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By me, with art by Sam Messerly.

Click here to read from the beginning.

Warbell showed up the next morning after I bugged his place, but he had little explanation for his behavior. Instead he was smiling.

“Sometimes you need to get away,” he said. “And those cocktails hit me a lot harder than I thought. It’s been a while since I felt that sick.”

“You can’t go running off, Warbell!” I said. “I am looking after you. If you disappear, it looks bad for me. It looks bad for both of us.”

“You didn’t want to watch any more of that,” Warbell said. “No one wants to watch a tyrannosaurus barf in the street.”

I shook my head and jutted out my jaw, trying to look intimidating despite the fact I was standing in my front lawn again in my pajamas, and no matter how far I could jut my chin, I wasn’t about to spook a dino.

“It’s my job to keep track of you,” I said. “If I don’t do that, I am not doing my job.”

“Then do your job to help me do my job,” he said. “I am training today to become a real masseur. I need people who trust me and who will be willing to be my guinea pigs as I learn how to do the best therapeutic massage two dinosaur fingers can offer.”

In my mind, I imagined people signing a waiver before getting a massage. “Warning: You might get squished into tomato paste.” Or maybe, “Pay extra to insure your life against dinosaur claws.”

“No pressure,” Warbell said. “Though it would probably be more comfortable to give my first massage to someone I know. And there is quite the sign-up list already for people who want to try the novelty of a t-rex massage. We put up flyers yesterday, and we are already getting a tremendous response.”

“Great, great,” I said. “But Warb… what was the ‘very important thing’ you wanted to talk about yesterday? What is going on?”

Warbell’s expression clouded over, and there was a pause as the dinosaur searched for words. A squirrel scolded him roundly for standing too close to a particular tree as he considered my question, the chitterings of the obnoxious furball filling the awkward silence.

Maybe it was the same squirrel Warbell had coughed into a passing car.

“You want to have this talk before breakfast?” he asked.

“If it’s important, yeah,” I said. “We should get it over with.”

Warbell nodded, and I felt my body tensing up for some reason as my nerves jangled.

“Alright then,” Warbell said. “Your leg… did you lose it on April 22, 2015?”

My mouth ran off without me in that moment, and I found myself yelling at the top of my lungs in the crisp air of the morning.

“What do you know about my leg?” I shouted. “What do you know about that? Why are you poking your head into this? Did you look at my medical files? Stay out of my files! None of this, none of it, is any of your business whatsoever!”

Warbell didn’t say anything. He just shook his head solemnly and turned away.

“I have to practice my masseur techniques,” he said. “No breakfast today.”

And he was gone, and I was left with my heart beating with anger and something jittering in the back of my mind. Something very much like fear.

By me, with art by the great Sam Messerly.

Click here to read from the beginning.

I tried to chase him, but a tyrannosaurus has longer legs than a human, and my bike was not equipped for offroading. That didn’t stop me from yelling myself hoarse in the middle of a strange field, and I thought I saw some spooked locals drive by slowly as I belted out the dinosaur’s name.

“Warbell! Where are you? Get back here!”

Since “Warbell” was just my pet name for the dinosaur, the public shouldn’t have any idea why I would be out screaming in the middle of a field.

I waited at least fifteen minutes for Warbell to come back, but when he didn’t, I jumped back on my bike, grinding my teeth. If that’s how Warbell wanted it—but what on earth had he been talking about? Too late for what? And who was going to die?

Was he talking about the invasion of the dinosaurs against human civilization?

I kicked the bike stand up and started peddling. I didn’t go particularly fast, but neither is Final Pumpklin a huge city, and thus it didn’t take long to get back to my house. Warbell wasn’t there, either.

Out of frustration, I hatched a crazy idea. I should bug Warbell’s room and listen in on any conversations he might have in that big lonely garage with whatever dinosaurs use instead of cellphones. I’d never seen him use a cellphone before, but then again he also had that insane trick with his teeth. Surely these dinosaur folks had iPhones like the rest of us.

So instead of chasing Warbell, I spent half the night setting up hidden microphones and cameras in the garage. If Warbell did have secret conversations, they weren’t going to be so secret anymore. Luckily Warbell did not return while I was bugging his room, and so I finished up quickly and fell into my bed.

As a side note, I heard a rumor a few days later that some joyriders in their Mustang had skidded out when they hit Warbell’s puke patch and ended up stuck in the ditch with a nice car splattered in stinky dinosaur vomit. It kind of made me appreciate Warbell a little more when I heard about it.

Read the next chapter.

By me, and with gorgeous art from my friend Sam Messerly.

Click here to read from the beginning.

“What do you mean, you decided to become a masseur?”

We were on our way home shortly after the run in with the Wringlers, me peddling slow on my bike, and Warbell strolling lightly (or as lightly as he could) beside me. He was smiling, obviously happy to get away from the cocktail party. Still, despite his attempts to avoid drinking the champagne, his breath reeked of alcohol. And fish. He had eaten a lot of fish.

“It’s the perfect job,” he said, and his breath was so bad I could almost see drunk tuna swimming before my eyes. “I can get to know people, talk to them, on a closer level than just as a curiosity or as a celebrity in town.”

“But your arms!” I said. “They are so small!”

“They are about the size of human arms,” Warbell said. “Precisely one of the reasons why this job is a good fit.”

“You only have two fingers on each hand, and those claws…”

“Can be trimmed,” Warbell finished. “And there are techniques to get around the lack of fingers. I have been talking with some of the best masseurs in the nation. Several have expressed interest in training me.”

“It’s absolutely crazy,” I said. “You’ll crush people! On accident!”

We made a turn, and Warbell nearly took out a stop sign. An oncoming car with an ogling driver also made him slow and move behind my bike for a few steps, but then once the car had passed he moved up next to me again.

“I am very gentle by nature,” he said. “Except for when I used to hunt. I wasn’t gentle back then. But I have changed.”

“That,” I said. “That right there. You’re a meat-eater. Meat-eaters shouldn’t be kneading the flesh of… of animals that you might think about eating. It’s like you’re playing with your food.”

Because of increased traffic, Warbell tried to walk up on the sidewalk, but his weight shattered the cement and broke the curb. For a while he walked back behind my bike again, which made me feel uncomfortable, as if Warbell was hunting my trusty five-speed like a predator.

“I don’t think of humans as my food,” he said. “Ugh, that taste. I wish I had never eaten anything in this awful world at all. It’s going to be the end of me.”

I wasn’t sure what he meant by that, so I pedaled in silence, watching him in the rearview mirror I had attached to my bike handles. He had his head down, and I could hear him breathing heavily, puffing and snorting in a strange way. Along with the nasty dinosaur breath, I also picked up a stink as if an army of sopping wet mutts were walking by in a parade. Bizarrely, I could have sworn I heard the flustered trumpet of an elephant out of nowhere, and I just assumed Warb must have cussed in dinosaur pidgin or something. He was also slowing down. Given that he wasn’t running very quickly, I didn’t think he could be tired out already, but something seemed to be wrong. I slowed and stopped near a field, and Warbell stopped, too.

“Hey,” I said. “Problems?”

Warbell jerked and pawed at the ground, eyes blinking, lips working uncomfortably over his huge teeth. Then, in an incredibly burst of sound and stink and fury, he vomited all over the road. Chunks and streams of bile rolled and swam across the pavement. Warbell snapped his jaws together a few times, looking around.

“It’s no good,” he said. “No, leave me alone. Probably I can’t do anything to help anybody anyway, and I’ll just perish, helpless and alone. I shouldn’t have gotten you mixed up with this as well. And so many people are going to keep dying.”

There was a haunted look in Warbell’s eyes—anger, fear, frustration, rage. Then he made a quick movement, spun on one foot, and dashed out into a nearby field.

Continue reading.

By me, with art by Sam Messerly/Kaiju Kid.

Click here to read from the beginning.

I didn’t meet with Warbell until later that evening, wherein I escorted the huge lug to a dinner party of sundry celebs. As I cruised up on my bicycle, I thought it would probably be best to discourage Warbell from finding the job he wanted. At least, I figured I should do what I could to stop him until I could find out if his objectives were not at all sinister. Of course, I had no idea how I might begin to stop the beast given that so much of his daily schedule as dinosaur royalty and as object of scientific curiosity was to meet and greet with endless people.

Indeed, he was meeting a lot of folks that evening at the dinner party with the local rich snobs. I had never attended such an event myself, and I immediately felt underdressed because I had come in my sparky outfit after work. No one warned me that all the local rich would be competing for “most expensive wardrobe.” As I wandered through the crowd and introduced Warbell to people, I got an earful of bragging about this or that pair of gloves, that watch, this bag, those shoes, and the thousands of dollars spent on each. I mean each shoelace, for heaven’s sake.

The mayor was at the event, too, and she gave me the evil eye when she saw my electrician’s work clothes.

“We really need to get you an official set of ambassador threads,” she said. “Like a uniform.”

“Couldn’t I just carry a badge?” I asked.

Apparently that was out of the question.

“We are still learning how to live with a king in our midst,” said Mayor Pilky. “But clearly proper attire is very important. Look at the British. The staff at the palace. Those charming guard uniforms.”

“I will not wear a hat that looks like a Bride-of-Frankenstein vertical afro,” I said. “Oh, but the rex is looking for a job now. What if we made the dinosaur wear the hat, and then made him stand completely still all day, no talking, so people could take pictures with him?”

Before Mayor Pilky could respond, Warbell tapped me on the shoulder. I looked up at him. He was holding a dinosaur-sized cup of champagne and a scrunched-up expression of disgust.

“This stuff tastes awful,” he said. “Let’s go home. The discussions here are among the most inconsequential I can imagine, and there is something very important I want to talk with you about.”

My ears perked up.

“What is it?” I asked.

Before Warbell could reply, a celebrity couple—Pluck and Cake Wringler, the owners of the Brr-Eat-Toe chain of toe-shaped ice cream burrito snack cafes—stumbled up half-drunk to take a picture with the resident dinosaur celebrity.

“Take a sip from your cup, would you, and be a peach?” asked Pluck. “We are collecting sip-picks with all the stars, and you’re the biggest star on the scale—or maybe the biggest star WITH scales!”

A burst of tipsy giggles sprayed from the couple. Warbell looked visibly annoyed, but he put his champagne glass on a nearby table and then placed his claws on the couple’s shoulders.

“If you would like something better than a simple and boring photograph, and a unique experience as well,” he said, “then you should sign up for a dinosaur massage from your king. I will be starting my job as a masseur as soon as possible, and I can pencil you in as advance customers.”

By me, and with art by the great and mighty Sam Messerly.

Click here to read from the beginning.

I almost fell off the bench. Colander hit the egg again. It cracked open in a collapse of dust and pebbles. And she was right, there were no dinosaurs in there. Just rock and dirt and dust.

We sat looking at the mess on the picnic table as I scratched my stubble and Colander stuck out her tongue.

“That was fun,” she said, then blew the dust off of the hammer and slipped it into a loop on her coveralls as if it were a gun holster.

“I don’t know what to think,” I said. “I was sure it was an egg.”

“Maybe it’s a fossil egg,” Colander replied. “There have been a number of fossils found in and around Final Pumpkin in the past, after all. Or maybe just somebody made some mud balls and it hardened like that.”

I rested my chin on my one arm and doodled in the dust left over from the mutilated mudball.

“What do you think of Warbell, Colander?” I asked.

“Warbell?” she asked.

“Oh, that’s the name I gave—”

“The dinosaur, gotcha,” Colander finished. “Seems like a pretty cool dude to me.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “There is so much mystery around him. I don’t know really why he is here, why he wants my garage, if he is just going to eat everybody.”

“Probably not the last one,” she said.

I slammed my hand down on the table, which blew up a cloud of dust and made Colander jolt away. I immediately felt guilty, but I plowed ahead anyway, blushing furiously.

“But we don’t know!” I said. “He is apparently from some dinosaur kingdom! What if they invade? And he has that weird technology with his teeth. What if the dinosaurs have some kind of super weapon that they can use to destroy everybody in the world?”

“Warbell did a special activity on Thursday for the kiddies at the library,” Colander said. “He was telling stories about being a dinosaur cub. Biting his brother’s tail. Headbutting trees. He described the burbling stream as his version of the Internet. You could learn about the world from what comes floating by. Lots of branches and leaves might come down the stream, and that probably meant a storm or an earthquake. But it’s better than the Internet because you can reach in and catch your lunch, and then keep right on watching. You can use it as a toilet, too. You can’t do that with a computer screen. The kiddies were really laughing.”

I crossed my arms on the picnic table and plopped my head on top of them.

“Evil masterminds can be good with children,” I said. “Like in that movie with the babbling yellow pill people.”

Colander gazed up at the sky, and she let out her breath with a puff.

“There are no guarantees in this life, Walty old bean,” she said. “Maybe Warbell is in reality a secret ninja warrior beast waiting to assassinate the President with pizza-sized ninja stars or something. But usually I find kids are a pretty decent judge of a fellow’s character. Not always, but often enough. Get a bunch of kids together, and if you are a murder monster, they won’t laugh at your jokes.”

She reached out, and the index finger on her right hand lightly grazed my elbow.

“But you’re right, Walter,” she said. “Warbell is hiding something, and even if he has good intentions, it’s possible whatever it is could cause trouble. I think you are right to try to figure out what is going on.”

We chatted for a while longer, and then Colander got up to go. My elbow, where she had touched it, felt like it was glowing for the rest of the afternoon.

By me, with art by the illustrious Sam Messerly.

Click here to read from the beginning.

I survived my first week as Warbell’s ambassador while also working my electrician’s job at the same time. There were a few other highlights actually—or lowlights, depending on how you look at it.

Twice I had curious gawkers trying to break into my home in the middle of the night because they wanted to see what a tyrannosaurus looks like sleeping. We have guards now.

I had a chance to pose for a picture with the star of the Dinosaur Yacht Slaughter series of films, Paul Gransmall. I got his autograph, and he got Warbell’s. I love those movies—especially Dinosaur Yacht Slaughter 5: No Hope Atoll. They have a sea serpent that gets seasick in that one.

On Friday, when Warbell was munching away at a maple tree, a confused squirrel dived down his throat and he actually coughed so hard that he launched the poor rodent into a passing convertible. Luckily the driver only screamed like a ninny as the panicked squirrel ran circles in the back seat before bounding out and down the street and up the nearest telephone pole.

And finally it was Saturday. Warbell had some kind of job interview—I couldn’t remember which one. While he was busy with that, I went to the park to meet Colander, though I arrived long before three in the afternoon. We had agreed to meet at a specific picnic table—the one near Lake Bunch closest to the dock. Before I met with Colander to talk about the (suspected) eggs, I was trying to collect my thoughts about everything that had happened that week. Part of my process of doing that was just writing down some of the most memorable events, like I shared above. But I also took stock about all the things I was afraid of, all my doubts about Warbell, all my frustrations and confusions.

Colander appeared at 3:05 wearing overalls, yellow tennis shoes with gaudy smiley-face pom-poms and a big smile as she bounced down the sidewalk. She was 35 and dressed like a sugar-rushed five-year-old, but it made me smile. Her eyepatch had an omelet design today, in honor of our meeting presumably.

“All right,” she said, hopping sideways and scooching into the picnic table seat then dropping her head low conspiratorially. “Boiled, scrambled, or fried?”

“Raw so far,” I said, and took out the two strange rocks and placed them on the table. They were almost perfectly round, like oversized softballs, but dark brown with a rough surface. I had washed them thoroughly before our meeting, so they were dust free. Colander rolled one of them around on the picnic table a few times.

“Want to just break one open?” she asked.

“Right here, where anyone can see us?” I asked. “Anybody walking by could catch a glimpse of what we’re doing. There could be a dinosaur inside!”

Colander picked up one of the rocks and shook it up and down, listened to it, gave it a long sniff, put it back down again.

“Nah,” she said. “Definitely not hollow. No dinosaurs in there.”

And with that, she whipped out a hammer and hit the egg with all her might.

Read the next chapter.