Melanie Woefler was standing in front of an end cap at the Wal-Mart gaping at a display of cranberry flavored Sierra Mist. $3.99 for a twelve-pack. A steal! Dang it though, she’d already stocked up on pop at the Save-A-Lot. Twelve would put her over her fifty dollar budget and she wasn’t about to surrender the hemorrhoid cream, the Adele CD, or the XXXL cotton panties. Nothing in her drawer was going to survive another washing. She sighed and checked out with what she had already loaded into the buggy. It totaled $47.83.
The shopping change always went toward scratch tickets at the Speedy-Mart, except for last week. The Powerball jackpot was pushing three-hundred-million so she grabbed one of those instead. Before picking up a Treasure Chest or a Big Money, she routed through her worn denim purse for the receipt. She found it crumpled at the bottom with some Vaseline lip balm and burnt red hair pasted to it. After scanning it under the automated device she bounced her jaw off the floor a few times. She didn’t hit the jackpot but she matched five numbers. 6, 12, 23, 25, and 36. The only number she missed was the Powerball number, 21. The ticket was worth $1,595,867.32.
Melanie was a rich woman. But that didn’t change the fact that her only way home was the bus. She couldn’t wait to tell her mother that the universe had finally stopped kicking the Woeflers in the gut. But she never got to. At home she found her mother dead in the faded blue recliner that used to be her dad’s. Rigor mortis had already set in. A commercial for Depends adult under-garments was blaring across the room (Mom was a little hard of hearing). Melanie hit the off button on the remote control, and then pried the device away from her mother’s cold gray fingers.
Melanie never felt guilty about not being sad at that moment. She stood there in the midst of the rare silence and let the feeling of freedom wash over her. She felt ethereal for awhile, until suddenly she had to go poop. When she was recollected inside of her own head she discovered that she wasn’t thinking about her mother at all. She was thinking about something that she recently spotted for sale in one of the neighbor’s driveways, something that she could now go and buy if she wanted to.
First Melanie had to get the money. No, first she had to deal with the dead body. It was already starting to smell worse than usual. No, first she had to do something about her mother’s final resting pose. She closed her eyes and her life flickered in front of her and it looked like a spliced reel of game shows, soap operas, news events, and hockey games. When she opened her eyes she saw everything through a new lens. It was surreal and hopeful, as though she’d sprouted wings and could soar above the person she used to be. Melanie wasn’t strong enough to move Mom. She had to kill the television instead.
In a small barn just outside the back door, there remained a few tools that hadn’t been hocked or stolen since Dad drowned in a grain silo more than a decade ago. One of those tools was a ten-pound sledge hammer. The sledge hammer held some special significance for Melanie and it was the reason that she had made a point of hanging on to it all these years. About a week before Dad died he busted the handle on the sledge while splitting a cord of hickory with steel wedges. Dad made a big thing out of showing Melanie how to replace the wooden handle, sliding it up through the hole in the tool’s head, and then setting it into place using two perpendicular wedges. Shopping for the new handle and getting it installed took all afternoon and no more wood ever wound up getting split with it after. Dad died before he could finish cutting the pile. The bigger rounds of the hickory had been sitting there rotting ever since.
It seems to weigh a lot more than ten pounds, thought Melanie as she hauled the tool inside. She kept her left hand close to the head so she had good control. Her right hand she kept about two thirds of the way down the handle. Melanie placed the head of the tool close to the television screen and practiced her stroke with her fish-eye reflection. Then she took one long back swing and with all she had she buried the business end of the sledge hammer inside the guts of the television. Glass shattered and poured down within the innards of the set, and Melanie stood there kind of starstruck observing the unit’s intestines. How could something so inanimate have held so much power over them. The sight filled her with a big weird respect for the thing. She also respected herself for having the fortitude to destroy it. The remainder of her life was going to take place outside of that house. She was standing on rock bottom, and it was time to swim up. She had money. She had time. And she had no one but herself to be responsible for.
Half an hour later two young EMT’s showed up to collect the body of the mother. One of them was a short, stout, Mexican kid who went by Lupé. He seemed like he was just out of training and rather green as a field agent. The man in charge was called Glen. He was reassuringly tall and muscular (it was going to take some brawn to get Mom out of the chair), with olive skin, a push broom mustache, and a very practical short haircut that was lacking in any style. Both Lupé and Glen seemed to be having a harder time dealing with the violence that had been inflicted on the television than they were with the dead woman.
“Did she break that TV before she died?” asked Glen. His tone was unsettled, as though he had seen a lot of disturbing things before but never this.
“I broke it,” said Melanie with a clear and resolute confidence that wasn’t available to her earlier in the day.
“What on earth for?” said Lupé.
“Sick of that thing. It killed my mother.”
“Televisions don’t kill people,” said Glen. “Sure, people could probably afford to watch a little less. Especially the reality crap.” Which happened to be Melanie’s favorite.
“If you didn’t want it anymore, you could have just put it on the curb. I bet a neighbor would have picked it up,” said Lupé.
“I wasn’t trying to break a television set. I was venting anger at something that has been stealing time from me for as long as I can remember anything at all. That stupid thing killed my mother. I wanted it dead. Now please just do your job. I’ll get someone else to come over and deal with the set.”
It wasn’t easy for the two men to get the big woman onto the gurney. On their way out the door Melanie heard Lupé complaining about pain in his lower lumbar.
After they left Melanie took a quick walk up Maple St., left on C, and then right on Doss. She had spied something for sale over there and wanted to make sure that it was still available. It was.
Melanie used the money to hire a lawyer to streamline the process of having Mom’s estate put in her name so she could sell everything. The for sale sign was planted in the front lawn on the same day Mom’s body was cremated. In fact Melanie was out back scattering the ashes around the base of the old Tulip Tree when the realtor brought the first potential buyers through. Farmington wasn’t exactly a hot real estate market but Melanie needed the headache of owning the house gone more than she needed the money. It was priced to sell and the first group to come through made an offer the exact same evening. Melanie accepted it. She would have accepted five bucks if that was what they offered. What the house deserved, she thought, was to suffer the same fate as the television. If she could have she’d have knocked it flat with the sledge hammer. She just didn’t have the physical strength, at least not yet. Plus she was worried about it falling on her head.
During the thirty days Melanie had to stick around clearing out the house and waiting for the deal to close, she kept it secret that she had won anything. She just swiped her ATM card when she shopped and let the money deduct from the over five-hundred-thousand dollar balance in her account.
With her checkbook in hand she strolled back over to Doss St. and banged on the front door of one of the houses. An old man answered the door. He was frighteningly thin and had to hold himself up with a cane. Some thin wisps of black hair snuck out from underneath a ball cap that said ‘I like to see a nice broad smile, especially when she’s smiling at me.’
“Can I help you, miss?” he said in a voice that was rendered scratchy and quiet from a lifetime of smoking cigarettes.
“I want to buy your Winnebago,” said Melanie, making damn sure she didn’t smile. “How much do you want for it?”
The man sucked in his lips. He had no teeth at all. If he had dentures, he wasn’t wearing them that today.
“You want to buy the Winnie?” he repeated. “Let me get my coat.”
The Winnebago was a late seventies ITASCA C25A. Its original white paint had turned creamy but it wasn’t in bad shape. The old man kept it parked underneath a large canopy. The big motor only had ninety thousand and change on it but the inside of the camper seemed well worn. Apparently the old man’s nephew had lived in it for several years until he got picked up by a fracking company in Oklahoma. The nephew was a gear-head and kept the engine running great but he was hard on the interior. Most of the upholstery was torn. There was a significant crack in the front windshield. The toilet seemed to function but the tank hadn’t been emptied in who knows how long. It smelled like shit and death. There was a hot water heater and an oven all running on propane. Both systems were rusty but functioning. The mattress was going to have to go. It was as thin as a quilt. Melanie found an old copy of the porno rag Plumpers stashed beneath it.
“I’ll hang onto that,” said the old man, who flashed a faint smile and then let his eyes wander over Melanie’s very full figure.
“I’m not touching it,” said Melanie. “What are you asking for this thing?”
“It’s worth a lot, you know.”
“To who?”
“Well, it’s not easy to find one from this era that runs this well.”
“The interior is disgusting.”
“Lot of memories have been made in here.”
“Please don’t tell me anymore. How much are you asking?”
“Well,” he puckered his gums a few times while thinking, “I’d be willing to let her go for six-thousand. If you promise to take good care of her.”
“I’ll give you five-thousand.”
“Sold.”
After the check cleared and the keys were exchanged Melanie dropped it off at Dave’s RV Center outside of St. Louis to have the interior redone. When she got back to Farmington, she threw out all of the food in the house, and embarked on a strict exercise routine.
Melanie had more than enough money to do what most of the overweight Missouri brass did: have their excess fat sucked out by a plastic surgeon. After which they would binge on new clothing that wouldn’t fit for long as their eating habits translated to more cellulose and more trips to the sympathetic doctor. Melanie was going to get herself into shape old school. She started jogging first thing in the morning. The first few attempts left her winded before reaching the corner. By the time the house closed she was running three miles before breakfast everyday. She had abandoned sweets, and shifted toward one of those high protein/low-carb diets that were all the rage. She had even been taking a beginner’s yoga class three nights a week.
It was full blown spring when a vibrant Melanie, down twenty pounds and wearing designer sunglasses, drove the spruced up Winnie south on Route 67 toward Greenville knowing exactly where she was headed: anywhere the fuck else.
On a postcard day in late August Melanie watched the sun rise and set from the beach on Key West. The back end of the Winnie was peppered with bumper stickers from truck stops all over the southeast, still running like a top. The interior of the RV had all new upholstery and was filling up with knick-knacks from her travels: a Disney World snow globe, a bronze bust of Elvis Presley, a potholder shaped like Texas. It always smelled like birthday cake inside because of the air freshener that she hung from the rearview.
Melanie was looking and feeling her undisputed best. The awkward red hair that she grew up with had turned cantaloupe from all the sun she’d been getting. Not only that, it was thicker and longer than she’d ever managed to grow it. Thanks, no doubt, to the array of vitamins that she had recently started taking after an herbalist that she befriended in Savannah convinced her of their value. It wasn’t just Melanie’s hair either. Her skin was finally an even healthy peach tone. Her watery blue eyes stood out more than they ever used to. A couple of trips to the dentist in Santa Fe left her with teeth that were finally parallel, and white as fresh snow. She was mostly avoiding alcohol, unless it seemed like a special social occasion (she didn’t want to be prudish), but it messed with the morning runs she still dutifully took. Seeking out yoga studios as she traveled helped her make a few friends and exposed her to more styles of teaching. Her breath and heart rate had calmed, and her flexibility had increased. Melanie used her generous food budget to seek out top quality produce at the grocery stores and always steered clear of fried foods and sugars if she splurged and ate out. She wasn’t what anyone would call skinny yet, but she had broken the two-hundred pound barrier, and she had broken it the hard way. She wast still plump. But it was a taut, toned, and confident plumpness, sporting bright white choppers and soft hair the color of ripe fruit. She had abandoned the loose fitting sweatpants and flannels that she used to live in. Her new wardrobe consisted of tighter, hipper outfits that showed off the perfect roundness of hear rear end and her boobs. Melanie was sexy.
She decided that arriving at the southeastern most tip of the country was significant enough cause for celebration. During the perfect twilight weather of that glorious summer evening she drank an unknown number of margaritas and sang an off key rendition of The Steve Miller Band’s ‘Abracadabra’ at a bar whose name she’ll never recall. Fortunately the audience was as drunk as she was and she left the stage to a standing ovation. She even got an offer to park her Winnie for the night in the driveway of a local boat captain named Jack. By the time she woke up in Jack’s bed he was long gone. Had to leave before four to make preparations for a sport fishing charter that shoved off before first light. There was a friendly note by the bed but no phone number or invitation to return. Melanie didn’t care. The boys back in Farmington would have used a blind heffer before using her. It was just another boost to her waxing self esteem. She slept in his bed until 8:30, found a place to get a bagel with peanut butter and a cup of coffee, and then went and treated herself to a pedicure.
Tranquil as the Keys are, it can be difficult and expensive to find somewhere to pass the starry nights, even in an RV. Melanie lucked into a late cancellation at The Big Pine Key Fishing Lodge, and they parked her next to a Isuzu Pup tugging a badly oxidized mid 1960’s Airstream trailer. It belonged to a high school librarian named Betty, who was starting the process of packing up her things and heading back north to Cherry Hill, New Jersey for another long cold winter. The two of them hit it right off.
“Do you have any interest in this face cream? I just bought it for eleven bucks but all it’s doing is clogging my pores and making me break out into zits like a damn adolescent,” asked Betty, before introducing herself.
“If all it does is clog up your pores why would I want it?”
“It’s just because of the menopause I think. It’s making my hormones get all screwy. You’ll be fine. You’re nowhere near as old as I am.”
“I bet that isn’t true. You look like you’re in great shape. I’d be stunned to hear that your forty.”
“Nice try, dumpling. More like fifty-eight,” Betty scrunched her face up as she said this.
“I’m stunned. I don’t believe it. You look fantastic.”
“All right, all right, keep talking,” said Betty. The two of them had a big laugh and finally introduced themselves.
“So,” asked Melanie, “what’s to do to here at the Big Pine Key Fishing Lodge?”
“I assume you mean besides fishing.”
“Yeah, I don’t really like killing innocent creatures.”
“Well there aren’t any innocent creatures in Florida so you might as well shoot from the hip, Melanie,” they laughed again. “No seriously, it isn’t too bad. Especially during the day when most of the men are out chasing marlin in their gas guzzling boats. There’s a bridge group and a couple of book clubs,” Betty whispered the next part, “there’s even a Christian one of you’re into that kind of thing.” Melanie shook her head. Despite being from the Bible Belt she didn’t believe in God. As far as she was concerned, no one but the Powerball commission had ever done a damn thing for her. If she was going to pray, she would pray to them. Fuck God. “Good,” chuckled Bettie, “me either. The pool is nice and so is the hot tub. I like reading novels in the lounge chairs and working on my tan.” This much was obvious, Betty was a little on the leathery side. “On Wednesdays at four there’s a yoga class in the commons building.”
“Really, I love to do yoga. Do you go?”
“Sure do. It’s kind of an old farts version of yoga so don’t expect too much. But the instructor is fantastic. He’s French and I think he knows all kinds of martial arts and Tai Chi as well. His name is Lyle.”
“Is he handsome?”
“Well, he’s in great shape. Dark-skinned with long black hair. Kind of on the short side though. And you know what that translates to?” Betty lifted up her eyebrows and chuckled. “Although there are a few interesting stories about him that circulate.”
“Tell me.”
“I heard that he can double in size.”
“Your pulling my leg.”
“I’m not. Peg and Joan told me so I’m pretty sure it’s true. Some thugs tried to jump him in Tampa and he doubled in size. Left two of them on the street with broken arms and legs. It has something to do with his chi.”
“His what?”
“His chi. Listen, I wasn’t there, dumpling, so I can’t confirm the story, but you know what I did see?”
“What’s that?’
“We were in class one day, doing a sun salutation, when Mr. Watson’s chihuahua came storming into the room and bit Lyle in the calf. Lyle didn’t even stop moving for a second. By the time he returned to standing pose the dog was long gone. It had run off terrified. Then Lyle reached down and pulled one of the dog’s canine teeth out of his calf, root and all. Do you believe that? The dog tried to bite him in the leg and the leg was stronger than the tooth. After class Lyle gave the tooth back to Mr. Watson and the vet over on Grassy Key was able to reattach it. Shit, I nearly forgot. It’s Wednesday. We have to go. I have an extra mat if you need to borrow one.”
“I’ve got a mat,” said Melanie, still looking a little doubtful. “It’s just not really a good day for me.”
“Are you on your moon, dumpling. I wouldn’t let that stop me. Not like it’s even an issue anymore.”
“No, I’m actually not.”
“Why the heck not, then?”
Melanie leaned in close so that she could disclose the following information in secret. The gesture strengthened the developing bond between the two women. “I just got a tattoo,” whispered Melanie.
“You didn’t?”
“I did,” Melanie blushed, “it’s my first one.”
“Well let me see it, dumpling,” said Betty.
Melanie pulled down on the collar of her thin v-neck. Underneath it she was wearing the top half of a bikini. From the shadowy heart of Melanie’s cleavage a phoenix rose from the ashes. It looked exactly like the sort of thing that you’d see on the hood of an old Pontiac Trans-Am. The hot red color that the tattoo artist used for the bird would probably mellow over time. It was outlined in thick black. At the moment it had a lot of bling. Melanie looked into the eyes of her new friend with that desperate feeling that only a person who just accidentally got a horrific tattoo, tremendous in scale, and in a highly visible location could possibly understand. Fortunately for Melanie, Betty was a wizard with people’s emotions. Her saggy jaw dropped and her eyes rendered the perfect balance between bewilderment and envy.
“It’s awesome,” she said. “Is that supposed to be like, the new you?”
“I’ve been going through a lot of changes lately.”
“I want to hear all about it, dumpling. But I don’t see why you’d need to miss the yoga class. Just put something on it to keep it moist. I think I got some bag balm if you need something to borrow. Then keep it out of the sun while it heals.”
“You seem to know more about tattoos than I do.”
“Are you kidding me? I got two boys and they’re both covered in them. My oldest is a plumber and he’s got a tattoo of a damn plunger on his forearm. A plunger. Can you even believe it? Look, I’m going to take my nap. When I get up, we’ll walk over to yoga together.”
Just before four Betty knocked on the door of the Winnie. She was dressed in her yoga gear. Mostly tight black but not tight enough to hide the fact that her skin was getting loose everywhere. She had a visor on and hot pink wristbands.
Melanie had also gotten in a nap and a shower and she felt fine and looked even finer. She’d been getting plenty of fresh air. Not knowing where she was headed or who she was going to run into on any given day had filled her with a youthfulness she’d honestly never known. Sometimes she had to force herself to admit that the she and the Melanie who ate thousands of frozen dinners while watching Pat Sajak with her agoraphobic mother were the same person. She danced now. Not too well but she was getting better. It was all about not working too hard. It was about not thinking too much. She had acquired a glow, combined with a body that was curvy and ripe. Like a melon. Like a cantaloupe. A soothing fleshy orange tone, firm but yielding, juicy without being messy, sweet without making the teeth hurt. Melanie wore red spandex tights that looked like they were designed just for her. They looked good with her wild red toenails and her freshly washed hair. She was wearing a stretchy white top. The tattoo wasn’t easily visible but it wasn’t hidden either. Melanie was learning to wear it well. Over her shoulder she carried a top-loading mat bag. In it she carried the spongy blue mat that she liked and her water bottle.
“There’s something else I forgot to tell you about the teacher,” said Betty as they walked toward where the class was going to be.
“Is he flirty?”
“He can be. He’s also a big Elvis fan. Every class he teaches he leaves a mat on the floor for Elvis to practice on, in case he shows up. From time to time he’ll tell the class to envision Elvis doing yoga with perfect form on the empty mat. It’s a little weird at first but you get used to it. It even helps in an odd way.”
“I love Elvis.”
“Me too, dumpling.”
“The teacher sounds like a nut.”
“It’s just Florida.”
Betty introduced Melanie to Lyle at the beginning of the class while the other students were all laying out their mats. It was all women in the room besides Lyle, and potentially the ghost of Elvis. Lyle was handsome, Betty wasn’t kidding. He had hypnotic dark eyes. Neat black hair was tied back and hung almost down to his waist. He had a salt and pepper beard and all of his facial features were so relaxed that he had hardly any wrinkles, except around the corners of his mouth. Probably he laughed a lot. His age was anyone’s guess. He repeated Melanie’s name in an accent that retained only the slightest trace of his native French.
“Melanie,” he said, “like a melon. Welcome to yoga? Have you ever practiced before?”
“I have been to some classes but only recently. I’m kind of getting into it.”
“That’s wonderful,” he said. “It’s very nice to meet you.” Lyle wasn’t quite dressed like a yogi. A gold choker overlapped his unmarked black t-shirt. His pants were brown canvas and baggy, the kind martial art fighters tend to wear. It was hard to tell how short he really was at first because he was seated in a full lotus pose with his spine ramrod straight. He was very fit but not in the kind of way that would turn heads on the beaches south of Miami. His shoulders were narrow but well-formed, his chest looked powerful but smaller than his waist. It was almost possible to confuse him for fat. What he had was an extraordinarily strong core attached to limbs that were at once fluid and graceful and deadly.
Nine ladies showed up for the class. Betty obviously knew them all and shared their names with Melanie, from which she retained a Violet and a Peg and was damn sure that Joan wasn’t there because of her sciatica. Lyle had them all begin seated and focusing on their breath.
“You know I find when I come down here, that you ladies have an easier time then most settling into the relaxed flow of the yoga. Up in the city everyone is going this way or that way. In class they are all trying to push themselves into this pose or that pose. I think they’d learn a lot from coming down here and practicing with you ladies. I know Elvis likes it a lot better down here. Don’t you, King? Yeah, me too.”
“We may not do headstands, but we know how to relax, right girls.” Melanie laughed along with the rest of the group even though she wasn’t sure if she counted amongst them. Sure she was part of the RV crowd now. It’s just that the other women seemed a lot older than her.
“The key to relaxation, Lyle, is take two vacations a year,” Peg went on, “but they’ve got to be six months a piece.”
“Cheers, Peg,” everyone laughed.
“Alright,” said Lyle, “I can see that you are all in a feisty mood today. We’ve got Melanie joining us for the first time. It’s a beautiful day with a nice breeze. Let’s just all sit here together for a moment and notice the moment.”
Outside the big window that most of the students were facing stood a palm tree that was in serious decline. Many of its roots were severed when a plumbing crew trenched a new sewer pipe into the commons building. About five years ago a new parking lot was installed just on the north side of it and the soil had gotten very compacted. There was a long scar in the trunk from where someone had it with a boat trailer. It was parched and riddled with dead fronds. Practically begging for a mercy kill.
“Some people would look at that tree and say that it’s and ugly tree. Some people might say that it’s still a beautiful tree. Me, I don’t name it. I just look. We get so caught up in naming everything all the time. There’s no need. You have to learn to let it be.”
After that they all sat quiet together for a short while and then Lyle led the class in a series of neck and shoulder rolls just to get a little loose. Then the group transitioned onto all fours and engaged in a series of cat and cow poses to wake the spine up. Melanie stole a glance around and was impressed. Half the room had to be pushing eighty. But they were all moving with the same supple grace as the charming instructor. He got them to roll over their toes into a position in which the arms and legs are both extended and the butt is thrust well up into the air. It’s called a downward dog pose but Lyle preferred to call it by its Sanskrit name Adho Mukha Svanasana. It’s a move that takes a lot of strength in the forearms and Melanie was blown away that everyone in the room looked so good in it. Everyone, that is, except for Betty. Betty had abandoned the pose for a comfortable seat and chugged thirty-two ounces of purple Vitamin Water in about half a second. Melanie, noticing her friend’s sudden distress, bent close to her for a quick talk. Betty was red as a beet.
“I’m having a hot flash,” whispered Betty, “I’ve got to get out of here.”
“Should I come with you?” asked Melanie. Frankly she didn’t want to. She was really getting into the class and liked Lyle as an instructor. He seemed far superior to anyone else that she had worked with so far.
“No, no. You stay. I’ll be fine. I just have to go to the beach and cool off. I’ll see you later.” Betty apologized for having to leave the class in the middle, claiming that she simply wasn’t feeling well. Lyle complimented her for knowing herself and wished her well as she made her exit.
“Yoga can be very intense,” said Lyle after Betty had gone. “Sometimes it’s too intense and what our bodies really need is to rest. It’s the resting in between the postures when yoga has its true benefit.”
The next forty-five minutes was filled with a short series of standing poses, forward folds, and some simple vinyasas. The class finished up with a few gentle floor twists, the chanting of three Om’s together, and a lengthy dead man’s during which Lyle played the harmonium. After he finished playing, but before releasing the women from the trance that he had led them into, he swung by Melanie’s mat while her eyes were closed.
“Hang back after class, will ya,” he whispered into her ear. And then he took up his position at the front of the room again. “Let’s start to slowly bring ourselves back into this space,” he said, “in case you happen to have drifted off. I don’t know if some of you have gone inside your minds to India or Africa, or driven one of your RV’s over to California. All I know is that right now at this moment, you shouldn’t be making any plans. Remember, nothing ever happens in the future. There is only what is happening in the now. You need to learn the art of slowing down. Although I know that you ladies are better at that than most. Up in Tampa I’ve got people answering their cell phones during class. It was wonderful to see you all as usual. I’ll be back again next week. Namaste, ladies.”
“Namaste,” said the class.
People started drinking from their water bottles and rolling up their mats. A few of the ladies invited Lyle to their trailers for a happy hour cocktail.
“Thank you, ladies, but I don’t drink. I wish I could.”
Melanie sort of loitered on her mat alternately practicing asanas and trying to keep her heart rate under two-hundred. Eventually the room emptied out and it was just the two of them left in there. Lyle glided across the white tile floor and arched backwards until his hands hit the ground. From there he lifted his legs one at a time into a handstand, held it, and breathed. Then he settled his legs on the floor and came into a yogic squat right in front of where Melanie was still sitting on her mat.
“Hey,” said Lyle, “what do you say you and I take a walk down to the beach. I could use some nourishment.”
“Well, that sounds fun, but, I’m all sweaty from the class.”
“Who cares? Sweat is wonderful,” Lyle leaned into Melanie, stretched his tongue way out, and lapped up several rivulets of perspiration between her triceps and her armpit. Melanie blushed like a tangerine. “Let’s go,” said Lyle.
“Oh my, you really are flexible,” the voice yanked Betty out of a deep sleep. She was lying at the edge of the pine forest with a cool towel draped over her eyes, just uphill from a deserted stretch of sandy white beach. The sun was going down behind the forest, and a couple was approaching on the path that led through the dunes. Betty kept still in the shadows and let them pass. She felt a little bit better but still dizzy and sweating despite the fact that the day was cooling off. Once she felt like the couple was far enough toward the water’s edge, she risked taking the wet towel away from her eyes to get a peek at who it was and she nearly swallowed her tongue. It was the yoga instructor Lyle, acting sort of cozy-like with the new girl from Missouri. She was happy for Melanie, and then fury washed over her. She was blind with envy. Of course he would go for the younger girl, even if she was heavyset. What were they about to do. Skinny dip in the moonlight? Have sex on the beach?
Then Betty noticed something very peculiar about Lyle. Something had happened to his legs. They had essentially fused together and tapered, not to feet, but a stack of menacing black rings. Lyle wasn’t so much cozying up to Melanie as he was slithering around her. Betty got a good look at Melanie’s face. The poor girl looked scared. Lyle looked more or less the way he always did, like a poised coil of muscle. He still looked charming and as handsome as ever. He still had the long black pony tail.
Lyle unwrapped himself from Melanie and made little S-turns with his torso in the sand, as though he was warming himself up. Betty couldn’t say whether his shoulders or his arms disappeared next. It all seemed to happen at the same time. Lyle’s hands melted into his hips and then the whole region lost its taper. Lyle’s neck was gone. He had morphed into an imposing green-black snake that was winding itself up and steadying for a strike.
The sun’s last rays lit Melanie’s face up and she looked surprisingly relaxed. A pair of brown pelicans flew overhead without pausing to take notice of anything but the surface of the sea. Betty didn’t really know anything about the cute girl on her own in the clunky Winnebago, but she did get a warm feeling that where she was during that sunset was much nicer than where she had started out from.Welcome to the Keys. If only there was still time to share a margarita together. But there wasn’t.
Lyle wasn’t noticing any of the sweetness that Betty was when he eyed his prey. The only things he saw were biomass and heat, and perhaps there was still a small part of his unconscious mind that recalled her having a particularly juicy quality. His hair was gone now and so was the beard, replaced with salt and pepper scales. The gold choker snapped when the neck thickened and was lying on its own in the sand. Four of Lyle’s bright white teeth stretched out into a viscous fangs and oozed something that could only be poison. His elastic body thrust itself at Melanie with incredible force, wrapping itself thrice around her and squeezing. Blueberry yogurt and granola shot out of Melanie’s mouth like a spume. The snake man squeezed harder and Melanie’s face turned from orange to purple to blue to lifeless. She didn’t appear to put up any type of a fight. Betty sat watching the scene, frozen in terror, but less in disbelief than you might imagine. Apparently there was some truth to the stories about Lyle.
Only after the poor girl’s soul had flown off with the pelicans did the snake man release his grip. Melanie collapsed onto the soft sand and Lyle circled her a few times, letting his forked tongue dance along the sweaty skin of his victim. It sort of occurred to Betty that even though she was cloaked from view and had the favorable light, she was alone on a beach with a fresh corpse and a shape-shifting yoga instructor who had just turned into an asphyxiator right before her eyes. She thought for a moment it might be best to run. But it also could have been dangerous. Plus, if we are being completely honest, she wanted to see what was going to happen next. A pair of hopeful buzzards appeared doing lazy circles in the sky just overhead. The snake man hissed at them and they flew off. Then he unhinged his jaw.
The snake man began the process of swallowing Melanie whole by the head. He sunk his four fangs into the pudgy fat beneath her jawbone and milked his powerful upper body up over her face. Betty saw all of that lovely hair disappear like water going down a drain. With his tail the snake man reached around and slit Melanie’s white yoga top down the center, allowing her big beautiful breasts to fall out to the sides, and exposing her new tattoo to the first stars of the night. The snake man’s forked tongue emerged again and took its time sliding back and forth along the tattoo, occasionally meandering to the right or to the left to tickle one of the orange nipples. The snake man widened again, unhooked his jaws and slid them down to the narrower region below Melanie’s ribs in one deft move. Disgusting as it is beautiful, thought Betty.
What little light there was glinted for just a second off of a belly button ring that Melanie had gotten somewhere in her travels. It made Betty sad. Something about the tattoo and the piercing together. She was glad that at least she got to see them and how good they looked on her, and how good the red spandex pants still looked on her. Underneath those pants was a pair of striped cotton panties from Victoria’s Secret, a wild tuft of pumpkin-colored pubic hair in desperate need of a trim, and a wad of Preparation H that was interfacing with a variety of other bodily fluids in her butt crack. Lyle got all of that and down to her knees in his next bite.
In a strange way Betty felt sad that this terrifying spectacle was nearly complete. She felt like a witness to another dimension or a whole new universe that had been forever existing beside her. Lyle could have finished Melanie off in another bite but he probably wanted to savor the moment as well. He moved his jaws down to Melanie’s ankles and left only her feet dangling out of his mouth. Clydine, the adorable aesthetician who just earlier that morning painted Melanie’s toenails fire engine red with silver swirls, would have likely been touched to know that those nails were the last parts of Melanie to exist in this world. And then the snake man ate those too. After that he looked heavy and tired. And it was dark enough that Betty was comfortable sneaking away. At least the hot flash was over.
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