Year of the Snake

She had been born in the year of the Snake, that’s what the paper restaurant placemat said. Dara traced her finger over her birth year and frowned a little.

She liked rabbits and she liked dogs. She wouldn’t have minded being a tiger or a dragon. Even the chibi ox printed on the placemat had a charm to it.

But she was a snake. The one thing she was most afraid of in the world.

Ophidiophobia. A fear of snakes. That’s what Wikipedia said she had.

When she was really small–like still wearing pull-ups small–she’d been sitting in the yard on a checkered blanket playing with her dolls when she’d felt something crawling over her toes and up her leg. And she’d looked, and even without know what it was, she’d been absolutely terrified.

Now, as a big girl, she knew that it had been a garter snake and that it couldn’t hurt her. But when she’d been small… Seeing that thing crawling on her leg had left a deep scar on her psyche.

Even thinking about snakes sent a chill over her skin and made her stomach ache. She was terrified of them, with their blank black eyes and the way their tongues would flick out as they tasted the air. Or when they ate something and their whole heads would open up to reveal that maw lined by sharp fangs.

She hated snakes.

And now, looking at the placemat, she found out she was a snake.

Dara sighed and moved her plate to cover the placemat, refusing to look at it.

No matter what good words were said about snakes, she didn’t think she could bear being something she was so scared of.

Why couldn’t I have been a dog? she thought.

"Hey Dad," she said, "can we get a dog?"

"A dog?" Izan looked at his daughter, wondering where this had come from. The way her brain worked was a complete mystery to him. Even looking into her eyes, he could never tell what she was thinking.

Dara licked her fork. "Yeah. A dog. Can we get one? It doesn’t have to be a big one." She held her hands a few inches apart to represent a size. "We can get a little one. A cute little dog. I’ll take care of it. Feed it. Walk it. I’ll even pick up it’s poop!"

"Well…"

"Please Dad? I really want one and… and… It’s… It’s my year!"

"It’s your year?"

"Yeah. It’s my year. So we should get a dog that’s born in the same year as me and we’ll be best friends because we’ll be the same!"

Izan looked at her pleading face, then sighed. "I’ll have to talk to your mom."

Dara grinned, knowing that she’d be getting a dog. She kicked her feet and scooped up another forkful of fried rice. "We’ll have to get a collar and a leash and all kinds of toys! I’m so excited."

Izan watched his daughter eat and couldn’t help smiling to himself. She was humming under her breath, and her feet couldn’t stay still, little white laces dangling. She was so happy that he couldn’t bear to break her mood.

I guess this is the year we’re getting a dog, he thought.

=END=

~Harper Kingsley

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Lucky Embroidery

It was luck, finding the tattered old embroidery book with its black and white print of ink drawn embroidery patterns. The book had sat on the shelf of the secondhand store for decades, occasionally being moved around by the store owner as the categories were shifted, but never being bought. Flipped through, but always being reshelved, nobody wanting to spend even $2 to buy it.

Bezda had meant to pull down the book next to the embroidery book, but peering up and using her grabber tool to reach that top shelf, she’d accidentally grabbed the wrong one. And once it was down, she couldn’t reach high enough to put it back.

So she opened to the first page to be able to read the title information, as the cover had long since been worn to blurred illegibility.

"LUCKY EMBROIDERY" in an old-fashioned font, the author name unreadable.

Bezda glanced back up at the shelf, then looked around the store. She bit her lip, not wanting to bother anyone to put the book back.

She sighed and began turning the pages, wanting to see what there was. The drawings were more detailed than she’d thought they would be, with handwritten labeling that took a little concentration to discern but that was remarkably understandable once she understood it.

She had done some embroidery before. There had been a couple of embroidery kits that had caught her attention with their cuteness and she’d learned enough that she’d been able to hang the results on her wall without having to feel a sense of shame. So she already had needles, hoops, and a spool of embroidery thread she’d bought before realizing the kits came with their own skeins of embroidery floss.

Bezda frowned to herself, then shrugged and decided to buy the book along with the science fiction paperbacks she’d already picked out. She had a few plain canvas tote bags at home that she’d planned to decorate. Doing embroidery with the thread she already had saved her from having to buy fabric markers.

Why not? she thought, heading toward the cash register.

---

Scared of ruining a tote bag, she practiced embroidery on a scrap of denim cut off an old pair of jeans. Her first few stitches were messy, but after a while she was able to create a result she was somewhat pleased with.

"Practice makes perfect," she told herself, wincing when she pricked her finger.

And practice she did. A few minutes here and there between work and school. Then a couple of hours on Saturday when she took her embroidery to the park.

Sitting on a blanket with a tote bag attached to an embroidery hoop on her lap, she had the book opened flat off to one side, the pages weighted by her phone.

The pattern she’d chosen was a series of concentric circles and checkers. It looked intricate, but it was easier to make than most people would think.

Bezda listened to music through her headphones while she focused on perfecting her stitches.

It was soothing. The repetitiveness of poking the needle through the cloth. Seeing as something she did with her own hands took shape in front of her. The only thing better would have been if she’d bought different colors of thread, but the monochrome pattern had its own charm.

She’d thought the pattern was going to take her another day to complete, so she was surprised when she suddenly found herself finishing the last stitch.

"Wow. I’m better than I thought," she murmured in quiet pleasure. She followed the directions in the book to tie off and snip the trailing bit of thread.

She poked the needle into the top of the spool of thread and smoothed her fingers over the embroidered pattern. It looked so good. She’d never thought she’d be able to make something so intricate and pretty.

Bezda was examining the backside of the pattern when she began to hear screams and the rush of footsteps over the music playing through her headphones. She raised her head in surprise and saw people scattering and running through the park. There was the crack-crack-CRACK! of gunfire.

She pulled her headphones down around her neck and looked around, trying to tell where the shooter was coming from. Her right hand fumbled to grab her crutch, knowing that she was going to have to get herself to safety if she wanted to live.

There were trees off to her left, about fifteen feet away. She couldn’t run, but they might be close enough for her to reach and hide behind if she was lucky.

She wasn’t lucky.

Bezda was trying to lever herself to her feet when the gunman appeared in front of her. The long barrel of the rifle rose in her direction, aiming at her. She fell back on her butt, knowing there was nothing she could do.

It was ridiculous. She didn’t think about it, just raised the tote in front of her and braced herself to die.

There was the sound of a gunshot. It felt like she was pushed backward. As though she was holding up a metal shield that someone hit with a football.

It was an abrupt force hitting the tote bag she was holding up, but while her elbows bent a little, she was barely affected.

Someone shot the tote bag with a bullet, but the bullet didn’t go through the fabric and she wasn’t even knocked down.

There was a long moment of silence.

Bezda lowered the tote bag and dared to look.

Feet. Black shoes, black pants, a black jacket, a black hat. A body sprawled on the ground where the shooter had been standing. Limp and unmoving. Blood spreading around as the gunman gurgled out his last breath before twitching and going still. Dead.

Bezda stared, not understanding what had happened. She looked at the tote bag she held and noticed there was a black mark on the front. A broken patch in the pattern where the threads had simply disappeared.

The bullet had struck her tote bag and ricocheted back at the shooter to strike him in the middle of his throat.

He had intended to kill her, but had died instead.

Tears of relief streamed down her face and her eyes were drawn down to the still open embroidery book.

"LUCKY PROTECTION PATTERN" was written at the top of the opened page. The short descriptive sentence said the pattern could be used to save a life one time by rebounding all harm back to the person that cast it.

She’d just thought the pattern was pretty. Nothing more. Nothing less. But it had really worked to save her life.

Bezda picked up the book and hugged it against her chest.

It was luck that had let her find and buy the embroidery book. Luck that had saved her life.

"Thank you," she whispered to the book, hugging it tighter. "Thank you so much for coming into my life."

=END=

~Harper Kingsley

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And What Rough Beast?

It came with a bang rather than the expected whimper. Darker days then ever before, filled with greed and wastefulness followed by all the regrets a world’s worth of hearts could hold.

Some said he was the Antichrist, with a big A. But he himself objected, claiming to merely be a man.

He wasn’t the son of some mythical devil, a manifestation of all that was wrong with the world. He was just one antichrist amongst many. It was pure luck that he ended up at the forefront of them all.

A leader amongst men. A loud voice letting others express their free will to do as they wished in their heart of hearts. Giving them the excuses they told themselves as they destroyed the environment and wallowed in ill-gotten gains.

At the end of it all, as the world burned in the fires of climate change, and the heated oceans flooded as the melted ice released million year old viruses and bacteria, and nearly all life was extinguished, from his underground bunker he could only laugh in his madness. Tears streamed from his eyes. "I don’t understand why this happened! How could any of this have been my fault? I was just a podcaster!"

=END=

~Harper Kingsley

https://paypal.me/harperkingsley.

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https://kimichee.com.

https://www.youtube.com/c/HarperKingsley.

https://harperkingsley.bsky.social.
https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/HarperKingsley.