Robert Kowalski told Dr. Morrison the story three times. Each time, the details were slightly different. On the first visit, in March 1994, Robert said he had been driving home from work on a rainy evening when he saw a woman lying in the ditch beside the road. He stopped his car, got out, and found her unconscious, blood on her forehead, her dress torn. He carried her to his car and drove her to the hospital. Her name was Sarah. She was twenty-eight. She had been driving home from a party when another car hit her. On the second visit, in April 1994, Robert said he had found Sarah in a ditch beside the road, but he did not remember what evening it was or whether it was raining. He only remembered that she was beautiful and that he had known, from the moment he saw her, that she was the woman he was supposed to marry. On the third visit, in May 1994, Robert said he had not found Sarah in a ditch at all. She had come to his door one evening, knocked on the door, and asked if he could help her. She had a bruise on her forehead and a torn dress, and she said a car had hit her, but Robert was not sure. He was not sure of many things. Dr. Morrison took notes on each visit. He was a man of forty-five, with the kind of careful, methodical approach that comes from twenty years of listening to people tell him things that were not entirely true. He had been treating Robert for six months, since Robert had first come to him with complaints about insomnia and anxiety. The complaints had grown more complex over time. Robert and Sarah had been married for eight months, by Robert's account. They lived in a house in a suburb of Philadelphia, a modest thing of brick and mortar with a small yard and a driveway that led to a two-car garage. Sarah worked as a nurse at the local hospital. Robert worked in claims at an insurance company. They were, by all outward appearances, a perfectly ordinary couple living a perfectly ordinary life. But Robert was not entirely ordinary, and his life was not entirely ordinary, and Dr. Morrison was beginning to understand the difference. The trouble began, by Robert's account, with a snake. It was found in the garage by Robert, who was looking for a tool. A black snake, coiled in the corner behind a stack of boxes, its body thick as a man's wrist, its scales the colour of midnight oil. Robert killed it with a broom, one strike, clean and efficient. The snake fell without a sound. Sarah was horrified. She told Robert that snakes were important, that they controlled the mouse population, that killing one was a kind of violence against the natural order. Robert listened politely and said nothing. He did not believe in natural orders or snakes or anything that could not be seen or touched. But he began to notice things after he killed the snake. Small things. The light in the garage seemed dimmer. The air in the house seemed thicker. Sarah began to act differently, moving through the house with the expression of a woman who was listening to a conversation that no one else could hear. "You killed it," she told him one evening, her voice low and trembling. "You killed it and now I can't hear it anymore." "Hear what?" Robert asked. "The snake," Sarah said. "It was talking to me." Robert did not know what to say. He had never heard snakes talk. Dr. Morrison asked about Sarah on the fourth visit. Robert's expression changed. He looked away, then back, then away again, the way a man looks when he is deciding whether to tell the truth or a version of the truth that is close enough. "Sarah is fine," he said. "She's at work." "Robert," Dr. Morrison said gently, "Sarah has not worked at the hospital in six months. She quit in November." Robert was silent for a long time. Then he said, "She quit because she didn't like the schedule." "Robert," Dr. Morrison said, "I have your wife's employment records. She did not quit in November. She was never employed at the hospital." Robert looked at him with an expression that was neither anger nor sadness nor anything that could be named. It was the expression of a man who has been caught in a lie and does not know whether to correct it or double down. "I don't understand," he said. Dr. Morrison did not press him. He had learned, over six months of treatment, that pressing Robert was like pressing a spring: the more you pressed, the harder it pushed back. Instead, he asked about the snake. "The snake," Robert said. "It was in the garage. I killed it. Sarah was upset." "Robert," Dr. Morrison said, "there was no snake in your garage. I spoke to the neighbours. They said you live alone." Robert was silent. He looked at the wall behind Dr. Morrison's head, then at the floor, then at Dr. Morrison's face. His eyes were wide and unblinking, the way a man's eyes look when he is trying to see something that is not there. "I don't understand," he said again. Dr. Morrison made a note in his file. He had been suspecting for some time that Robert was suffering from a form of schizophrenia, possibly paranoid, possibly with psychotic features. The evidence was mounting: the inconsistent stories, the belief in a wife who did not exist, the conviction that a snake had been talking to him. But there was something else. Something that Dr. Morrison could not quite name. On Robert's next visit, he arrived with a notebook. He placed it on Dr. Morrison's desk and opened it to the first page. It was a diary, written in Robert's hand, dated from the previous year. The entries were short and fragmented, written in a handwriting that grew increasingly erratic as the pages progressed. March 12: Found a snake in the garage. Black. Killed it with a broom. Sarah was upset. She said it was a guardian. I told her snakes don't guard anything. March 15: Sarah says she can't hear the snake anymore. I told her there was never a snake talking. She looked at me like I was crazy. Maybe I am. March 20: Sarah's mother called. She asked about Sarah. I told her Sarah was fine. She said Sarah hasn't called her in six months. I told her Sarah was busy. She said Sarah doesn't exist. April 2: I found a black scale in the garage. Where did it come from? The snake was dead. I buried it in the yard. April 10: Sarah says I'm killing things. She says I killed the snake and now I'm killing everything. I told her I'm not killing anything. She said I am. She said I'm killing us. April 15: I looked in the mirror today and for a second I didn't recognize myself. My face was wrong. The eyes were wrong. The mouth was wrong. I opened my mouth and my tongue was wrong. It was long and thin and it flicked in and out like a snake's. Dr. Morrison closed the notebook. He looked at Robert, who was sitting across from him with the expression of a man who has finally said everything he has to say and is waiting to see what happens next. "Robert," Dr. Morrison said, "I think you need to be hospitalized. I think you're suffering from a condition that requires more intensive treatment than we can provide here." Robert nodded. He did not argue. He did not resist. He simply stood up, picked up his notebook, and walked out of the office. He was admitted to the state psychiatric hospital the following week. The admission records described him as "cooperative but withdrawn, exhibiting signs of severe psychotic breakdown with possible schizophrenic features." In the weeks that followed, Robert was committed to a secure ward, where he spent his days sitting on his bed, staring at the wall, or pacing the length of his room, or sitting on the floor with his back against the wall, his eyes closed, his mouth slightly open. The nurses said that at night, he would sometimes drop to his hands and knees and crawl along the floor of his room, his body moving in a way that was not entirely human, his tongue flicking in and out of his mouth like a serpent's, his eyes wide and unblinking in the darkness. They said he would press his ear to the wall and listen, as if hearing a conversation that no one else could hear. They said that in the mirror on the wall of his room, he would sometimes stare at his own reflection with an expression of terror, as if seeing something in the glass that was not himself. Robert Kowalski remains in the state psychiatric hospital as of this writing. His file is thick with notes from doctors and nurses and therapists, each one describing a man who is slowly disappearing into the architecture of his own mind. In the mirror of his room, someone found a single black scale, glistening in the dim light of the corridor lamp. No one could explain how it got there. 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