Disaster came from above, just like Brian always knew it would. The great meteor had blazed above them, setting the sky on fire. Everyone else wanted to watch.
“So pretty,” said Prudence.
“A real light show,” said Lester.
“DOOM!” shouted Brian. But as usual, no one listened.
The other dinosaurs wanted to get closer to the pretty sky rock. They wanted to see where it landed. Jasper, moron that he was, wanted to catch it. They were all gone now.
“That’ll show them,” Brian muttered to himself, but secretly, he was a little put out by the whole thing. Granted, his other proclamations of the end had been false alarms. Those spots on Monty’s back had been flower pollen, not some contagious disease. And the rat-monkeys that robbed their nests weren’t possessed by the spirit of the underworld, trying to make them all infertile, they were just dicks. And Brian didn’t want to think about the time he thought meat was a slow-acting poison that killed them over the course of 20-30 years. He spent six whole months eating only vegetables, and the effects on his…waste…had been rather shocking.
But this time he had been right. The sky rock had brought disaster, and for the first time, Brian could say “I told you so.” He looked around, scanning the charred and smouldering landscape, but there was no one to tell.
A nearby fidgeting caught his eye, and Brian lumbered over, uncovering a family of raptors, making their way across the desolate fields. Brian crouched down to look them in the eye. The lead raptor jumped and nearly lost his hat. Scrambling to place it back on his head, he blinked up at Brian.
“Hello. What do you want?” he spoke quickly, like all raptors.
“I told you so,” Brian said with a toothy grin.
The raptor family looked at him sideways. “Told us what?” the lead raptor demanded. “I don’t have time for this. Go away, big mouth.” Rustling up his family, he picked up his suitcase and herded them on across the waste.
Brian watched them go with a big reptilian pout. He continued on his way, dragging his taloned feet through the ash, and coughing as he inhaled a big cloud of it.
“What’s the point of being right if there’s no one to tell?” Brian moped, but of course, no one answered him. So, one sad step at a time, Brian made his way towards the crash site, figuring a dead meaglosaur was still better company than none at all. As it turned out, he didn’t find any, dead or alive. The meteor probably vapourised them, he realised. This day was just getting better and better.
Brian sat down in a crater, not even caring that he was getting dirt on his scales.
It wasn’t long before a stout triceratops came to sit beside him.
“You the last one too, huh?” the three-horn said, taking a long draw from a cigarette and exhaling the smoke over ground of the same colour.
“You know,” Brian said, leaning away from the smelly smoke. “Those things will kill you.”
The triceratops looked from his cigarette, to the blast crater, and back to Brian, then burst into laughter.
“Yeah,” Brian muttered. “Go and laugh. Everyone else does.”
The three-horn rolled backwards, howling with laughter. His whoops became barks, which became coughs, and soon the other dinosaur was on all fours, hacking.
“Hey, are you all right?” Brian asked, unsure if he should pat him on the back or something. Before either of them could do anything more, the triceratops keeled over in the dirt.
Brian stared at him for several seconds, before jumping to his feet, mouth open wide in a gasp, and little arms waving.
Sucking in a deep breath, Brian cried, “I told you so!”
But of course, no one was there to hear him.
FlashFictionMonth day 18
Wordcount: 648
Challenge:
Element 1: Disaster has struck! Set your story in the midst or aftermath of a disaster
The meteor that killed the dinosaurs
Element 2: Who put that there? Include something that does not fit with the chosen time period
Hats, suitcases, cigarettes, possibly some of these dinosaurs
C. A. Harland 