FLASH FICTION WEEK 2026
Runner-up
BY RUTH ROSENHEK
Copyright is held by the author.
WE MET the day I discovered a snake in my bed. A two-metre-long python, skin that was a diamond tapestry. I scrambled to the floor. Unfazed, my scaly bedmate didn’t even lift its head.
I waited by the front door for the snake woman to arrive. Nat was tall, with lava black hair and tattoos up her arms including Ouroboros eating its tail. I pointed down the hall where I’d rolled the bathroom rug against the bedroom door.
“Clever,” she said with a lopsided grin.
I lingered in her dark eyes, my face turning pink as I wobbled, spinning through a wormhole.
“You OK, Jamie?”
I nodded, then jumped back as she seized the snake behind its head, slipping it into a hessian bag.
“Wow,” I said, uselessly.
Nat winked, turning back for a moment. “Might see you again?”
I nodded — a poet tongue-tied into silence.
The slight lilt at the end of her sentence formed a background beat over the next few days. I rang her, left a message: There’s no snake in my bed, can I make you dinner instead? The hours crawled by.
Yes, came the reply.
I was buzzing as I bustled about, cooking, cleaning, fixing my hair in the mirror.
Nat arrived, sleek and lithe, a presence that made the room bigger. Made me bigger.
The next morning, I nuzzled into her neck, inhaling a scent of sea-salt. “I could stay here forever,” I purred.
From there we sailed along.
Swam with dolphins.
Gazed at the Seven Sisters while musing about the universe.
Lazed, intertwined, in bed, ice-cream on our chins, our giggles replacing laugh tracks of old sitcoms.
Her skin was glossy, mine was matte. Her body was svelte, mine, portly.
We were particles dancing through the galaxies.
My friends were shocked. My mother wanted us to marry immediately.
I latched onto my laptop to keep from floating away, churning out love poems.
We camped on the beach, watching the tides ebb and flow. Nat was a star with her oyster knife, shucking pippies.
“Magical how gravity makes the ocean bulge at the seams,” I said.
“You’re my moon,” she whispered.
“I love how you’re the husband and I’m the wife.”
I was researching the eight ancient Greek loves when Nat’s sister rang me.
“Nat’s been bitten. An eastern brown snake.”
I raced to the hospital. Nat’s face was ghost white. I sat by her bed day and night, reciting lines.
She was gone without any goodbyes.
I tumbled into a black hole where I could only take small breaths.
My friends urged me to move on, but still I waited at our spot under the moonlight, cutting my finger as I tried to shuck pippies.
At home, I sobbed my way through sit-coms, eating ice-cream by the gallon.
In the quiet of the night, I heard a gentle whisper.
“My wife.”
“My husband,” I murmured.
***
Ruth Rosenhek is an emerging writer in her 60s based in northern New South Wales, Australia. She is a retired psychotherapist who spent many years working to protect nature. Ruth is the author of The Meeting Place (2025), a dystopian, place-based novel. In 2025, she developed a passion for flash fiction. Publications include: Highway Collision (Habitat Press) (March 2026); “All Eyes Looked Up”, Offtopic (March, 2026); Lego Women (Odyssey Victoria, April, 2026); “Remember Where the Raspberries Grow”, Bending the Arc (May, 2026); and “Married to the Sea” (July, 2026) Flash Fiction Magazine.
I was drawn into this love story by the unexpected beginning, a python in the bed! Then, the appearance of Nat, the new partner, and the surreal quality of the developing relationship of man-wife-lovers, reminding me of passages by Gabriel García Márquez, the irony of the ending, a snake brought them together, a snake separated them forever. Your story has a mythological quality to it, well done!