To Slay A Dinosaur: Part I
B L A C K skies stretched as far as he could see. There was no horizon. There were no stars.
He could look around only as far as ten feet in front of him, while he kept running.
White trees like pillars seemed to hold up the blanket of moist darkness around him. Trees that spread out long, straight branches of spiky, dripping leaves. Treeswith bark dented, broken and scratched from a thousand conflicts long ended. Testimony to a thousand lives the trees had survived, to a time long forgotten.
Perhaps one that should not be.
He tried to walk, and the soil cracked and creaked like paper. The ferns beneath him were long and sinister, like the claws of darkness. They seeped in and out of the night as he ran as though they were trying to flee from him. Long, thick creepers and vines stretched between the awful trees and out of the water that flowed through the cracks in the Earth beneath him.
Sounds like long, high-pitched echoes – almost like Whale Calls – mournful, broken, lonely – traversed the warm, wet air with the wind currents. The booming clap of great, rubbery wingbeats scraped through his mind and emptied his soul; leaving him cold with terror even in the tropical forest night.
Low, painful growls seemed to crawl at him through the ground.
Insectile clicks and clacks burst out of the sinister ferns – sounds like somebody swallowing live crickets. Crunching, choking, gargling, and with them came the whips of long tails and leaping forms that he saw out of the corner of his eye. Howls of territorial conquest carried for miles and almost broke his eardrums. Rattling hisses and snapping jaws seemed to pop out of the Night Itself right next to him – but when he looked over, nothing there.
Long,-drawn out screams as deep as thunder nearly broke his eardrums. They drowned out all the other sounds – though they only came here and there, off in the distance, perhaps. With these calls came great quakes in the ground that shook him to his core and flipped him over into the dense foliage, with the spiders and centipedes and snakes.
He got up and kept running. Bugs smacked against him like he was walking through a cloud of them. Sweat seeped off of him to the point where he did not know how much of the water on his body was his own or from the humidity.
Horrible smells assaulted him from all around. Some like must and dust and animal bone. Some like the stench of lizards and rotting flesh. Some unlike anything his senses had ever perceived before.
Amongst the nightmarish cacophony that surrounded him and out of the Hellish Symphony of nature abounded the loudest of all. It was to his right. He stopped and looked about in a dazed state of adrenaline-fueled panic, a little off to his side, there was his mom.
“Jack! JACK!”
The screams were of his mother, standing above a meter-wide crack in the earth that flowed gleaming, shimmering water.
He stopped before the water that separated him from her.
She almost glowed with sweat as her skin dripped water and blood. She had attempted to use her scraps of clothing to cover the wounds that the parasitic insects and thorny vines had given her extremities – to no good avail.
They stared at each other. Jack’s mother cried and threw up a little and cried more and harder. Her eyes were sunken in and baggy and her mouth of dry and corpse-like.
Jack didn’t look too well himself, but it wasn’t his mom's Ghoulish Appearance that drove him away from her.
It was the silence.
All the sounds had stopped.
And that was when it happened.
Great, booming sounds shook the ground; throwing Jack into the spiky, unmalleable ferns where the spiders and snakes hid and clung to the soil as though it might shake them off into the sky.
She cried for him. She jumped into the water and cried and yelled for him to come back and that was when it happened.
An animal the size of a Rhino sprinted thirty feet and landed on scarred, disgusting feet. Like bird legs, but larger. A Great, throaty, whooping roar bounced across the night and sent every living thing a message of territory – a message of warning. A huge, leathery eagle-foot slammed down on Jack’s Mom and pinned her to the ground. Something liquid flowed out of her that glistened maroon in the shadows. He looked away while a head as big as he was descended onto the barely-breathing Mommy and opened huge, dripping jaws full of jagged, onyx teeth that reeked of death. Jack looked over the ferns to see three a pair of blade-like horns on its head above the eyes. Black shark-eyes looked around as those huge, horrific jaws of Hell panted grotesque reptilian breath. As though the beast had a mouth full of dead insects (though if this were the case, it wouldn’t have eaten Mommy, now would it?)
It dropped its massive, open jaws and bit a crunching chunk of meat and bone – half of his mother – out of its kill.
It threw back its double-horned head and swallowed its mouthful through a wrinkly, lizard-bird throat. Its throat was an alarming black, in contrast to its dark, crocodile-green head. Its face was painted with black interlocking bands like a Zebra’s coat. Its exposed ribs, somewhat obscured under a coal-black, very light coat of hairlike feathers, expanded with each raspy breath.
It lifted its head into the night sky and screamed a punching, painful call as its foot slammed into the ground. It shook Jack back to reality as he hid behind the white, scarred tree.
The second one – the female, with the smaller horns and no color to her head or feathers besides the standard olive green – emerged from the night. Curved teeth, shark-eyes and lizard-horns, just like the other.
The male moved his head down in a bird-like fashion and pushed the rest of it towards his mate. Like a reptilian falcon, she drove her head down and twisted it. Mangled the other half of her mate’s kill, crunching bones and snapping tendons. A long, thin arm hung out of the side of her mouth, drenched in blood.
The male raised his neck and the female put her head under his – crossed necks, a symbol of their devotion to one another.
They displayed affections for almost ten minutes before they ran away into the Jungle Night. Small animals crawled away from the swift, thundering footsteps of the great predators and became nothing but fixtures of Jack’s imagination as they disappeared with unreal speed into the Cretaceous Evening.
Gorgosaurus. Horned King of Jack’s new home.
He could look around only as far as ten feet in front of him, while he kept running.
White trees like pillars seemed to hold up the blanket of moist darkness around him. Trees that spread out long, straight branches of spiky, dripping leaves. Treeswith bark dented, broken and scratched from a thousand conflicts long ended. Testimony to a thousand lives the trees had survived, to a time long forgotten.
Perhaps one that should not be.
He tried to walk, and the soil cracked and creaked like paper. The ferns beneath him were long and sinister, like the claws of darkness. They seeped in and out of the night as he ran as though they were trying to flee from him. Long, thick creepers and vines stretched between the awful trees and out of the water that flowed through the cracks in the Earth beneath him.
Sounds like long, high-pitched echoes – almost like Whale Calls – mournful, broken, lonely – traversed the warm, wet air with the wind currents. The booming clap of great, rubbery wingbeats scraped through his mind and emptied his soul; leaving him cold with terror even in the tropical forest night.
Low, painful growls seemed to crawl at him through the ground.
Insectile clicks and clacks burst out of the sinister ferns – sounds like somebody swallowing live crickets. Crunching, choking, gargling, and with them came the whips of long tails and leaping forms that he saw out of the corner of his eye. Howls of territorial conquest carried for miles and almost broke his eardrums. Rattling hisses and snapping jaws seemed to pop out of the Night Itself right next to him – but when he looked over, nothing there.
Long,-drawn out screams as deep as thunder nearly broke his eardrums. They drowned out all the other sounds – though they only came here and there, off in the distance, perhaps. With these calls came great quakes in the ground that shook him to his core and flipped him over into the dense foliage, with the spiders and centipedes and snakes.
He got up and kept running. Bugs smacked against him like he was walking through a cloud of them. Sweat seeped off of him to the point where he did not know how much of the water on his body was his own or from the humidity.
Horrible smells assaulted him from all around. Some like must and dust and animal bone. Some like the stench of lizards and rotting flesh. Some unlike anything his senses had ever perceived before.
Amongst the nightmarish cacophony that surrounded him and out of the Hellish Symphony of nature abounded the loudest of all. It was to his right. He stopped and looked about in a dazed state of adrenaline-fueled panic, a little off to his side, there was his mom.
“Jack! JACK!”
The screams were of his mother, standing above a meter-wide crack in the earth that flowed gleaming, shimmering water.
He stopped before the water that separated him from her.
She almost glowed with sweat as her skin dripped water and blood. She had attempted to use her scraps of clothing to cover the wounds that the parasitic insects and thorny vines had given her extremities – to no good avail.
They stared at each other. Jack’s mother cried and threw up a little and cried more and harder. Her eyes were sunken in and baggy and her mouth of dry and corpse-like.
Jack didn’t look too well himself, but it wasn’t his mom's Ghoulish Appearance that drove him away from her.
It was the silence.
All the sounds had stopped.
And that was when it happened.
Great, booming sounds shook the ground; throwing Jack into the spiky, unmalleable ferns where the spiders and snakes hid and clung to the soil as though it might shake them off into the sky.
She cried for him. She jumped into the water and cried and yelled for him to come back and that was when it happened.
An animal the size of a Rhino sprinted thirty feet and landed on scarred, disgusting feet. Like bird legs, but larger. A Great, throaty, whooping roar bounced across the night and sent every living thing a message of territory – a message of warning. A huge, leathery eagle-foot slammed down on Jack’s Mom and pinned her to the ground. Something liquid flowed out of her that glistened maroon in the shadows. He looked away while a head as big as he was descended onto the barely-breathing Mommy and opened huge, dripping jaws full of jagged, onyx teeth that reeked of death. Jack looked over the ferns to see three a pair of blade-like horns on its head above the eyes. Black shark-eyes looked around as those huge, horrific jaws of Hell panted grotesque reptilian breath. As though the beast had a mouth full of dead insects (though if this were the case, it wouldn’t have eaten Mommy, now would it?)
It dropped its massive, open jaws and bit a crunching chunk of meat and bone – half of his mother – out of its kill.
It threw back its double-horned head and swallowed its mouthful through a wrinkly, lizard-bird throat. Its throat was an alarming black, in contrast to its dark, crocodile-green head. Its face was painted with black interlocking bands like a Zebra’s coat. Its exposed ribs, somewhat obscured under a coal-black, very light coat of hairlike feathers, expanded with each raspy breath.
It lifted its head into the night sky and screamed a punching, painful call as its foot slammed into the ground. It shook Jack back to reality as he hid behind the white, scarred tree.
The second one – the female, with the smaller horns and no color to her head or feathers besides the standard olive green – emerged from the night. Curved teeth, shark-eyes and lizard-horns, just like the other.
The male moved his head down in a bird-like fashion and pushed the rest of it towards his mate. Like a reptilian falcon, she drove her head down and twisted it. Mangled the other half of her mate’s kill, crunching bones and snapping tendons. A long, thin arm hung out of the side of her mouth, drenched in blood.
The male raised his neck and the female put her head under his – crossed necks, a symbol of their devotion to one another.
They displayed affections for almost ten minutes before they ran away into the Jungle Night. Small animals crawled away from the swift, thundering footsteps of the great predators and became nothing but fixtures of Jack’s imagination as they disappeared with unreal speed into the Cretaceous Evening.
Gorgosaurus. Horned King of Jack’s new home.
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