Really nice story, @bex-dk. I'm glad you let inspiration guide you! I remember seeing that you had a snake in your greenhouse. What a great inspiration for a story.
I also really stumbled this week. I wanted to write a piece about an event in history (one of my little passions), and came up with several possibilities. I chose what I thought was the best idea of all, but the words just didn't work. It took several rounds of trial and error and I was finally successful at completing a draft I was satisfied with late last night. I let it rest and did a few tweaks this morning.
I think it's especially difficult to capture terror. I hadn't thought about that when I chose this prompt, but danger and fear are really challenging because they are so personal, and words can fall so flat.
You did a great job of capturing that startled and terrible moment of coming face-to-face with a venomous snake. But I especially like the twist at the end, that perhaps the snake is terrified too.
The thing with terror and fear is that showing them can be wordy and we have so few to work with. It needs a character arc in which that dominates, so you don't need the words for other things. I suspect if you allowed yourself more words, you'd more quickly be happy with a story. But the challenge is good for us. We need to push ourselves if we want to improve.