By me, with art by Sam Messerly.
Click here to read from the beginning.
Warbell was working with a masseur named Lilt Parley, a man who looked like a muscle mannequin lightly sprayed with skin-colored paint. Each day I would escort Warbell to his lesson, and there would be Parley in a Speedo stretching on the lawn outside his massage parlor (called “Everything You Knead Massage Parlor and Tanning”) folding himself in half or maybe cleaning his ears with his big toe or something. Often there was a crowd waiting, hoping to get a chance to have a tyrannosaurus knead the knots in their back into nothingness—or possibly just break their ribs. I used to watch the shenanigans sometimes, incredulous, because I found it so difficult to imagine a full-size alpha predator with those little chicken-arms actually massaging anything. My shoulders definitely had not felt better after Warbell carried me across the city to save the life of the bacon boy. Parley always talked with Warbell at the beginning of each day, worked him through a set of stretches (including tail stretches somehow), and even massaged Warbell’s arms and forearms carefully, slowly, deliberately—boringly. I had better things to do then gawp at a nearly naked fatless man tickle a t-rex. Plus I was still pretty mad at Warbell for looking into my past, into the history of my leg injury, without even asking me permission. What I mean to say is, I could only watch for so long before I wanted to kick something hard. Preferably with my prosthetic leg so that I didn’t break my toe.
Meanwhile, every day I was also checking the recordings of Warbell at night, recorded via the secret equipment installed in his room. I hadn’t found much yet. There were times when he would grunt and growl or something, but I was never quite sure if he was just snoring. Sometimes I would pick up sounds of him rolling over, smacking his lips, or farting—when he passed gas, it made a sound like the whomp of a tuba. But I never heard him say even a word in English.
I found myself talking over the issue with Colander on my break one day as she was fixing some book covers at the library. That day she had a mandala on her eyepatch, and it was really distracting.
“Of course, I am listening to the recordings on fast forward,” I said. “But listening to eight hours of snoring on fast forward is just like listening to chipmunk chirpy snoring for four hours instead. It’s still boring enough that I want to disconnect my ears for a while and turn them in for industrial strength medicine.”
“Well, that tears it,” Colander said.
I waited. When Colander didn’t offer an explanation, I couldn’t help but ask for clarification.
“What do you mean?” I said. “Something wrong?”
“Oh, when I hold the book like this, it tears,” Colander said. “This novel really needs some industrial strength repairs. That, and plus I was wondering something.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Why are you listening for English?” she said. “Doesn’t Warbell speak fluent dinosaur?”
My eyes widened.
That night I returned to my recordings and listened carefully to some of the sections I had thought were particularly noisy snoring. At least one of these from a few days ago had a great variety of blats and grunts and wheezes. And there did seem to be a pattern to it. Colander listened too when I texted her the audio file, and she agreed with me.
That didn’t sound like just an innocent snore. But who could Warbell be talking to late at night?