One Door From Heaven

couldn't be ignored any more than you could ignore an asteroid the size of Texas hurtling at Earth with impact predicted for noon Friday.
        Sinsemilla's left hand was clenched. She opened it to reveal a wad of bloody Kleenex that Leilani hadn't been able to see before. The crimson tissues dropped out of her grip; in the meaty part of her palm were two small wounds.
        "Poor scared thingy bit me when the lights went out."
        Dark with clotted blood, the holes no longer oozed.
        "Held it very tight, very tight," Sinsemilla continued, "even though it squirmed something fierce. Took a lot of time to work its fangs out of me. Didn't want to tear up my hand, but I didn't want to hurt thingy, either."
        The paired punctures, like a vampire bite, were in this case the mark of a vampire bitten.
        "Then I held poor scared thingy a long time in the dark, the two of us here on the bed, and after a while thingy stopped squirming. We communed, baby, me and thingy. Oh, baby, we bonded so totally while we waited for the lights to come on. It was the coolest thing ever."
        Leilani’s hard-pounding heart seemed to clunk as arrhythmically and as awkwardly as a panicked girl with one shackled leg might run.
        Warped Masonite, cracked plastic glides, and a corroded track conspired to prevent her from sliding the closet door with ease. Grunting, she shoved and shook it out of her way.
        "No venom, baby. Thingy has fangs but no poison. Don't wet your panties, girl, we're doing less laundry to conserve electricity."
        As in Leilani's own closet, a tubular-steel pole, approximately two inches in diameter, spanned the seven-foot width. Only a few women's blouses and men's shirts hung from it.
        She glanced down at her feet. No snake.
        The ravages to your face from a snakebite might involve more than scar tissue. Maybe nerve damage. Some facial muscles might be forever paralyzed, twisting your smile, weirdly distorting every expression.
        The pole rested in U-shaped brackets. She lifted it up and out of the fixtures. The hangers slid off the rod, taking the clothes to the closet floor.
        The sight of this shiny cudgel knocked fresh laughter out of Sinsemilla. She clapped her hands, oblivious of the bite, excited by the prospect of the entertainment to come.
        Leilani would have preferred a shovel. A garden hoe. But this length of tubular steel was better than bare hands, something to keep the serpent away from her face.
        Gripping the pole in her right hand as if it were a shepherd's staff, she used it to help maintain her balance as she stumped toward the foot of the bed.
        Waving her hands in the air as a gospel singer waves praises to the heavens while shouting hallelujahs, Sinsemilla said, "Oh, Lani, baby, you should see yourself! You look so completely St. Patrick, in a total snake-driving mood!"
        Hitching clumsily but warily alongside the bed, telling herself, Calm. Telling herself, Get a grip.
        Leilani wasn't able to act on her own good advice. Fear and anger prevented mind and body from being properly coordinated.
        If the snake had struck her face, it might have bitten her eye. It might have left her half blind.
        She cracked her hip against the chunky post at the corner of the footboard, fell against the bed, but at once levered herself upright, feeling stupid, feeling clumsy, feeling as though she were the Girl from Castle Frankenstein, lacking only bolts in the neck, an early experiment that hadn't gone half as well as the creature that Karloff played.
        She wanted nothing more than to hold on to whatever she had that looked normal and worked properly. This wasn't so much to want. The twisted leg, the deformed hand, the brain too smart for her own good: She couldn't trade those in for standard-issue parts. She hoped only to keep the strong right leg, the good right hand, the pleasing face. Pride had nothing to do with it, either. Considering all her other problems, a pleasing face wasn't just about looking good; it was about survival.
        When she rounded the end of the bed, she saw the pet-shop terror where she had left it, stacked in scaly ringlets under the window. Evil-looking head raised. Alert.
        "Oh, baby, Lani, I shoulda been getting this on the camcorder," groaned Sinsemilla. "We'd win big bucks on TV-that show, America's Funniest Home