Since I was twenty, I’ve lived two separate lives. By day I am John Hardin, a Managing Partner at Caldwell & Associates, and a loving husband with three adorable kids. By night I am SnakeMan, protector of the peace and terror to the criminal underbelly of Phoenix, Arizona.

I have stopped fentanyl from crossing our borders. I have taken down everything from local dealers to drug kingpins. I’ve stopped murders, rapes, kidnappings, and everything in between. What Spider-Man is for New York City, and Batman is for Gotham City, that is what I am for the southern border of this great country.

But I have been fighting crime now for over thirty years. I tire easily, I make more mistakes than I used to, and I am afraid now that any escapade could be my last. I love this city and my country, but I love my family above all else.

Now I need to be there for them. And I am ready to tell my family the truth about my identity.

I see Lauren, looking radiant as ever, standing out on the balcony from our bedroom. She stares into the night sky as she sips her glass of wine. I come up behind her and she gives no reaction when I put my hands on her shoulders.

“Honey,” I say softly. “I need to tell you something.”

She turns around to face me and it’s hard not to lose myself in her captivating gaze. But I can tell she’s been crying. Something’s wrong.

“What is it?”

She wipes her tears away and shakes her head. “John I-I know what you’re going to tell me.”

I can’t help myself, I laugh at this. “Lauren, baby, I promise you don’t.”

But she pulls away from me. “Oh no John, I do. Yes, you’re SnakeMan. The protector of our southern border.”

I feel like the wind has been knocked out of me. The way she says it so nonchalant, so dismissive.

“H-h-how did you know that?” I whisper.

Now the tears are back and streaming down her face. “John, you have told me this exact story every night for the past twelve years.”

“That can’t be true,” I say. But I feel stuck in a dream and I am starting to doubt my thoughts.

“It is John. I don’t know what to do anymore. We’ll call Dr. Mott in the morning, he swore to me this new medication would be different.”

“NO!” I scream. “Lauren, you fucking listen to me now! Don’t do that. I am not crazy and I’ll prove it to you.”

I walk across the bedroom to our closet. I’ll show her where I hide the SnakeSuit. I hear her collapse on the bed behind me, just bawling at this point.

As I go to move our dresser, a cold shiver runs down my spine as the secret compartment I installed years ago is nowhere to be found. What the fuck? I feel my heart beating in my throat. No, no, no, no. It can’t be.

I now bolt out of the bedroom, racing through the house to the basement. I pass Cody, my fourteen year old, sitting on the couch watching TV and cracking open a coke. He sees the intensity in the face.

“What’s the matter dad? Going to look for the CobraCopter?”

The tone in my youngest son’s voice, the mockery, stops my dead in my tracks. “You know too?”

He now gives me a look of pity as he guzzles his soda. His expression hurts me more than anything I’ve ever known. “Yeah dad, I know. So does Melody, so does Sam.”

I stand there staring at him. I don’t know what to say.

“Mom! Can you come get dad? He’s having his episode!” Cody has already turned back to his TV show.

My fists clench. “You lying piece of shit.”

Cody looks away from the TV and I see the fear in his face now. “Huh?”

Before I can think it through, I take the lamp from the coffee table and throw it against the wall. It shatters into a million pieces. “I SAID YOU. LYING. PIECE. OF. SHIT. SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!”

I am now hurling pictures, toppling over bookshelves, throwing plates. I punch through the TV as Cody screams. I hiss at him. Lauren has now ran downstairs to find my chaos and is screaming at me herself in between bouts of tears.

Hours later, when most of the house has been demolished, they come to take me away. They find me out back smoking a cigarette. I stare out at the empty black desert and mountains beyond. The stars are bright tonight. As they lift me up and bind me in a jacket, assuring my family that I’ll be just fine and not to worry, I fixate on the desert. I see a rattlesnake slither past. Then another. And another.

Soon I see swarms of rattlesnakes, my friends, writhing in the desert and begging me to come with them. Come have one last night with them, dancing under the stars and fighting crime wherever it is to be found.

Oh if only I could my friends. If only I could.