Fiction, Anna Tregurtha
Lately, life has been a drag for Elliott. Really, a drag.
Elliott works part-time as an assistant from home. When she’s done with her work mid-afternoon, Elliott visits thrift stores. Elliott has bought five brown jackets in the past month, even though it is the height of summer. She scans the racks alone. All the teenagers in the thrift stores have friends. They laugh and try on five-dollar, twenty-five-inch-waist True Religion jeans together.
Elliott tries to figure out the exact moment when things went wrong, but it’s hard to place. Was it when she moved away? No, it was before that. Is there a moment she could go back to and fix everything? Is there a way she could go back and warn herself not to make some fatal error that put her in this place? She wishes she knew what the fault was.
Elliott knows she can’t go back in time. But she wants to be ready. If the opportunity ever comes up again, she will not squander it. She doesn’t ever want to end up here again. She doesn’t want to make that unknown mistake again.
Every night she wakes up at 3 AM to pee. She walks into the bathroom, stares herself directly in the eyes in the mirror of the medicine cabinet, and goes back to sleep. A pattern. A dream. The days run into each other and run away. The days have leveled and flattened out. So flat and small and thin she knows she could fold them up and fit them in her pocket and forget about them.
Elliott waits for something amazing to happen. Lately, she’s been thinking this mysterious and amazing thing may not happen at all. She wishes she knew what this amazing thing was. She hopes and prays and ruminates on the concept of what this thing could be.
Elliott has started measuring time in episodes of The Hills. She figures it’s as tangible and real as any other metric. Each episode is approximately twenty-one minutes long. I have four more episodes of The Hills before I’m done with work. It will take me two episodes of The Hills to walk to the post office and mail this package. She tells no one of her new system of measurement.
Elliott fills her time with long walks. She tries to walk five miles a day because that feels like she is doing something worthwhile. She hopes the walks will help her to dissolve into the city a little bit. She finds intriguing things on these walks like the overwhelming rush the scent of rotting guavas gives her, a full-sized towel in a recycling bin, and an East Side trailer park with new Subarus and Audis parked out front of each boxy little trailer home.
One day, Elliott drives to a park in Chinatown to walk around. Every single woman walking through the park is on a call on Bluetooth headphones, presumably talking to some other young woman on Bluetooth headphones walking through a park somewhere else.
Elliott’s walks occasionally take her west. Near Don Antonios, a restaurant that Heidi and Spencer often go to on The Hills, Elliott sees a piece of paper taped to a pole that reads “Did anyone witness the crash between a 1993 Toyota and a 2018 BMW on 08/29/2023? Elliott wonders if anyone will respond to the ad, and if the person who might respond could solve some sort of overarching mystery of the crash. What if someone nefarious responds to the ad, involving themselves in the dispute for no reason other than to cause chaos?
Mostly, Elliott takes the same routes again and again. She likes to walk out her front door, turn left, and walk past a Catholic school. The Catholic school often hosts musical performances at night, and Elliott likes to look through the fence into the auditorium of the school and wonder how she could get invited to these events. Everyone at these events seems to know each other, and they all know how to dance in the right way so as to not look stupid or out of place. Is loneliness a choice? Elliott wonders.
In front of the Catholic school, a statue of Jesus stands under a hedge archway. He looks welcoming, facing outward with his arms extending wide.
The fingers on Jesus’s left hand are broken. Elliott wonders how they got snapped off. There must be no real way to replace Jesus’s fingers without getting an entirely new Jesus, so the school has opted to landscape the hedge archway in order to hide the damage. Even with the deceptive landscaping, the imperfection is obvious. The landscaping makes the hedge uneven and slant toward Jesus’s wounded fingers. This only draws more attention to his injuries.
Elliott likes to imagine whatever administrator in charge of the landscaping at the school talking to the hedge trimmer, asking him to make sure he hides Jesus’s missing fingers in the greenery, even at risk of the hedge being lopsided. The lopsided arch is a sacrifice worth making. You can’t just get rid of Jesus and get a new one.
As Elliott walks down an industrial street alone one night, she glides down the street. Her feet have been taking over lately while her head floats two or three feet above her body. She likes walking down this street because there are never any other pedestrians. The only other evidence of humans is painted graffiti that keeps popping up on the sides of warehouses and box trucks. The graffiti is always in all caps and painted with blocky paintbrush lettering. STOP MASS SHOOTINGS. STOP MASS SHOOTINGS. STOP MASS SHOOTINGS. Elliott isn’t sure if this graffiti will have its intended effect. Something about the way that it’s always painted gives her extreme unease. But Elliott doesn’t worry, because she always carries expired mace with her when she walks at night. The side of the mace says “Use By August 2021”. It’s odd that the mace wants to be used up, to have the owner of the mace be put in a situation where it is necessary to spray. Elliott can’t imagine what would make mace expire. She doesn’t even fully understand what mace is. She hopes the gesture alone of pulling out the canister would scare off any crazed artists hellbent on stopping mass shootings.
On this night, there is only one cloud in the sky. It looks like a perfectly textured Dorito. Even though it gets darker, the Dorito doesn’t disappear. A single star in the sky, and a single Dorito.
Elliott passes down a dark street without her glasses and all the dogs in all the yards keep barking at her. She realizes has no idea where she is. Just lost in the little one story houses and the Dorito chip in the sky is gone now, and so are the stars and she realizes, they’re actually planes, and she wonders if that first star she saw was a plane the whole time.
She passes a bread factory. The image on the side of the building shows a cheery red and blue train car. Elliott thinks the train car looks like it has a smiling face on it, but really it’s just two windows and some shading. As Elliott turns the corner from one industrial street to another, cars whizzing by, a waft of sourdough hits her. Each car that speeds by sends another wave of beautiful bread scent into her nostrils. The scent is heavenly, and she reflects upon this solitary religious experience for weeks afterward, searching for meaning.
One night, Elliott sits in a 24-hour deli and writes a song in her black notebook to the tune of “On Top of Old Smokey”.
My life is so lonely
Each and every day
I thought things would be different
Since I moved away
The city keeps changing
Wish that someone would stay
My friends all don’t live here
I cry on the freeway
Last year I got sober
From that I won’t stray
But it’s hard to make friends now
So I’ll try out AA
When I see my neighbors
I try to say “Hey”
But sometimes that word is
All I say all-day
People keep leaving
I’m alone in LA
Even my therapist
Moved to Santa Fe
Elliott orders a sandwich at the deli. When it arrives, it is covered in grease and comes with an unceremonious mountain of kettle chips. She finishes the grease sandwich and goes to the bar next door to watch stand-up comedy.
The comedian on stage says he can turn the name of any board game into a sexual joke. “Jenga!” the audience shouts. “Hungry Hungry Hippos!”. Elliott does not laugh. Elliott nervously dances her straw around in her seltzer water with lime. She kicks her feet against the bar. The bartender asks her if she is ok. This makes her feel much worse.
After the astounding comedic performance, the comic informs the room that he had been the last act. The show is ending. Loud music comes on in the bar. Elliott walks out of the bar and down the street. The street is full of people having fun in the glimmering lights projected from the awnings of shops. Everything is alive. She sees teenagers in baggy jeans going to see movies, people who look vaguely like celebrities spilling Topo Chico on their Teslas, hip girls with their hella ugly boyfriends, a man pissing on the side of a building while exclaiming to himself, drunk bar patrons yelling out to their friends approaching from across the street, a grown man riding a child’s scooter with a tiny fluffy dog on each side of him, the leashes pulling him ahead as he heads down the sidewalk. The sled dog scooter man is confident and unbothered. Everything is overwhelming. It almost feels too alive. Elliott gets into her car. Tears seep out of her eyes and down her face as she drives through the city. Going outside is horrible. Going outside is a mistake. I will never go there again. I will never go anywhere again. I will never leave the house again.
A few weeks after the deli incident, Elliott decides to betray her lifelong promise to herself of never leaving the house again. She wants to go on a hike. The temperature is approximately 86 degrees Fahrenheit. It takes Elliott the length of one episode of The Hills to drive to the trail.
She has been to the trail before. A river runs beside the trail, and it is nicely shaded.
Elliott parks in the gigantic gravel lot at the trailhead. Driving up to the lot, the Robotic Research Center materializes into view. The Center created the first satellite that the United States sent into space. The center also built the Voyager 1. Is there a significance in being so close to something that made the most faraway object? To be in nature and know the magnificent buildings filled with ambiguous scientific innovation are looming so close? Most people visiting the trailhead probably don’t know what is going on inside The Center. Elliott has no idea what goes on inside The Center, even though she could easily look it up online. She tells herself she likes the mystery, but she also tells herself that one day she will become more informed about the goings-on inside The Center to answer her questions.
She gets out of her car and walks to the trailhead, carrying a red backpack. Inside the backpack is her Camelback, filled all the way up with 2 liters of water, a book she has been trying and failing to finish for the past year, and her keys.
Entering the trail, she sees three paths. She chooses the center one. She walks along the dusty ground, stepping around rocks and dodging under trees. She gets to the river. There are families swimming in the river, listening to music, and speaking in Spanish. There are kids laughing and screeching. Everyone seems like they are having fun. Elliott admires the scene of the families and then feels self-conscious about lingering a little too long. She unties the bandana from around her neck, dips it in the river, wrings it out, and puts it back around her neck. She continues on. The path then leads to some small rocks that leisurely cross over a stream. She finds great satisfaction in crossing the stream so easily. The route goes back to the river and under a small bridge. Under the bridge the rocks are cool. She perches on the rocks and stops to read her book for a while. Elliott crosses over rocks again to the other side of the river and up a dusty hill.
Elliott walks along the path, in direct sunlight for the first time since the gravel parking lot. She sees a smaller path on the right side and decides to take it. It goes down to the stream. She sees a woman and her husky. The husky is splashing around in the water. Elliott recognizes the woman and her dog from the last time she hiked this path months ago. Elliott watches as the husky plays in the cool river water and the woman relaxes nearby, her feet dipped in. Elliott and the woman make eye contact. Elliott again feels nervous about her observations and moves along. On her way back to the main path, she thinks about whether she will see the woman again. Elliott wonders if the woman recognized her as well. What would it take to work up the courage to greet the woman? Seeing a stranger again and recognizing them is an inherent step of becoming part of the fabric of a city, she thinks. She wonders if she is ever a recognized stranger to other people. She knows she must be, by the simple fact that she is not invisible, but she has a hard time believing anyone can perceive her. She imagines herself appearing as a black hole, not visible to the eye, but making her presence known by the energy-sucking darkness she thinks her loneliness must give off.
The path then goes over a wooden bridge. After the bridge, the footpath weaves back into the trees and starts to have a mild incline. The shade is enjoyable. The path is paved over and wide. After walking on the broad trail for a bit, the path splits. Elliott knows that to the left is a sunny area with access to the river again. To the right is a path that eventually forks into two paths. She knows the path on the right goes up into the mountains but follows the river through the woods for a while. She decides to go to the right.
The route becomes sunny again, dusty, and much more narrow. White desert flowers frame the path. The flowers look dry, almost like they should make a crunching sound when they get moved around by the wind. Then the path goes into the trees. The path tightly hugs the side of the mountain. Many fewer people are on this path than the main path. Elliott decides that every person she sees on this path she will say “hello” to because she finds it nice when other people do this. A glistening, slim runner in small shorts and a bucket hat runs by. “Hello.” “Hello,” he pants.
The path is getting higher and higher, but the river is still visible. She looks over the edge to see the man-made waterfalls. Is the river dammed up? She doesn’t quite understand. The concrete has messages stamped from the city on it, claiming the concrete as city property and forbidding trespassing. There appears to be a lot of concrete incorporated into the water, and the trickling over the edges sounds nice. Elliott decides she doesn’t care if the waterfalls are pure nature or not because the water feels natural enough. The sound reminds Elliott of an alarm clock that her grandmother bought her when she was a child. The alarm clock was metallic and light blue. It was preprogrammed with different relaxing sounds instead of the typical stressful alarm clock sounds. One of the sounds was of waves at the beach. Elliott’s favorite of the sounds was of water flowing. The alarm clock called this sound “Babbling Brook”. Whenever Elliott hears this sound in nature she hears that phrase in her head. Babbling brook. Babbling brook.
The path follows the pattern of shaded and tree-lined with the sounds of “Babbling Brook”, back to a dusty mountain with crunchy dancing flowers. The patch switches back and forth between this pattern many times. The path goes up and up. Elliott feels amazing. She feels in awe of the patterns of nature. She knows the only way she can really get high anymore is by exercising. And this is doing the trick. Elliott thinks about God. She thinks about how grateful she is that she is alive. She thinks about people she knows who aren’t alive anymore and how sad it is that they never get to see how beautiful the path is. She doesn’t like to share these thoughts with other people, because they feel contrived and overly sincere.
When the moment of awe passes, she tries to trigger it again. She still feels good—it feels good to move her legs and be outside—but she can’t get the euphoria to click on again. She tries to press the button of euphoria a couple of times. God. Life. Death. Nature. Beauty. It doesn’t work. She knows that part of what is special about this feeling is that it can’t just be turned on and off, but she still is willing to try. She keeps walking.
Elliott comes to a fork in the road. She decides to go to the right again. She climbs up the mountain, saying hello to everyone she passes.
After a while, she gets a view of the top of the mountain. She knows she is close to the top.
As Elliott walks, she thinks about a date she went on a couple of weeks earlier. She met the guy in line at 7-Eleven, where he used a cheesy pickup line on her. Elliott found this so amusing that she said yes when he asked if he could have her number and yes when he asked her on a date to a gallery opening downtown. Going on a date made her feel nervous, but standing by a table filled with snacks and drinks in a corner calmed her nervous ticking energy a bit.
“I have two tarantulas,” he said, picking up a cracker.
He looked her in the eyes.
“They don’t have names.”
He looked down at the cheese board, trying to decide which cheese to select. He decided on a soft cheese with herbs.
Elliott looked at his face but thought about tarantulas. He had big, soft, and stoned eyes. He said the tarantulas scared him.
“Why do you have them then?” she asked.
“I like watching them grow,” he said as he looked directly at her.
The eye contact made Elliott nervous, and she looked down. As her eyes passed downwards she noticed the way his thumb moved over his cracker. He was using his thumb to spread the soft cheese over the crispy surface. As he thumbed the cheese, he started talking about his dirt bike.
On the drive back to the boy’s apartment that night, Elliott reached across the front seat and grabbed his hand. She took his thumb and stuck it into her mouth and sucked on it. His thumb tasted like cheese.
The path begins to slope downwards. This brings Elliott back to reality. Elliott worries that she will continue to be led downwards and she will have to trek up on the way back when she is exhausted. She is starting to get tired but has continued on with the thought that her journey back will be almost entirely downhill. She decides that if the downward slope goes on for more than five minutes, she will turn back, but for now, she wants to see where it goes.
At the bottom of the slope, the ground flattens and goes around a curve. There are two picnic tables under some trees. She sees three hikers sitting at one of the picnic tables talking. They stop their conversation for a moment to say hello. Elliott says hello. She keeps walking.
The trail starts going up again. There is another manmade concrete dam in the river extending outwards. Elliott still doesn’t feel confident about what these monoliths around the river are. This one seems stable and extends outwards about halfway into the river. Elliott decides to take a break to rest on this dam, despite the warnings from the city that this dam does not belong to her. She sits down and pulls a bag of red and yellow cherries out of her red backpack. She knows these may be the last cherries she eats for a while. They are about to go out of season. At least that’s what the guy at the farmer’s market said. She can feel the energizing effect of every cherry on her body. She spits the pits over the edge of the dam. She wonders if she is spitting so loud that the people sitting at the picnic table can hear the sounds from her mouth. Elliott doubts the possibility, but the woods are so quiet, and the spitting is so loud. In order to get the cherry pits to go really far, she ends up making the loudest sounds possible.
After finishing the cherries, Elliott decides that she feels very tired. She tells herself that soon she will come back to this trail, and she will take the center path, and then the path to the right, and the next path to the right, and down the hill, and finish climbing the mountain next time. It’s starting to get late in the afternoon. She thinks about her sunny apartment and the way the light shines through the windows this time of day and misses being there.
Elliott heads down the incline of the trail. She passes the two picnic tables under the trees. The three people that were sitting there are now gone. She walks up the short incline she almost didn’t take. The mirrored reflection of her journey—woods, dust, sun—runs through her mind as the sky starts to become slightly overcast, hinting at rain. The rain is always such a tease, and she doubts this sky warning has any weight. Still, she feels justified in her decision to head home.
Each step downhill pushes Elliott forward with ease. In her ease and satisfying exhaustion, she almost doesn’t see a flash across her vision.
Elliott stops, quickly, her worn-down sneakers almost sliding on the dusty tan dirt.
A large rattlesnake is in the center of the path.
To the left, the trail drops off the side of the mountain. To the right, there is a steep incline into the rock of the mountain. In short, there is no way around the rattlesnake.
Elliott and the rattlesnake lock eyes, or at least she thinks so. It feels like locking eyes with a deer or a coyote crossing the road. But worse, different. Her stomach flips. Elliott remembers her lifelong fear of snakes.
Elliott isn’t sure how she knows the snake is a rattlesnake, but she trusts herself enough to turn around and start running in the opposite direction. All the hair on her arms is standing up straight. She runs until she reaches a small creek she passed over about 3 minutes earlier. She stares into the trickle of water.
Elliott takes out her phone. She hates having her phone out during a hike, she thinks about something she heard that interacting with smartphones while outside decreases the calming effectivity of nature. She probably heard this on a podcast she was listening to while on her smartphone while walking outside. Regardless, she wants answers. She gives in to her weakness and lets her phone become temporary God. All-knowing. Savior.
The internet is slow. She opens Google and types “Rattlesnake” into the search. The slowly loading images displayed relay her worst fears. She is right, something horrible is happening. The snake in the path is a rattlesnake. She searches “What to do if a rattlesnake is in your path”. It takes a few tries of typing the phrase before she gets anything that yields results. According to the search, the correct action to take when there is a rattlesnake in the path is to not get near it. Stay at least three feet away. They can move fast. If you can’t give them enough space to move by, wait it out. The best action when a rattlesnake is in your path is no action.
Elliott feels uncomfortable with this plan of no action, a plan of no plan. She walks away from the creek and towards the rattlesnake. She walks slowly, looking down at her feet to make sure there aren’t any snakes where she is stepping. Her fear escalates with every step. When she sees the rattlesnake again she cannot believe that it is still there. That it exists. She runs back to the creek.
Elliott remembers something she had heard about snakes–that they are sensitive enough to feel vibrations on the ground when humans are walking. That’s why they usually clear out of the way and go unseen. Of course, this logic directly goes against the fact that a snake is on the ground ahead. Still, Elliott decides to put this theory to the test. She turns to walk back down the mountain trail toward the rattlesnake’s resting place. With each step she sets her feet down heavily, stomping with purpose. Elliott feels nervous and sick; experiencing actual danger is not something that happens to her often.
When she gets to the rattlesnake, it has slithered to the side about six inches closer to the incline of rock holding up the mountain on the right side of the path. This would have been a relief, but all of the information on the spotty internet she had pulled up on her phone indicated one should leave three feet of space between one’s fleshy permeable body and the sharp and poisonous mouth of a rattlesnake. The path did not allow for this. The rattlesnake sits comfortably where the sandy-colored crumbling rock inclines and hearty desert plants grow vertically.
Elliott speed walks back in the direction of the creek. She hunts for weapons. She collects palm-sized rocks in her hands. She turns, stomps forward, and throws the rocks in the direction of the rattlesnake. She doesn’t aim to hit the rattlesnake, just get the rocks close enough that it will get scared and choose a new place to rest. Elliott feels slight anxiety about being caught doing this and that if witnessed by other hikers, it would seem like she was trying to kill wildlife or disturb rocks. But no one is around. She throws a rock, then takes a step closer. Picks up another rock, throws it, and gets closer. The rattlesnake is unbothered. It lounges in the dusty sunspot it has chosen. Elliott looks at the snake a moment, the sight of it horrifies her so much that she finds herself running away again. Back to the creek and the water. She sits. She waits. She perches on rocks and reads the book she brought with her. The escape of the book comforts her.
Elliott reads for about twenty minutes and then decides to return to the rattlesnake’s spot. The rattlesnake is gone. She finds it eerie that a snake could just disappear like that, and she wonders if it’s hiding and waiting to bite her as she walks by. Maybe revenge for her rock-throwing. Elliott walks by the empty rattlesnake spot. She does not get bitten. She sees no evidence of the snake. Her steps on the ground cause the light brown dust to puff up and create small clouds at ankle height.
Elliott runs down the footpath, fast, into the wooded area. The shade is beautiful. The creek is beautiful. Two boys somewhere between the ages of sixteen and twenty-six sit on rocks, smoking weed between the trees. Elliott is happy to see the stoner boys, the normalcy of their t-shirts, and the skunky smell. She slows her run to a walk, not wanting to make the boys paranoid with her nervous energy.
As Elliott walks away, one of the boys says, “Ma’am, your backpack is open.” Elliott says thanks and stops to zip up the little red bag. She feels vulnerable walking around in the wilderness, seeing a wild animal, all with her backpack open. The wilderness is no joke, Elliott thinks. She walks faster. She power walks over the dirt and rocks out of the wooded area, away from the stoner boys, and back into the sunshine. She is walking so fast she almost misses what is in front of her. She almost takes a step and then sees a shape.
A baby rattlesnake. A baby rattlesnake is crossing the path and turns its baby rattlesnake head to make eye contact with her. Elliott almost collides with the baby rattlesnake on the baby rattlesnake crosswalk. Elliott walks backward very fast away from the baby rattlesnake crossing. Her heart beats fast again. She is in complete disbelief seeing two rattlesnakes on the path over the course of one hike. Of being trapped on the side of a mountain by a snake twice in one day.
Elliott tries her approach of stomping and throwing rocks from before. Throw a rock, run away, approach slowly, see if the snake is still there, repeat. After a few disturbances from the rocks, the snake moves to sit in a small crinkly bush on the left side of the trail, near the edge of the cliff. Its rattle sticks out from the bush, looking menacing. Elliott decides there is no safe way to pass this snake either.
Elliott walks dejectedly away from the snake. She sees one of the concrete dam structures from before, sticking out over the river which is so far below her now. She sits on the concrete dam and waits. She finishes her book after so many months of agonizing over its completion. She finishes her water. She waits.
Elliott’s shirt is soaking wet from sweat. The shirt is black. It has an image of Betty Boop on it, and reads “Born to Be Wild”. Elliott doesn’t feel very wild- sitting on the concrete slab, waiting to be rescued. She wishes more than anything to be home in her sunny apartment. The thought of her apartment makes her feel very sad and far away, even though it’s a quick shot down a mountain highway to get back to her neighborhood of mysterious industrial buildings and car repair shops where she lives above the liquor store with the shining yellow and red sign that feels as comforting as the golden arches of McDonald's.
In the distance, Elliott hears the sound of a bike bell, which breaks her out of her daydream. All day as she walked up the mountain, she had been hearing the ring ring ring of the bike bells as cyclists catapulted themselves down the mountain, looking like bugs bent over their spaceships they built themselves at the scientific laboratory nearby.
Elliott knows her chance is now.
“Hello. Hello. Help me, please,” she says, trying to sound as casual as someone asking for help can. The cyclist stops and smiles.
“There is a rattlesnake in the path, I’ve been sitting here for an hour waiting for it to move. But it won’t. I’m too afraid to walk past it. I’m afraid it might bite me. I’m afraid it might bite me and I will die because I’m here alone,” All the words get jumbled and fast and she tries to speak.
“You’ve been here an hour?” The cyclist sounds like he feels very sorry for Elliott. He seems kind and patient. He tells her he is going to go look. He gets on his bike and rides slowly ahead. Elliott gingerly follows behind.
“I don’t see any snakes.”
“It’s further ahead, not yet, not yet…”
“I still don’t see any snakes,” the cyclist says, still kind, but confident in the lack of snakes on the path. He rides past the small bush where the baby rattlesnake’s rattle was peeking out from.
“Wait, it’s there, it’s there, you just rode past it!”
The cyclist stops, turns around, and looks. He is standing about fifteen feet ahead of Elliott. He looks for a snake. He doesn’t see it. Elliott insists upon the existence of the snake in the bush. The cyclist walks slowly forward, getting closer to the snake, and Elliott feels extreme anxiety. He starts to bend down a bit, looking closer, and then backs up quickly.
“Ok, I see the snake.”
The cyclist convinces Elliott that she should walk by the snake. Elliott cannot believe that he is suggesting this. After waiting for an hour, she is just going to walk by the rattlesnake? She was hoping the cyclist would put her on his handlebars or run the baby rattlesnake over with his mountain bike. Elliott realizes that at any moment the cyclist could tire of her anxiety and ride away. She gathers her energy, the images of light shooting through her apartment windows, gathers speed, runs, and then jumps into the air as she gets close to the snake. She leaps through the air toward the cyclist. She lands. The baby rattlesnake has not moved. The snake seems unbothered in its bush.
The cyclist pats Elliott on her back. He seems genuinely happy he could help.
“I’ll let you know if I see any other snakes!” he shouts as he rides away. The ringing of his bike bell disappears into the mountain.
Elliott begins her descent again. More tired and thirsty than before but alive, not filled with poison, not dying. In less than ten minutes, Elliott finds herself at the main paved walkway. It is much closer than she thought, and she realizes she had not been very far away from it the entire time she was waiting for the baby rattlesnake to move.
Previously Elliott had viewed the wide paved walkway as a path for amateurs who did not want real adventure. That feeling is replaced with excitement to see people, the wideness of the walkway, the parents with screaming children and thirty-seven-year-old men who probably work in offices with their expensive gray French bulldogs who snort and squeal in pain and ecstasy of being alive.
Excitement shifts to fear, as Elliott thinks about the danger that the mountains hold. Not only the genuine danger of the rattlesnakes but the fear by association. Elliott worries that her explorations near the Robotic Research Center are ruined and that if she tries to return she will be overtaken by anxiety and fear about the rattlesnakes. She goes back and forth on whether these are the right thoughts to have. Maybe these fears keep us safe, she thinks. Although it would be a shame to never be able to hike near the Robotic Research Center again just because of these two snakes.
Elliott walks ahead, debating herself, and everything has a crisp freshness. She wants to tell every person about her escape. She sees the big gravel lot, and the scientific laboratory, and has never been happier to think about the spaceships being developed inside. She exits to the parking lot. The gravel feels crunchy and perfect. She looks up into the sky, her view no longer crowded by trees, and looks directly into the sun, creating a sort of demented Kusama Room for herself. Blinking, the dots of the sun are everywhere for a moment.
When her vision clears, she sees her dusty toy car and rushes inside. She locks the doors. She reflects on the possibility of a snake being inside on the floor. She tries to push this thought out of her mind. She looks forward, ready to start the car and drive to the light of the imitation McDonald’s liquor store sign. She sees something sitting on the dashboard that terrifies her- a green Beanie Baby snake named Hissy circa 1997 that she found on a pile of discarded furniture near UC Berkeley a few months earlier.
Elliott tries her hardest to regain composure. She turns the keys in her little plastic scratched-up car and drives out of the parking lot, kicking up dust as she goes.
The journey home has one of Elliott’s favorite views of the city. Cars shoot down a mountain freeway with downtown neatly placed in the distance. The air looks like someone smudged the image just a little bit. Helicopters circle the skyscrapers like little bugs.
One episode of The Hills later, when she gets home, Elliott takes a shower. She pulls herself into bed and turns out the lights. She scares herself over and over thinking about the possibility that there is a rattlesnake in her bed at her feet. She is asleep by 8 PM, her mind filled with snakes. All night she dreams of the snakes.
The next two days are unremarkable for Elliott. Unremarkable lunches, unremarkable dinners, unusually unremarkable walks around the neighborhood. As Elliott waits to cross the street at a four-way intersection, the lights short out for a second, leaving cars in all four directions stopped, idle, all lights red. Everything is still for a moment.
On the third day, after finishing up her assistant work, Elliott finds herself taking out her red backpack, filling up her water bottle, and putting a fresh book in her bag. She walks to her toy car and starts it up. She doesn’t need GPS because she knows the way– she is going to the Robotic Research Center’s gravel parking lot.
She chooses the path to the center, past the river, then to the right, up the mountain, and towards where the rattlesnakes live.
Anna Tregurtha is a writer and video artist. Her works have been published in super / natural (Perennial Press) and POOL Magazine. She graduated from VCUArts in Richmond, Virginia. She lives in Los Angeles.
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