But the tyrannosaur, my tyrannosaur, is no longer screaming.
There is blood on his jaws.
He is angry now, not afraid.
Only you up there—only you are still screaming.
He pants as we circle, stirring the sand. Sweat runs over my skin. I breathe through my mouth. The triceratops drags one hind foot and snorts sand from its nostrils in explosions of breath. “Now,” I whisper, and lash my tyrannosaur’s flank, sending him into a run. His hunting cry is long and ululating and my whole body, marrow and bone, reverberate to it. For the briefest instant I wonder if Orca, Hyena, Hummingbird are watching me on the screens, if they can see my hair in the wind, if they can hear me whooping with the tyrannosaur bull. We close with our opponent in a crash of feather and hide.
The triceratops feints—I see it, my bull doesn’t—then slams its head into my tyrannosaur’s hip. I flick my hook across his cheek to warn him, too late. Two spires of ivory shear deep. My ears would bleed at the bull’s scream, so near my own head, but the nanites stanch the blood before I ever feel it. Eardrums are easily repaired, more so than lungs or entrails or hamstrings, and the living galaxy of tiny physician machines burns hot and fast inside me. Not so with my tyrannosaur; no devices smaller than mitochondria inhabit or protect him. He is designed to die.
A tower of muscle and sinew, he founders.
I dance across his shoulders, but he is falling, and all I can do is spring aside to land in a blossom of sand and red dust. His crash sends a hot cloud of it at me. Still he screams as he kicks his fierce leg, throwing up more sand. The triceratops charges by me, a wind against my body. Balancing on my feet, I join my scream to the tyrannosaur’s as the frilled beast slams again into his belly. There is a deeper red than the sand.
My body is hot and my breath is hot and I am cooling in a sheen of sweat, but for the fury in me there is no cooling. My tyrannosaur flails weakly in the sand. I have only a second to think and I do not use it. There is no thought, only rage. Gripping the handle of my hook, I hurl myself into the air, leaping to the triceratops, onto its shield of bone.
7
This day has gone long enough without a death. Clinging with my thighs to the edge of the triceratops’s frill, I spin my rope beneath and around its neck, then leap across to the bull’s other shoulder to catch the hook, and as I tighten the noose, the beast gives a hoarse roar and breaks into a panicked run, clouds of red sand billowing past me like architites blowing on the wind over Neptune’s second sea.
I dance grimly on its back to keep my balance, and the muscles scream in my arms. I do not care if I damage myself; the nanites will repair me. My pulse is beating hot in my temples and all I can think of is to tighten, tighten that rope.
With a gasp, the triceratops stumbles to its knees; it shakes its head as if to throw me, but I stay put. Its horns sweep past before my eyes like trees in a gust. I sit and slam my feet against its frill for leverage and I pull and pull at the rope. Red and purple light washes across me, garish, from the hovers, but no one interferes. All of you are watching, I can feel your lust wash up in waves against me, your yearning to see one of us naked animals down here, at least one of us, die a gory death.
I give you no gore with this one; you have had enough blood. The triceratops’s tongue hangs from its mouth and its huge sides lift and fall raggedly and then are still as I cut off the last of its air. It gets uneasily to its feet, a surge of its muscled body beneath me like the whole earth moving, but then the beast beneath me tilts and it collapses onto its side, a bow wave of sand cresting away from its fall. I leap free, hitting the sand and then somersaulting back through the air to land again on its thigh, and I am pulling the ropes taut again, so taut, allowing it not one gasp. It kicks weakly, craning its head back, the great frill scooping sand before it like some monstrous shovel. I neither speak nor shout; I just strain at the rope, letting the nanites within me heighten my muscles and hyperoxygenate my veins, giving me such strength and endurance as you have only in your dreams.
The triceratops stops kicking, the death noise in its throat loud like rocks rasping together. I do not relax my hold. Then it shudders and is still, and as all of you hold your awed silence, from a thousand megaspeakers the Duchess Amy Mardonia’s sharp cry pierces the air: the act of love a ceremonial refutation of the day’s first death.
Numb, I slide from the triceratops’s hip, barely noticing the impact of the sand against my feet. I leave my rope and hook wound about its neck. The triceratops lies lifeless behind me, of no more significance than an unnamed boulder in the hills. My fury still burns through me like forest fire through bamboo, but I no longer care about that horned beast. I give no heed to the Duchess Amy’s moans or to the excited cheering of your tens of thousands that soon drowns her out. There is only one I care about now, and my eyes are on him as I cross the sand.
8
The tyrannosaur, my tyrannosaur, lies gored and dying; I walk to his head. As I bend to look into his eye, already glazed with pain and approaching entropy, the roar and rush of all your voices fades until it is nothing louder than the rush of my own blood in my ears.
It is over. I am not yours anymore to prize, or envy, or yearn for, or fuck. None of you matter.
Tenderly, I kneel by his massive head and put my arms around him. His head is warm against my breasts, his feathers soft. He makes a wheezing sound but does not move at my touch.
He has been trained and shaped, too. He has been torn from his place and time as surely as I have. And I wonder that none of you, not one of you, has thought to pity him. I can see into his heart. I make him a vow, whispering the words in Mandarin near the tufted hole of his ear. I will teach my sisters to see into his heart. Into all your hearts. As I have.
Embracing the dying bull, I sing softly to him a song of my mother’s, a song of old China, words of Li Po’s set to music long before I was born, in a year when there were only moons in the sky and no orbital platforms, no conservatory worlds or steel cylinders. Maybe only one moon; I think there was only one moon made by the gods and not by men.
My voice is softer than I have heard it before; tears burn at my eyes.
Among the blossoms I
am alone with my wine;
lifting my cup I ask the moon
to drink with me, its reflection
and mine in the wine, just we three:
and I sigh, because the moon cannot drink
and my reflection just mimics me, silent;
no other friends here, these two
alone are with me—
The tyrannosaur murmurs low in his throat, like a child about to shift in his sleep, and I know this beautiful old animal understands the song. At least as much as I do. More than any of you ever will. Yearning takes me, to retrieve my metal riding hook and plunge it into my own breast, to bleed out here beside the tyrannosaur and leave all of you behind, all of you lost in the scream of your crowd. Because I am a wolf separated from her pack, watching my only companion die.
But I have made a promise.
As the hovers approach with a roar like cicadas at dusk, I cling tightly to my tyrannosaur’s head, close my eyes, and sing softly as I weep.
A Word from Stant Litore
Do you want to ride a tyrannosaur, explore the universe, or fight the ravenous, Bronze Age dead? That’s my world—the world of “The Screaming of the Tyrannosaur,” of Ansible, of The Zombie Bible, of fictional futures and fictional pasts. I invite you to come visit for a bit.
I really loved writing this story—both because of a lifelong obsession with dinosaurs that I never entirely grew out of (who am I kidding, I didn’t grow out of it at all), and because it was an opportunity to work out my fury at our beauty culture and our entertainment culture. As a father of two daughters, the way our culture distorts the lives of young women is often pressing on my heart. Then, too, I wanted to tell a story of unexpected kinship, of finding a companion in an unexpected place when alone. And if that companio
n is feathered and weighs nine tons, well, that’s par for the course when you’re writing science fiction.
All right, what should I say here about myself? You’re much more interesting than I—after all, you just spent the last forty minutes in a colosseum for tyrannosaurs. That is an exciting life.
About me: I’ve been publishing fiction since 2011, have been recognized in a feature on Amazon.com and in NPR. I live in Aurora, Colorado with my wife and daughters, and am working on the final pages of Tyrannosaurs in the Sky, a novel set in the world you just read. My other series involve 25th-century Islamic explorers who transfer their minds across space and time to make first contact only to be marooned in alien bodies on alien worlds (that’s Ansible) and a set of retellings of Old Testament stories and ancient legends as episodes in humanity’s long struggle against hunger and the hungry dead—so if you have ever wondered how our Bronze Age ancestors might have faced the ravening dead, how the walking plague might have shaped the cultures and religions we have today, The Zombie Bible may be for you.
My mottoes as a writer are: A great story should tell the truth and take no prisoners; there’s no topic too silly for a good story, if the idea excites you and you do it well; and: invite the reader into the adventure, from the first page.
I hope I’ve invited you into this one. Thank you for reading it!
If you’ve enjoyed the story, consider joining me on Patreon – www.patreon.com/stantlitore –where readers in my monthly membership get copies of all my stories and novels, and contribute ideas and feedback on those yet to come. Patreon members get to read everything first.
If you're the kind of reader who has always wished you could sit down on a porch with one of your favorite writers to just listen to the rain and ask them that question you've always had or even just hear them spin out new ideas, then you belong there. Maybe I’ll see you there! You are also welcome to contact me at [email protected].
Ugly
by Laxmi Hariharan
Christine:
Those who have seen your face
Draw back in fear
I am the mask you wear
Phantom:
It's me they hear
—Andrew Lloyd Webber, The Phantom of the Opera
1
Goa, India
I NEVER THOUGHT my first trip to Dad's home country would be to sell an asteroid piece. Two days to go till I meet the buyer and I’m still jetlagged from the time difference. I plonk myself into a beach chair. Blinking at the sunshine, I unzip my backpack and flip open the box inside.
The light picks out the red and purple blotches in the palm-sized slice of meteorite.
What secrets lie under its surface?
It's probably—definitely—worth more than what I'm being offered. But at this stage, I'll take what I can get.
Anything to not return to my tiny basement room in London.
So what if this really is a piece of the asteroid responsible for wiping out the dinosaurs? It's not like I have any sentimental attachment to it.
I barely knew the man who'd sent it to me.
I shut the box and tuck the backpack carefully next to me, where I can feel it. Swigging my now warm beer, I rest my head against the chair.
The red behind my eyelids grows brighter as the sun climbs overhead.
Sweat runs down between my breasts and I sigh, mentally following it down, down, down towards my navel. A light wind feathers over my face, and I get a whiff of something dusty, old ... millennia old. But it's gone so quickly I am sure I've imagined it.
The breeze creeps over my skin and a shiver runs down my body as it traces the curve of my shoulders, swirls over my arm.
I shudder and move towards it, running my fingers over skin.
Uneven skin.
Uneven, scaly skin.
I recoil and my heart slams against my chest. I try to turn away, but my waist is gripped and held back. The touch continues across the length of my waist, tracing the swell of my belly, and then, lower still, making me moan. I sit up with a start, so quickly that the blood rushes to my head. The world tilts around me and I clutch the edge of the chair for support.
Is there someone here, someone with me?
I look around, noticing the tide has gone out. The beach is empty, except for my bag with the Ashdown. Good thing that's not alive. I giggle, and the sound of my voice breaks the silence.
When I leave for the bar an hour later my fingers still carry the feel of those scales. Rough, yet soft. Like nothing I've ever touched.
2
Hugging the massive speakers, drink in hand, I ride the music as it slams into me. A touch on my arm has me jerking back. A guy with blond dreadlocks towers over me.
"So that’s what making love to music looks like?" he asks, and I laugh.
His eyes run over the swell of my breasts, clearly visible above the low-cut blouse. I look like who I am—someone who does not want to go home alone tonight.
He's quite good looking, actually, in a rumpled backpacker way, the shadow of his nipples visible through the thin shirt.
He leans down and yells to be heard over the music, "Want to get out of here?"
Without taking my eyes off him I tilt back my glass, chugging down the liquid. The alcohol burns its way down, taking the edge off my awkwardness. I don't resist as he plucks the empty glass from my hand and flings it over his shoulder. Leaning down, he brushes my lips with his.
Just a touch.
An easy touch.
Rising on tiptoes, I lean into him.
His arms slide around my waist.
My heartbeat speeds up as he presses me back against the speakers, right into the wall of sound. The vibrations pound through me.
Breaking the kiss, I gasp, "My place."
He grips my hand and pulls me along.
Sometimes it’s easier to accept comfort from strangers.
3
Dad's last days had been spent like most of his life, chasing after extra-planetary phenomena. A dreamer, he'd been.
Before he died, he'd been on the trail of what he called the Ashdown—a slice from the asteroid that crashed into Earth millions of years ago. It had set off tsunamis and global fires, wiping out most land-based life.
The debris had shot into space, some of it falling at the site of Dad's last expedition. Strange to think I have a slice of time with me.
Something of value.
Not that I'd been aware of it.
Not till a week ago, when the collector had called and offered a seven-figure amount for what I'd thought was just a rock. I refused to believe the guy, but when he'd gone so far as to send me a ticket to meet him in Goa, I gave in and decided to sell.
After all, Dad owed me.
Perhaps this was his way of compensating for all the times he hadn’t been around.
He must have mailed the Ashdown to me just before he died.
But why? Why would he do that?
I am still not sure what to make of it.
A breeze blows in through the open window of the beach shack. Underneath the smell of salt is something else, something metallic, coppery. I turn over and my hand drops to the sheet. It's wet.
As if I've sweated bucketfuls.
No, this is too wet.
My eyes fly open to see the man next to me on his back, naked, eyes half open.
I shrink back from the dark liquid pooling next to his head. No, not liquid, it's blood.
His blood.
Pulse pounding in my ears, I push myself away from him and over the side of the bed, falling to the floor with a thump. Bile rushes up to my throat and I heave the contents of my stomach, wincing at the acid taste of alcohol.
Think, think. What are you going to do now?
First things first.
Clothes.
Get some clothes on.
Ignoring my spinning head, I heave myself to my feet. Finding my jeans, I pull them on. Next, T-shirt. When I grab the backpack with the asteroid pi
ece, I find it empty.
Strange. Did I take it out last night when I was drunk? Show it to this guy who’s lying dead now? Where can it be? My gaze swivels from one end of the room to the other. And then I see it.
The Ashdown is out of its case and next to the bed.
Next to the dead guy.
I run over to it and freeze. There's blood all over it. I swear aloud. He was trying to steal it, is that it?
I curse myself, and am putting it back into its casing when a loud banging on the door startles me.
"Open up!”
I stay where I am, unable to move.
“Police. Open up. We know you're in there."
Biting my lips, I take a deep breath, calming my thundering pulse. I find my sneakers and slip them on. Then, heaving the backpack, I rush to the back door without giving myself time to think.
And then I am out on the patio, jumping onto the sand and racing away, parallel to the shore.
In the distance I hear another shout and know they’re behind me. I swear to myself again, but don't look back.
Just keep going.
The heat shimmers off the beach, burning me through the thin soles of my sneakers. The sweat runs down my forehead, into my eyes, blinding me.
Run-run-run the chant echoes in my head, in time to the thud of my feet. But where? Where do I go?
I’ve just reached the main road when an SUV screeches to a stop and the door is flung open.
The Jurassic Chronicles (Future Chronicles Book 15) Page 16