ST4.03 | "Rattlers"

MARCH 2026
I’M A BLANK SPACE, BABY (NOW WRITE YOUR NAME)
There are thousands of blank spots on the map. Hollers in the mountains. Empty places in the desert. Houses and buildings removed from the maps. And the only thing they have in common is that these places aren’t meant to be seen. That they’re hidden. That they contain secrets. This month, we want the stories of these undiscovered places, and we want to know why they were never meant to be found.

RATTLERS

by C.E O’Conaing

Ethan loved looking for trouble. It was one of many reasons we didn’t make sense together. Every inconsequential interaction with a service worker, every smile from a gas station attendant or nod from a security guard, he read as some kind of secret slight. I had a theory it was from growing up with money. Made him paranoid. I didn’t share that particular affliction.

You keep looking for trouble, sooner or later, you’re going to find it.

The sequoias really are incredible in California. I’ve lived in this state my entire life, but I’d never seen them before Ethan. The drive to his family’s cabin was long and winding, starting in the flat desert outside of Palm Springs and curving around the Agua Caliente Indian Reservation, past Tahquitz, past Falls Creek, past Suicide Rock. I didn’t recognize the names. All I knew was that his family’s cabin truly was in the middle of nowhere. But I wasn’t worried.

Ethan told me that he had friends coming he wanted me to meet.

“You tell your mom about me yet?” I asked.

Ethan didn’t look at me as he answered. Busy watching the roads. The winding blacktop wrapped around stony mountains before leading into an enclave of trees, impossibly tall and dark red in the growing dusk.

“Of course,” he replied.

“What did she think?” I asked.

“She likes you,” Ethan said, “She likes that I’m seeing someone new.”

I smiled. “Did you tell her I’m a witch?”

Ethan didn’t look away from the road. Overhead, almost no glimpses of the evening sky were visible through the canopy of branches and leaves. “Of course,” Ethan said, “She thinks it’s cute.”

I smiled, toying with a lump of jade at the end of my necklace. Protection.

“You still talking to Oliver?” Ethan asked.

I heard the edge enter his voice. Like he wanted me to know it was there. It was cute, this paranoia. Like dating a teenager who was worried about you texting other boys.

“Nah,” I replied, “Not anymore.”

The cabin was sweet, but good luck to anyone trying to find it. It had been about twenty minutes since we’d seen anything resembling a town. Twenty minutes further into the mountains. And even that “town” was just an enclave of cabins and a general store.

By the time we got out of the car, it was night. As we walked up the wooden steps leading up to the small cabin, Ethan was saying something about the hikes around here, but I was distracted.

“No one for miles, nothing but nature—”

“Shhh!” I hissed.

I surprised myself, holding up a hand. Ethan looked unimpressed. He had old-fashioned ideas about things like that. Didn’t want to be shushed by a woman he was addressing. I clutched his shoulder so he knew I was scared. That I wouldn’t bother him if it wasn’t something serious. We stood in silence for a moment.

“Did you hear that?” I asked.

“Hear what?” Ethan replied.

“Rattlers,” I said.

I shined the flashlight of my phone beneath the boards of the cabin’s porch. Could have sworn it lit up some glinting eyes but, a second later, whatever had been there was gone. Back into the murky darkness under the cabin. Beside me, Ethan’s tense arms loosened up.

“Jesus, scared the shit out of me,” he said, but he was grinning, “Now who’s paranoid?”

A small kitchen, but it had everything you could need. A bathroom that was luxurious as far as cabins in the woods went, but didn’t stretch beyond the bare necessities. The cabin’s real triumph was the bedroom, a double-wide room with a king-sized four-poster bed and a wall-mounted TV. It looked like it belonged in a hotel instead of so deep in the forest that no one knew it existed.

“Pretty nice, right?” Ethan asked.

I flashed my teeth at him.

“Bet you Oliver’s never gonna take you anywhere like this,” he added.

I didn’t rise to it.

When we’d started dating six weeks ago, I’d mentioned my co-worker, and Ethan had never let it go. A dog with a bone. First, Oliver was my secret lover. Then, any time I was texting, it was because I was secretly messaging him. Then the two of us had plans to run away together. The private joke was funny at first, but I noticed Ethan prying when I looked through my phone. Once, I came back from a shower to see him slamming my laptop shut. Meaning he’d paid enough attention to work out my passcode.

Like I said, cute. The sweet, obsessive kind of love you have as a teenager, just retrofitted onto a grown man.

The first night was for sleeping. We barely even fooled around, exhausted by the drive. Ethan went out like a light when his head hit the pillow, but I spent a while staring out the window into the black expanse outside. A million miles from anyone else. So, why was I terrified that a face was ready to pop out of the darkness?

When I woke up, Ethan wasn’t in bed.

I scanned the small cabin and tried to keep my cool, going through the morning motions. Peeing in a bathroom so cramped, I’d almost rather squat outside. Making coffee in the kitchenette. I tried the door to the basement, but it was shut fast. As Ethan had said, with a laugh, “Who wants to go into the basement of a cabin in the woods?”

I’d just started to panic when I noticed his truck still parked out front. Then him. Ethan stood naked on the deck. He turned to face me, grinning.

“What did I tell you?” Ethan asked, “Not a soul around for miles!”

He let out a wild roar. It sounded cathartic.

The day was quiet, but there was a sense of tension to it. We had big plans for this trip, to go on ambitious, isolated hikes to remote peaks, to blow off that plan and instead spend entire days fucking in bed, to catch up on sleep. But now that we were there, we found ourselves restless, passing each other as we went from room to room. Waiting for something to happen.

Ethan and I had been dating a month and a half, and I still hadn’t met any of his friends. He said they were coming this weekend, but when? He wouldn’t be walking around naked if they were five minutes from arrival.

I was lying on the bed, on my phone, when he came into the bedroom.

“How’s Oliver?” Ethan asked.

I rolled my eyes.

“He’s good,” I said, “He wants to know if he should take my place here, since you’re so obsessed with him.”

Ethan didn’t laugh at my joke. He just smiled. A sad, resigned sort of smile.

“Kendra,” Ethan said, “I know about the others.”

I looked up from my phone. Something tightened in my stomach.

“What ‘Others’?” I asked.

“The other guys,” Ethan said, his voice still steady, “Oliver. Steve. Michael.”

“Michael . . .” I said, “Michael, my landlord? Steve as in my uncle Steve?”

Ethan shook his head as he took a step closer to the bed. I almost expected him to pounce on me, to start nibbling my neck and pass this off as a dumb joke. Instead, he reached beneath the bed and pulled out a large utility box.

“You don’t have to lie, Kendra,” Ethan said, “I love you. I don’t blame you for what you’ve done.”

I felt my limbs freeze, as if my bones were immovable. A cold shock washed over me.

“Ethan, whatever you think I’m doing, we can talk about this,” I said, hearing my voice shake, “You don’t need to—”

I was cut off by Ethan slamming the box on the floor. Right between me and the door.

“Ethan, I haven’t done anything with anyone else,” I pleaded, “You know that! Just please, calm down . . .”

Ethan shook his head as I spoke, then yanked the box open.

The first rattlesnake jumped out of the box, a shock of colorful scales and too-fast movement. Ethan’s eyes shot open, but nothing else moved fast enough.

It clamped down on his neck, hard, scared from Ethan slamming the box on the floor. The second snake’s bite was almost as bad, snapping at his collarbone and sinking its fangs into the soft space under his throat. A third and a fourth slid out as Ethan stared at the box, the third biting his bare calf while the fourth lazily sank its teeth into the small of his back. An afterthought.

That last snake’s indifference was made all the worse by the dawning horror on Ethan’s face. First fear, then confusion, then an awful, sinking realization.

“Where’s the . . .” Ethan started. The words got caught in his throat.

“The gun?” I asked, “The rope? The pliers?”

The rattlesnakes slid out of the room, darting toward the light and freedom of the cabin’s open door.

“Come on, Ethan,” I said, “How dumb do you think I am? No one tells their mom they’re dating a witch.”

Ethan was on his knees, staring at the bites as if they were impossible. They were swelling already, a true instant reaction. The skin turned from chalky white to an angry red. Then the thick, dark purple of bruises.

“I, I—” Ethan continued.

Words failed him. He grasped the bites, feeling the skin’s surface balloon under his shaky fingertips.

“No one’s coming to meet me out here, are they, Ethan?” I asked, “Just you and me.”

Ethan stared, his eyes bloodshot, but couldn’t speak. He was shaking now, trying to close his hand into a fist and failing. The skin, too swollen and stiff already.

“How many girls were there before me?” I asked.

He shuddered, his body moving like some awful marionette. His whole spine was stiff and straight, rocking back and forth as he tried to breathe. Dry flecks of spit collected at the corner of his mouth, one eye twitching. His chest heaved, but everything else froze up.

“Do you think maybe that’s why you didn’t want me to look in the basement?” I continued.

Ethan jerked forward and, for an awful instant, reached out a hand to grasp at me. Then his fingers settled on the floor, his other hand clutching his closing throat. He gasped, trying to breathe but getting nowhere.

“It must take an awful lot of family money to make this morbid pastime possible, Ethan,” I said.

Sure that the snakes were gone and the venom had set in, I finally slid off the bed. I walked over to where he was folded on the wooden floor, still shaking. Still staring up at me. I slid my hand into the pocket of his khaki shorts and pulled out his phone. Smiling, I held it in front of his face. Unlocked.

“You don’t always need to watch for passcodes,” I noted, “Between face ID and your fingerprint, I figure I should have everything that I need.”

Ethan snarled, an animalistic non-word. I grinned, showing my teeth, and nodded down at him.

“I know, honey,” I said, gazing into his eyes, “But maybe you’ll get lucky. Maybe, by chance, someone will happen upon this cabin out here in the ass end of nowhere.”

I paused before hopping to my feet, swiping into his banking app. I whistled at the sum, my eyes widening in genuine shock. Two convenient clicks and everything was in the holding account I set up a month ago.

“I wouldn’t count on it, though,” I said, “Because there’s not a soul around for miles.”

C.E Ó CONAING (on Twitter / X @ceoconaing) is an Irish writer and poet whose work has appeared in Last Girls Club, The Occulum, HCE Review, and The Weary Blues, among other reputable locales. Their work was recently published in the collection Samhain Screams and is forthcoming in the collection Memento Mori: Book One and Mythaxis.