Exploring Inner Space – Jane Dunlap

For a time I was a hideously ugly beast about 6 feet in length, with a short, alligator like body, a long neck, and a head like a huge snake.  With my feet in squashy slime and my narrow tongue quickly extending with each hiss, I stood hating, hissing, attacking, my own tongue extending and my body lurching.

Repeatedly I was lizards, phytosaurs and snakes, fighting my way through reeds or thick mud or over rocks.  Between blinding splashes of muddy water and green slime, I could see a great tangle of trampled ferns, lunging bodies and the kicking, gurgling, dying animals, their moist brown, gray or black hides and bony plates shining in the sun.  I could feel the powerful impact of great crocodile like tails slashing at me and the jabbing razor sharp teeth sink with vise like grip into my throat, then hear my death gurgles as I sank into the mire.  For hours I hissed and snarled, bit and fought to preserve my composite life of thousands of animals.  With each individually I fought, first a hiss, then a lunge, a snarl, a bite, a death gurgle, my mouth foaming and my body arms and legs threshing in every direction.  At the same time I was sobbing with terror and overcome by the horror before me.  The pile of used facial tissues by my side quickly grew to hill proportions.

For a moment I was Brontosaurus rex, king of the dinosaurs, standing in muddy water three or four feet deep and surrounded with other dinosaurs of every kind; my legs felt inconceivably heavy, my body unbearably cumbersome