The Harbinger - Bethany College

It took Catalina three months to recover to where she could function
with a semi-form of normality. In that time, the delivery boy came and
taught her a bit of Greek and of the mythology because he was studying in
college and felt a kind of debt to the woman that he’d ultimately saved.
She never spoke. Never made a noise. He had been relating the story of
Narcissus and complaining about how the vain man’s name was a Latinized
form of the Greek word meaning, ‘sleep or numbness’. She began to
think… to think about poison… to think about sleep… to think about the
Serpent… to think about how the wound looked. She could almost imagine
the feeling he felt… awaking from his slumber only to sink back down
into numbness… like the times when the snakes had bit her.
“Narcissa.”
The delivery boy nearly fainted. He snapped his attention to the woman
and asked if that was her name. She gave a small nod. It was now.
Narcissa is twenty now, having left the hospital in the middle of the
night and between the switching of guards… healed upon the outside,
still raw and bleeding upon the inside. No one knows. No one will ever
know. All they see is the mind numbing beauty and lethal toxicity emanating
from the woman. All the world sees is the lustrous serpentine female.
Cool, calculating, cunning, and oh, so very toxic.
65