They learn to live with it, but “living” is a generous word. The man in Thailand now scans every bowl like a crime scene, muscles tensed for an attack that probably won’t come, but once did. The South African survivor times each visit, calculating risk in seconds and shadows, bargaining with plumbing as if it were a god that sometimes lies.
Friends laugh it off, sharing memes about snakes in toilets, but the joke slides off them like water off porcelain. Some wire motion sensors, some keep a broom by the door, some simply hold it a little longer each day. They know the statistics are on their side, yet the numbers feel useless against the memory of being ambushed in the one place you’re supposed to be unguarded. The house hasn’t changed. The bathroom hasn’t moved. Only their belief in private, ordinary safety is gone for good.
