Shortages of Blood
Finn Bechtold
It’s not like he had planned to visit, but after five long, wet hours, the downpour outside is showing no signs of slowing down. The museum is a proper building at least, not the wood and cardboard that every other house in this city seems to be built of. The floors are reasonably wide and airy, the lighting mildly pleasant. He saunters into one room after the other, looks at exhibits and pretends to read the signs next to them. Some of them don’t have signs at all. He looks at the tiny crocodile in its glass cubicle, and wonders whether it has just wandered in randomly one day and never found the exit. It looks a bit too shiny for taxidermy. Almost alive.
He has not paid extra for the special exhibit, so his stroll takes him to the skeletons instead. Two T-rexes prancing next to each other; one of them—Peter—is a bit smaller, his bones a charred black. Barbara, whose bone composition identifies her as female, sports an elegant grey. Her skeleton jaw is one of the parts that is not plaster, but the genuine article. It seems to be smiling ever so slightly.
He taps on the touchscreens around the exhibit and learns that Peter has been killed by another T-rex. You can still see the bite marks, stark white, in his leg. Both skeletons are from the United States; they were found five hundred kilometres apart. Barbara, the screen tells him, survived an injury that would have made her unable to hunt. Are T-rexes hunters now? Somewhere behind him, a group of small children tries to shuffle through to take a look at the screen. He ignores them. Something about the information seems wrong. He taps through it again. After a few minutes, the small children are joined by impatient-looking parents. One father in particular seems inclined to shove him out of the way. He turns away, as if he had been planning on that all along, and heads towards the exit. Five hundred kilometres apart. It seems far for a dinosaur.
Back home, he goes directly to bed, but lies awake for ages. The trees outside throw shadows on the walls, and they look like dinosaurs. When he finally does fall asleep, the two T-rexes prance through his dreams. Peter scales through lush palm trees, a plucky beast with feathers on his head and along his back. He gets them groomed, regularly, at the barbershop. Barbara, on the other hand, looks more like a reptile: scales all over. She is slightly larger and walks with intent. The touchscreen at the museum said she was gravid; carrying an egg. More susceptible, as it were, to gravity. Her eye is the size of his hand, and the yellowish stare leaves burn marks in the back of his head. The next day, he wears sunglasses to work. No one makes a comment. They never comment on anything.
It takes the lady at the museum reception about two weeks to recognise him.
“Interested in history?” she asks in a friendly voice.
He sort-of-nods and walks straight through to the dinosaurs. The same way he has done it, every day, for the past two weeks. He still hasn’t found out what is wrong with the T-rexes. Shortly before the museum closes, when the room is almost empty, he measures the teeth marks in Peter’s leg. Time and weather have eroded most of the specifics, but he writes down the measurements anyway. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Barbara’s skull in the dimming light. She smiles. The eyes that aren’t there look slightly more sinister now. He turns around and sneaks out of the museum, just before the security guard spots him on their last round of the day.
He has taken to wearing sunglasses all day now, even indoors and at work. One of his colleagues makes a comment in passing, and he says something about migraines. It isn’t true, but then he has no idea what is. The bright sun here hurts his eyes. That is all there is to it, he thinks, and ignores the other thought that crops up right behind. He doesn’t need his regular glasses anymore. Suddenly, his eyesight is better than it has been in years. When he walks into the museum, the lady at the front desk throws him a look that speaks of suspicion. Sure, he could be scaling the building for a break-in. But all he ever looks at are the dinosaurs. And he is not about to carry a giant hip bone out without being noticed. He waits until the stream of visitors dies down a bit and stands there in front of the two giant skulls, both looking at him, and observes. Peter seems restless today, shivering a bit. Maybe he is catching a cold. There is a wisp of feathers visible around the base of his skull. Every time he comes back, the image is getting stronger. They must be slowly dimming the lights in the afternoon, he thinks. Allowing new details to emerge.
Barbara’s feet have somewhat moved from their position. He can hear her weight hit the ground, slow and measured; can feel it in his hollow bones. Now, it is Peter who grins at him, steadies his posture and slowly moves his head around to Barbara. The touching of two bony noses makes a dry sound. A tender gesture. The room is holding its breath. He turns and runs, runs out the nearest exit. The ground seems to tremble under the sudden rattling of his joints. He runs downhill, into the Domain. Past the car park, past the winter garden, all the way down until he gets to the sports field.
In the middle of the field, he stops. Behind him, his footsteps are imprinted, deeply, in the mud. Up on the hill, in the distance, he can make out two silhouettes against the darkening evening sky. His newly improved eyesight can do even better than that: the two dinosaurs look down at him, and they seem a whole lot friendlier now. Peter waves at him, as earnestly as his short arms will allow. Barbara stands completely still, the falling sun shining through her ribs where the heart would be.
In his jaw, a buzzing starts to spread. Like a distant meteor gaining speed. He feels as if he might fall, suddenly. As if a part of his body is missing, something that might balance him out. Whatever is happening to his bones, breaking them into a new form—it only takes him halfway. He plants his feet more firmly. It doesn’t help.
The dinosaurs keep standing there, skulls angled slightly at each other. A picture of harmony. Their old injuries don’t seem to impede their posture. Whatever happened, it is a thing of the prehistoric past. They must have flown them here, for the exhibition. Compared to that, five hundred kilometres are nothing. He waits until he cannot make out their silhouettes against the sky anymore. Then, he turns around and walks. Slowly, with a newfound weight in his steps. The buzzing sound follows him all the way home.
—
Finn Bechtold is a writer from Germany, now based in Auckland. She writes poems and short prose about things slightly outside of reality.
