Sweet Romance11 min read
A Talking Snake, A Coffee Machine Named Small Four, and the Night He Became Mine
ButterPicks11 views
I have been a veterinarian for years, and I have seen dogs that won't stop eating, cats that won't stop singing—well, that's exaggeration—but I had never once been messaged by a snake.
The phone buzzed in my palm. A message popped up with a short sentence and a location pin.
"Help. I just bit someone. What do I do?" the text read.
I blinked. Then I blinked again.
"You're joking," I said out loud to no one. "This has to be a prank."
The pin was real. I slid into my sneakers, grabbed my jacket, and ran.
When I turned the corner I saw a small black snake coiled beside a man's phone on the pavement. The man was out cold, skin pale, eyes closed. The snake was perfectly still, looking apologetic, like a child with a broken cookie.
"Is that the snake?" I asked, breathless.
The snake lifted its head and, unbelievably, nodded. "Yes."
My mouth went dry. "You—you're talking."
"It is embarrassing," the snake said. His voice was small and high and sounded like wind striking a glass chime. "I bit him. I didn't mean to."
I crouched. He had left a neat pair of puncture marks, no blood, no swelling. The man was probably just fainted from fear. I let out the breath I'd been holding. "He's fine. He just fainted."
The snake's tail twitched, and he tucked his body into a smaller ball. "I got lost. I can't find Pan-Serpent Village. I haven't eaten for days."
The way he said it—so meek, so raw—made my chest clamp.
"I'm a vet," I said. "I'll help you. But first—what's your name?"
He blinked his vertical eyes. "My name is—" a pause, "Wells."
"Wells?" I repeated, smiling despite myself. "Okay, Wells. Stay here."
He surprised me by sliding right into my open bag. "Thank you," he said. His tail brushed my fingers warm as a cup of tea.
I rushed to the emergency room where I expected Kenneth Carter to be waiting with that smug look he wore like a brand. The bar had ended minutes ago; the woman who'd been with him was already leaving with him in a car. When I reached the curb, I sent Kenneth a message, "I'm here," and watched the read receipt glow. Inside the car he glanced at his phone, smirked, and crushed it.
"He's gone," someone told me, laughing. "He left with a pretty woman."
I stood there, phone in hand, feeling something freeze. I sent a single message: "Kenneth, we are over." I watched him ignore it and drive off. Then I called a cab and rode home with Wells in my bag.
At home I unzipped the bag slowly. Wells peeped out, his eyes reflective. He looked smaller in the apartment light, thin as a pencil. I set down a container of wriggling earthworms—what I had left from a cat feeding—and he ate like a child at his first birthday.
"You're welcome," I told him. He finished and latched his tail around my finger and made a sound that might have been a thank you.
"Can you—can you read my maps?" I asked, half-joking.
He blinked. "I can learn."
Over the next week, he proved it. He learned how to open the fridge with a loop of tail, how to flip knobs, how to fry an egg perfectly balanced on a flat spoon. He learned my favorite meals and made them—first worse than disaster, then oddly perfect. Once he made porridge so good I had to close my eyes and breathe.
"How do you know this is my favorite?" I asked.
"You like soy sauce in your porridge," he said without looking up. "I learned by watching. I memorized the way your nose wrinkles."
"You memorized my nose?" I said. I couldn't stop laughing.
He pressed his cool head to my palm. "I like doing things for you."
That was the first time I realized my heart didn't only jump for the thrill of saving an animal. It fluttered when Wells cooked, when he massaged my neck after long surgeries, when he learned how I liked my coffee.
"Why did you bite that man?" I asked one night when we shared a late dinner and he had curled around my wrist like a bracelet.
"He reached," Wells said quietly. "He said he would make me into medicine. He wanted to put me into alcohol. I got scared."
I wanted to scold the man. I wanted to wrap Wells in layers of safety. But I had other things roiling under my skin: Kenneth's texts that had become a slow drip of insults and possessive demands, and the way the hospital staff whispered when cameras caught him showing up in the lobby or parking lots.
"Do you want to meet people?" I asked. "Do you want a place here?"
Wells's eyes lit. "I want to stay with you."
"Okay," I said before I could overthink it. "You can stay."
At the clinic, Wells became my secret helper. He learned to lift small dogs onto examination tables by coiling under them and giving a slight push. He opened drawers for instruments, he carried small syringes wrapped carefully in cloth. He brought a sense of calm to snarling terriers and made the clinic staff pause with surprised laughter rather than fear.
"June," Andrea Cummings, my assistant, said one morning, sweeping in with her usual efficiency, "did you put a coffee machine in the staff room?"
I blinked. "No."
They all chuckled when a gleaming machine appeared on the counter with the name label 'Small Four'—Wells's rank at home, he said, fourth child. Wells had learned to save enough coins in tiny jars and, one morning, carried the machine into my kitchen like a knight with a flag.
"How did you—" I asked, and he shrugged. "I am small."
"You're impossible," I told him, and kissed the top of his scaly head.
Meanwhile, Kenneth's interference escalated. He sent messages, then visited. When he walked into the clinic with a showman's grin and started loud enough to draw attention, I felt a flood of anger and embarrassment.
"June," he said in a tone made for headlines, "you need to think about what you're doing. Who is this creature you're hiding? Are you trying to make a fool of me?"
I didn't answer. Wells, who had been coiled in my bag under my desk, poked his head out and hissed softly. He had never hissed in my presence before; that was his way of saying: back off.
Kenneth sneered. "Is he your pet? You always did like odd things."
"Kenneth," I said, voice steady, "we're done."
"You can't just—" He leaned forward, right into my space, smirk like an accusation. "You can't be serious."
He left, but he didn't stop. The next morning, a photo of Wells—small and wet in my sink—appeared online, spread by someone with a knack for poison. Kenneth had enough followers to ensure the image traveled.
That day, the clinic door banged open and a crowd found me in reception—neighbors, reporters, strangers on scooters. Kenneth stood on the sidewalk, phone out, narrating like a man at a festival.
"Look at her," he said theatrically. "She keeps a snake in her bag. She lied to me."
One of the assistants, Andrea, tried to shield Wells with a folded towel. "This is a patient," she hissed. "This is none of your business."
"It is everyone's business," Kenneth said loudly. "She's a liar."
People pointed, voices rose. A teenager recorded with a phone. A woman laughed, a man scowled, another woman whispered a curse.
Wells went still in my bag. I felt my cheeks burn—not from shame, but hot, bright anger. Kenneth's mouth moved and the crowd enjoyed the scandal.
Then Wells did something only possible when you had learned trust deep enough to risk everything for someone.
He slid out of my bag and onto the linoleum. He moved towards Kenneth with a motion that was not a threat. He raised his head, and at once the crowd hushed. The air felt like a held breath.
"Kenneth Carter," Wells said, each syllable clear as a bell in the silence. "You have used this woman's life as your stage. You posted images, you spread lies, and you tried to humiliate someone you swore you loved."
Kenneth blinked as if he had been hit. "What—what are you—"
Wells's vertical eyes locked onto him. "You think this is a joke. You think because your money buys access to cameras, you own people's stories."
"Who told you my name?" Kenneth spat, on defense now, cheeks flushed.
"Everyone knows you," Wells said. "But I also know the way you hide your phone when you meet someone new. I listened. I have seen your messages. I have seen your calls. I have seen the way you made promises to make this woman small."
A ripple of shock went through the crowd. Someone gasped. A camera zoomed in. Kenneth's smugness faltered.
"You—" he stammered. "You can't prove—"
Wells uncoiled and with a simple, smooth motion pulled from between his coils a small, wet piece of plastic—Kenneth's SIM cover perhaps, or a thumb drive Wells had found under a café table. Wells flicked it between his tail.
"You recorded yourself," Wells said softly. "You argued in your messages that if she resisted, you'd make sure people despised her. You told friends to post. You celebrated the shame as a sport."
The teenager in the front row held her phone like an instrument. "The messages," she said. "June—these are from his own account."
Andrea stepped forward. "I can vouch for June. She saved her life—," she said, gesturing at Wells, "—and Kenneth's been stalking her for months."
"That's not true!" Kenneth barked. "She's the one—"
"Sh-h!" Wells hissed—not angrily but as if to hold the room's attention. "Listen."
Wells fed the small drive into a clinic laptop. The video began to play: Kenneth celebrating with a man at a bar, laughing about how he'd make someone 'learn their place.' His voice was loud and clear. The other man, Brennan Marshall, whom Wells had named as his 'brother-in-law'—in the messages—laughed and agreed. The clip ended with Kenneth sending the first poisoned photo.
The laughter around us curdled into a heavy, stunned silence. People looked at Kenneth like a stage actor revealed without costume. Andrea's eyes were hard. "You used my friend's life," she said. "You used her heartbreak for sport."
Kenneth's shoulders rose; his face went white, then red, then a purple patch under his jaw. "You all have no idea what you're talking about," he said. "She—she's manipulating—"
"Really, Kenneth?" a neighbor snapped. "I have screenshots. She gave me the messages you sent. You said you'd destroy her."
He ran for the car. In the doorway, some called for the police. Others shouted accusations. Someone called Kenneth's employer. His phone buzzed with an incoming video call—someone had shared the clip with his company. The touchscreen lit up in his hand with a corporate logo he could no longer hide behind.
"You're done," Wells said, but softer. "You are done."
Kenneth's bravado crumbled in the span of the next five minutes. The clinic door was no stage anymore; it had become an arena where evidence and witnesses moved faster than his lies. His attempt at denial shifted to pleading, then to contradiction, then to shame. He tried to shove the phone into someone's face; a bystander grabbed it and posted the clip.
"Get off me!" Kenneth yelled. His voice shook. People pulled away like the air burned him. He pounded on the clinic glass until the security guard—Forrest Faulkner, who had been delivering supplies—stepped forward and asked him to leave. "Don't come back," she said. "And don't contact June again."
By the time a patrol car arrived, Kenneth was trembling, not just from physical exertion but from the unmasking. Cameras on strangers' phones followed him as he walked to his car—people snapping photos, muttering, one woman finally saying the thing he'd never thought they'd say: "He's awful."
He had looked so certain a minute before. Now his stride broke down into a shuffled retreat. He tried to explain to an officer, but when the officer asked for proof of harassment, those around us handed the phone with the video and messages. Kenneth's words squealed thin as a wire.
"You stirred a storm and found yourself in the rain you made," Wells told him. "You told us who you were."
Kenneth's face crumpled. He fell to his knees at the curb, the city lights making his tears shine. A circle of people formed—not to gloat but to observe the fall.
"All those people you courted for applause," Wells whispered, "have phones now."
Someone in the crowd recorded Kenneth begging, "Please—I'll take it down, I didn't mean—" His voice bled into the hum of cars. He begged, denied, collapsed into silence, then attempted to laugh. It sounded brittle. Around him, faces hardened. The social calculation he had relied on—connections, wealth, influence—had been stripped by the simple fact of witnesses and his own words recorded.
By nightfall, Kenneth's corporate contact had called him off. His name was trending on the city's small-time scandal feeds. His ex-friends distanced themselves. A former colleague sent a curt message severing ties. Kenneth's calls and texts went unanswered. He was left on the curb with a shrinking audience.
It took more than one public humiliation to alter his life: colleagues who had once been ready to close a deal with him now demanded answers; his boss issued a formal statement requesting he stay away from the clinic and the staff. The harried manager of Kenneth's firm left him a message: "We do not tolerate harassment."
Standing in the bright clinic doorway with Wells curled in my hand, I felt something settle. We had not needed to stoop to revenge. We had only shown the truth in front of witnesses, and truth had a way of doing the rest.
The crowd thinned. Phones dimmed. People returned to their lives. But the memory of Kenneth's arrogance breaking had a satisfying edge, like a snapped thread.
After that night he stopped contacting me. His messages, which had once come like a tide, fell away to a whisper. I told myself it wasn't sweet revenge; it was justice. Wells, who had been brave enough to speak in a stranger's voice, settled against my wrist and tucked his head into my palm like a sleeping dog.
"Thank you," I said softly.
He blinked up. "You are my home," he said in the kind of way that rearranged the furniture in my chest.
Days turned into a rhythm. Wells learned to make better coffee, to patch a torn curtain, to soothe a skittish rabbit in the clinic, to hum when he was pleased. He became everyone's secret favorite. Patients responded to his warmth. I learned to move around him without fear; he learned to wrap his tail gently when he wanted to express affection.
There were little moments—three that I held like tiny bright stones:
- The morning he smiled only for me: He never smiled at anyone the way he smiled at me. It happened one winter dawn when I had forgotten my scarf. He slid around my neck in a warm coil and gave me a soft, crooked smile that felt like surprise: "You are cold," he said. The world narrowed down to the place where his tail touched my skin.
- The night he made me coffee and learned how my spoon stirred: He brewed three attempts. At the third, he watched me sip and said, "You always close your eyes before you swallow." He was right. I hadn't told him. He had noticed.
- The careless brush of fingers: He once reached for my hand to steady himself on my kitchen counter. Our fingers brushed—his smooth scales against my knuckle—and I felt something inside me click like a tiny lock opening.
We were ridiculous. We were improbable. We were content.
One afternoon a box arrived on our doorstep—a gift from Wells's sister, Estrella Carr, and her husband, Brennan Marshall, with printed notes of admonition and affection. Inside, there were towels, a neat folder of instructions in perfect handwriting, and a small, absurdly plush stuffed snake for Wells, who blushed something like a boy.
"We expected you'd make a mess," the note read. "But if you take care of her, you take care of us all."
I cried when I read it because, in three months, a strange little family had made room in my life.
People asked, sometimes in awe and sometimes in thin disgust, "How can you live with a snake?" I answered with a laugh and a finger press to Wells's head. "We live together because he makes my coffee, and he knows my favorite porridge, and because he healed me when I broke inside."
He had a way of returning my small, private wounds to health—an accidental pressure point pressed his warm head to my forearm and the ache in my chest would ease.
Years later—if there is a year to count—Kenneth's name would appear in gossip columns, a cautionary line in the margins of other people's mistakes. He learned that applause can't be bought when your own voice is the one that condemns you.
As for us, Wells and I learned the genderless lengths of patience and the blunt honesty of kindness. We learned to make a life that fit our odd shapes—my shoes and his coils—and to expect nothing but the comfort of a small body beside mine at night.
One evening as we sat with the coffee machine Small Four purring on the counter, Wells uncoiled and placed a tiny, carefully formed paper rose on the saucer. "For you," he said.
I smiled. "You always do things twice as sweet."
He bent forward and, in a whisper that smelled of fresh beans, said, "Stay with me."
It wasn't dramatic. It was simply an offer, like a plate laid out on a table.
I took his hand. "I already did."
The End
— Thank you for reading —