For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand

 As I sat in my hospital bed, I thought about what the Mother of Snakes had told me. It had been the truth. All of it.

My father had been a bagman for the mob. He didn't kill people, but he cleaned up after those who did. He buried the bodies. And one night, when my mother was away, he couldn't leave me alone in the house, so he took me with him. And he told me not to look, but I did.

The FBI is outside the room now. I told them I would make a deal with them. Tell them everything I know. All they had to do was provide me with a laptop and internet connection and I would make a full confessions and give up all my contacts.

I'm not. I'm mean, I won't squelch on a deal, but I'll be dead before they ask me anything.

You see, there's a mirror in this room, too. And I don't think the Mother of Snakes liked me shooting her. But I had to.

No women, no children, no good people. That was my rule. Just kill bad people, just for money. Because I knew if I killed for myself, I would like it too much. I didn't want to be like my dad.

Especially after I took so much time to kill him.

I can see Stheno now. She looking at me through the mirror. I can see her fangs. She looks slightly less beautiful with them out.

I'm going to die. But I'm okay with that. I haven't killed anybody that didn't deserve it. And I have some good memories to rely on. I can remember my mother, the sad look on her face disappearing as she read to me.

Come away, O human child!

To the waters and the wild

With a faery, hand in hand.

For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

Empty your heart of its mortal dream

 I sat on my bed, unable to dream, unable to think about anything except Stheno. I had gone to DeSelby's to die, but instead I had been given a message. Go see her. Whoever or whatever she was. In the space between mirrors.

There was a slight problem with that: I had no idea how to get to the "space between mirrors." Stheno obviously could, but me? No clue. What was I supposed to do?

It was then that I had an idea. It was probably a stupid idea, but it was better than trying to sleep again and dream about dead friends.

I went to the store and bought two full length mirrors, then brought them back to my motel. I set them up next to one another, each one mirroring the other, creating an infinite loop. Snakes represented infinity, right? Well, that's what I had read.

I stepped in between the two mirrors and waited for something to happen. Nothing did. I felt supremely stupid. I looked at the multitude of mes in the mirror and suddenly I saw that one of them was moving, yet I was standing still. The other me leaned forward and waved. I waved back, echoing him. He motioned for me to start walking.

I stepped outside the mirrors, but as I did, I realized that I wasn't in my motel anymore. I was in a gray room. There were still the two mirrors, but they were in the center of a room I had never seen before. A room I was now in.

There was a door to the side, so I walked over and opened it. The sun was so bright and blinding outside that I closed the door as quick as I could. Before I did, I saw a vast desert.

"Did you see?" a voice asked. I looked around, but couldn't find where it came from. "Did you see my desert? I have carefully cultivated it, made it ready, made it suitable for my purposes. You don't like deserts, do you, Boyd Walker?"

"Who are you?" I asked.

"You're father took you to a desert once," the voice said. It sounded feminine, that was all I knew. "He told you to stay in the truck and not look as he buried a body, but you did. You looked. Like Lot's wife, you looked back and saw something terrible."

I could see a shadow now, a shadow where the voice was coming from. It looked like a snake, but then it didn't, it looked like a woman. "What do you fear, Boyd Walker?" it asked.

I slipped my hand in my pocket and gripped my gun. "Not much," I said.

"No, not much," the voice said. "But what you fear is what you deny. You kill people, do you not?"

"Bad people," I said. "No woman, no children."

"And that makes it good?" the voice said. "That makes it right? Just because you do not heed your darker impulses?"

"What?" I said. "What are you talking about?"

"Why you kill," the voice said. "Why you fight. You are afraid of what you would become. You are afraid of being cold blooded, Boyd Walker. But you are. You cannot deny yourself. You are one of my children."

The shadow finally came into the light and it looked like a woman, but her skin was covered in scales, beautiful shining scales. "And I am the Mother of Snakes," she said.

I took out my gun and shot as many times as I could. Blood burst from her chest and I ran, I ran back to the mirrors and as I looked in them, they shattered around me, they cut my clothes and my skin, but I closed my eyes and ran and when I opened them I was back in my motel.

I was covered in cuts and was bleeding profusely. The wound in my shoulder had reopened, too. I needed to get to a hospital.

I dropped my gun on the floor and left my room.

A man awaits his end dreading and hoping all

I don't really know where to start next. After the incident with Madam Morrigan, I changed motels, but I never really felt safe. I would stand in front of the covered mirror and dare myself to just uncover it, to look at my sorry reflection, to just get it over with. But then I would remember what happened to poor Frankie and I would go back and lie down and try not to dream about him.

It didn't work. I had dreams all that week with him and other people from my life. They all had the same holes in their head with snakes slithering through. I would always wake up covered in sweat, then walk to the bathroom to wash my face and avoid looking in the mirror.

By the time a week had passed, I was at the end of my rope. Was I going to hide for the rest of my life? No. No, definitely not. But if I was going to die, I was going to die my way. I loaded my gun and then drove to DeSelby's.

The bar was nearly empty, but that was pretty much normal for a weekday. Except I could see the bartender sleeping. And there was Caleb, too, at his normal table, fast asleep. Every single patron in the bar was asleep.

I looked in the mirror behind the bar and saw her. She looked so beautiful, her hair as red as the setting sun. "Hello, Boyd Walker," she said from behind me and I turned and there was she, outside the mirror, in real life. "Ask your questions."

I looked at her. She wasn't biting me. At least that was good. "Why is everybody asleep?" I asked.

"They were tired," the woman said. "We needed to speak alone. I could have killed them all if you wish. Do you?"

"No," I said quickly. "Who are you?"

"My previous name is unimportant," she said. "The name She gave me was Stheno."

"The eldest of the Gorgons," I said. "I've done some reading."

Stheno smiled. "Yes, I was the first to be called by Her. I was scared. I did the things you have done. I hid. I ran. But eventually, She found me and She made me see. She made me see that what I was was not something to run from. Not something to fear."

"What you were?"

"I was the same thing you are." Stheno leaned forward and whispered into my ear. "Cold blooded." I backed away. "And now I serve Her. You will, too, when you see Her."

"Or what?" I asked. "Or she'll kill me? Turn me to stone?"

Stheno laughed and even her laugh sounded beautiful. "She'll meet you in the space between mirrors, Boyd Walker. She has been waiting for you. She is ready. Go to Her."

I turned and ran out the door.

Yet still she turns her restless head

I stood in front of the wooden door and the sign above it - FORTUNES TOLD & PALMS READ - and wondered why I was there. What had brought me here.

After my visit with Professor Hamilton, I went back to the motel I was staying at. I knew it probably made no difference, but I didn't want to stay in my own home, so I had gone to a motel and covered up every single reflective surface I could find.

As I walked into the motel, however, the desk clerk saw me and said, "Mail for you, Mr. Lee." That was impossible. Not only was I staying under a fictional name - Oswald Lee - I had only been checked into this motel since last night. It might have been the snake woman - but why mail? She already showed she could phone me if she wanted to.

I took the envelope from the clerk and went to my room. Carefully, I opened it:

Dear Mister Walker, 

You have questions. I have answers.  

Please go to this address: 

            [Complete Address] 

Good luck, 

A Friend

If it was a trap, it would have to be an incredibly obvious trap. And why try to trap me anyway? However, it was, perhaps they were sincere. They knew my name and where I was sleeping, perhaps they knew more.

So that was why I was here, in front of the door to "MADAM MORRIGAN'S." I was about to knock when the door opened. The woman on the other end was tall and statuesque, with dark skin and long black hair. "Well?" she said. "Are you in or out, Mr. Walker?"

What the hell. I walked inside and she led me down to a table in the center of which was a genuine crystal ball. "Are you gonna read my palm now?" I asked. "Maybe bring out the Tarot cards?"

"Don't be facetious, Mr. Walker," she said. "It doesn't become you."

"Fine," I said. "What do you know about my situation? How can you help me?"

"Those are two different questions," she said. "The answer to the first is that I know a lot. About your situation and others like it. You have been targeted by creature not confined by the rules of this world. A creature eldritch in nature, godlike in ability. The one that hunts you is one of many."

"Many?" I said. "There are others?"

"Yes," she said. She removed a deck of cards from her pocket and for a moment I thought she actually was going to try and tell my fortune with Tarot cards. Instead, when she flipped the cards, I saw they weren't Tarot cards at all, but had other things on them. A boy colored completely blue; a tall man in a suit without a face; a flock of birds; a large dog with blood-red eyes. "There are many others," she said as she spread the cards out in front of me. "They have been gods and monsters, myths and tales told in the dark." She turned another card and it was the image of a coiled snake with the body of a woman. "The one you have encountered hasn't appeared in quite a while. You are an unusual case, Mr. Walker."

I looked at the cards and then at the woman - Madam Morrigan - and asked, "Can you help me?"

She smiled and said, "I can." Then she turned another card and on it was the image of two triangles on top of one another, mirroring each other. As I looked at it, she grabbed my hand and said, "You must embrace the Archangel." With her other hand, she pulled out a knife from her sleeve and tried to stab me.

I backed away, but she held onto my hand tightly. She thrust the knife forward again and I moved out of the way, but she sank it into my shoulder and I screamed. Finally, I pushed her away and grabbed my gun from my pocket and I shot her three times in the chest.

She sank to the floor. And then she appeared again in front of me. She was lying dead and she was standing alive. I couldn't understand it.

She smiled at me with bloody lips and I turned and ran.

Out of old mythologies

Professor Hamilton turned out to be Professor Edith Hamilton from the state university. It was an hour and a half drive to there and I spent all that time nervous, glancing over my shoulder at every stop. Even though I had all the mirrors covered, I had no assurances that the snake woman wouldn't be back.

I had never been to the university, so finding my way to Professor Hamilton's office was a jumble of confusion. Finally, I got out the correct directions from a random student and walked there, carefully checking over my shoulder every few minutes.

"Professor Edith Hamilton, Greek Mythology Department." That's what the sign said. I knocked and then pushed the door open, without waiting for a response.

"Tests still aren't graded," the professor said. She was forty-ish with graying hair. Not bad looking, but not my type.

"Hello," I said.

She looked up quickly. "I'm sorry, I thought you were one of my students," she said. "How can I help you?"

"I think a friend of mine visited you a little while ago," I said. "Frank Meyer?"

She scrunched her eyebrows in confusion. "Yes, I remember him," she said. "He wanted to discuss snake goddesses in mythology. He kept on saying it was life and death. It was kind of a strange visit." She paused and then, probably to be polite, asked, "How is he?"

"Dead," I said bluntly.

She looked taken aback at that. "I'm sorry," she said. "Is that why you're here?"

"Something like that," I said. "Can you tell me everything you told him?"

"Well," she said. "I don't think I was much help. He wanted to know about Echidna and Medusa and the Naga - which aren't actually Greek mythology, but rather Indian. In fact, there was a lot of snake worship in ancient times."

"Really?" I said. "Any of them have to do with mirrors?"

"He asked that, too," she said. "I'm afraid the only one I can recall associated with mirrors is Medusa. Perseus used his shield as a mirror and was thus able to kill her without seeing her. Although, now that you mention it, snakes and snake monsters were often associated with water and rivers, which acted as mirrors back in those days. Not many people could pay for a real mirror, even one of polished metal."

"Anything else you told him?" I asked.

"Well," she said, "he wanted to know about Echidna. She was called the Monster of All Monsters and wife of Typhon. Actually, he didn't seem that interested in the male snake monsters, but rather the female ones. Can I ask how he died?"

"Aneurysm," I said. "How do you kill them?"

"I'm sorry?" She coughed. "That's something he asked, too, and I'm afraid I'll have to give you the same answer: you can't."

"You can't?"

"Well," she said, "first of all: they don't exist. You can kill an imaginary monster because it's, well, imaginary."

"Say they do exist," I said, "what then? How would you kill them if they do exist?"

"I'm afraid the answer is the same," she said. "Unless you have enchanted armor or magical powers or the gods on your side, you can't kill them. Perseus used a sword and shield granted from Athena to cut off Medusa's head. Heck, even cutting off the head didn't work in some cases. If you cut off one of the Hydra's head, two more would grow in its place." She put her hands down on her desk. "And that's it, I'm afraid. I'm sorry your friend died, but there's really nothing else I told him. And I have to get back to work."

"I understand," I said. "I must sound like a loon."

She shook her head, but I could see it. I nodded and turned to leave.

The phone on her desk rang. She answered it. "Hello. Who is this? No, I want to know who this is. What? Who...I...okay, I'll get him." She put down the phone. "Mr. Walker? Mr. Boyd Walker?"

I hadn't told her my name. "What?"

She held out the phone for me. "It's for you," she said.

"Hang up," I told her. "Hang up the phone right now. Just hang up."

"I can't," she said. "She...she knows me. She said she'll eat my young if you don't speak to her. Please, Mr. Walker."

I took the phone from her and put it to my ear. "She is ready," the woman's voice said. "She who has mirrors for scales. The Mother of Snakes. She waits for you. You must be ready for her. Be ready, Boyd Walker. She is ready."

I hung up. As I left, I could hear Professor Hamilton crying and calling her children.

I didn't stick around to see if they were alright.

Cast a cold eye

I needed information. I needed to know what was going on. I needed to stop panicking and start figuring out what the hell was happening.

I started with Little Frankie. There was the starting point. After the incident of the church, after sitting at the side of the road for several hours trying to calm myself, trying to make my heart stop beating so fast, I drove to Frankie's house. The house he had left behind when the Feds flipped him.

I unlocked the door with a well-placed kick. Inside, it was dark and musty. He must have packed lightly, because everything still looked like it was here.

I did notice one thing: no mirrors. I checked the bathroom and confirmed it: the bathroom mirror had been completely covered. Whatever was after me had also been after Frankie. Frankie must have fled to the Feds in order to get away from it. Too bad it didn't work.

There were books scattered around his bedroom. Books on Greek Mythology and Hinduism and lots of books on snakes. In one book, written on a slip of paper was the words ECHIDNA? MEDUSAE? NAGA? SEE PROF HAMILTON.

Professor Hamilton. There was a lead. Did Frankie go to see him? If he did, doing so didn't help him. But I would see him anyway.

What did I have to lose?

The uncontrollable mystery on the bestial floor

That night, I had strange dreams. I dreamt I was playing poker with Little Frankie and Mike Molloy, an old friend from high school. We were all drinking and smiling and laughing, but I noticed that they both had holes in the middle of their foreheads. Bigger than bullet holes and perfectly round.

Suddenly, there were snakes slithering through the holes. The snakes slithered, half hanging out of their heads, but they still smiled and laughed like this was nothing. I backed away, dropping my hand of all blank cards.

Then, without transition, I was walking down an alleyway talking to Mike Molloy. "She knew you were there," he told me. "She wanted you to see her glory."

"What is she?" I asked.

"She's the Serpentine Mother," he said. "The Mother of All Lamentations. The Lady of Shining Scales. You know, the mirror-scalèd serpent is multiplicity and all that."

"What?" I said.

Mike Molloy turned to me and he looked as I had seen him last: emaciated and dying of cancer. "She is ready to return, Boyd. She waits. Don't say a word." He raised a finger to his mouth and made a shushing sound. He smiled and his teeth were black and oozing.

And then I woke up. I tried to dismiss what happened yesterday as a dream. I went to the bathroom and splashed water in my face. Then I looked in the mirror and saw my sink was filled with snakes. I jumped backward, but they were gone.

I went to my normal pub, DeSelby's. There, I met the man who hired me, Caleb. "Great job," he said.

"I'm sorry?" I asked.

"I don't know how you did it," he said, "but that was a great job." He slid over this morning's paper and pointed on an article near the bottom: Federal Witness Dies of Aneurysm. Little Frankie was dead. "I don't know how you got it to look like an aneurysm," Caleb said, "and I'm not going to ask. Must be like being a magician, you know, everybody's got their secrets."

"Yeah," I said, "secrets." I ordered a shot of whiskey, even though it was early. Caleb was already on his first Guinness. I wondered what I should do. Everyone thought I killed Frankie - but from what I had seen, whatever did kill him was something else entirely. I thought back to the woman I had seen.

And I saw her again. In the mirror behind the bar, I saw her walk behind me and smile. I turned quickly, but nobody was there. "What is it, Boyd?" Caleb asked.

First the snakes in the mirror, now the woman. What was she, some sort of Bloody Mary monster?

I downed my whiskey and got up. "I gotta go," I said. "I got errands to run."

"Errands, right," Caleb said. I let him think whatever he wanted to think and left.

The window outside DeSelby's shown like a mirror and I saw the woman behind me. She reached out with one hand and touched the back of my neck and I felt something wet. I turned, but she wasn't there. She was only in the mirror.

In my car, I covered the rearview and sideview mirrors with duct tape. So what if the police pulled me over, it was worth it.

I drove around, not knowing where to go, when finally it came to me: church. I could talk to a pastor or priest or something. They had to believe me, right? Luckily, there was an abundance of churches where I lived. I chose the closest Catholic church - hey, old habits die hard, that's how I was raised.

As I walked inside, I passed the baptismal font and looked inside. There was my reflection and there was the woman, her dark red hair flowing down onto her chest. She was still the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. I turned, finally expecting her to be gone.

And there she was. Right behind me. "She is ready," the woman said. "She is ready to reveal herself. She waits to reveal herself." She moved forward and I moved back. I couldn't stop looking at her. "She allowed you to witness the birth. She waits to reveal herself. You will see, Boyd Walker. Open your mouth and-"

"Excuse me?" I heard the voice, probably the pastor, but I couldn't stop looking at the woman. "Can I help you?"

The woman turned away from me and I watched as she walked towards the pastor. "You will witness," she said and I knew she was still talking to me. "You will be witness to her return. She is ready."

"I'm sorry?" the pastor said. He was tall and gangly and looked like he was around twenty. "Did you...can I help you with anything?" The woman strode forward, somehow becoming sinuous. I looked at her legs weren't legs at all, but the tail of a snake. She coiled around the pastor and he began blubbering and then sobbing. She coiled around him tighter and then opened her mouth and I saw her fangs, long and white and sharp, as she quickly bit down on the pastor's neck.

After a minute, she dropped the pastor's body to the ground and looked at me. "She waits," she said. "She waits for you, Boyd Walker. You will open your mouth and speak for her. You will give her more. She is the Lady of the Shining Scales. You will never escape her."

And then she slid down the rows of pews and out the door. I slumped to the ground and tried to figure out what the fuck was going on.

The only thing I could think of to do was run away, away from the dead pastor, away from DeSelby's, away from any and all mirrors.

I wish that had helped. Oh God, I wish that had helped.