my dinosaur dream

Nate and I stood behind the bar in the coffee shop, making lattes and fruit smoothies as dusk began to fall. The doors suddenly burst open and students came running inside, screaming and shouting. Nate looked over at me and said, “Go and see what the fuss is all about.” I nodded and went into the student life center; a girl told me, through broken gasps, that there was something in the kitchen. I ran out of the worship ministry building and into the dining hall at the other end of campus; the place was deserted. I cautiously entered the cafeteria: chairs were overturned, tables knocked on their sides, food spilled all over the floor. The hanging lights flickered on and off. I moved past the salad bar, confused; and then I he ard some noise coming from the cafeteria. I ducked through a door and peered inside: I saw a great creature hunkered over what had at one time been a human being. Blood covered its jaws as it took another gruesome bite. I shuddered, instantly realizing—to my shock and horror—what stood before me: Utahraptor.

I darted out of the cafeteria and began making my way back to the coffee shop. I heard crying inside the bookstore, so I went inside. A girl sat curled up behind the counter; I helped her to her feet, said, “We should get out of here.” She came round from the counter. As we left, I grabbed three books on dinosaurs. She asked what I was doing. I told her, “No one’s going to buy these now.” We stepped out into the main hallway, and a piercing shriek shook our eardrums. We spun around on our heels to see a Utahraptor blocking the main doors out; fear gripped us and our legs carried us through an adjacent door, and we sprinted down an iron stairwell into the school’s bowling alley.

We could hear the creature chasing us, rattling the stairs. We had just entered the bowling alley and were searching for a place to hide when the Utahraptor burst inside; it opened its bloody jaws and screeched. Behind it came another, and another. Three fiendish creatures stared us down. The two of us grabbed bowling balls and threw them across the floor; they knocked the legs out from under the Utahraptors, and they crashed to the ground. We ran past them as they tried to stand; the girl had returned to the stairwell, but one of the creatures leapt onto my back, knocking me down. I raised my hands to protect myself, catching it by the throat as it snapped its jaws in my face. I screamed for help; the girl appeared, holding a bowling pin, and she bashed the creature upside the head with it. The animal flailed away, snapping; I scrambled to my feet and we rushed into the stairwell. We slammed the door shut on the animal and locked it; through the glass window on the door we could see the three Utahraptors attempting to get at us, banging their heads against the door.

We rushed up the flight of steps and emerged in the hallway. We ran outside, and a fierce cold hit us. Somehow time had gone through a vortex and winter had come over us. We stood outside in the snow, shivering; human skeletons lay through the parking lot, a thin layer of dust accumulating on the bleached bones. The entire campus had been blanketed in the snow, and though we shouted, no one answered. The girl started climbing an abandoned scaffolding, and I followed. We emerged on the rooftop, and looking out over the city of Cincinnati, could see a myriad of dinosaurs moving through the valley between the run-down and empty skyscrapers, railways, and blocks of homes. The girl took a deep breath and spoke: “The dinosaurs are ruling the earth once more.” A shiver ran up my spine… And I woke up.