By me, with art by Sam Messerly.
Click here to read from the beginning.
I marched over to the bushes and picked up one of the “dinosaur eggs” that I had been obsessing over and held it out towards Warbell with a scowl on my face.
“You are telling me this is a t-rex turd?” I asked.
“Maybe t-rex,” Warbell said. “It’s about the right size and shape. But other dinosaurs have similarly sized stools. Don’t worry, though; it’s fossilized so you won’t get stinky fingers from handling it.”
“Geez, what a waste of time,” I said, and threw the rock across the yard. It rolled onto the sidewalk, then plonked off the curb onto the street.
“Hey, I thought your people put things like that in museums,” Warbell said. “Maybe you should try and sell it.”
“Well, since you arrived, now all the paleontologists have as much fresh monster feces to study as they could ever want, right?” I said.
“True,” Warbell said. “That’s part of my income. Almost every day scientists come to purchase my poop. You should be thankful it’s not just all over your lawn.”
Trust me, I was grateful. I really was. But I was not in the mood to express my gratitude on that day. Instead, I asked him point blank the question that had been eating me up.
“Did you cause it?” I asked. “All those deaths and injuries. The disappearing death virus. Is that why you are trying to stick your big lizard nose into the personal lives of the people of Final Pumpkin?”
Warbell actually took a step away from me, shaking his head.
“Tell me the truth!” I yelled.
“No,” Warbell said. “I don’t know yet what happened.”
“You don’t know if you caused this?” I tapped my artificial leg as I spoke. “What do you mean, you don’t know? What do you mean that you don’t know if you ruined my life?”
“I am trying my best to find out what happened,” Warbell said. “Trust me.”
“Trust you?” I said “Trust you? Are you serious? You are keeping secrets from me. You won’t tell me why you are really here even though I let you live in my garage. You are talking with someone at night in your dinosaur language, too, right? Don’t think I can’t hear it. Who are you talking to? And now you’re saying that MAYBE you caused the deaths of hundreds, maybe thousands of people around the country? No one even knows how many people have succumbed to the disappearing death disease!”
Warbell looked me right in the eyes before speaking.
“Yes, I think that your mysterious deaths may be my fault, or I should say our fault,” he said. “But that’s—”
Even before Warbell could finish speaking, I just lost my mind.
“I’ll kill you!” I shouted. “I have a rifle! For what you did, you should die, you monster!”
Nice Story.👍🏻