(A story I wrote with my friend Pippa a few years back.)

Once upon a time, there was a snake in the middle of the desert.  Although he was a beautiful creature with bright green scales, he was sad.  You see, some time ago, an explorer walking through the desert had put a tentpole through the snake’s body, cutting the end of his tail in half.

This made the snake feel victimised, so he went to see his lawyer to see if he could claim compensation for the injury, as he felt he was not to blame. However, the lawyer said that he was silly, as he was bright green, and this was not a very good colour for a desert snake. As he was not even trying to blend in with the desert, he was to blame for the incident, for being a vain and ignorant snake.

Feeling that the lawyer was not being sensitive to his needs, the snake promptly ate him.  He then went on his way, looking for other methods of revenge.

Coming to a square in the centre of town, he saw a protest against the use of the word “antidisestablishmentarianism” on TV.  The protesters claimed that said word was too long and nobody knew what it meant, making millions of innocent people feel stupid.  The snake watched them wave their signs about, and felt a tear come to his bright yellow eye.

“These people are the victims of unfairness, much like myself,” he thought, “I shall join them in their quest for justice!”  And with that, he swung from a lamppost onto a nearby statue, and began to sing a selection from Les Miserables.

Unfortunately, this was the wrong choice, as the crowd was against anything related to the theatre, which meant he had to slither away as fast as he could and hide up a drainpipe until the mob (who had somehow found pitchforks and lit torches) had passed.

Even more unfortunately, the split in his tail meant that he could not hide himself fully in the pipe! The bisected part stuck out the end! Some eagle-eyed member of the mob spotted this, but could only persuade his group of five friends to come with him to investigate it, leaving the rest of the mob to pass by and  fall into the river which passed by the end of the road.

Not wanting to be caught by these six ruffians, the snake slithered out of the drainpipe and ate the ringleader.

“Gasp!” yelled his friends, “You ate our friend Cliff!”

“Yes, I did!” snapped the snake, “He was going to kill me just for singing showtunes!”

“But…  But…  We loved him!” wailed Cliff’s friends, their eyes brimming with salty tears.

“Listen!” said the snake, “You think you’ve got problems?  An explorer cut my tail in half, and then my lawyer…”  But the rest of the snake’s sentence was drowned out by the ruffians bawling over their dear departed friend Cliff.

“Shut up!” yelled the snake. And he regurgitated the clothes the gang leader was wearing into a heap in front of the rest of the group. As the five big, burly men stared, tears drying on the cheeks of their shocked faces, he knew it was time for a quick get-away.

With angry (but somewhat watery) shouts echoing along the alleyway behind him, the snake sped off, taking as many twists and turns as he could in an effort to lose his pursuers. As luck would have it, he turned around a corner and saw his salvation.

For there, in a yellow suit and hat, stood the very explorer who’d bisected his tail in the first place!  The explorer was cutting the ribbon at the opening of a new wing in the hospital, so he was completely distracted.  The snake grinned.  Vengeance would be his!

With a strangled cry, the snake launched himself off the ground and at the explorer, jaws wide open in preparation for the extremely satisfying meal he was about to have, when suddenly…

The explorer turned, alarmed by the commotion caused by the arrival of Cliff’s gang. Seeing his imminent demise in the shape of the bisected snake, hurtling towards him with reckless speed, the explorer drew a katana and the whole crowd went quiet.

The explorer and the snake froze, looking at each other, watching for the signs that indicate impending movement. Suddenly they were both distracted by an appearance from the lobby of the hospital.

“What is the meaning of this?” bellowed Pythia, the goddess of snakes, who had just materialised in the lobby.

The snake bowed (which was more difficult than you might expect, since he was floating in the air mid-jump).  “Your holiness, this man cut me in half with a tent peg!  Ever since then, I’ve had to go around with a bisected tail, which makes it hard for me to hide in drainpipes, among other things.”

“Is that so?” asked Pythia, turning an angry eye on the explorer.

“How was I to know that there was a snake underneath my tent peg?” the explorer exclaimed defensively.

“I’m bloody bright green, aren’t I?” the snake roared, turning an angry eye on the explorer. “I should be easy enough to see in a desert, shouldn’t I? I’m not exactly camouflaged!”

“But I’m colour-blind!” wailed the explorer.

“I think I can see a way through this predicament.” This was hesitantly said by the new leader of Cliff’s gang (who was named Philip), as he picked his way through the crowd to the steps in front of the lobby. He looked nervously at the still-floating snake as he did so, as if expecting him to swallow him whole for daring to speak.

Which he did.

“Oh, that’s just great!” said the explorer, “He was about to solve all our problems!”

“Well, I’m sorry!” said the snake, “I was just going by my instincts!  And as for you, you allegedly colour-blind twit, I think I’ll eat you for dessert!”

Meanwhile, Pythia had been thinking.  “You know, snakey, if the explorer couldn’t see you, then that renders your lawyer’s argument completely invalid.  It didn’t matter that you were bright green, and therefore you can’t be blamed.”

So the snake and the explorer joined forces to sue the lawyer’s surviving family for a million pounds, completely bankrupting their law firm and sending them into the poorhouse, and then moved to the Bahamas and lived happily ever after.

The End