JULNOWRIMO

Something very strange happened the year my daughter turned nine. The news mostly ignored it, so I wouldn’t be terribly surprised if you hadn’t heard about it. I don’t think the news really knew what to make of it. It was May Fourteenth, and I lived in a quiet suburb outside Washington D.C. with my wife Danielle and daughter Dani. (Dani isn’t named for her mother, she’s actually named after a brand of yogurt. I’m not terribly fond of it myself, but Dani loves it.)
The alarm went off at the usual time that morning, exactly way to early. The first thing Danielle said to me was ‘hrmph.’ The second thing she said to me was “Today is Dani’s birthday,” except she was noticably less coherent. Today Dani turned nine, and Danielle turned twenty nine for the eighth time. The coincidences ended there, however, as it was not also my birthday. I’m certain there are a great many other people born on May Fourteenth, but I was not one of them. I often wished I was; perhaps then I would be allowed to share Dani’s party like Danielle did. She got valentines and mother’s day, too, while all I got was the red-headed step child of national holidays. Father’s day. I slapped the sleep button and rolled out of bed. Danielle was already asleep again. She hated waking up, unless she got to do it every seven minutes for two hours.
It was five thirty am, and it was still dark outside, even after I finished in the bathroom. No sane person got up this early. I looked out the window at our quiet street full of quiet houses and quiet yards with guiet trees and little quiet mailboxes, and my very noisy neighbor already up with her flock swarming around her.
I wondered if the woman ever slept, or if she ever took off that house gown. It had blue and brown polka dots and I couldn’t tell which were stains. She had five children and four of them orbitted her at the moment. They flowed down her driveway to meet the paperboy at the curb, like she did every morning.
The alarm went off again. Danielle slept through it, like she did most mornings. I flicked it off. I would let her sleep for a while, then kiss her awake or something equally romantic. I brushed her hair away from her face and took a moment to enjoy the shape of her under the blanket.
I padded downstairs on bare feet, dodging toys and knick nacks and animals I couldn’t see. It was far too early for my daughter to be awake, but I heard her in the living room as I came down the stairs. I deftly avoided the squeaking stair by jumping over it, and stepped on her roller skates instead. I crashed down the last five stairs and sprawled across the hardwood in the entrance way, and landed such that I had a clear view into the living room. Dani pulled her head out from under the couch. Her eyes grew until they overlapped her ears.
“Looking for birthday presents?”
She looked quilty, just for a moment, in that odd way kids manage to admit they were being bad without doing anything at all. It might have been the carefully wrapped package in her hands.
“You know better. Besides, that one is for your mother.”
Dani glanced at the box, then stuffed it back under the couch as if hiding it again changed what she had been doing. I struggled to my feet and kicked her roller skates away. My back ached. It had a dent in it roughly the shape of a lunch box. I say roughly, because falling on the lunch box had bent it and it was not now entirely lunch box shaped itself. I rubbed at it, and kicked the lunch box over by the roller skates. The awful things had tried to kill me on several occasions and had managed it once, (A story for another time, I’m afraid.) this time I resolved to do away with them once and for all. As soon as Dani was on the bus, I would dispose of them in the most horrendous way I could imagine. Finally, a suitable use for my wood chipper.
“Since you’re up,” I said, “ready for breakfast?”
Dani said nothing, she just went into the kitchen and sat at the table. Best to let her stew a bit, waiting for the scolding. Maybe I’d be able to get out of giving it. I pulled cereal from the cupboard. Something with extra bran for her and extra sugar for me, and milk from the fridge. I should mention now that this was a Friday, and we generally do our dishes on Sunday. Typically, we have just enough dishes to last the week, so there is no reason to wash them more often. Unfortunately, I had had a bit of a row with Danielle the week before which ended in three salad bowls and a porceline hotdog holder being broken against my face. This had the direct consequences that we ate salad from cereal bowls, and also that I now could not find a cereal bowl.
I glanced at the sink, but that’s it, just a glance. It was full of menacing dishes. They looked back at me with greasy eyes daring me to try and wash them. I did not even know where the brush was. In the bottom of the sink, most likely. I tried to size the dishes up from the corner of my eye. The dishwasher loomed open, with it’s guts spilled out across the floor. I intended to fix it, eventually. In the mean time, dishes were done the hard way. The same way most chores were done in my house, by yelling at Dani until she did them.
I mused over the cereal and the milk for a moment, long enough to realize I didn’t have any clean spoons either. “Well,” I said. “Nothing we can do about it, is there? Open up.”
I poured cereal into Dani’s mouth, then milk. She chewed for a bit, with milk running down her chin, then we repeated the process a few times until she had devoured what I estimated to be a bowls worth.

I went to get the paper. Dani tagged along. Neighbor Lady was still outside, with her four daughters, like four identicle robots. The badges flowing down their sashes gleamed in the morning twilite. I pretended I did not see her, and hoped she would get the point. I had miscalculated. I had not realized that having Dani there would draw her the way can openers attrack cats and homeless people.
Neighbor Lady looked up from murdering innocent weeds and stalked across her yard towards me. He gaggle of girl scouts arranged themselves behind her by order of height (and thus also by order of age and order of badge-count) and stared at me in that adorable and frightening way that always tricked me into buying cookies.
“Hello, Dan,” she said. That’s me, by the way. Daniel Danson. “How are you today?”
I searched for the ulterior motive in her words. I knew there was one, but often I could not see it until it was too late to extricate myself. But Neighbor Lady did not give me a chance to properly answer. She shifted her attention immediately to Dani.
“And how are you today, dear?”
So it was going to be that again, was it? The girl scouts also removed their attention from me. I was happy to have the urge to pull out my wallet removed, but dismayed to see my daughter wither under their glare.
“Fine,” Dani sqwuaked.
The girl scouts folded around Dani, overwhelming in their perfect uniforms. “Have you thought about becoming a girl scout?” Neighbor Lady asked.
“Not really,” Dani said. Wrong answer. I had to do something, I had to rescue her before Neighbor Lady devoured her, or worse, convinced her that the girlscouts would be a good idea.
“She doesn’t really like those sorts of things,” I barged in.
“Oh, it’s mostly arts and crafts now. None of that camping stuff.”
“Yes, that’s the part she doesn’t like.” Dani made the appropriate faces to demonstrate her agreement.
“You know, she really should spend more time with girls her own age.”
“What, you have something against tom boys?”
“Well, without a female influence,”
“What are you talking about?” I interuppted. “We really aren’t interested, I’m sorry.” I’ve found that if I’m nice to her, she often goes away of her own accord. But this was not likely to be one of those days. I could see her pushyness rising up from her bowels, where it was usually put to a productive use, and flowing across her face.
I grabbed my newspaper and fled. I was vaguely aware of Dani pounding the pavement behind me. The pushy erupted in a flurry of ‘I really thinks’ and ‘it would probably be best ifs’ that struck our back sides like high calibur rounds. I staggered and sprawled across the sidewalk. Dani tugged at my arm, vainly trying to pull me back to my feet.
I glanced to my left, at one of the mud puddles that dotted my yard (I never seemed to have the time for yard work anymore) “You know what your problem is?” I asked Neighbor Lady. “You have no sense of fun at all.” I scooped and flung in the same motion, and plastered mud across the youngest girl scout’s face. The girl shrieked and fell.
Dani and I ran for cover as the remaining scouts returned fire with their automatic weapons. We dove behind the stoop as mud splattered across it. I spared a glance over and almost had to wash my hair because of it. Years of this pointless war had turned us into hardened soldiers. I looked over the weapons at our disposal. Mud. Today was a good day to get messy. “We need a plan, Colonel.”
“I say we throw mud at them.”
I thought about that for a moment. “I like it.”
I looked out from behind the stoop. One of the girls was standing out in the open, unprotected. Dani and I must have had the same thought, because we threw as one. The girl never stood a chance. She twisted about in the air and toppled into a mud puddle. But where were the others? I glanced around for them, and discovered to my horror that they had flanked us. I saw them as they threw, and put myself between the mud and Dani.
It plastered across my chest and I fell gasping against the stoop.
“General! General!” Dani shouted.
“Listen,” I gasped. “Colonel Pumpkin; if I don’t make it, I want you to know it’s been an honor servivng with you.”
“You’re going to be fine,” she said. “It’s just a flesh wound.”
“Run. Run now while you still can.”
“No! I won’t leave you!”
I saw the two remaining girl scouts approaching us, heavily armed. “Pumpkin!” I shouted and pointed. Dani turned and fired, and one of the girls went down screaming. The other flung two handfulls of mud at Dani.
Dani slumped back against me and lay still, half her face gone under a mud mask. “Colonel Pumpkin?” I asked, quietly at first. “Pumpkin?” I shouted. “Pumpkin?” I shook her and wailed. The sun rose on our grisly scene, Colonel Pumpkin dead in my arms. I felt my own life leaking through my wounds. The mud around us slowly turned red and sticky.
A shadow fell over me. It was the enemy, General Neighbor Lady, but I didn’t care. Nothing she could do to me now would be worse.
“I’ll defeat you, General Lady,” I said. “We won’t go quietly into the night! We will stand and fight!”
“I’ll send you,” she said. “the cleaning bill.”
I was wrong. So terribly wrong. I shouted at the heavens, I would get my revenge. But first.
“You need a bath,” I told Dani.
She wiped the mud off her face. “No I don’t.”

I listened at the bathroom door until I heard water running, then I dragged myself upstairs to change. It was then that I realized I had not eaten breakfast myself. While Dani had chewed her bran, I had not devoured my own dose of sugar filled marshmallow charms. I do not drink coffee. I’m quite proud of that, actually. But the adult body just doesn’t have the same energy producing capabilities of the young, or perhaps I had just been spoiled by easily accesible carbs. In short, when I say I dragged myself upstairs, I mean it quite literally. I may have taken a nap on the landing.
When at last I changed from my frilly sleeping gown into sensible slacks and a wrinkled shirt, Danielle was still sleeping. “You didn’t iron,” I said.
“Hrmph,” she replied.
I smoothed my shirt with my hands. It didn’t work at all. “I’m off to work. Dani’s in the bath.”
“Hrmph,” Danielle said.
“Don’t forget to get up today, okay?”
“Hrmph.”
I bent over her and kissed her. She didn’t hrmph at that, at least.
The bath noises were over when I went back downstairs. “Don’t miss the bus!” I shouted through Dani’s bedroom door as I passed. She shouted something back, muffled. I peaked in and she shrieked, also muffled, apparently by the shirt stuck on her head. She fumbled towards the door and fell into it, effectivly slamming it in my face, which I suppose was what she had intended to do anyway.

A half hour later, I was sitting in traffic. It was something like seven am when my cell phone rang the first time, but I couldn’t answer it because I was singing along to My Girl. It rang again soon after, and the radio was playing something I didn’t know the words too, and also the song was awful, so I went ahead and answered it. It was Dani.
She has her own cellphone. I thought it was a good idea at the time, it’s certainly important that she be able to reach me, since I leave before the bus comes, but shortly after I got it I discovered that not only could she reach me, but also many other people for about a thousand minutes a day. I never did figure out how she managed that, seeing as there are only one thousand four hundred forty minutes in a day. With only seven and a third hours left to sleep, it became clear that she must spend every waking moment on the phone. Since this is not the case, I surmise that she also talks in her sleep. Naturally, her phone only dials two numbers now. Mine, and 911.
“Iforgotmylunch,” she said all at once.
“What?”
“Iforgotmylunch!”
“Words! Talk in words!”
“I forgot my lunch…”
I took the phone away from my ear and glared at it. I was half way to work and stuck in traffic, and she’d forgotten her lunch box. I’d packed it and left it on the table, right next to her book bag. (An issue unto itself. Why did she need to haul all those books back and forth every day, if she hardly ever had homework? I don’t even remember having books in third grade. Couldn’t they leave them in the class room? It’s not like she didn’t sit at the same desk all day, every day, anyway. At least it was only for another month. Maybe she would de-stoop over the summer.) Or, I though I had, but as I considered it I realized that that had probably been yesterday. In fact, the last time I remembered seeing her lunch box was when I fell on it. Still hurt, too, she could just go without lunch.
Dani’s voice came as a little squeek from the cell phone. I put it back to my ear long enough to hear “SCHOOLISALMOSTSTARTINGINEEDMYLUNCHINEEDTOHANGUP” which hurt my ear, so I pulled it away and yelled at it from a distance. Some rude person in another car honked at me just then, so I had to repeat myself.
“Call your mother.”
“DAD!” Dani screamed back. Someone else honked, adding a little extra emphasis.
“Fine, fine, I’ll bring you something.” I hung up the phone.
Now, you may have noticed what I had not. I should also point out that when I am talking on the phone, I give it my full attention. I feel whomever has called me deserves my respect, if for nothing more than having the fortitude to call someone as awesome as I am. What you may have noticed was the people honking at me. I had also noticed this, and found it quite annoying. However, what I had not noticed was that I had crossed into oncoming traffic and was about to hit a very large minivan.
I noticed it very suddenly and swerved. The minivan also swerved, but a little too hard. It rolled past me in the way minivans are not meant to roll, that is, not on it’s wheels. My face was briefly illuminated by the reflection of an explosion in my rear view mirror. My mind connected this with the minivan, though I could not be sure and, honestly, I was far too busy not hitting the tank in front of me.
No, I am not using ‘tank’ to mean an especially large SUV, though some of them would certainly look nice with a turret and maybe a 20 millimeter. I mean a tank. An honest to God tank, with those things I said would look good on an SUV.
I did manage to avoid it, but learned shortly after that it was escorting a bus. A bus is a very large vehicle, and my car is not. The bus was also full of a baseball team, whose steroid enhanced bulk added greatly to the vehicle’s overall mass. I decided at that moment that I would rather strike the tank, but unfortunatly it was too late. My airbag punched me in the face like Mike Tyson, and I instinctivly covered my ears.
My head ringing, and not sure what had happened to the last thirty seconds, I stumbled away from my car. I was looking two ways at once because my eyes hadn’t quite agreed on which way was forward yet, and I’m not sure how I kept my feet. My car was a crumbled and dieing mess. Steam gushed from it’s front end and a pool of gasoline gathered under it’s ass. Someone was yelling at me to stay away from it, possibly because it was on fire but most likely because they were a jerk and couldn’t see how I had to be with my poor friend while she passed away.
The bus, however, was fine. Sure, it’s nose was a little red, and it had a dent in the corner that the bus driver was clucking at, as if her poor baby was going to die from some little scratch. While the bus licked it’s wounds I tore back to my car and rescued my cell phone, then remembered that I had actually gone over there to comfort her while she died. I felt tears on my cheeks, that jerk was probably crying on me or something. I hugged my baby’s steering wheel to my chest. This turned out to be fortunate, as it was no longer attached, and they were able to drag me away before she exploded.
The baseball team stood around looking annoyed and menacing, and alternated between glaring at me and enjoying the fireworks. The tank rolled to a stop some distance away and swivled it’s turret angrily.
“Are you okay?” someone asked.
“No, I’m Dan.”
“You should come over here.”
“I think I’d rather go over there.” I did not know where here was, but I have an important rule of thumb I often follow instinctivly and that is that anywhere I pick, ie, over there, is better than what someone else picked. Naturally, I wished to go over there, which happened to be the public library across the street. Of course, that meant going around the baseball team.
I attempted to circle them, slowly, as not to anger the bulls guarding their herd, but they seemed to think this was ‘fleeing the scene of an accident’ or some such nonsense and detained me. They detained me by sitting on me. Not all of them, just one, but he was a very large bull with arms the shape and flavor of hams. I squirmed under him to no avail. I chewed on his arms, which only annoyed him.
Eventually, a wail arose far down the road. I thought at first it might be me, I wanted to wail, but I discovered that my throat could not produce that exact tone. And then I realized that if my throat was free to try and make it I must not be making it. It turned out to be some sort of flashing vehicle, and now I’ll share a secret with you : Dinosaurs are aliens. I know this because I saw that ufo land beside the bus. It had flashing red and blue lights on top, and the rest was gleaming white and chrome. Now the man with ham arms let me up, and took me by both shoulders, and offered me to the ufo like some sort of sacrifice.
A seam appeared on the side of the ufo. It spread in both directions horizontally, then made a sharp turn and moved upwards. Little wisps of steam sprang from the crack, and a section of the ufo folded up like a hatch. (This particular turn of phrase is rather pointless, isn’t it? If it folded up like a hatch, it’s a hatch, why didn’t I just call it one and say it folded up?) A light came forth from the hatch and struck me. I squinted against it, and would have covered my eyes except that ham-arms had me pinned.
A shape appeared in the light. As you have probably guessed, it was a dinosaur. Specifically, it was a velociraptor. What you certainly did not guess what that this particular velociraptor was wearing a blue uniform with some sort of badge on her breast, and a gun on her hip, and had a rather fearsome looking notebook clutched between her talons. Did I mention that it was a she velociraptor? You can tell because of how their mouths curve.
The velociraptor looked around, then focused on me. I could see what she was thinking : yummy. I hoped that she preferred ham to chicken. I shied away, pressing myself into ham-arms, as she came closer.
“Were you driving that vehicle?” she asked, while pointing a claw at my dearly departed.
“Ye… yes,” I stammared. My bowels twisted in anticipation of her terrible claws. Those terrible claws clicked on the pavement as she walked around the accident scene, her forepaws tucked behind her back, still cluthing that notebook. She paused and wrote something sinister on it.
“I’d like to ask you some questions,” the velociraptor said. “Were you speeding?”
“What?”
“Were you driving over the speed limit?”
“Oh, I wasn’t driving. Do you think you can let me go, Ham-arms?”
Ham-arms glared at me, but, in my defense, he hadn’t actually told me his name. It also seemed to be a good idea to make sure the velociraptor knew his arms were made of delicious ham. He let me go, at least. A glare was a fair trade.
The velociraptor blinked at me. “What, then, were you doing?”
I held up my cell phone, both to distract her and so that she wouldn’t ask me any dumb questions like ‘How?’ or ‘Is she still in the burning car?’ after I said, “Talking to my daughter.”
“Yes, I have a daughter,” I continued before she could say anything else. “An entire family to look after, in fact. You really shouldn’t eat me.”
“What?”
“Please don’t eat me.”
My heart pounded in my chest. It would pound in yours too, if you were staring down a hungry velociraptor, and she was looking at you the way she looked at me. I couldn’t quite tell if she was annoyed or just starving. Niether seemed to be velociraptor states that were in my favor.
I had begun to shake. Finally my instincts overcame my natural indicision. I’m very glad it was a baseball team and not a football team, they only have to run for five seconds at a time, and there weren’t any running backs or left tackles to come after me. The velociraptor, however, was plenty fast. Her breath warmed my neck as I sprinted. At the time I thought she clawed me, but it turned out the searing pain in my chest was just my heart exploding.
The velociraptor roared behind me, and hooted into her alien communication device. Calling for more, no doubt. Their little ufos would surround me, and velociraptors would come pouring out, or worse. I could not imagine what could be worse than a velociraptor, and I did not want to find out.
The library loomed before me, three stories of old brick and new concrete. Used to be, when I was little and actually went to libraries, that this one was a nice old building. I didn’t appreciate it at the time, but since then someone came along and covered up the old building with a modern cement thing which was meant to look nice but actually looked pretty shitty. The urge to replace perfectly good buildings just because they were old will destroy our society one day, mark my words. Also, modern architecture kind of suck. Everyone knows this except the architects, who get awards for ‘best design utilizing chrome’.
I burst into the library and toppled over a cart of books. What fool left a full cart of books right inside the door? I hoped it wasn’t me. (Actually it turned out to be this gigantic bug, I’ll get to that.) I screamed into the front lobby place with it’s signs telling me to be quiet and it’s displays of children’s books that even small children thought were kind of lame. I screamed around a corner and between the first two shelves I saw. A gigantic bug told me to be quiet. (See, I told you I’d get to it.)
It would just have to take care of itself, though. I didn’t have time to worry about why there was a gigantic bug in a library telling me to be quiet. I pressed myself to the end of the book case and peered down the aisle at the velociraptor as she stalked past. She had one hand on her gun, and the other on her alien communication device which looks suspiciously like a walkie-talkie. She whispered into it, awful things about how good I tasted and how she needed backup right now because there was some guy fleeing her. I bet everyone fled her!
Maybe she had eaten ham-arms. He deserved it.
The velociraptor paused. She scanned the aisles with her beady eyes, searching, searching, for a tasty morsel. She tapped the giant claws on the back of her feet against the cold tile floor. Click. Click. Click. I tracked her as she clicked down the center aisle and turned between two shelves. She was about three shelves away, I judged. I quivvered against the shelf.
I peeked around the corner and watched her appear in the space along the librarie’s back wall. She looked over. I ducked back. I clutched desperately to the hope that I was fast enough, but the sudden flurry of clicks showed the lie. I realized with growing horror what that clicking meant. She was running. Running towards me. I scrambled up the shelf, my terror giving my limbs an undiscovered strength. Books showered around me and tumbled across the floor. I heard her below me as she reached the shelf, or more accurately, stepped on a book and slid into it.
The whole shelf shook. I was on top now, and I leapt to the next shelf. It rocked under me but stayed up. The velociraptor heaved herself onto the book case behind me. She slathered in hunger and shouted incoherent things at me. My book case wobbled and I very nearly fell. I did fall, but managed to only fall onto my ass instead of all the way to the floor. I grabbed the sides of the shelf. I needed something to throw. Something hard, perhaps something made of wood.
I scrambled down the length of the shelf, and hopped over the next aisle, trying to put as much space between myself and the horrible predator. I hopped another aisle, and she leapt. She did not just jump to the next shelf, or even the one after that. She leapt five aisles, and landed on the sixth shelf. If you’ve been keeping track, you know that I was currently on the fourth shelf. She passed all the way onto the other side of me.
Naturally I turned around and hopped the other direction. She leapt again, right back to where she was, and though the shelf rocked violently under her, she stayed on top. I could see where this was going, and I still needed something to throw at her.
Oh. Right. Library. I reached down and snatched a book off the shelf and flung it. It missed wide to the right, but it got her attention. She raised her forelimbs to ward of the astrology books I heaved. I happened to spot one with the title ‘A Reference for Writing Horoscopes’. It was nice and fat, but every page was blank, so I wrote my horoscope myself. “You shall be devoured by a velociraptor.” I never believed in that garbage; the book made a wonderful missile.
I threw another and another. The velociraptor staggered under my incredibly onslaught, and the book case lurched under her. It toppled, ever so slowly. Of course it fell into the other shelf, because if it didn’t it wouldn’t have knocked over all the others too, and then I wouldn’t have gone flying and landed in a pile of books. I shook them off and sprang to my feet. The velociraptor screamed at me from under a shelf. The gigantic bug was screaming at me, too. I turned and ran.
There was a back door, but it didn’t lead out of the library. It led into a graveyard. Decaying books stood everywhere in neat stacks like monuments to the shape they once had. I could hear them yearning to dig their roots into the soil and spread their leaves in the sky. Light shot in two beams from the little window in the corner and played with the everpresent dust. Bright little motes danced in the air like pixies, living in an enchanted forest.
I reached out and ran my hand over one square trunk. I sucked in the sweet smell of rotting wood and glue. I made sure the door was locked behind me. I moved slowly through the book graveyard, my eyes sliding over the horrible dismembered corpses of books half way through a repair. I couldn’t stand to look at them, they were so horrible, with no covers; their guts hanging out in the air.
The light beam struck a table. Motes of ash sprang off it, the pixies swarmed around it in droves. I brushed the pixies aside, something on the table caught my eye. It was a book. But it was unlike the other books laid to rest here. It was as beat up as them, it had as many tears, but it was not as old. No, it was much, much, older. It was bound in real leather, and the title was set into the front in leaf of gold. Some of the letters had flaked off, but I was able to read ‘Ho to mke brwnies’.
A cookbook! Sweet, I love to cook. I picked it up, and too my surprise, nothing surprising happened. I ran my fingers over the worn cover, I felt the way the binding was pulling away from the pages, just a little. The pages were that super-thin paper you find inside bibles, that feels so soft against your skin and has the foil on the edges. I wondered what sort of brownies it would teach me to make. Almond? Pecan? Banana? I hoped not, I hated bananas.
I would have opened it right there, except the door I had entered through jiggled. The velociraptor must have freed herself. Well, I’ll be damned, she wasn’t going to get my new cook book. Or eat me. Mustn’t forget that. The door jiggled again, and the knob turned. I held the cook book over my head, prepared to defend myself. The door opened, and I smacked the giant disgusting bug in the face.
I should have hit it harder, it would have saved me a lot of trouble later. It didn’t squish at all, which was a bit dissapointing. The velociraptor stood right behind the bug, but they were so surprised by my assualt that I slipped right past them and ran. I’d been doing a lot of that, hadn’t I? I’m not a coward, it’s just that she was a velociraptor. You understand.
I ran out of the library, but then I ran back in. Outside the library, I saw what was worse than a velociraptor. The thing that I did not believe existed before was discovered. It was a whole bunch of velociraptors. A half circle of ufos spread before the library, with two or three velociraptors crouching behind each. The tank was there too, I think it was hitting on the bus.
One velociraptor was scary enough, and, indeed, she was stalking towards me. The disgusting bug followed a safe distance behind her, rubbing it’s multifacetted eyes.
“On the ground!” The velociraptor shouted. She’d drawn her gun, though I don’t know what she could do with it that she couldn’t with her teeth. “On the ground!” she shouted again, so shrill this time that my brain automatically filtered her out. Luckily she motioned with the gun too, so I knew what she meant.
I didn’t see any way out now. Velociraptors outside. Velociraptor inside. I sank to the floor. The velociraptor pounced on me. I made a silent prayer to Bob. Bob was this guy I knew. He lived downtown, in a nice cardboard place on the corner of Indiana and Fifth, that the arcitects could learn a thing or too from. I prayed to him because he’d told me once that he was Jesus. You never know about these things, I didn’t want to take any chances with a velociraptor standing on my back.
Her claws closed around my wrists. Great, so she was going to play with me. She lifted me up and pushed me out of the library.
“You have a right to remain silent,” she said.
“What? You don’t like when your food talks back?”
“Anything you say can and will be used against you,” she continued.
“Can we not drag this out?” The circle of velociraptors outside relaxed as I emerged. Obviously they had been preparing for a chase. Some part of me was sorry I couldn’t offer it. “Maybe keep it private? You take me and do what you want, but avoid the feeding frenzy?”
The velociraptor said nothing. She pushed me towards one of the ufos. Her friends licked their chops. Oh, they wanted a piece of me alright. Where was the baseball team? I couldn’t see them. In their stomachs, no doubt.
“Why share me? Don’t I look tasty?”
She did not like that at all. She threw me into the ufo. Her claws came away and released me, but she slammed the door on me. Were they going to probe me before they tore me to pieces? I curled up around my cook book.
The town ran by outside the ufo. It glided over the pavement so smoothly I might have been sitting still while the town whirled around. We stopped at a squat little building with a giant star over the door. Obviously the alien velociraptors embassy. I wonder who had given them permission to move in, and to eat innocent citizens. I would have to remember not to vote for them next time.
I was led down a procession of sterile halls by slathering velociraptors then thrust into a tiny cage. It was about six feet by twelve feet. Bars closed one of the short ends, the other three walls were plain brick. A porceline shrine squatted opposite the barred end, lind up with the little door the velociraptors pushed me through. Well, so long as they were on the other side of the bars, they weren’t eating me.
Two bunks hung on the right hand wall. I tossed my cook book onto the nearer of the pair, because the other had a mime on it. The mime lounged on his back, with one leg propped up on the other knee and a cigarette hanging from his mouth. The mime blew out a puff of smoke that swirled perfectly in the air, then stopped suddenly and formed a table in mid air.
Maybe if I ignored the mime it would go away. I set about ignoring it. I made a donation at the altar of the porceline god. I sat on my bunk and thought of things to do with my cook book, such as hitting the mime with it or using it as a pillow. It did not make a very good pillow. Eventually I got up and went over to the bars.
“Hey! Hey!” I shouted at the especially fat velociraptor watching me. “Before you eat me, can I call my daughter or something? I’m supposed to be taking her lunch and she’s going to wonder where I am.”
The velociraptor glared at me around his newspaper. I did not know velociraptors could read.
“You’ve got my cellphone right there. Can I use it?”
He plucked my cellphone off his table and chucked it at me. It missed the bars and flew past me, and bounced off the mime. He must have deflected it somehow, it seemed to bounce of an invisible wall. I was too busy ignoring him to pay attention. I grabbed the phone and opened my contact list. I had forty seven contacts, but they were all Dani. I dialed the third one.
It rang four times and then Dani answered, and immediately shouted what at me. “You got me in trouble!” she said.
“It’s an emergency.”
“It’s never an emergency!”
“Then why do you always answer? Forget that. I won’t be able to bring your lunch.”
“What? Why not?”
I cupped my hand around the phone and whispered just in case the mime was an alien velociraptor spy. “I’m about to be eaten by alien velociraptors. They got me in a cage. Can you believe that?”
“Velociraptors?”
“Yeah, velociraptors. And they have these blue uniforms and guns and badges and stuff. And they fly around in ufos with red and blue lights.”
And then she hung up on me. I took a moment to stare in shock at the phone, and then I would have dialed her again to yell at her except the velociraptor guard snatched the phone back from me.
“Hey I’m not done with that!”
“One phone call,” he said, and proceeded to ignore me.
I was ignoring the mime. The velociraptor was ignoring me. I glanced over at the mime. “Are you ignoring the velociraptor?” The mime nodded. Perfect.
I moped about to the bunk and slumped against the wall. Eventually I got bored enough to actually read. I cracked the cook book open on my knee. Copyright 1976. Good vintage. The title page confirmed what I had gathered from the cover, it was indeed titled ‘How to Make Brownies’. The contents, however, confused me, so I skipped them and started reading chapter 1. (That’s odd in and of itself, what sort of cook book has chapters?)
It read;
The young brownie should be aged five to seven years before first initiation. The purpose behind the indoctrination is to produce an effective brownie; this section will lay out the guidelines for preparing a brownie for any obstacle she might face.
Part 1: Choosing your brownie.
The best brownies are made from girls who are adventurous and obedient. A proper balance must be had between these aspects. A girl who is too willful will not be content to follow orders; a girl who does not think for herself will be unable to improvise when your careful plans ultimately fail.
I put the book down. It was not a cook book. The mime finished his cigarette and started on another.
“So,” the mime said. I did not believe it at first. I looked all around but no one else where there. I even checked under the bunks and inside the toilet. Finally I looked at the mime.
“What you in for?” the mime asked.
“How’d you do that?”
The mime looked at me funny, which was usually how I looked at mimes.
“Mime’s can’t talk,” I said.
The mime sat up and leaned forward. He rested his forehead on an invisible wall. The smoke from his cigarette made the confines of his much smaller cell apparent, I could see now that he was in a little box that surrounded his bunk. “Just because we don’t talk doesn’t mean we can’t,” he explained. He had a thick french accent, the sacre’bleu kind, where his words dripped with snootiness and every syllable threatened to surrender to the next. “What’re ya in for?”
“They think I’m delicious, I guess.”
“What? Them?” The mime hooked a thumb at the guard.
“Yeah, the velociraptors.”
“Why couldn’t they have left me in here alone?”
“How should I know?”
“I wasn’t asking you.” The mime put his hands together as if he was holding an invisible harmonica and began to play. A sad sweet melody poured out from between his lips and filled our cell. “Me,” the mime said during a pause in the music. “I killed this guy,” he said in another pause.
Tears sprang to my eyes, the music was so pure and sad, like audial melancholy poured into the air.
“But he totally deserved it.”
“That’s so sad,” I wailed.
“I know, isn’t it? I’m just an innocent mime.”
“No, I mean the song.”
“That too. No, see this guy, he pulled a gun on me, so I shot him.” The mime put his fingers together like a gun and shot at the guard. The bang bounced around inside the cell and burst out into the hall, and the guard jumped and looked around. He peered at us for a moment, and paid special attention to the mime. The mime waved at him.
“I didn’t know it worked like that.”
“Thought it was all fake, huh?”
I rose from my bunk and walked over to the mime. I reached out and touched his invisible box. It tingled a little against my finger tips. “Honestly, yes. Always thought you were just strange french people.”
“I’m not french,” the mime said, “I’m canadian.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Hocky,” the mime said. “Look. You seem like a nice enough guy, you ever thought about being a mime?”
“No, I look awful in makeup.” I threw myself back onto my bunk. “I’ll just wait here until they come to eat me if you don’t mind.”
“That sounds terrible.”

I spent a rather long time in that cell doing nothing at all, an hour at least, so I’m going to take a moment to extrapolate on what I think happened somewhere else while I rotted. I don’t want to ruin the surprise, however, so I’m going to try and reveal as little as possible. I shall refer to the persons involved as Shadowy Figure One and Mrs. Winkerbottom. (If your name is Mrs. Winkerbottom, I apologize. Not for using it.)
Shadowy Figure One loomed on some sort of Shadowy Throne in a Shadowy Palace overlooking a Shadowy Land. Actually it was probably an easy chair in her living room. Mrs. Winkerbottom kneeled in front of her, by which I mean she sat in the opposite chair and sipped tea.
Mrs. Winkerbottom was distressed and the tea was meant to settle her stomach. She had come to Shadowy Figure One straight from the library.
“Is that better now?” Shadowy Figure One asked in a pleasant voice.
“Much,” Mrs. Winkerbottom probably replied. Then I assume she said “What’s troubling me is that when I went to the library, the book was missing.” I’m certain she phrased it differently, but if I had just said “It’s gone!” you would have no idea what I was talking about.
This news made Shadowy Figure One very distressed as well. She also had to drink some tea. “What happened to it?” she asked at last.
“I don’t know,” Mrs. Winkerbottom admitted in an incredulous voice. She was not used to not knowing things and didn’t have much practice saying so. “But the place was wrecked, books everywhere. There was a very handsome man in there just before me, escaping from ravenouse velociraptors.”
Shadowy Figure One leaned forward in her chair. “Who was this incredibly handsome man?”
“Daniel Danson.”
Shadowy Figure One gasped. Perhaps an organ played in the background. I was indeed incredibly handsome, so handsome I made her tingle inside. “The tom boy’s father?” she asked through her hand, which was busy keeping her fluttering heart from burtsting out her mouth.
“Yes, Daniel Danson, the most handsome man in the entire town.” I might be exagerating slightly.
“You know what this means,” Shadowy Figure One said in a forboding manner.
Mrs. Winkerbottom’s eyes grew as round as the delicate saucer clutched in her hand. “How forboding.”
“We must have her.”
“Oh my.”
“Yes!” Shadowy Figure One rose from her chair and turned to face the camera. “We must have Dani Danson. It would make me very happy if we had Dani Danson. Dani Danson, the daughter of the most handsome man in the entire town, who will hold my heart forever.”
“These are very good crepes.”
“Aren’t they? I got the recipe from a boating magazine of all places.”
And then they spoke about girly things like doiles for a while, and not about how handsome I was, which frankly is terribly boring, so I shaint impose it on you. But you should have an idea now of what I was about to find myself up against.

I was having a pleasant dream about there not being velociraptors when a velociraptor kicked me in the face. I shrieked and jumped off the bunk, but it was just a mime, not a velociraptor.
“Someone is here to see you,” the mime said.
I looked. Neighbor Lady stood outside the bars, next to the velociraptor guard. The door stood open. The mime stood next to me, his box stood around him. A lot of standing was being done.
“Dan, come on,” Neighbor Lady said. “I’ve paid your bail.”
“Bail?”
“Yes! And it was a lot, too. Resisting arrest, really?”
“So they aren’t going to eat me?”
“What? No. Don’t daddle, it’s a wonder you get along at all, you’re like a big child yourself.”
I stepped outside the cell and was not immediately devoured. Perhaps they would eat Neighbor Lady instead. She looked quite delicious in her too-small sweater pulled over her house gown. I was certain she would be quite hot if she wore something nice and let her hair grow out, but she had that short haircut house frows got to tell men that they couldn’t handle five kids and a hair style at the same time. Also she had five kids, and I didn’t want any part of that.
“What about the mime?” I asked her.
“Don’t worry about me,” the mime said, stepping out right behind me. “I’m just here for the free bed.”
“You know I’m only doing this because Dani called me,” Neighbor Lady said as we walked past rows of drooling velociraptors. The mime whistled.
“Her phone can only dial two numbers,” I pointed out.
“Trust technology against children? How silly.”
“Yeah mate,” the mime said. “I ‘member a time at the barby when me boi had this gameboy thing.” Apparently he was australian now.