Amy was standing in her shower, using her finger nails to scrape at her scalp while shampooing her hair. She was facing the back wall, letting the scalding hot water running down her chest. The heat always turned the bathroom into a sauna of it’s own that was therapeutic after a long and stressful day. This was Amy’s happy place. She liked to close her eyes and either let the music insider her head play out or think about things in reflection from the day and what she wished she had done differently. Today she was letting her knees bounce as she bopped along to a song in her mind.

She periodically peaked at the door to make sure no one was coming in on her in the middle of the shower, which sort of ruined the oasis of her bathroom routine, but it was a necessary evil since she had more than once been scared nearly out of her skin when her toddler had crept in silently and was standing at the shower door staring at her. Her thoughts got away from her during one of these checks and she started thinking about the monsters in her mind.

One of her most frequent monsters was the sky is falling monster. This was the monster in her mind that had her convinced that she would be killed because of something falling out of the sky and crushing her. Amy looked up then, eyes wide open, and scanned the tension rod and ceiling to make sure nothing was above her. She knew it was illogical, but she saw a jet engine fall from the sky and crush a teenager in a movie and thus developed this illogical fear herself. She had several of these mind monsters that lurked and made her check her surroundings for various illogical threats.

She pushed back the thoughts and let the soapy water from her head run over her face as she rinsed out the shampoo and moved on to fingering conditioner through her hair. She grabbed a clip off the tension rod and pulled up her hair with conditioner still applied. She heard a little metal click sound and checked the door. It was still closed and she shook her head. Now she was falling for random noises too, great. She reached for her shower puff and added a few pumps of liquid body wash and began to lather from head to toe.

As she worked the soap into her arms, she heard a noise again. She checked the door and still nothing had changed. As she turned back to her arm, she felt something brush her leg. She looked down and bit back a scream of horror. Her whole body went rigid and she didn’t dare move or make a sound anymore. Wrapped around her leg was a snake that had made it’s way up to her mid calf. It was still slowly creeping up towards her knee while she stood frozen in place. As she looked down, trying to assess how to proceed, she saw the drain to the shower was dislodged. At least now she knew where the clicking sound had originated.

She didn’t think snakes could survive or even fit in the pipes for the shower. This snake looked brown and black, but being wet made telling it’s true colors a bit difficult. The snake was past her knee now and she knew she needed to think quickly to get the snake to release from her leg and get away from it. She slowly looked at the shelves on the tension rod in the corner to see if anything made sense to use to help pry the snake off. There were four bottles of conditioner and a few bottles of shampoo, there was also a couple bottles of body wash, a soap bar, two kinds of wet hair brushes, and two shower puffs. She eyed the puff on a stick that hung in the back of the top shelf. She might be able to steer it’s head away from her leg and then work on pulling it free.

She slowly reached for the wood handle of the puff and froze for a moment as the snake’s head shifted to watch her movements. She thought it might just be watching her with intelligent eyes, knowing her plan to remove it from her. She waited a couple of breaths then continued to reach for it. She felt the wood with her finger tips and then continued until she wrapped her hand around it. She pulled it free from the hook and slowly brought it back to herself. She held the puff end and used the wooden handle to gentle pull the head away from herself.

Amy was making good progress in getting the snake to slowly slide down off her leg. She was just below her knee with it’s head pushed away from her slightly and facing a wall instead of her. She took a deep breath and continued to work the snake downwards, nearly to the point where she could try to step out of it’s wrap. Just as she felt the last coil of it’s body begin to release from her skin, the door to the bathroom opened. She made the mistake of looking to see who was coming in just now. There was a clatter to the floor as her husband dropped the linen basket in surprise. As the noise echoed through the room, the snake bit into her leg.

She registered the pain and her husband rushed to her side instantly, trying to help free her from it’s mouth. She prayed to whoever would listen that it wasn’t a venomous snake. The teeth released from her flesh and her husband flung it across the bathroom and tossed the plastic hamper over it. The weave pattern was tight enough that it could not slither through the holes and her husband put the bathroom trash can on it for good measure. It was metal so it would be able to hopefully hold the weight of the basket down while he turned to check on Amy.

She felt the blood run down her leg as she collapsed, half in and half out of the shower. The pain of hitting the tiles did not register though. The shock of what had just happened was still working on her. She could hear her husband calling 911 for help. Her husband was describing the snake to someone on the other end of the phone and saying a lot of “I don’t know” responses to the person asking questions. Her breathing felt heavy and she was trying to pay attention to him. Something about that snake seemed wrong. Something about the bite seemed wrong too. She could feel her body but not feeling it at the same time. She tried to tell her husband she felt wrong, but she couldn’t get her mouth to move. Her body wasn’t listening to her anymore. If she could, her eyes would have gone wide in shock, but instead her eyes began to slowly drift shut on her. She was now trapped inside herself in a silent prison, with sounds beginning to fade around her too. She screamed inside her head and began to weep, but her husband was oblivious to this fact as he began to perform CPR on his now unresponsive wife.