byJ.C.White – 2025

Southern Gothic Flash Fiction

The faded single-wide perched on the fern ridge like a discarded animal. A place made popular by locals for dumping their trash and old furniture and tires. Siding mottled with mildew, its tin skirting bent where dogs and coons rooted through in the winter. Smoke from a rust-barrel stove leaked low from the roof, and the bodock trees held hands and leaned close as if to hear the sermon. Inside the air was thick with sweat and kerosene and the sharp ammoniac smell of urine from the outhouse dug too near the front porch.

The kitchen was gutted of its appliances and cabinets, the island had been raised on cinderblock and carpet scraps into a makeshift pulpit, and faded gold Formica scarred from grease pans and the scorch of cigarettes topped the wannabe lectern. Behind it stood Reverend Peter Coots, thin as a broom, eyes wild with an inward shine, hair thick, coarse, prickly and jet black. His beard tufted in adolescent patches like hog bristle; mustache awkwardly absent, and the Bible under his hand was water-stained, its edges curled like dried leaves.

The faithful were gathered. Mountain folk with hair slicked flat as possum pelts, mouths ruined with chaw, teeth black at the gums, taking turns with a Mountain Dew bottle used as a spittoon. A family of six with generational hare-lip scars cut their faces like old whipmarks. Two cousins sat side by side, one cross-eyed inward, the other outward, so neither met the other’s gaze. Children scratched ringworm bellies with dirty fingernails. Their eyes burned with a kind of hunger, though whether for food or fire from heaven no one could say.

He raised the plastic tub. Inside coiled a timber rattler, black chevrons cut sharp against its scales. The sound of its rattle rose thin and dry, a death song waiting on opportunity.

“The Lord say them that believe shall take up serpents,” Peter cried, voice breaking into a ragged hymn. “And they shall not be harmed. But them that doubt, they be the ones laid in the grave.”

He remembered his mama and daddy twitching on sawdust, tongues black and swollen, struck down by fangs in a July revival when he was seventeen. He had stood dumb with a Bible in his hands while the crowd shrieked. His granny told him afterward they died because they had lost the faith, because their hearts quivered weak and unworthy. That could never be his fate. He had carried that like a stone in his belly ever since, vowing he would not falter, he would not half-ass his way to heaven.

Peter shoved his hand in the tub and drew out the rattle tailed serpent. It writhed ’round his arm like a lover, tongue tasting the sweat of his skin. He lifted it high above. his head in excitement.

“You-un’s of little faith,” he shouted, “the kingdom won’t come to them what hold back. It come only to them bold enough to drink down poison and live.”

The people moaned, voices blending like cattle lowing in the dark. One woman wept openly, her face shining with grease, fingers instinctively picking at the return air filter grate, stroking the thick dust across its slats from left to right.

The twins sat in the front. Brother and sister, twelve years, their hair the color of sorghum in the sun, eyes too large for their gaunt faces. They were new to the church, dragged here by a mother in a denim skirt that hung to her ankles, her mouth rimmed with scabbed over sores.

Peter looked to the little girl. “Come forth, Sister. Claim your birthright today.”

Her lips trembled. She looked to her brother but he only swallowed hard, jaw locked, eyes gone watery. She rose slow, dress brushing the stained rug covering a blistered linoleum floor.

When Peter laid the snake in her hands she gasped at its coldness. The congregation leaned forward, breath held. The serpent turned quick, sunk its fangs into her upper arm. She screamed once, high and piercing.

“Hold the faith,” Peter thundered. “Doubt’ll kill you-un’s quicker’n venom will.”

The girl dropped to her knees. Her arm swelled grotesque, purple streaks climbing like ivy. They laid her on the floor, and her heels drummed until stilled. Forty minutes it would take the ambulance to climb that ridge, but she had only ten.

The boy knelt beside her, tears carving trails in the dirt caked to his cheeks. His mouth opened and closed soundless.

Peter bent down, voice low but cutting enough for all to hear.

“She’ll rise up if you stand in the gap, son. Take up her serpent. Pay her tithe to God.”

The boy’s hands shook. He reached for the snake, wet with his sister’s blood. It coiled once round his arm, then struck his neck, fangs sinking just below the jaw. His scream was short, cut off in a gurgle. Blood pulsed bright, dripping down in streams from his neck. He staggered, clawing at the wound, then collapsed against his twin’s body. The two of them lay crumpled together on the warped linoleum, pale as butchered calves.

The congregation sat stunned, mouths slack. An old man’s dentures slipped loose and he pushed them back in with his tongue. The hair-lip children snickered without meaning, their laughter like pigs squealing in the dark.

Peter’s eyes burned brighter. He lifted his arms wide.

“You-un’s all see? The Lord giveth and taketh away. Their flesh has failed but their spirits climb higher’n the hawk on the thermals. Who among ye will take up the cross today? Who among ye will show the serpent he has no power in this here church?”

The people swayed, moaning. One woman shrieked tongues, her hair wild. Another began to slap her thighs, her bare feet drumming against the linoleum floor.

When the ambulance came at last, grinding up the gravel road with its lights painting the pines, the twins were already cooling. The EMTs stepped into the trailer with their bright jackets and rubber gloves, bringing with them the clean stench of disinfectant.

They found the children side by side like lambs laid down for slaughter, lips blue, eyes half-lidded. One EMT bent low, felt for a pulse that wasn’t there.

“Christ Almighty,” he muttered.

Peter raised his voice. “You men of medicine, come witness the power of the Lord. Do you believe, or are ye the brood of doubters?”

The EMT shook his head. “These kids are D.R.T., sir. Scuze my French, but you-un’s ought to be in fuckin’ jail.”

Peter stepped close, eyes blazing. “Don’t blaspheme boy! The Lord is present. Their spirits gone on. But you, don’t you want to know the truth? Don’t you want to feel the Spirit burn?”

The congregation surged forward, hands raised, voices a wild cacophony. One of the hair-lip boys shrieked in a pitch that curdled the air.

Peter thrust the tub into the EMT’s chest. The lid rattled loose. The serpent shot out, a streak of black muscle and fang, fastening on the man’s wrist. He cried out, tried to tear it loose, blood spurting down his glove.

The trailer erupted in shouts. Some wept, some cackled laughter, some fell on their faces and clawed at the floor. The snake clung fast, jaws locked, its body coiling tighter around the man’s forearm.

Peter raised his arms higher, eyes gleaming like a prophet lit from within. His voice thundered over the din.

“Behold, the Lord has come among us. Death has no sting. The grave has no victory.”

And while the EMT staggered backward, venom racing up his veins, the congregation roared their approval, a guttural hymn that shook the thin walls of the converted trailer. Outside the wind rattled the pines, carrying the sound down the ridge, a dirge and a warning both, that on this mountain men worshipped not in reason but in blood, and that the preacher Peter Coots had traded his soul for fire and death itself twined the congregation in its muscled coils.