If an anaconda bites your hand – as, no doubt, one someday will – gulps your fist whole and holds fast, fight the keen urge to yank back. Really.
Opening line, Emergency Instructions: If an Anaconda Bites Your Hand, David Macey
This is the first line of a short short story, perhaps it’s called flash fiction, found in issue 84 of the journal Agni.
I definitely don’t have a thing for snakes, but in this three-paragraph story I saw something humorous, reminiscent of an illustration in Le Petit Prince of a boa constrictor swallowing an animal.
It also reminded me of a rock formation I once saw, with a long snakish snout, a semblance of teeth and a fierce eye.
Like anacondas, and boa constrictors, rock can be dangerous. You can be washed off it, fall from the top, disappear into its midst like Miranda in Picnic at Hanging Rock. But rock doesn’t search for prey, doesn’t coil about those too near, is never hungry. Its jaws won’t open, it won’t bite your hand. My husband is safe.
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