Snake-Eater

by T. Kingfisher

The rattling went all the way up her arm and into her skull, setting her back teeth clattering against each other.

“Probably not. Brains aren’t big enough to shove gratitude into. Still, never hurts to try.” She scooped the creature up with a spatula and shoved the frying pan handle into Selena’s hand. The scorpion sat inside the pan, looking sullen (although Selena was willing to admit that she might be projecting a bit).

“When I was young, they told us to learn typing. Said you’d always have something to fall back on.

My mom made me learn this too

“And that,” said the DJ, in a smooth, androgynous voice, “is the culmination of my ninety-seven-song thesis that songs about being happy are inherently worse than songs about being horny or miserable.” Ninety-seven-song thesis? Selena thought. Did they nail them to the station door or what?

Wanting to help is good, but this belief that you, personally, have so much power to affect the universe is starting to border on personal idolatry.’”

Maybe “because my ex wouldn’t” wasn’t a good enough reason to believe in something, but Selena thought she’d rather be in a cult with Grandma Billy and Father Aguirre than home with Walter any day.

Selena had never seen the old movie The Birds, only knew about it from the cultural gestalt, but she’d never heard that there were roadrunners in it.

that would be terrifying

Selena shook her head. “You’re saying my aunt was friends with a roadrunner—” “Roadrunner spirit.”

Her aunt went to Mexico, drew pyramids, drank tequila, got food poisoning.

sounds like a great time

Nothing about what to do if your aunt had been dating a god of roadrunners.

Then again, she was carrying a priest’s boxer shorts while following a giant peccary who was doing its best impression of a bloodhound, so god only knew what counted as likely or unlikely any more.