy to see him stretched out, she quickly removed her clothes. Her naked body seemed unreal.

Hypnotic. Sparkling. He tried to warm her, caressing her breasts, wanting her desperately, but she didn’t let him move concentrating on his pupils, wrapping herself around his body with unexpected slithering force, squeezing it like in a vise. She leaned over him and unfolding her hair, sniffed, smelling his neck moving down towards his belly, until his overwhelmed manhood disappeared entirely in her hands.

He felt something wrapping around his foot. An unusual numbness crept up his body as he felt a cold touch ascending. His breathing became heavy and began to tremble. She hugged him quickly dispelling fear. On his belly moving forward, wet and fluid, the serpent's head. She kissed his neck, his face and eyes as the snake continued to climb. She ran her tongue over his belly, stooped and twisted her spine like a reptile in ways impossible to describe. He closed his eyes and became a train about to derail. Was it her tongue, the serpents?

No woman made him feel like this, there was actually no another woman. The world no longer existed. This odd and overwhelming fusion became the world. She gathered herself on his chest, her upper lip trembling.

He heard her moaning and somewhere above the hissing serpent identified its presence. He felt a sting and his eyelids began to struggle, shaking spasmodically. Warmth pervaded his bones. Could not make any move. Who was encasing him, the woman or the snake? A whiff of blood in the air. Whose blood? He parted his swollen eyelids only to see her hair changed into small water snakes.

He was not afraid and regretted nothing.

At last, the rain washing everything.