Jurassic Car Park Read online

  “Reeeeeeeeaaaaaar!” said…something, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t terrified.

  “I will call upon Constables Whelk and Grimes if you do not cease this ridiculous charade right now,” I said. In the corner of the room, I separated a mop from its bucket and wielded the thing as a weapon, a weapon which was dripping bleach all over the place. Still, it was better than nothing at all. “Whoever’s in there, I am armed and incredibly stupid. So come out with your drawers up and your hands where I can see them.”

  There was more chittering, more squelching, and then the door slowly creaked open, and I saw the thing that would haunt me for the rest of my life (though fortunately, in that moment, I didn’t expect to live for many more seconds).

  Sitting on the toilet, a sort of faraway gaze upon his face, was Sid. He was drenched in blood, his arms were chewed down to the shoulders and his feet had been gnawed away up to his knees. He looked like a shop dummy, which was remarkable, really, as he shouldn’t have even been in this story.

  “Oh my God!” I said, even though I wasn’t religious. However, what I saw in the seconds that followed made me realise that nothing was impossible, not even an all-powerful being with a great booming voice and the propensity to fuck over the human race whenever possible.

  For out of Sid’s chest came a face, and it was a grotesque face, all scaly and toothy and generally evil-looking. I recognised the face from museums I had been to (once) and films I had seen (thousands of films), and it was the face of a dinosaur. A little fucking raptor, it was, and it looked at me as if I’d just told it to go fuck its mother, which I clearly hadn’t.

  “Now, now,” I said, trying to placate the thing. “Let’s not go all Gojira up in this lavatory.” I took a step back, and that was when I realised that my legs had decided to do their own thing, branch out on their own, create a whole new walk which involved a lot less in the way of actual walking and a lot more in the falling down department. I slid upon the tiles just as the raptor burst from Sid’s chest (much like one of those breast-breakers from that film that can’t be named). As I sprawled, drunkenly, across the floor, the dinosaur came at me, and it was nippy of both teeth and speed.

  “Piss off!” I said, and I brought the mop around in a wide arc. The head of the mop slammed into the baby velociraptor, knocking it sideways into the urinal that, up until a moment ago, I had been shaking myself into in a non-masturbatory manner. The creature screeched and the porcelain cracked, but it came at me once again. I slid back, for the floor was incredibly slippery now, and swung the mop upwards just as the dinosaur’s feet left the tiles.

  “Have it!” I said as the mop cracked the raptor upside the face and sent it hurtling backwards. That was when I saw the man standing at the end of the sinks, watching all this unfold with a look of abject ear upon his face. How long had he been there? The vast array of aftershaves and lotions, not to mention condoms and lollipops, laid out on the counter before him suggested he worked there. “Who works in a toilet?” I said.

  The man raised his hand. “Wash your hands?” he said, holding up a squirty soap-bottle and grinning a mouthful of pearly whites, though somewhat nervously.

  “In a minute,” I said, for the raptor was back on its feet and running toward me. “Feel free to join in,” I told the toilet attendant.

  “More than my job’s worth,” he said, and went about rearranging his elixirs and potions.

  “C**t!” I said, and the toilet attendant slapped his hand over his mouth and made the sign of the cross.

  The raptor was almost upon me when I decided to try something new, and that something was an elbow-drop. Now, wrestling has never been my strong point, nor has fighting in general, but on this occasion, something went right. I don’t know whether it was because the planets had aligned perfectly, or if the toilet attendant watching from the sideline gave me just the correct amount of faux bravado, but I came down on that little dinosaur’s head like a tonne of bricks. It squeaked like a rat caught in a trap and then went floppy beneath me. “That’s what you get!” I said, for it seemed like the right thing to say.

  I picked myself up, dusted myself down, and nudged the raptor with my foot.

  “Is it dead?” asked the toilet attendant whose name, according to his badge, was Keith.

  “It should have been dead sixty-five million years ago,” said I, which was quite a smart thing to say. “How is this possible?” I held my hands over the sink, and Keith set about washing them.

  “What was that thing?” he said as he applied soap to my bleeding digits. “Some sort of rabid weasel?”

  I shook my head. “Rabid Weasel is a post-hardcore scream band from New Jersey,” I said. “That thing was a dinosaur.”

  Keith flicked me in the ear. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he said. “Dinosaurs are a thing of myth. Like DeLoreans and Eskimos.”

  “Apparently not,” I said, and Keith towelled my hands down with paper towels. He might not have been much use when it came to battling the raptor, but he was damn good at his job. My hands had never looked so clean. “This is all The Barry Boys’ fault.”

  “Isn’t it always?” said Keith. “What have they done now?”

  I didn’t know whether to tell him the whole thing or the abbreviated version. There was something inherently wrong about talking to a man in a toilet for longer than absolutely necessary. It made me a little nervous, and so I opted for the abbreviated version.

  “They went back in time and fucked it up,” I said.

  “That the abbreviated version?” said Keith.

  “That’s the gist of it,” I said.

  “Sounds awfully confusing,” the toilet attendant said, scratching at his head. “Are you sure people are going to be able to follow the plot?”

  “It’s hardly fucking Inception,” I said, because the old ones are the best. I allowed Keith to spray me with various aftershaves – you can never wear too many, in my opinion – and dropped a quid in his little plate.

  “Cheap bastard,” said Keith.

  “You’re welcome.” I left the bathroom in a far worse state than it had been a moment ago – with a dead dinosaur sprawled out on the floor and a confused-looking toilet attendant mopping up the innards of Sid the Extra.

  24

  “Okay, I’m going to have to stop you there,” said the doctor. “I’m finding it hard to get my head around this. Are you sure it wasn’t just a rabid weasel, or something?”

  “It wasn’t a rabid weasel,” I said. “I’ve seen rabid weasels before. I’ve also seen all of the Jurassic Park movies. I know what a velociraptor looks like, and that thing that ate Sid and attacked me in the toilet looked just like one.”

  “Also, you reckon Keith saw this? Keith the Toilet Attendant?”

  “That’s right,” I said. “Saw it, and then spent the next hour mopping it up.”

  “But I spoke to Keith just an hour ago,” said the doctor, and he leaned in close. “He does our toilets, too. And he doesn’t know anything about any dinosaurs. Not only that but he also reckons Sid, who doesn’t have a real role in this narrative and yet keeps popping up intermittently, is alive and well, and all his giblets are in the right place.”

  “I can explain all that,” I said. “You’re just going to have to let me continue with the story. I promise it will all make perfect sense in the end.”

  “That’s good,” said the doctor. “Because it really is confusing. Are you sure people are going to be able to follow the plot?”

  “Ah, fuck off,” I said. “Inception has been given far too much press as it is.”

  “Good film, though, wasn’t it?”

  “It was okay,” I said. “I liked the bit where they were rolling around the corridors.”

  “We’ve all been there,” said the doctor, tapping at his nose.

  “Right. So…I left the toilet, and I was fairly shaken up. I arrived back in the bar proper, and Marla the Stereotypical Landlady blew a huge pink bubble and said—”
r />   25

  “You’ve got a little spot of wee on the front of your trousers.”

  I glanced down, cursed the Gods, and rubbed at the dark patch with the palm of my hand.

  “We’ll have none of that nonsense in here,” said Marla, and she cuffed me across the back of the head. “This is a respectable place. If you want to polish your junk, you’ll have to do it at home and in your own time.”

  “What’s the matter, Al?” said John, who was standing at the bar in the same place I’d left him. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “I’ve just seen a dinosaur,” I said. The wet patch on my trousers would have to wait. “A dinosaur in the toilet.”

  Marla snorted. “A dinosaur,” said she. “You crack me up, Al. You really do.”

  “I’m telling the truth,” I said. “There was a dinosaur in the toilet, and I elbow-dropped it a good ‘un, but not before it half-ate Sid.”

  “Sid’s in the lavatory?” said Marla. “I thought he wasn’t going to be in this narrative.”

  “He’s not,” I said. “Well, not now that dinosaur’s devoured his vital organs.”

  “This is all a bit much,” said John. “All this talk of dinosaurs. First Whelk and Grimes were at it, and now you. Are you sure it wasn’t just a rabid weasel.”

  “Great band,” said Marla. “Saw them back in ’09, just before the lead-singer got arrested for slapping a grannie.”

  “It wasn’t a rabid weasel,” I said. “It was a dinosaur. Whelk and Grimes were telling the truth. Everything’s gone mad! Mad, I tell you! Mad!”

  Marla slapped me, which I thought was a little uncalled for. “Can we all just calm down here,” she said, pouring herself a large glass of vodka. Russian vodka it was, too. None of that cheap stuff that makes you go blind (the real reason Stevie Wonder was visually-handicapped). She knocked back the contents of her glass in one go and set about pouring a second.

  “Do you think that’s wise?” asked John, which was odd as he had been trying to get Marla drunk for the past ten years. “Won’t we be needing our wits about us?”

  “I don’t have any wits sober,” said Marla. “And it’s rare I get to go off the deep end. Let me have a little fun. Help yourselves to the bar. If we’re all going to die, then we might as well go out of this life exactly how we came in. Confused and drooling.”

  “We’re not going to die,” I told her, and quite believable I was, too. “I know what we’re going to do.”

  “I’m all ears,” said Marla, pouring herself a third vodka.

  “And beautiful ears they are, too,” said John. “Pointy. Like that wench from Lord of the Rings.”

  “Gollum?” said Marla, and poked John in the eye. “How very dare you.”

  “Will you pair knock it off?” I said, for I was angry. Angrier than I had been in a very long time. It’s surprising what a dead man sitting on a toilet does to a person. “This is important. For our survival, and that of Buckfutt, we need to keep our heads clear and our bodies in tip-top shape.”

  “It’s a bit late for that,” said John. “Do you think we’ve got time to join a gym?” He flexed his arm. Marla almost choked on her Smirnoff.

  I knew that I had to do something dramatic, something to get the attention of every Tom, Dick, and Harry (or in this case Barry) in the joint. I decided to step up onto the nearest table, much to the annoyance of the elderly couple sitting there. Once I managed to hake the old woman off, though, I was good to go.

  “What’s he doing?” I heard Marla ask John.

  “This would be his moment of glory, so to speak,” said John. “You know those moments in films where the hero rallies the troops and they all cheer him on, and so on and so forth?”

  Marla nodded. “Like the president bit in Independence Day?”

  “That’s the one I was thinking of,” said John. “How uncanny. Do you want to have some sex?”

  “Everyone listen up!” I said, and I lit a cigarette, for all rules had, as far as I was concerned, gone out of the window. “We’re under attack, people!” Sure, it was overdramatic, but it did what it was supposed to: got everyone’s attention. The bar fell silent. Even the fruit machine over in the corner stopped bleeping. I was ready for my moment of glory.

  “You’ve got a spot of wee on the front of your trousers!” yelled Danny Barry, and my moment of glory went the same way as the rules: via the window.

  “Let’s just pretend for a few minutes,” said I, “that I managed to give myself the correct amount of shakes and thusly avoid a piss-patch, and pay attention to what I have to say.”

  “Who’s attacking us?” asked the old lady at my feet of her husband.

  “I hope it’s not the Ruskis,” said her husband as he sipped anxiously at his bitter. “They’ve got chemical warfare that can make a man’s genitals explode.”

  “Can everyone just pipe down for a minute?” I said. “This is supposed to be the part where I rally the troops and give everyone hope.”

  “Like the president bit in Independence Day?” asked Keith, who had come out of the toilet to see what all the fuss was about.

  “Keith knows what he’s talking about,” I said. “Now, as I said, we’re under attack, and it’s not the Russians, nor ze Germans, or even Al Qaeda, who as we all know are renowned for stirring shit up when you least expect it.”

  “Not the pikeys,” said Danny Barry, and he slammed his fists down on the air-hockey table. “Fucking c**ts, the lot of ‘em.”

  Willy Barry elbowed his older brother in the kidneys. “What an awful word,” he said. “I’m telling Mom.”

  “Tell her,” said Danny. “And I’ll tell her you’ve been wanking over the lingerie section of her Summer Littlewoods Catalogue.”

  “I won’t tell her,” said Willy.

  “Didn’t think so,” said Danny.

  “Bloody hell, this is ridiculous,” I said. “You try to instil a little morale amongst your men, and what do you get? I bet Russell Crowe doesn’t have this trouble.”

  “Whatever happened to Sheryl Crow?” asked Marla, who had lined up shot glasses and was in the middle of filling them. “One minute she was strumming her guitar and singing about winding roads, the next she was gone.”

  “Aliens,” said John. “Same as Amelia Earheart and Margot Kidder.”

  “No, I saw Margot Kidder shouting at a watermelon just last week,” said Marla.

  “Jesus H. Christ on a stick!” I said. “Can I get back to my rousing speech now, please? Before the tangent becomes too much and we forget why we’re even here?”

  “He’s my best friend,” John told Marla. “Good, innee?”

  “Right!” I went. “There’s been a bit of a murder in the men’s toilets. Keith can back me up on this, can’t you Keith?”

  The toilet attendant nodded and stuffed a lollipop into his face. “There is a half-eaten dead man in the middle cubicle,” said Keith, which was pretty much what I’d expected him to say. “Does anybody want to try a selection of aftershaves while I’m here?” I hadn’t expected him to say that, but I suppose he had a living to make, albeit a very small one out of a men’s lavatory.

  “I was attacked just a moment ago by what appears to be a velociraptor of the late cretaceous period.” I shrugged. “I know that doesn’t make much sense given the title of this little story, but I should imagine raptors are quite a formidable little beastie and therefore intrinsic to the plot. You know? To ramp up the tension, and suchlike?”

  “Nah, I’m not having it,” said Danny Barry as he made his way to the bar. “Dinosaurs are fictional. Like DeLoreans and anteaters. Are you sure it wasn’t just a rabid weasel?”

  “Can everyone stop babbling on about rabid weasels?” I said. “As a running gag, it’s piss-poor, and we don’t have time for such ridiculous jokes.”

  I tapped the heel of my boot upon the table on which I stood.

  “What’s he doing now?” I overheard Marla the Stereotypical Landlady say.

&
nbsp; “I think he’s doing a little dance,” replied John. “He’s got the moves like Jagger, my mate. Pity it’s Jagger now and not Jagger fifty years ago when he was in his prime.”

  “I’m not dancing,” I said, and I stopped dancing, for that was where the confusion lay. “And allow me to explain what I think has happened here, for our lives might just depend upon it.” I cleared my throat, scratched thoughtfully at my chin and the three hairs that lived there, and said, “It’s all the fault of The Barry Boys.”

  “Now hang on a fucking minute!” said Danny Barry. “Why is it always our fault? Someone sets fire to the allotment? That’ll be The Barry Boys’ fault. A load of marijuana sprouts up in Mrs Billington’s window-box? Ah, Willy Barry did that. Dinosaurs have come out of extinction and are feeding on people’s giblets in the male bog of The Fox with Two Dicks? Must be The Barry Boys, huh?”

  “Put the pool cue down, Danny,” said John. “There’ll be no violence here tonight. At least no human-on-human violence.”

  Danny Barry put the pool cue back where he found it – in the hand of a confused chav – and said, “Well, he’s making some very serious allegations about us. I’d like to know where he’s getting his intel from.”

  I sighed deeply and did more tappings upon the table with my boot-heels. “The DeLorean you and your brothers found up at that abandoned car-park on Charlie Chaplin Street?”

  “What about it?” said Danny as Marla force a pink drink into his tattooed hand and he forced a fistful of rusty washers into hers by way of payment. She didn’t notice as she secreted the washers in the till. I made a mental note to try that one later, should we survive the night.

  “You took it for a little joyride, didn’t you?” said I.

  “It’ll never stand up in court,” said Danny. “That thing out there is a myth. You might as well tell the judge we hijacked a unicorn or an anteater.”

  “Danny,” I said, holding out my hands in a placatory fashion. “Nobody here is trying to put you or your brothers behind bars. We’re just getting to the bottom of this so that we can figure out a way to put things right.”