Rachel Swirsky - If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love, and Other Stories

My wife’s scream becomes something like a laugh. I slap her across the face. She keeps laughing as I push past her and rush toward the window.

The second bird lunges for another strike. She stares at me with naked hunger. The proffered sacrifice means nothing to them. One trussed, dying victim will never sate their ravenous bellies.

My wife laughs and I snarl.

It would be wise to bolt for the front door while the birds are at the window, and hope that I can run fast enough to get past them. But I can’t run, not now, with my wife still hanging from the ceiling, half–dead but still grinning, still mocking.

My fist finds my cock. No need to dredge up images this time. My desires are richly, extravagantly present. The blood dripping from her plucked flesh. The sawed–off remains of her ankles. My fist draws back and forth. I aim upward like a fire hose, ready to loose myself into her face.

Suddenly, pleasure vanishes. I look down and there’s my fist, white and clenched around a necrotic shaft. The flesh is soft. My fingers start to sink in. I tear them away. Tatters of black flesh adhere to my hand.

She laughs and I slap her again, but it gives me nothing, a slap against all she’s done to me.

If I’d really killed her, I’d have bought a butcher’s knife and relied on the internet to instruct me on how to joint her, cut by cut. I wouldn’t cook her. Wouldn’t want her rump roast churning in my guts. Wouldn’t want her to be part of me forever, infiltrating my lungs and stomach and fingernails.

No, I’d cut her up to make it clear that she’d never been a person in the first place, never been anything but a grinning sack of meat.

Wings slap the air. The bird strikes. This time, the glass breaks. Fractures spiral out from the impact as if the window had been struck by a bullet.

I can imagine what will happen next. The birds will dig their talons into my rotting flesh and shred me. They’ll push their faces inside my skin. Their teeth will slice sharply, wetly through my muscles. One will pause and lift her head, mouth and cheeks crimsoned with my blood, so that she can watch me watching her feast. The other will seize a long, glistening tube from my abdomen. She’ll tip her head back and choke my intestines down her throat with a series of avian swallows.

Still, I can’t leave, though, not yet. This time I won’t just let her — me — her — leave me. The knife–handle is solid in my grip. She watches helplessly from behind those mud–eyes. She spits. Saliva splatters hotly onto my cheek. My arm draws back. Knife plunges into that distended nightmare of a stomach. It rips upward through her sternum and then tears into the flesh of her hidden, bloody jewel. Shit spurts down her legs, sprays my body. I stare back at those swamp–black eyes, behind which flickers the base consciousness which would — which did — devour my heart.

Her death plays out just as I’d imagined. Her eyes don’t dim as her life pours out. Just alive. Then dead.

Remember, this is a story.

It has nothing to do with me. It’s an extrusion. A waste project of the imagination.

Forget what I told you about writers who claim to be separate from what they write. It was bullshit. It sounded good enough for fiction. I’m telling the truth now. It’s all just stories.

One of the vultures dives when I pull open the door. Even though the knife is in–hand, I strike out by instinct. Her nose crunches. She spits. I hope there are teeth in her blood.

Her feathers strike my face. Her wing beats deafen. The wind driven by her flapping tries to push me back into the house.

Precariously, I maintain my footing. Past the vulture, I can scarcely discern a streak of fresh air. Whether or not I persevere, I’ll always treasure this in my once–eaten heart — this time, I won. This time, there’s one fewer harpy shitting on the world.

If you were a dinosaur, my love, then you would be a T-Rex. You’d be a small one, only five feet, ten inches, the same height as human-you. You’d be fragile-boned and you’d walk with as delicate and polite a gait as you could manage on massive talons. Your eyes would gaze gently from beneath your bony brow-ridge.

If you were a T-Rex, then I would become a zookeeper so that I could spend all my time with you. I’d bring you raw chickens and live goats. I’d watch the gore shining on your teeth. I’d make my bed on the floor of your cage, in the moist dirt, cushioned by leaves. When you couldn’t sleep, I’d sing you lullabies.

If I sang you lullabies, I’d soon notice how quickly you picked up music. You’d harmonize with me, your rough, vibrating voice a strange counterpoint to mine. When you thought I was asleep, you’d cry unrequited love songs into the night.

If you sang unrequited love songs, I’d take you on tour. We’d go to Broadway. You’d stand onstage, talons digging into the floorboards. Audiences would weep at the melancholic beauty of your singing.

If audiences wept at the melancholic beauty of your singing, they’d rally to fund new research into reviving extinct species. Money would flood into scientific institutions. Biologists would reverse engineer chickens until they could discover how to give them jaws with teeth. Paleontologists would mine ancient fossils for traces of collagen. Geneticists would figure out how to build a dinosaur from nothing by discovering exactly what DNA sequences code everything about a creature, from the size of its pupils to what enables a brain to contemplate a sunset. They’d work until they’d built you a mate.

If they built you a mate, I’d stand as the best woman at your wedding. I’d watch awkwardly in green chiffon that made me look sallow, as I listened to your vows. I’d be jealous, of course, and also sad, because I want to marry you. Still, I’d know that it was for the best that you marry another creature like yourself, one that shares your body and bone and genetic template. I’d stare at the two of you standing together by the altar and I’d love you even more than I do now. My soul would feel light because I’d know that you and I had made something new in the world and at the same time revived something very old. I would be borrowed, too, because I’d be borrowing your happiness. All I’d need would be something blue.

If all I needed was something blue, I’d run across the church, heels clicking on the marble, until I reached a vase by the front pew. I’d pull out a hydrangea the shade of the sky and press it against my heart and my heart would beat like a flower. I’d bloom. My happiness would become petals. Green chiffon would turn into leaves. My legs would be pale stems, my hair delicate pistils. From my throat, bees would drink exotic nectars. I would astonish everyone assembled, the biologists and the paleontologists and the geneticists, the reporters and the rubberneckers and the music aficionados, all those people who—deceived by the helix-and-fossil trappings of cloned dinosaurs– believed that they lived in a science fictional world when really they lived in a world of magic where anything was possible.

If we lived in a world of magic where anything was possible, then you would be a dinosaur, my love. You’d be a creature of courage and strength but also gentleness. Your claws and fangs would intimidate your foes effortlessly. Whereas you—fragile, lovely, human you—must rely on wits and charm.

A T-Rex, even a small one, would never have to stand against five blustering men soaked in gin and malice. A T-Rex would bare its fangs and they would cower. They’d hide beneath the tables instead of knocking them over. They’d grasp each other for comfort instead of seizing the pool cues with which they beat you, calling you a fag, a towel-head, a shemale, a sissy, a spic, every epithet they could think of, regardless of whether it had anything to do with you or not, shouting and shouting as you slid to the floor in the slick of your own blood.