That old lady, the one who is a regular at every store in town, but none of us know her name—just that she always wears a red scarflette around her left wrist; she gifted us with her secret today. As she was scrawling her pen across her badly stained check to pay for her groceries, cat food and frozen TV dinners, an unruly child in the checkout line pulled at the scarflette. It felt like everyone in the store stopped what they were doing and gawked as the flowy, red accessory fell to the ground in slow motion. It curled onto the ground like a graceful snake. The child and the old woman screamed in unison as blood began spurting out of the woman’s wrist. A crimson river drowned the snake, spatter painted the child’s face, as well as mine.