Dinosaurs On The Brain

Dinosaurs on the Brain

I have dinosaurs on the brain. That’s a bit silly, isn’t it? But I swear: I’ve dinosaurs on the brain. I can feel their breath, their movement when they pass by. I can hear their rumbling and chirping and crying and howling, feel their knightly armor or exotic feathery-tuft. I can sense their passage; swift and quick or slow and graceful.

At the library, on the way home, at the park, at the restaurant: I have dinosaurs on the brain. I can feel things like the unseen breeze. I watch them amble down packed highways, or stride along crowded beaches. Softball games dont phase them, cookouts neither. Graduations are just another boring shindig for the dinosaurs on their way. Hooting movie theaters dont scare them away either, not one bit.

So here I sit on my front porch under the summer night sky, beneath stars the dinosaurs wouldn’t recognize, in a neighborhood crowded with houses and metal stumps we funnily call cars. The dinosaurs don’t mind. Not at all. Their never-ending August goes on, gorgeous and unreachable, primeval paradise in all its savage, strange, stinging reality.

I’ve dinosaurs on the brain. Really, it’s true.

I • Am • Risen

The world is on fire.

Black flames rise and scream with horrendous agonized howls, spreading to every corner of a wretched, twisted, blackened globe. The fire is grotesque, like liquid night that scalds, hungrily ablaze.

Buildings fold in on themselves—inverted, bending lines that groan out in terrible pain. Wriggling worming tormented shadows of human beings are glimpsed in those half seconds before thorny tendrils snatch at them, impaling, grasping, pulling.

Midnight fire warbles in non-Euclidian geometries. Resonant symphonies made in un-sound notation ring out like some nightmare cathedral billowing it’s bells, but these notes scream and scream and scream, the very fundamentals of reality aglow in this awful terror.

An unending sky cracks with jagged shards like broken glass, like starving and diseased teeth; shattering downward to devour all of the Earth, all of forever..

Ocean waves curl upward and upward and upward, unnaturally colossal. Crimson waves shake and shudder and squirm with livid suffering from unseen slithering serpents.

All of the Earth is burning in black flame, rising and screaming, crumbling sanities cascading into unending dark pits.

I

AM

RISEN

Excerpt from the Intergalactic: Unrest on the Frontier

In an interview with the Intergalactic, David Randal (photographed above in his Exo-Multiplatform Unit, or EMU) expressed the viewpoints common amongst spacers in these trying times. “It’s hard work, work that can kill or maim with even the greatest in safety tech. And out here, on the frontier? We’re undersupplied, practically forgotten about. Now rumors of war, whispers of aggressive aliens? The Company has practically abandoned us to the Deep Black.”

Tensions continue to mount as protests Galaxywide have spread to nearly five hundred systems now. We reached out to Haven-Uros-Iln Industries for commentary, and respectfully received none.

An Unlikely Pair: The Colossus and the Scout

Derros grumbled and Nastrea chuckled at him. They were both sweating in the sweltering, primeval heat. Insects, some as fat as a charcoal-colored chitin finger, orbited about their exposed skin along their heavy scaly armor. Angry sunlight stabbed between colossal tree trunks like glassy shards, wind tussling richly enshrouded trunks covered in mossy plated growths.

“Derros”, said Nastrea with a smirking laugh on her lips, “you seem like a hatchling, you know that? Pale as a weaver-worm freshly spurted from its-”

Derros interrupted. Irritated at the tall black woman, and also trying to hide his own laughter behind an unhappy expression.

“Would you hush up, you talkative squaking menace? I’m not sure what’ll drop me first: the predators, the parasites, the heat, or goddamn you!” Much to the young mans dismay: Nastrea burst further into laughter and clutched her stomach, wheezing in syrupy humid heat.

Derros sighed, wiped his brow. The young man was tall, but not as tall as his companion, and pale skinned. His lengthy curly hair was unruly. His armor was light and simple, fit for a scout to traverse the steaming jungle with ease. Nastrea on the other hand was tall and crowned by midnight dark hair, with vigilantly speckled green eyes. The woman’s armor was heavy, but organic with slick curves and tactical gear: ammunition cartridges, communications maintainers, chemical disperers, even a small active reactor that could be used for a rapid deployment vehicle or long term campsite. The pair trudged through the scraping forest floor.

As they walked, little did they know: they were being hunted. For deep in the shadows of the murky jungle, predators are abound always..

I see you, and we’re not alone.

When people like the things I write, I get very happy and excited, and sometimes I’ll ask them things on their page, almost always anonymously, as my way of showing them that I see them. I feel them. That little moment of connection is brilliant and beautiful as any summer blossom. It says to me “I see you”. And I want someone to know that I see them too, and that in this moment, we’re all not so alone in this world.

Canadian dinosaur coins, how awesome!