The Paleoneirologist's Dreams
by Marc A. Criley
Dreams persist in the bones.
The paleoneirologist raises the rock hammer above his head, holds for a breath, slams it into the fossil. Chips of chert and limestone spray. A colleague, observing too closely, yelps as stone fragments strike and draw blood from cheek and chin.
"If you seek a paleontology of dreams," the near-manic man holding the hammer says, panting and spitting out bits of rock, "it begins and ends with the bones."
*
The paleoneirologist smashes dreams and stones; shatters bones of calcite and quartz, grinds the shards to dust. He mixes the dust with wine. The dust does not dissolve—the wine thickens. It must be stirred, then drunk. Stir, drink, stir, drink. Dreams coat the teeth with grit, wine cleans the palate.
The dreams then, the dreams, they overwhelm, they invade, they infect the senses—fetid swamps, the reek of death, raw meat and rot. A burning sun, super-oxygenated air, fierce life and fast death. Thundering giants, echoing howls of the hunt. Predator, prey, fear, terror, sex.
In twisted sheets the paleoneirologist wakes, gritty and besotted with sweat and wine. He swelters in the heat of his dreams.
*
The paleoneirologist abhors secret knowledge—he is a scientist. He shares his wine, the paleoneirological wine of Old Dreams. His colleagues imbibe; they spit, gag, retch. "What is this? Are you trying to poison us?"
No one will share the paleoneirologist's dreams. He is ridiculed. "Fine," he mutters. "I alone will know the Old Dreams."
*
Alarm! Alarm! trumpets across the tundra. Tusks savage the barking, howling pack; muscled trunk thrashes blindly against claws, against snarling fangs ripping at belly and throat. Heat and musk, tangled hair and matted fur, steaming blood and breath, smashed bones, the whimper and wheeze of pierced flesh and torn throats beneath ice-point stars.
The paleoneirologist wakes, moaning. Powdered mammoth tusk coats his face, cut through by rivulets of tears. His heart is pierced by the cold stone bones of the dead.
*
The paleoneirologist spins his hammer, strikes the chisel head against the chevron stone, cleaves it smartly in two. One piece he sets aside; the other he shatters, grinds to powder, moistens to a gray-white slurry, spoons it to his mouth; he chews and swallows mud. He sleeps.
Immersed in a body heat sea. Rapacious, meat-lust hunger. Frenzied slaughter, predator and prey, the snapping of bones and the flood of blood gorges full in the throat. Insatiable.
An interloper, blood-drawn, ablaze with hunger, cuts in; slashed shark fins and razor teeth savage a red-ribboned emerald sea. None survive.
The paleoneirologist wakes; vomits rancid bile, mud and salt. He rolls out of twisted sheets, seeks the remaining megalodon half-tooth. He grasps the rock hammer in mud-sweat hands and smashes it down again and again—coughing with each gritty breath—until he and his dreams are enveloped in dust.
*
On a sunny weekday afternoon the paleoneirologist visits the Museum of Natural Origins. There are no school field trips this day; only a handful of visitors; the few docents are bored. He buys a rock hammer in the gift shop. A color coded track on the floor guides him to the Hall of Hominids.
Beneath a sunlit dome, in a paleontological cathedral of dreams, lies the museum's marquee exhibit: a nearly complete three-million-year-old Australopithecus africanus. The paleoneirologist peers through protective glass, scrutinizes calcified bones.
He reaches for his hammer. He yearns for the Old Dreams.
__________________________
About the Author
Marc A. Criley avidly read fantasy and science fiction for over forty years before deciding to try his hand at writing it. He has since been published in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Galaxy's Edge, Abyss & Apex, and elsewhere; so rest assured it is never too late to start writing. Marc and his wife “manage” a household of cats in the hills of North Alabama. Marc tweets about writing, space, Alabama, and other shiny things as @That_MarcC. He maintains a personal website and blog at kickin-the-darkness.com.
© “The Paleoneirologist's Dreams” by Marc A. Criley. All rights reserved.
