Hysteria

by Gordon, Christopher

  “Hush it, Ghost, you can’t follow,” Egg says kissing the cow on the lips.

  “Ewww,” I say, “practicing for the girls at school? Won’t they get jealous of your new girlfriend?”

  Egg kicks me.

  We make for Red River in silence on our mountain bikes. Our heads buzzing with what’s ahead. Know a place where it’s shallow and narrow and most likely our cattle cross to that strange place. Never to return. From up high here on the over-hang we can see Raptor Ravine. Another place that keeps our interest. But we ain’t fixing up to be mad dog brave just yet.

  If like me you can’t swim, it’s a run up that needs all our concentration to clear the thirty foot high cliff overhang or we end up drowning. So naturally we leap it onto the other side and Big D’s ranch.

  Egg leaps first. Landing in a crouch and roll. “Aced it,” he shouts.

  Egg is humming his impression of the force-field-fence around Big D’s land.

  I land on top of Egg and I give him our stealth signal. Which to an untrained eye is similar to an arm punch. But he knows to shut it.

  Egg jumps out the way as Old Cedric and Caesar land on me. Knocking the wind from my lungs and sitting on my chest. Licking my face as if that will help me breathe. But I’d never dare to be mean to our boys. Being cattle dogs they got more horse sense and special herding skills than me and Egg together. And them skills can save your life out in these parts.

  Egg throws a rock at the buzzing fence. It bounces back at us and near knocks our heads off.

  “One touch and you wakes up dead,” I say.

  FOUR: Tunnel of Flies to Dinosaur Country

  “Wakes with T-Rex munching on your bones,” Egg says and tries a whistle.

  I slap his head.

  He giggles and farts nervously.

  All week skipping classes and digging under the fence. Making room enough for us to reach that strange world.

  Egg removes the flat stones concealing our craftsmanship.

  “Ready phase two,” Egg says. “Scared?”

  I shake my head.

  “Liar,” giggles Egg. “I hear your butt sizzling like a hot cow chip.”

  “You first,” I say pushing him down into our tunnel.

  Egg brushes aside tangled dripping tree roots reaching out at us. Scraping our faces. The tunnel walls seem to crawl and close in on us. The ground shakes as a long low howl reaches down into our tunnel. Chasing a cloud into our faces.

  Flies. The biggest. Blackest. Furriest. Maddest noisy critters. Swarming in their thousands. Swooping down over us. Buzzing like chain-saws about our heads. Diving on Old Cedric. Egg wrinkles his nose and retches.

  I hold my ears and clamp my mouth tight shut.

  Caesar nips my butt.

  I open my mouth and in rush a swarm. I involuntarily swallow hard. Biting down. Choking up them flies and sneezing them out my nose. I push Egg on. We hurry along our tunnel. Beating away at them crawling, biting devils.

  At last, light breaks through and we poke our heads up and sniff.

  Air feels heavy. A strange mist lays low over Bid D’s meadows. Place is soundless. Seems not even birds dare sing.

  Feeling my stomach heave. I swallow hard. “I smell it.”

  A mountain of hot steaming dinosaur dung sits perilously on the edge of our tunnel.

  “Biggest hot chip in the world,” Egg says.

  The ground shakes like someone slam-dunking the moon. The dung mountain wobbles.

  I volunteer Egg to squeeze up first. Shoving him.

  This time the ground shakes like it’s raining cow size hail-stones.

  “Reckon it’s one coming?” Egg says.

  I nod. “Set up your web-cam and high tail it out of there.”

  Dung Mountain wobbling side to side begins to roll onto our heads.

  “You ain’t never smelled so good, baby,” Egg says like one of Mom’s afternoon soaps. “So good you is bad.”

  Cockroaches spew out of the center of the dung mountain. Crawling over our skin. Feasting on me like a hot cow chip picnic.

  “They’re fixing up to a Norther for busting up their home,” Egg says.

  “If T-Rex sees us first,” I say holding one finger to my lips.

  “Can’t be a T-Rex, Jack,” Egg says and I smell his nervous farts in my face. “First delivery ain’t due yet.”

  “If our Intel is old,” I say and pinch his butt to get him moving. “We’re dead.”

  “Whole month’s pocket money getting Old Man River drunk,” Egg says and his ears turn bright pink.

  “Liar. You steal Dad’s beer,” I say. “Seen you water down his bottles.”

  Egg hides a sheepish grin. “Stops Dad’s grumpy hangovers, don’t it?”

  I shrug. “You think Big D deliberately leaked us wrong Intel?”

  “To trap us?”

  I nod

  “Why, Jack?”

  I shrug. “Just what Big D said to Dad about us.”

  Egg hesitates at the mouth of our tunnel. “I know a way we can make this trip mega,” Egg says. “Make so much money not even Big D can touch us.”

  “What scam you got hatching?”

  “I read T-Rex eggs be a secret ingredient in beauty cream, Jack.”

  “Calling me ugly?”

  “Yes, sir,” Egg giggles. “Worth fortune to Dino City folk…”

  “Not as dumb as you look are you?”

  Egg grins. “So we steal one?”

  FIVE: Dinosaur Eggs

  “Got to find one first,” I say as the ground begins shaking harder than ever. “What these eggs look like?”

  “Green and scaly like lizard skin,” Egg says and climbs upon pink gungy rocks caked in dry mud and straw.

  The ground shakes like a T-Rex trampoline. Once. Twice. Three times. Four.

  “Something smells us,” Egg says pulling straw and raptor bones out of his hair.

  “What dinosaur eats straw?” I say climbing out of our tunnel and standing on the pink rocks as big as Egg. “It’s everywhere. Like a nest.”

  “What eats Raptors?” Egg says.

  Them rocks start to shake. Old Cedric growls at them. The straw and dry mud flakes off revealing a green mottled lizard skin shell.

  “Jack,” Egg says, “them ain’t rocks. We gone tunneled ourselves into a T-Rex nest.”

  Below my feet, tiny cracks begin appearing. Splintering fissures widening.

  “Them rocks,” I say, “dinosaur eggs.”

  I jump off them giant egg rocks and Egg lands on top of me. We roll in the grass to get the smell of the T-Rex eggs off us.

  The low sun blinks and vanishes.

  A sudden gust of wind blows Egg over.

  We turn fast. Run blind into a wall of yellow, black and blood soaked razor teeth. Each front tooth on an upper and lower jaw stands taller than my head. Bending back like rows of chiseled steel ice-cream cones. Jammed up side by side together. A starving crowd jostling for view of breakfast: Egg and me.

  Black eyes flashing red hate. Like binoculars staring into my soul. This Mad-Mama-Rex’s butt sticking out more than twenty feet straight up. And its tail another twenty. Seems to wiggle for zoom focus on me and Eggs.

  Feeling Egg’s cold sweating hand slip inside my shaking hand. I know I got to clear my head free of thoughts of my bones grinding between gnashing walls of teeth. Or we both panic and die.

  A twenty foot long lizard tail cuts air like fork lightning and slaps down with an explosion by our feet.

  A shock wave crashes into our legs. Knocking us onto our butts.

  I lose grip of Egg’s hand.

  “Mad-Mama-Rex thinks we her breakfast in bed,” I say.

  Nostrils of green honeycomb scales, size of my head, sniff its first human meal. “Reckon it’s got a taste for humans?” I say.

  Egg nods and drops his web-cam on a pile of dung. “What’s plan Jack?”

  Old Cedric and Caesar bark for all they are worth at this T-Rex.

  “Scream,
then die,” I say as the T-Rex jaws open.

  I realize Egg and me could fit inside its skull without Rex noticing more than a tickle on its tongue.

  A mountain range of razor teeth seem to go on for miles. Disappearing out of sight and down its throat like an army of lethal bananas eager for mincing us for our bone marrow

  T-Rex unfurls a royal red shag-pile carpet of a tongue like the sudden jerk of a spring recoil action on a raptor hunting rifle. Smacking me in my face like horse hooves inside a boxing glove. Royal breakfast arrives your Imperial T-Rexness.

  Old Cedric and Caesar dive into our tunnel.

  “Cowards,” shouts Egg.

  T-Rex’s sandpaper rough tongue scrapes over my face. Licking me like a human lollipop. Steaming saliva oozes off mushroom like bumps on its tongue. Seeping into my pores and burning my face like acid.

  I swallow hard. Throat begins to swell. My arm and leg joints seize up. I can’t move. Something in the T-Rex spit is paralyzing me.

  “T-Rex likes her humans in butt flavor,” Egg says.

  “Hush it,” I say, “or you is next.”

  “She thinks we is her babies,” Egg says and pulls on my hand but I’m stuck.

  I can’t let Egg come to harm. “Leave me Egg. Save yourself.”

  ###

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