Dinosaur Ghost Chapter 8: A Heaping Helping of Prehistoric Justice

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The reporter stood in front of the convention center, microphone in hand.  Her red blazer perfectly accentuated her lustrous auburn hair.  “Channel three action news reporting.  The city is abuzz tonight over a purported attack on a downtown gun rally.  Eye-witness accounts vary, but reports suggest that nearly all of the three hundred people killed or wounded in the melee suffered from wounds that were either inadvertent or self-inflicted.  One policeman I talked to suggested that this may be a case of mass hysteria.  Meanwhile, city officials tell us they are in the process of testing the water supply for psychedelic hallucinogens, and more than one person, including reporters at this network, including me, right now, speculated that this may be the work of Al Qaida.

"We go now to Washington D.C. where Senator Buck McStain took questions from reporters just moments ago.”

Senator McStain, an 85-year-old curmudgeon, limped down the capitol steps to greet the throng of reporters.  He wore a white suit to match his thinning hair, which blew loosely in the breeze.

“Senator, Senator,” the reporters shouted as they heaved their respective microphones into the senator’s face.  “How do you respond to reports that dinosaur ghosts have attacked the Gun Rights Association?”

“I think we should invade Iraq.”

“But Senator,” asked a reporter from the Washington Post, “What does Iraq have to do with dinosaur ghosts?”

“Don’t worry, we’re going to get to the bottom of this,” the senator replied, “and we will continue to get to the bottom of this until we bring these perpetrators to justice.  You can count on it.  I have spoken with several highly placed officials in the intelligence community, and if what they are telling me is true, the United States may very well need to re-Invade Iraq by the end of the week.”

“Senator, are you suggesting that these dinosaur ghosts are Al Qaida operatives sent from Iraq?”

“I’m not suggesting anything,” Senator McStain said, “other than the fact that Al Qaida operatives within Iraq may very well have perpetrated a terrorist attack on the United States.”

Cut to the reporter for channel three.  “There you have it,” she said. “A highly placed U.S. official has called this a ‘terrorist attack perpetrated by Al Qaida. 

“In other news, the United States Supreme Court ruled today that guns are actually people, and are therefore entitled to equal rights and full protection under the law.  Now let’s check in with Candy at the sports desk...”

“Shut it off, ”Helen said. “I can’t take it anymore.”

Eric turned off the television set.  He sat down beside Helen at the kitchen table.  She continued to fiddle with one of her thingamajigs. 

Eric took the device out of her hand and examined it.  “What is this thing?” he asked.

“It’s a project I’ve been working on.  I call it a Decayed Matter Reanimator Locator.”

“You made this?  What does it do?”

“It finds dinosaur ghosts.”

“Hey, we could use something like that.”

“I still can’t get over it,”  Helen said, a tear rolling down her cheek.  “It’s like they rose from the dead through the force of sheer hatred.”

Eric put his hand on her shoulder.  “We’ll get through this.”

“The thing is, I know they aren’t actually a part of our world in the strictest sense,” she said.  “They aren’t real like you and me.  They’re leftovers from another epoch.  Through some freak occurrence in nature, they can observe us, and we can observe them, but I’m certain they can’t actually impact our lives directly unless we let them.  Those men at the gun rally shot themselves.  The journalists died in freak accidents.  Both James and the security guard from the zoo died of a heart attack.  I think if people took the time to face the ghosts, they would see that they’re actually quite harmless.”

“That’s good,” Eric said.  “I don’t want to be harmed.”

Helen picked up another one of her doodads, one that looked like a ray gun, and aimed it across the table. “Yeah,” she said, “But you better believe I’m going to find a way to hurt them.” She pulled the trigger and sprayed water onto the table.  She then turned the barrel toward her mouth and shot a spray of water in there too.  “Yum,” she said.

Meanwhile, far away in the halls of justice, the esteemed members of the Supreme Court of the United States of America were having their bi-weekly hotcakes and sausage breakfast.  They ate in their underwear, as was customary, so as not to spill syrup on their robes, while they discussed various cases before the court.  The justices tended to focus on current deliberations, but occasionally some resentment lingered after a particularly contentious decision, and this was such a day.

“Even for an argument based on original intent, the decision made no sense,” Justice Sotomayor said as she chomped down on chicken biscuit.  “Why would the founding fathers put in special protections for guns?  What’s next?  Equal rights for screwdrivers?”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” Justice Scalia roared, as was his habit.  “The original wording of the second amendment, before it was revised, stated, and I quote, ‘blah blah blah, the right to keep and bare arms shall not be infringed, and the right of arms to keep and bare people shall not be infringed either.’ Or, to put it another way, guns are people.  Case closed.”  He shoveled a pile of grits and bacon into his mouth and then chased it with a big slurping gulp of grape Kool-Aid.

“At this point,” Justice Sotomayor countered, “guns have more rights than women.”

“Yeah,” said Justices Ginsberg and Kagan in unison.

“The fact of the matter is,” said Scalia, “we are not to go beyond the intent of the founding fathers, and the founding fathers clearly believed that guns were more important than women.  That’s why they mentioned guns in the second amendment and they didn’t mention women at all.  Maybe that’s why they’re called founding fathers and not founding mothers!” He elbowed Justice Thomas and cackled, “am I right, Clarence?”

Justice Thomas opened his mouth as if to speak, but stopped when Justice Ginsberg pulled her fork back with her thumb and catapulted a chunk of cantaloupe through Justice Scalia’s gaping mouth, where it lodged in his throat.  He sputtered and clawed his neck, finally expelling the obstruction when Justice Alito delivered a swift karate chop to the belly.  

The breakfast then devolved further when Chief Justice Roberts stood up and shouted, “Food fight!”  Soon the entire room, including all nine justice’s underwear, was covered in bacon grease and Aunt Jemima’s Private Reserve.  This was why supreme court justices never wore their robes at breakfast.

Amidst the flying hotcakes, no one noticed that the walls of justice were literally crumbling around them, until that is, they found themselves faced with a pair of hissing, spitting, roaring dinosaur ghosts.

“What would the founding fathers think of this, Antonin?” Breyer cried.

Justice Scalia removed his miniature copy of the constitution from his garter belt and began frantically flipping through pages.  It should be here,” he said.

“This is why I believe in loose constructionism,” Breyer shouted as he dove under the table.  A set of jagged spikes crushed the dessert bar where he had been standing.

Justice Sotomayor somersaulted over the swinging tail of the Tyrannosaurus and cartwheeled to safety.

 Justice Kagan looked dead in the eye of the dinosaur blocking her path to freedom.  “To hell with this,” she said.  Using her head as a battering ram, she charged the unsuspecting stegosaurus, passed through the ghost as she would through an open door, and then literally passed through an open door to safety.

Justice Roberts watched Kagan's successful escape and attempted the same, but with very different results.  Instead of empty space, his face flattened against a mound of taught, scale-covered muscle.  With a flick of a large hoof, he flew against a wall.  Justice Ginsberg used this momentary diversion to slip unnoticed behind the dinosaur ghosts, where she too escaped.

Roberts, Alito, Thomas and Scalia, through some unspoken concurrence, formed a semi-circle of machismo near the coffee and juice table and readied themselves for battle.

Justice Kennedy froze, unable to decide whether to follow Ginsberg or join his brethren on the right as they focused on weaponizing butter knives and cocktail forks. He looked back and forth from one side to the other.  “Which way should I go?  Which way should I go? Which way should I go?” He asked himself as he tap-danced in place.

With a swish of its tail the stegosaurus crushed a support wall, and his escape route was sealed in a rush of falling debris.

Kennedy joined the rest of his clan, all of whom slowly backed away from the approaching Tyrannosaurus.

“Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus,” Justice Roberts cried.  He began hurling melon with all his might.  The stegosaurus caught the pieces on its spikes and then proceeded to devour this delightful new form of vegetation.  It munched quietly as its carnivorous compatriot devoured the Chief Justice.

Justice Thomas opened his mouth as if to say something, but then evidently decided against it, just before he too was eaten.

“You wanna piece of me?”  Alito said, slapping his chest as he approached the tyrannosaurus.  “You wanna piece of me?”  The  tyrannosaurus evidently did not want a piece of him as he ate Justice Alito in his entirety.

“I changed my mind!  I changed my mind!” Kennedy cried, but he too was gobbled up by the tyrannosaur.

“Screw you, you prehistoric bastard,” Scalia roared.  “I sentence you to death!” He took one last swig of Kool-Aid and then charged the dinosaur ghost with his cocktail fork.  

Within seconds, the carnage was over.  The dinosaur ghosts roared in celebration of their victory and then disappeared in a puff of smoke.  The room was empty, except for Stephen Breyer, who sat shivering beneath the breakfast table.

go to chapter 9

Dinosaur Ghost Chapter 4: Conservative Repellent

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Herman sat upright in bed, his body trembling uncontrollably and drenched in sweat.

 “Go back to sleep,” his wife Lita said groggily. “It was just another dream.” 

“It wasn’t,” Herman insisted.  “It was real. I saw it.”  His voice dropped to a whisper.  “The dinosaur ghost.”

“It wasn’t real.” Lita assured him. “You know there’s no such thing as dinosaurs.”

“But what about all those bones in the museums?” Sweat continued to rain down his brow.

“That’s just liberal propaganda.”

Herman nodded. “And ghosts?”

 “Well, of course ghosts are real,” Lita said, “but dinosaurs are purely speculative.”

Herman began taking in and releasing deep breaths. Slowly, his heart rate returned to normal.  “You’re right,” he said. “It was just a dream.”

“Just a dream,” Lita repeated. Her voice transformed into snore.

“But it seemed so real.” Herman whispered.

The rest of the morning proved uneventful. Herman went about his normal routine. He showered, dressed, gobbled down the microwaveable hotcakes and bacon Lita had lovingly placed on a stick, and then took one last swallow of coffee. Lita met him at the door with his briefcase. He kissed her once on the lips and planted another on her protruding belly button.

“Have a good day little boy,” he said to her stomach, adding, “little Bruce Willis.”

As he strolled down the driveway, his nightmare long forgotten, he felt safe and comfortable, and he was about to feel even more so.  He climbed  up the steps and into his own private fortress, The Leviathan, the biggest SUV ever manufactured outside of a military facility. It got only two thirds of a mile to the gallon, but it more than made up for poor fuel efficiency with its ability to intimidate other drivers.

“Hello, Beautiful,” He said, stroking the padded leather dashboard.  He settled into plush seats made from the skin of a small herd of Italian cattle. He leaned forward and kissed the steering wheel. He loved this car: the powerful engine, the luxurious interior, and the capacity to literally crush any other vehicle on the road. He kissed the steering wheel again and then fingered the gear shift. As his tongue flickered against leather, he suddenly remembered he was driving. 

The moment coincided with a sudden jolt that rocked him out of his seat.  He frantically steered his vehicle back onto the road, while checking both directions to make sure there were no witnesses. 

“No problem,” he said, calming himself once more. He patting the dashboard again.   “Nothing can hurt my little girl.” 

The neighbor's mailbox, on the other hand, was completely destroyed.  He would have to remember to blame renegade teenagers at the next neighborhood barbeque.

A flashing red light on the console snapped Herman back to the present. “Well, Dixie Cups,” he mumbled. “I just filled up last night. And here I am late for work.”

Herman could feel his blood pressure rising.  The last thing he needed was to run out of gas.  Life as a conservative journalist was becoming increasingly stressful.  Back in the old days, all you had to do was take the daily talking points memo and then transcribe it into your own words.  These days, you had other syndicated print journalists, half a dozen radio broadcasters, a million jerks on the internet, and FOX NEWS to compete with.  With everyone reporting the same talking points, it became increasingly necessary to find new ways to zazz up the news.  In fact, that was the slogan of his own personal website: "Looking for New Ways to Zazz up the News."  

Work was stressful alright.  Luckily, he had an ace in the hole.

He’d recently entered into a new business venture selling modified truck engines.  Herman’s crew could reconfigure a standard internal combustion engine to produce nearly three times as much carbon dioxide as it would have normally, thus allowing his clients to totally stick it to the liberals. He already had a half dozen orders, and just as soon as he uploaded that YouTube video of  various patriotic Americans spewing black smoke from their trucks’ exhaust pipes into the windshields of a bunch of Prius-driving communists, sales would explode through the roof.  

Herman turned on the radio and smiled.   He had decided to ignore the blinking light on the console, and nothing calmed his nerves like the mindless jabbering of radio shock jocks. To his disappointment, every button he pressed produced nothing but static. “Dominoes Pizza,” he said.  (Herman always substituted the names of conservative-owned businesses in place of  curse words as a way of simultaneously promoting conservatism and avoiding the Lord’s wrath.) 

There was something odd about the white noise, though, he noticed.  He heard a low rumble, almost like a roar, emanating from the background. He recognized that roar from somewhere, but where?

Ahead of him on the freeway, a chain or break lights illuminated. “Hobby Lobby,” Herman exclaimed. Now he was really going to be stuck in traffic. He began to feel that old familiar anxiety that comes with a flashing fuel light. Of course, he could always manually override the “Socialist Repellent,” as he called his modified exhaust system, thereby saving much needed gasoline, but if he did that, how would he dump a black cloud on the Chevy Volt riding up behind him?

 “It’s totally worth it,” he said as he adjusted the rear-view mirror.

It was then that he noticed something strange glaring back at him from the back seat: a large pair of greenish yellow eyes. Instant recognition accompanied a blood-curdling scream. As stalled traffic barelled toward him, he tried to brake, but something went wrong.  He couldn't move his foot.

“What the Chick-fil-A?”

He looked down and saw the translucent image of a three-toed claw superimposed against his J.C. Penny loafer, holding the pedal pinned to the floorboard. He gasped as he looked up and saw the approaching rear end of a tractor trailer.

A moment later it was all over in a giant ball of fire.  

At his funeral, one of his friends solemnly remarked on the massive number of toxins released into the atmosphere following the crash.  Everyone agreed that Herman would have pleased.
chapter 5

Dinosaur Ghost Chapter 3: Phantasmic Excreta Caca

Dinosaur Ghost is now available for free as a pdf!

Helen decided to visit the excavation site on the outskirts of town, network with some of the paleontologists, and maybe pick  up some valuable work experience that she could later use to fortify her argument the next time she confronted that terrible admissions officer, Mrs. Bellingham, at her home.  I’ll show you a restraining order, Helen thought as she trekked across the barren landscape.

After an hour or so of wandering, she found the dig site: a twenty foot by thirty foot square of earth marked off with wooden stakes and string.  Just outside the perimeter, a young man in his middle twenties paced the area, occasionally taking his hat off and then putting it back on again a few seconds later.  He appeared to be muttering to himself. 

“It doesn’t make sense,” he muttered.

Helen, having decided to ‘fake it’ until she ‘made it,’ hailed him as she would an old friend.  “Hey, old friend,” she hailed. 

The man continued to pace and mutter.  “This is bad.  This is very bad.  Dr. Watson is going to kill me.”

“Hi, I’m Helen,” Helen said, extending her hand.  “I’m a freelance paleontologist who happened to be walking by.”

“How could this have happened?” The man asked.

“How could what have happened?” 

“The dinosaur bones, they’re missing.  We had three quarters of an stegosaurus's rib cage exposed, and now it’s just gone. Like it never existed!”  He resumed stalking and scanning the ground.  “Nothing!”

Helen took off her backpack and unzipped the main compartment.  “Good thing I brought my equipment,” she said.  She removed several items.

 “What is all that stuff?

Helen ticked off names as she pointed to each item.  “Endoplasmic Reticulator, Soul Detector, Anti-Matter Scatter Capacitor, Carbon Dater Meter Reader, you name it.”

“You’re kidding.”  The young man looked at her as if for the first time.  “What did you say your name was?”

“I told you, it’s Helen.”

“This isn’t paleo gear,” he said, gesturing to the stack of  hardware.

“In addition to freelancing, I’m also a paranormal psychologist.”  She held one of the devices out in front of her like a divining rod.

“That isn’t a thing.”

“Look, dinosaur bones don’t just disappear," Helen said.  "This may be the site of a major spectral disturbance.”  She focused her attention on an area littered with boulders a short distance from the dig site.

“I know what’s going on here," the man said.  "You stole them.  You stole my bones!”

Helen’s gadget started beeping like a son of a bitch.

“You think that’s going to make me believe you?” the man asked. “You must think I’m a real sucker.”

Helen stopped at the edge of a giant boulder and stood, mouth agape, looking at something on the other side.  “I think you better come over here,” she said.

The young man shook his head, but did as he was told.  What he saw when he arrived caused him to drop his Indiana Jones-inspired fedora in the dirt.  It was a humongous pile of shimmering dinosaur feces--stegosaurus by the look of it.

“I don’t believe it,” he said.

“Do you believe me now?” Helen asked.  “Oh wait, you just said you didn't.  Never mind.”

“I do believe you,” the man said.  “I’m sorry I ever doubted you.  My name is Eric by the way." He extended his hand. "My friends call me Homo.”

“Oh, are you...?”

“No, that’s just what they call me.”

“You know, you don’t have to tell people that when you introduce yourself.”

“Oh, I guess you're right.  It just felt natural.”

“You may even want to consider finding new friends.  Yours don’t sound very nice.”

“Aw, they’re not so bad, although, come to think of it, one was just put in jail for committing a hate crime.”

“Is that what I think it is?” Helen asked, pointing to the poop.

“I still can’t believe it,” Eric said walking toward the massive pile.  The poop was roughly the same height as he was--about five feet seven inches tall--but at least five times as wide.  He reached out to touch it.  “It looks fresh.”  

“Ew,” Helen said.

Eric's hand passed through the pile as it would through the atmosphere.  “Nothing,” he said.  He held up a relatively clean hand.  He put it to his nose.  “It doesn't even smell.”

“Freaky,” Helen said.  She approached the enormous collection of fecal matter with another one of her machines.  “Just as I thought,” she said after waving it in front of the pile a few times.  “Phantasmic excreta caca.”

“You want to say that in English?”

Helen leveled her gaze at Eric.  “This shit came from a ghost.”

go to chapter 4