D is for dinosaur, p.2
D is for Dinosaur, page 2
part #4 of Alphabet Anthologies Series
Tanith silently digests this information. Feels bad for the dyke comment she made the other day. She thinks about saying something, but when she meets Daisy’s eyes, she realizes that it doesn’t matter to the other girl. Not like that. So she grabs some corn chips instead.
Daisy smiles. “Then I let Sue do the work. I figured out just what frightened me, and I turned her loose on them in my dreams. And eventually, I realized I wasn’t so scared anymore. I mean, it’s not that simple but that’s the gist. It also helps that I met good people, the sort who loved and accepted my whole family, and I realized the world didn’t have to be terrifying.” Shrug. “It’s horrible at times, but it has lots of good points.”
Huh. Tanith tilts her head. Is Daisy for real? She seems sincere. “But I don’t have your problem,” she says at last.
“I know. You’re a total rage-monster. But why? What’s bugging you?”
Tanith is all set to answer. Or to tell Daisy to mind her own fucking business. Or to just storm off. That moment of decision lasts an eternity; finally, she gets to her feet with a need to move.
“People!” she bursts out, like someone lanced a boil and all the pus and nasty stuff escaped. She throws up her hands, and a lifetime of frustration spills out. But as she’s airing all of her petty grievances and frustrations, she hears herself and realizes just how little most of it really means. How she’s let all the little stuff fester until it filled her and driven everyone away because that way they can’t let her down. And as she realizes this, she trails off. She stares away from Daisy because she doesn’t want to see pity or scorn on the other girl’s face.
Her dinosaur is throwing itself against the bars of her heart again. She wishes she could vanish into herself, and let Dinah take over. Dinah doesn’t care, Dinah’s a ferocious monster that doesn’t take shit from anyone, and Dinah definitely isn’t a whiny bitch.
There’s a hand on her shoulder. It’s Daisy, of course. It’s comforting, and Tanith can’t remember the last time anyone touched her like that. Like they care. She shrugs the hand off, and immediately regrets it. She goes dead still, still not able to turn around. That’s okay: Daisy hugs her from behind, and this time Tanith accepts it. She closes her eyes so the tears won’t leak out, and leans back against her friend, taking deep, shuddering breaths. They remain like that for a few minutes until Tanith’s got control of herself. She pushes away, grumpily. Whirls to glare at Daisy, who’s just doing that thing of hers. The tall, quiet, patient blonde thing. “I gotta go,” Tanith says. And Daisy lets her.
But something in what Daisy said sticks with her, and that night, when Tanith tears her skin off and becomes Dinah the dinosaur, she thinks about her anger and everything that pisses her off, and how she can use her dino-self to deal with it. And just like that, as if someone flipped a switch, her dreamscape is populated with grotesque representations of everyone she knows, everyone who has ever pissed her off. Classmates, teachers, family.
And she hunts the fuck out of them. Chases them down. Tears them into bloody gibbets. Swallows them whole. Goes full-on Jurassic Park on her family. It’s a beautiful night-long orgy of destruction, and in the morning, when Tanith wakes, she feels good. In control. Like she’s finally conquered some small part of whatever’s been eating away at her all these years. She smiles at herself in the mirror, and for the first time in years, it’s not tinged with distaste or self-loathing. Her parents seem smaller, less… significant. Her little sister is less annoying.
When Tanith and Daisy get together for their run, it’s in silence as always. That is, until Tanith mutters a quiet “Thanks” out of the blue, and Daisy replies, “You’re welcome.” A whole conversation condensed into three words. And later, when they’re chilling on a bench and sharing corn chips again, Tanith says, “Dinah. Her name is Dinah.” And Daisy nods. She gets it.
“So how’d you know?” Tanith asks her.
“It’s just a feel,” replies Daisy. “Something in the eyes. In the way you move. I knew you were like me. Sometimes people just have dinosaurs in them, I guess. It’s not like there’s a Wikipedia entry or Facebook group for it.”
“Huh.” Tanith has a handful of chips. “So why’d you bother with me?”
“Why not? You were hurting. I knew I could help. You just needed someone who understood you.”
Tanith nods. She feels weirdly empty now that so much of the anger has drained out of her. Adrift. Awkward. That, of course, starts to annoy her, but she takes a deep breath, tries to find her new calm.
“You don’t have to be alone at lunch,” says Daisy. “The others, they’re pretty cool. As long as you’re not a total bitch, they’d be okay if you joined us.”
Tanith frowns a little, and mulls it over. “Maybe,” she finally allows. “My people skills are for shit at the moment.”
“Take your time.”
Just as she’s getting up from the bench, Tanith has a different thought. “Hey. The dream thing. The dino thing. Are we all separate, or do you think there’s overlap?”
That stumps Daisy, and she’s quiet for a while. “No clue.”
“Well if it’s possible… you and Sue can come visit.” She takes the bag of chips, upends the crumbs into her mouth, and wanders off.
A week later, Tanith finally decides to join Daisy and the artsy types at their table. It turns out that when she’s not busy being angry, she’s pretty damn funny, able to produce biting impersonations of their least favorite teachers. Years of hate-fueled observation have given her a gift for pinpointing the stupid and absurd, the flaws and imperfections. When she uses her powers to make friends instead of drive people away, it feels so much better. The awkwardness fades quickly.
She and Daisy still run almost every day, but it’s no longer the only thing which gives her relief from a world determined to press her buttons. It’s more a thing they do because it feels right.
And when, one night, Dinah is joined by Sue, the two dinos rampage happily in a dreamscape made up of fears and insecurities, conquering their inner demons one tasty morsel at a time.
Tanith Murray isn’t so angry anymore.
A is for Angry
Simon Kewin
Sometimes, in her dreams, Brontë became a dinosaur.
If she’d been given a choice in the matter she’d have gone for a flying lizard, some flapping proto-bird soaring over steaming primeval swamps aloof from the carnage below. Or, failing that, one of the vast herbivores that lumbered untroubled across the plains or waded through the lakes, too large to be a target.
That was her approach to life: rise above. It worked. Most of the time.
But, no, when she dreamed she was a raptor, a predator, sinking her dagger teeth into the smooth flanks of her fleeing prey, their blood spurting into her eyes and the air filled with the panicked, dying roars of their last thrashing moments.
It troubled her a little to have such dreams. It troubled her more that she found them so very satisfying.
“Brontë, are you up yet?”
She mumbled a reply to her mother. It was understandable she’d fantasize about being a T. Rex, or a T. Regina, anyway. Who wouldn’t? One of her father’s pet names for her as a child had been Brontësaurus, but there wasn’t actually much fun in being a creature that was basically a cow the size of a building. Although, being stepped on by a giant like a Brontosaurus had to be fairly fatal, too.
“Brontë, you’ll miss the bus!”
She slouched downstairs to sit at the breakfast table, sipping tea while waiting for her fifteen-year old brain to start working. She was not a morning person. She scrolled through messages on her iPhone but couldn’t make much sense of any of them. The kitchen reeked of bacon, the smell enough to put her off her toast. Being the only vegetarian in the house had its difficulties but secretly she was pleased, too. She didn’t feel hungry, her stomach already a fizzing cauldron of anxiety. The nausea of the smell would be her excuse.
“So what subjects have you got today?”
Her mother often tried to engage her in conversation over breakfast. It wasn’t like Brontë meant to be rude or uncommunicative. It just came out that way. She often listened to herself, the way she spoke, with stark dismay. Why couldn’t she be nice? “Don’t know. English I think.”
That was usually enough to please her mother. The great works of literature were her mother’s thing. She wrote novels of searing emotional honesty that were loved by those that read them but which sold next to nothing. The passion explained the name Brontë had been given. Given or lumbered with. No one could ever manage the umlaut. Still, it could have been worse, she could have been branded Woolf or Plath or something.
“Ah, wonderful,” said her mother, almost closing her eyes in delighted anticipation. “I envy you, truly.”
You wouldn’t, thought Brontë. Not if you knew the truth.
Her tormentors met her at the school gates, a pack of them that opened to engulf her like the jaws of some huge predator.
She’d never understood why they hated her. Okay, she was different. Fay, dreamy Brontë. Ethereal Brontë who never fought back. She was stick-thin, delicate, her bones slight. Perhaps that was all it was. They laughed at her, saying she was really a boy, she was still a kid. They delighted in emphasizing the swell of their breasts to her, explaining she’d have some of her own one day, when she grew up.
The irony was they spent much of their time wishing they were thinner while Brontë stayed as she was however much she ate. She sometimes wished for a few more curves, and more than once she’d eaten until she was sick. It had made no difference; she was what she was.
She tried to push through the throng. Rise above. But Lois, the ring-leader—beautiful, rich, popular Lois; cruel-eyed, vicious Lois—barred her way. Try as she might, Brontë wasn’t strong enough to force the taller girl aside.
They’d been friends once, the best of friends, when they were young. They’d played together. Played pop singers, played princesses, played dinosaurs. But things changed. For a year now Lois had made Brontë’s life a misery.
Lois laughed. “Let’s give the poor starved girl some food. Hold her hands.”
The other girls in the gang, content to follow orders, grabbed Brontë and pinned her arms to her side. Brontë struggled but wasn’t strong enough to fight off so many. Chelsea, perhaps the nicest of them, or the least worst, spoke up. “Come on, leave her alone. She’s not doing us any harm.”
Lois pretended to be concerned. “But she’ll fade away if we don’t feed her.” She’d taken out some food from her own lunch bag: a grey, floppy slice of chicken. “Open up and eat.”
“Lois, leave her,” said Chelsea. “You know she’s a vegetarian.”
“But once she tastes this she’ll realise what she’s been missing, won’t she? She’ll thank us. Hold her head still.” Brontë clenched her lips shut while Lois tried to force the wedge of flesh into her mouth. She felt the rubbery touch of it on her lips.
“What’s going on here? Leave that girl alone.”
Mr. Porter, who taught her history, was striding over, face red, teeth bared as he shouted. Lois and the others backed off, but only a short way, reluctant to yield their pray to the newcomer.
Brontë stood alone for a moment, caught between the girls and Mr. Porter. No one liked him. There were whispered rumours about what happen to girls who were summoned alone to his eyrie on the third floor. Brontë was tempted, briefly, to toss Lois to him, tell him some story to get her revenge, but she held her tongue. Her tormentor was small-minded and cruel, but even she didn’t deserve Mr. Porter.
“They weren’t troubling me,” said Brontë. “We were just messing around.”
Mr. Porter looked like he was going to pursue the matter for a moment, his bulging eyes casting from Brontë to the others but then, with only a wordless exhalation, he strode away. Before Lois and her gang could regroup Brontë left too, heading up the grey stone steps for her classroom. Her hunters could ambush her anywhere about the school, but she was generally safe in a lesson, under the gaze of one or other of their teachers.
But as she walked away, something clicked into place in her mind. Enough was enough. She wasn’t going to put up with Lois and the others any more. Who did they think they were? It was time she started paying attention to those troubling dreams. She was one against many but there had to be a way. A means of fighting back.
That lesson, she barely paid attention as her English teacher rattled on about Lady Macbeth. Plans for what she would do took shape in Brontë’s mind.
The following day, a Saturday, she went into battle. Time to stop being the prey and become the predator. The prospect filled her stomach with bubbling acid, but it thrilled her, too. She could do this. She wanted to do this.
She put on her retro Marc Bolan tee-shirt. Most likely no one would get the joke, but it amused her. Her mother studied her with narrowed eyes as she slipped out of the house but didn’t say anything. Lois liked to hang out with her pack at the local shopping centre but Brontë would make sure she was there first and confront the other girl when she was alone. She hadn’t mapped out exactly what she was going to do but she wanted to scare Lois. She’d rehearsed several speeches in her mind and she knew a few jujitsu moves from a half-hearted attempt to learn self-defence a year back. One way or another she would put a stop to Lois’s attacks.
But Lois strode into the shining shopping centre already surrounded by her friends and the thought of tackling them all was too much. Brontë spent the day stalking her quarry, watching them across the heads of hurrying shoppers or through store windows. Lois was never alone, her entourage always around her.
Finally her chance came late in the day, as Lois and Chelsea and the rest were bidding their farewells. The others were all laden down with bags but Lois, perhaps disdainful of everything the shops had to offer, had bought nothing. She carried only the plain handbag she’d arrived with. She stepped alone onto the bus that would take her to the sweet, leafy greenery of the country village her family lived in. Fortunately, Lois climbed to the upper floor of the double-decker, and Brontë was able to slip unnoticed onto the lower.
Lois left the bus as it squealed to a halt at the single stop in her village. Brontë waited as long as she dared for Lois to put a few paces of distance between her and the bus, then followed. It was already getting dark and ornate iron streetlamps cast pools of light among the trees. Lois walked towards the lines of huge houses and mansions that sat quietly behind their high fences.
Brontë didn’t have much time. Once Lois reached the gates of her family home her chance to confront her would be lost. She was about to run after Lois to catch her up but then Lois stopped unexpectedly. She glanced around, and there was something furtive in it, something guilty, that made Brontë stop and hide in the shadows of a hedge.
Lois looked through the railings at one house in particular, a white wedding-cake of a place, ornate interiors visible through high windows, gardens immaculate, but instead of going inside she took a rolled-up jacket from her bag and slipped it on, throwing the hood over her head. Which seemed odd: why put a coat on just as you reached home?
Then, with another glance around, Lois walked away from the house. She crossed the road and retraced her steps towards the bus stop and the centre of the village.
Brontë held her breath as Lois neared. Fortunately there were no near streetlights and Lois had her gaze cast down. Brontë let Lois pass then, puzzled, resumed her hunt.
Back at the stop, Lois waited for a bus going in the opposite direction, back into the city. There was something defeated in the way she sat slumped on the nearby bench. Brontë stayed back, watching to see what Lois was doing.
Twenty minutes later another bus arrived, windows bright in the gathering gloom. Lois rose and climbed on, moving more slowly than she had. Once again she took the top deck and once again Brontë followed. The bus rattled off. The lights inside made it hard to see what they were passing. Brontë pressed her forehead to the cold, vibrating glass and watched as leafy lanes gave way to the first familiar tendrils of urban sprawl. Soon they were rushing past the tightly-packed houses and tenements that clustered around the edges of the city. Then, at a stop still several miles outside, Lois came down the narrow, twisting stairs from the upper deck and left the bus. Once again leaving as much gap as she dared, Brontë followed.
They were in a part of the city she didn’t know well. A part of the city you never went to, only hurried through, car windows tightly closed. Fires, open fires, burned on squares of wasteland and people gathered around them for warmth.
Lois, walking by them all as if they were the most normal thing in the world, crossed a broken wasteland of rubble towards a teetering construction of boards and corrugated iron sheets leaning against the leg of a motorway flyover. The traffic streaming by overhead was an unceasing roar.
Brontë paused, unsure of herself, all her former resolve gone. She no longer felt like a hunter. She was alone, vulnerable. She imagined eyes watching her from the shadows all around. Predators’ eyes. There probably wouldn’t be another bus for at least half an hour to whisk her away to safety. She should never have set out on this craziness.
The weird thing was the only person she knew there, who was any sort of friend, was Lois. Brontë resumed walking, keeping out of sight but getting close enough to Lois to see what was happening. What was the other girl doing here? What was going on? It made no sense.
Lois walked up to the ramshackle hovel and, ducking, called through a low opening that was the nearest thing there was to a door. Then she disappeared inside, perhaps hearing some response out of Brontë’s earshot. Brontë crept closer. If someone did attack her, some gang or crazy, that broken hovel was suddenly her only refuge. She shivered. It was fully dark now, although the lights from the motorway up above cast everything in a constant glow.
