Flat Adder
Photo of a flat, dead snake on some tarmac.
Flat Adder wasn’t always flat, nor an adder. He had an unfortunate accident in his 32nd month which he has miraculously managed to transform into good fortune. This is why no one argues with him about his claim to adder-hood. There is too much to admire to quibble over such insignificant aspects of his personhood.
Being flat allows Flat Adder to see into another dimension which is 42 seconds ahead of ours, but otherwise exactly the same. As a result, a great many people come to visit Flat Adder so that they might know their immediate future. He has to speak really quickly to say the future before it happens, and if anyone knows adders, they’ll know how difficult a feat that is. All snakes are languid in nature and therefore not moved to particularly fast speech.
As a result Flat Adder speaks in part-sentences. He’ll get out the first two or three words of a description and then be forced to have to start a new one. As an example, his prophecy might go something like this: Bird will… apple rise… box of … therapeutic leaf… rare excitement… It’s tough to make out what that might mean on the page, but bear in mind that by the time you’re being presented with a box of antidote containing a medicinal plant, you’ll have eaten the apple that rose up from the ground after a bird dropped it there.
As it goes, I can also see the future, so I know that one day, a creative young fellow will come along and set Flat Adder’s predictions to some sparse but rhythmic beat, whilst another will make Flat Adder merchandise which will be all the rage on TikTok. As a result, Flat Adder will make millions out of his predicament, and that’s even after handing over a significant proportion of his royalties to his young collaborators.
In the end, Flat Adder will buy a very nice house on the top of a hill not far from the Devil’s Punch Bowl where he currently resides. He will wake up early every morning and meditate to the rising sun underneath a pagoda. When he’s done, he’ll stay another hour or two and sing another universe into existence: the beginning of a summit, the direction of a breeze, the first successful chickadee birth of the season. This is because after that many years of meditating, he’ll have figured out how to see into other dimensions and he will consider it his True Purpose to populate one.
So Flat Adder will, in the end, truly be forked: he will be a site of pilgrimage and a genesis point. On the one side of his tongue, he will be receiving your future and on the other, he’ll be creating a new one. As for me, I’m floating above him watching the colours of dawn sky, catching the words and letters of my own future, one by one.