THE NASTY SERPENT

I've met a woman of pure venom. She's the snake in the grass, slithering ever forward on her quest to deliver a lethal bite. She has lovely colors to catch the eye, but an extraordinary gift of fading around the edges until your eye skips over her--aware, but believing she is harmless, camouflaged.

She hisses and occasionally rattles warnings with a lilt which beguiles for its unusual quality. It creates nervousness for the bite, yet still draws you in, as curiosity is her bait. She doesn't hide in tall grass, but openly sunning herself, twisting this way and that in sinuous turns beneath the attention and tension. She smiles cunningly and waits. She draws you nearer still with antics that make you chuckle and lower your guard. She inspires loyalty and once she has it, she whips it at you with stinging accuracy.

Don't understand her. Don't coddle or try to care about her. Don't offer her friendship. These will be your downfall. For then she will show her fangs with venom dripping precision. She will snap at you until you feel wounded for caring. Despite what you think, you cannot do well by her, ever. She is a loner and her viciousness keeps her that way.

And yet it is not the sinking of fangs into flesh which leaves you hurt, it is the abrupt retreat, the flash of colors on her slinking back, the forlorn look as she turns once or twice --as though your friendship injured her--and it is the attack of her slithering tongue with half-truths and innuendos which close your veins in chilled shock.

She watches you without eyes. You watch her, awaiting the strike and being careful to avoid it. You take a wide berth but cannot worry for your friends who've become just as easily captivated by her bold colors and winsome ways, who you know will nurse their wounds too, one day.

She continues, knowing you know and with a smirk upon her serpentine lips she gosses and plonks and talks about her home while insulting yours and you for being there. And here is the venom for she spills her venom with words and behavior to the horrible ends of the internet, leaving bitten but wizened bodies behind. She counts them on her serpentine spines as successes, not seeing the twisted decay it becomes in her as she is left ever alone with another burned bridge stranding her on her lovely isle, one fewer than before.

The lovely snake is a lonely creature. She is bitter and unpleasant. She admonishes and distorts. She hates being told how to be or what to say all the while insisting others attend her, alter their course to please her. Her opinion is the only truth she knows and she will fail for she is ignorant and silly. Her collected victims grow in number, shake their heads, and point with red-tipped fingers: "Pull your head in. You've caused enough damage, snake. Be gone."

And the survivors are more than she, better than she, and not alone as she. They pull up and move on despite the chattering of fangs behind their backs when she vainly tries to recapture the sunlight of their attention for her basking. It grows ever colder for her though she doesn't see it.

Be gone, serpent. You've few bridges left.