Tina’s toilet brush hit something thick and firm under the rim of the toilet bowl, and then a snake tumbled into the water.
“Oh, bugger,” the snake said.
Tina stumbled backwards and ripped the earbuds from her ears. The sound of podcasters exclaiming about container gardening floated upwards from her shoulders.
During her tenure as a New York City subway janitor, she’d cleaned up a lot of surprising and revolting messes: human waste, dead animals, mysteriously soiled clothing, drug paraphernalia. This wasn’t even her first animal in a toilet, just the first that spoke.