Reptilian Poetry Chapter 1: Part 1, a series of unfortunate events fanfic

R e p t i l i a n P o e t r y

/I spread your Albino tablecloth on my table and I remember. I remember your shaved eyebrows that made a second roof for your face: a house of worship. And I go there every time the death toll rises: that's my milk. And your milk: a pale vampire that is the sun. And I want to throw you in there. All the time I'm thinking: I want to throw you in there today but I can always do that/

Montgomery's dark, heavily drenched bowl hat is tightly enclosed around his crabby skull. His cigarette butt, that's as white as rain clouds, crushes between his wrinkly fingers. A combination of soap and dirt twists and slithers slowly about on a wide but short skin of cold bathwater trapped in a cold-blooded, porcelain tub.

His thin, iced lips suck on the cigarette butt and an echo of his hoarse breaths breathing in the tobacco into his lungs snake up to the ceiling: faint ghosts of flames. He's been sitting like this for hours now, smoking then staring—then smoking.

The dark, curly hair on his bare chest is strewn with thick beads of water. His eyes—hooded by long, spider legged eyelashes—trace every wet strand of hair on his chest. And the bathtub is only half full just like the moon tonight—just like the moon.

Plop.

/Your collarbone is sharp I bought this necklace for you only to shred it. You turn into a dandelion seed—blowing away somewhere in Kansas. Blowing away like the beetles that crawled alive on your scalp, from a blow so hard from a tumor's young lips. My hands, they're knotted in a solar system named: Girl with no ears. And your orbs are so warm. My hands, they're knotted/

Plop.

The Mamba Du Mal neutralizes with the reptilian curves of the bathtub as it slithers, like the smoke puffing from Montgomery's mouth slowly. The hard, smooth snake buries into the morbid solution of bathwater, following the twists and glides of the diluted soap.

Montgomery's eyes stare downward at the dull, blurred scales of the snake underneath the morbid water. How the snake got in the bathroom is beyond his mind, but what can be beyond a mind with no boundaries like his?—as others say.

And he can feel a cold form of what feels like velvet—the serpent's skin—slide against his fleshy stomach that's half hidden in a half full bathtub. And his eyes are so wide now, even though he might be in love with love. They're so wide now because he's thinking maybe, tonight his "Mali" finally understands now.

He buries his free hand into the water and glides it across Mali's hard, smooth coat of scales. The snake slips out of his touch and slithers up his chest slowly like the wind outside. Every part of him she reaches, tingles now like a shock of warmth. A gust of warm, tobacco scented breaths brushes against the snake's slender face.

Her flat, split tongue reaches toward Montgomery's thin lips, melting all the wrong between them.

A silent love, snake and man. Silent stares from the dripping faucet:

Plop.

/My lungs are filled with Death Valley sand, from a single dab of your Egyptian mascara on my tooth. And I promise you, through the groans of the children that roll under us, we'll be okay when we jump out—we'll be okay, because I promise that. Your dress reminds me of Nancy Spungen, nothing but tumbling peroxide curls. I'm playing dead next to your heartbeat, your heartbeat laughs like a little man-girl. Because you mean the world—We'll be okay, because I promise that/

Plop.