Sean E. Britten

I’ve always been inspired by music (I know, super original!) and music has always been a part of my writing. Way back in the days of burnt CDs, my mates and I used to put together CD mixtapes and I came up with the idea of a series of short stories based around pieces of music. Mixtape is all short stories sharing their titles with different songs and inspired, to various degrees, by their lyrics, artists, and vibe.

Currently Playing: The Killers – Bones

Alan the allosaurus fossil is content with the humdrum routine of the museum. Certainly it beats the 150 million years he spent lying in the dirt beneath the Sonoran Desert. But a new arrival is set to bring some life back into his old bones.

======

Alan the Allosaurus wasn’t opposed to the move. For years he’d occupied centre space in the museum’s entry hall. It would be nice to have a new angle on life, even if it was less than ten metres away in the corner of the hall instead. He could still look out the front windows at the trees and the sidewalk and the people passing by.

It was discombobulating being taken apart and put back together but he’d been discombobulated before. He’d spent the better part of 150 million years becoming more and more discombobulated across a dry stretch of the Sonoran Desert, or what was now known as the Sonoran Desert, by weather and the slow, titanic, irresistible motions of the Earth’s tectonic plates. More than a few fragments were still there. A few bits and pieces of him had made their own ways into private collections scattered across the globe. He was perfectly aware of the surroundings of all of them, his mind, his spirit, scattered equally between them, but generally the entry hall of the Canadian Royal Museum was the most interesting place to be of all the places he was and it occupied most of his attention.

Alan’s skeleton was reassembled on a new plinth, replacing the skeletal horse and rider that previously occupied the corner. From there, Alan also had a view into the Hall of Insects. Carefully shifted, bit by bit, he was reassembled with wires and hooks. Some parts of the whole, like those fragments in the Sonoran Desert or squirrelled away in private collections, had been replaced by plaster moulds painted and weathered to look identical to the rest of him, the real him. To his mind, that kind of made him a cyborg. Once he’d been reassembled, however, the platform in the middle of the hall remained empty.

“Alan, we’ve heard you’ve been displaced, dislodged, evicted,” the silent voice of another fossil echoed down the museum halls above the general hubbub of other exhibitions. “Shunted, shifted, swept off to the side of the grand hall!”

Scuttlebutt made its way around the museum faster than brushfire. The voice belonged to Patrick the Parasaurolophus, star exhibit of the Hall of Dinosaurs. A web of petty jealousies and hierarchies tied the exhibits together, who was displayed foremost, who garnered the most attention, who was valued higher in human currency and such. Alan had never concerned himself too much with their intrigues but then again he’d never had to. As the first thing patrons saw when they walked into the museum he’d been considered top of the pyramid since he was first installed.

“That’s right,” Alan said. “I guess they’re making way for someone new?”

“Not so special now, are you?” Patrick said. “Not so exceptional, notable, remarkable.”

“I never said I was, Patrick! You know how these humans are, they seem to have a thing for claws and sharp teeth.”

“Pretty soon you’ll be shuffled off to the back, rear, hind, with the rest of us!”

“Nothing would make me happier, Patrick, honestly!”

The keeping of time meant very little to Alan after 150 million years in the dirt. 150 million years of feeling his bones rot and turn to rock. But a couple of days later, stacks of crates began to surround the central plinth.

An army of technicians and workers split the crates open and disgorged their contents. They laboured late into the night. Another fossil took shape over a frame of metal rods. Another dinosaur clearly, nothing that big had walked upon the Earth since that space rock hit the Yucatán Peninsula. Four legs like mighty columns, bones as thick as a human’s waist. The cradle of a gigantic stone pelvis. The pelvis and legs supported a spinal column and a ribcage the size of one of the humans’ vehicles. Alan watched, fascinated, as the workers assembled a long and tapering tail so that it curved overhead across the hall and then a towering neck that rose almost all the way to the rafters. The humans had one of their machines to help with these final steps, a basket atop a kind of mechanical arm that stretched from the ground to the ceiling. Hooked to wires anchored to the roof’s supports, they slotted the final piece of the grand puzzle into place as dawn approached. A heavy skull positioned in just such a way as to look down on the masses when they entered the main hall. After all their efforts, the museum workers and other technicians applauded and congratulated one another.

“You,” Alan said. “Are magnificent.”

“Oh, well, I don’t know about all that,” the new arrival said, sounding embarrassed.

“No, truly, I’ve never seen anything as, regal, as you. What do they call you?”

“A titanosaurus, Tina the Titanosaurus.”

“Believe me, I have no problem giving up my spot to you.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, did you used to be displayed here?”

“For the last few years, but don’t worry! Really, I don’t mind a change of scenery, and I can see why they would want you to be the first thing people see when they enter the museum.”

“Well, they do say I’m the most complete example of my genus in North America.” Tina tried to sound modest.

“Oh, it shows.”

“Most of my vertebrae are cast, a lot of them were stolen and split up into private collections actually. Most of these ribs, oh, and this skull isn’t really me of course. Most of those bits are still buried.”

“Well, you can’t tell at all.”

“Thank you, it’s a pleasure to be here. I hadn’t gotten your name?”

“Of course, it’s Alan, Alan the Allosaurus.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Alan.”

The human workers dispersed, heading home before the museum officially opened. Alan and Tina filled the next couple of hours getting to know one another until more humans began to file inside. They marvelled around Tina’s platform, taking photographs and pointing, but did little to distract from the pair’s conversation. Tina was younger than Alan, closer to eighty million years old. That didn’t make much of a difference though when the vast majority of that time had been spent in the ground. Their lives as living beings, so very long ago and so very short by comparison, had not been that different in spite of Alan being carnivorous and Tina a vegan. Mostly they’d spent their time wandering about looking for something to eat or a safe place to sleep, doing all the sorts of things that living beings did. They reminisced about the world as they’d known it, however, the other animals, the plants, the air, the stars, the peace relative to the noisy and constantly moving world that humans had created in their absence.

“No, this is my first time on display,” Tina said.

“I can’t believe it, you’re a natural,” Alan said.

“After they dug me up, some of my parts got stolen in transit. I’ve got some vertebrae and ribs and toe bones in private collections but most, as far as I can tell, are still in storage.”

“I’m in a few private collections as well. Mostly teeth, although most of these are real! I’ve got a leg bone in Germany, a foreclaw in Mexico.”

“Their scientists have been looking me over and doing their tests for years. But I think this is the most complete I’ve been since I drowned in that mud slick.”

“Well, you look great.”

“Oh, stop! I’m sure you say that to all the fossils!”

“Patrick!” Alan called silently down the halls. “I don’t say that to all the fossils, do I?”

“Drop dead, expire, cease function, Alan,” Patrick replied.

“See?”

“Well, what do you do all day as a museum display?” Tina asked.

“Mostly people watching, looking at the museum patrons as they go by. Like, hey, look at this guy.”

An older gentleman, probably in his eighties, marvelled at Tina’s skeleton from the entryway. He dressed more formally than most of the other morning patrons, in a navy suit and matching fedora. A fresh flower jutted from his lapel.

“That’s Dapper Dan, that’s what some of the workers call him anyway. He’s one of our regulars, probably here to see you! He’s always dressed up, reminds me of back in the days when I was first dug up, people had style back then. Not like today with their jeans and t-shirts. The men always wore suits and hats, and the women in their dresses and gloves. Everyone smelled a lot worse though.”

“Fascinating!”

“Sometimes I think it would be nice if they displayed Dapper Dan’s skeleton here at the museum after he dies so we could get to know him.”

“Oh, look, a mother and her young!”

A tired woman shoved a pram through the entryway, barely glancing up at Tina. Her baby fretted inside the heavily laden carriage while an older child, a toddler, rang rings around the two of them.

“You didn’t see many babies or toddlers in the lab?”

“No, they’re adorable! Look at their squishy little faces and stumpy limbs!”

“You’ll see a lot of them here! A lot of families, a lot of school trips, apparently we are educational to look at.”

“I want to eat them up!”

“Back in my day, I would have.”

The crowds were much larger than a regular weekend thanks to Tina’s installation. Many had clearly made the trip specifically to see her. While Alan had been denied the central spot and shunted to the side, he felt nothing but a sense of pride on her behalf. Besides, she was good company, good to talk to. And the big crowds gave them plenty of fodder for people watching.

“Look at those two! I think they might be on a first date,” Alan said, pointing out a couple of teenagers awkwardly slinking around the lobby like they weren’t meant to be there. “What a couple of nerds, the museum is such a geeky place for a first date.”

“Alan, what is a ‘date’ in that context?” Tina asked. “I heard the scientists talk about them sometimes but I never quite understood the concept.”

“Well, a date is part of the human mating ritual. Their mating is a lot more complex than, ahem, than what you and I might remember. Most of the rituals they do over their phones nowadays but a date is when two humans agree to go to a specific place at a specific time and do something together, like visit a museum or watch a movie or play a miniature version of their most boring sport. But the activity is really just an excuse for them to talk and get to know one another.”

“What do they talk about? Mating?”

“Usually anything but mating. They talk about their lives, their families, whatever they do day-to-day.”

“Kind of like what we’re doing?”

“A little bit, yeah! I guess you could say, um, that this is our first date too.”

xXx

Days turned into weeks. A fast friendship took hold between Alan and Tina as they talked throughout busy days and long nights. The fossils never slept, although time itself measured differently for them. While the two of them as living beings would have been separated by tens of millions of years, as bones and rock their friendship tied them closer and closer. Alan found himself sharing things with Tina that he’d never shared with anyone else. Dreams, what humans would call poetry, that he’d composed during long centuries in the dirt that spoke of smelling fresh air and seeing the stars once more. She told him stories that her species had passed from generation to generation over thousands of years. She spoke of children that she’d raised, places she had seen, plants she had tasted. He told her about all he’d learned about humanity in the years he’d spent above ground, the way things had changed far more rapidly for them than it had for their kind.

“I’m very glad you were here when I got here, Alan,” Tina said. “It was very scary in some ways, not knowing what to expect. But you made it so much easier and gave me a friend.”

“Since you got here, Tina, it’s like-, it’s like the first time they dug me out of the ground. The first time I saw the sunshine again after so long in the dirt, it felt the same when you came into my life.”

“Oh, Alan, I don’t know what to say.”

“I’m sorry, I hope I haven’t made things awkward?”

“Not at all, in fact, I feel the same, but it’s hard.”

“Is it?”

“If I’d known you when we were both alive-,”

“I think things might have gone differently in that case. You’d have probably stepped on me.”

“Never! Well, maybe. But, you know, I’ve spent so much time alone. And now, it’s like we’re so close all the time but still so far.”

“I know, often I wish I could reach out and touch you.”

One of Alan’s foreclaws may have let out the tiniest quiver. It was night, the hall was empty, and even in the daytime such a miniscule gesture would have gone unseen.

“I feel the same.”

Weeks turned into months. Every day and every night, Alan and Tina talked. Sometimes, for hours, they would simply sit in companionable silence. The initial crowds of curious patrons who had come specifically to see Tina ebbed but there were always plenty of people to watch. Throughout the days and nights and weeks and months, however, there was an undercurrent of yearning. So close and yet so far. Obviously, with no more flesh there was no more possibility of mating as a physical act of love, whatever that would look like, and no more desire for that particular act either. But to be pressed bone to bone promised a kind of intimacy beyond mating, beyond anything they could have ever achieved while alive. A melding of spirits as well as physical forms. But they couldn’t move by themselves and achieve that even for a moment across the yawning gulf of the grand hall.

“Hey, what’s with the suits?” Tina asked.

After the museum closed for the day, a couple of administrators crossed the entry hall with three men and a woman in suits. They walked past Tina and gathered in front of Alan instead. The six of them spoke in hushed tones. Alan could feel them measuring him with their eyes.

“What’s going on?” Tina asked.

“I’m not sure, it reminds me of when they came to check things out before they moved me and installed you.”

“Could they be moving you again?”

“I don’t know, I mean, we could still talk from the other room but I would miss seeing you.”

The humans took photos and even went as far as getting out a tape measure and measuring Alan from nose to tail. Afterwards, the suits all shook hands with the administrators and said they would be in touch. Alan couldn’t make sense of anything he overheard. He was left, however, with a sinking feeling in the region beneath his rib cage where his stomach used to be.

Alan tried to put it behind him, and he and Tina talked as normal. A couple of weeks later though, some of the workers set up a wall of plastic sheeting around Alan’s platform. Just barely could his empty eye sockets see over the top of it. Tina watched with concern.

“It says something on the outside,” Tina said.

“What is it?”

“New exhibit coming soon.”

“It’s okay, I won’t be going far!” Alan said. “If I move back to the room with the other fossils, we can talk about all the new things I’ll see!”

“Oh no, you don’t!” Patrick’s voice echoed from the other hall. “There’s no room, space, capacity back here!”

“But then where am I going?” Alan said.

That evening, after the museum had closed, workers and technicians unpacked a bunch of variously sized crates around Alan’s platform. The smallest of them was still the size of a human coffin. All of them were partially filled with packing material that looked like artificial straw. All kinds of markings were stamped to the outsides of the boxes, with words like ‘FRAGILE’ and ‘INTERNATIONAL FREIGHT’. It definitely didn’t look like they’d be moving him to another room within the museum.

“Alan, what’s going on?” Tina asked.

“I don’t know, I think I might be going on a little trip,” Alan said.

With ruthless efficiency and great care, the humans began to break Alan apart and stow him in their boxes. Their manifests tracked what went where, a foot here, a rib there, his skull packed down in the dry, straw-like material. Parts artificial separated from those that were truly him.

“I might just be travelling as part of an exhibition,” Alan said. “I’ve seen it before, I’ll travel around and come back with so many stories to tell you!”

“But when will I see you again?”

“I don’t know, I can’t be sure.”

“Oh, Alan!”

“But we’ll meet again, I’m sure of it! We’re meant to be together. I’ll find you again, someday, somehow!”

xXx

Inside the crates, Alan could see nothing and hear little. His bones of rock nestled in thick wads of packing material. Through the wood and packing, however, he could hear Tina’s plaintive cries. He shouted back reassurances that they would find one another again and that he would think of her always.

Within the crates, Alan felt himself lifted, piece by piece, and transported first through the museum itself. Not all the other fossils and unquiet dead were as mean-spirited as Patrick the Parasaurolophus and most shared goodbyes and reassurances of their own as he passed. At the back of the museum, he was loaded, all at once, into a truck. The voices dwindled behind him and vanished as the truck drove away.

At the truck’s destination, Alan could hear engines and raised human voices and all sorts of motion. He could smell the sea. Part by part, Alan went weightless as the boxes were picked up by crane and loaded onto what he supposed must have been a ship. On board, he was loaded away and felt heavy metal doors slamming closed.

Alan was on the sea for weeks. He had no way to see the days pass or to tell where they were going. Tina was constantly on his mind. His consciousness was always disseminated among all the parts of his original skeleton but he gave some of the pieces in private collections his specific attention while the rest of him sailed to destinations unknown. Tina had vertebrae and such also spread across the planet. He asked around, hoping someone in those other collections might know of her, but he wasn’t in luck.

Finally, the ship crawled into a berth at its final destination. Alan was unloaded without ever seeing the vessel and loaded, he assumed, into another truck. Together, his pieces were transported, unloaded, wheeled, and marked off. He heard voices comparing and confirming that he was as complete as they’d expected.

The first of the crates, containing Alan’s skull, splintered open. Sunlight flooded through the opening. If Alan had eyelids he would have blinked them. The light originated from rows of skylights far overhead. As more boxes were opened and parts of Alan began to be removed, he saw he was in a long hall with white walls absolutely crowded by other fossils, full skeletons, bits and pieces, and other exhibitions that harkened back to the time of the dinosaurs.

“G’day, mate,” a nearby skeleton, comparable in size to Alan himself, said. “I’m Murray the Muttaburrasaurus.”

“Where am I?” Alan asked.

“You’re at the Australian Museum of Natural History, mate, welcome!”

“Tina? Are there any parts of a titanosaurus named Tina here?” Alan had held out hope that perhaps some of Tina’s missing vertebrae or other fragments might be waiting for him at his destination.

“Yeah nah, sorry mate, no Tinas here.”

Piece by piece, Alan was scooped out of the crates and assembled. A bare patch between Murray and a stegosaurus, named Sarah, had been waiting for him. Genuine fossil parts and casts were assembled like a giant jigsaw. Alan felt himself take shape in a new, ferocious posture, leaning forward with jaws wide and claws spread.

“Any chance I’m supposed to be here as part of a temporary exhibition?” Alan asked.

“Don’t think so, mate, the museum bought you lock, stock and barrel, you’re here for the long haul!” Murray said.

Alan had hesitated to ask because he was afraid of the answer. When they were finished, the humans who’d assembled him let out a small cheer and posed, grinning, for photos. Alan’s mood, however, remained glum.

Days turned into weeks turned into months. Alan got to know Murray and Sarah and the other fossils he shared the hall with. Everyone was extremely welcoming and seemed far less obsessed with hierarchy than the exhibits at his previous museum. To tell the truth, if it hadn’t been for the lack of Tina he would have preferred it to his previous posting. There were still plenty of people to watch and new stories to share.

But there was no getting past the fact that Tina wasn’t there. Alan tried not to give in to despair, to cling to the hope that someday they’d be reunited, but he couldn’t shake the fear that he would never speak to her again. There had been no one like her in 150 million years. He didn’t know what he would do without her for 150 million more.

The thief came early on a weekday, right after the museum opened. The building was mostly silent. Even the stay-at-home parents looking for a cheap outing with their preschool-aged kids hadn’t started coming through the doors yet. Moving the length of the hall quickly, the man looked around to make sure he was unobserved. Even though he was inside, he hadn’t removed his hat or sunglasses. Hands were tucked into the pockets of his bulky hoodie.

The man in the hat and sunglasses stopped in front of Alan. Lost in his own thoughts, Alan didn’t pay the human much mind. He was surprised then as the man stepped onto the platform supporting him as well as Murray and Sarah. Reaching up as if harvesting a ripe piece of fruit, the thief took hold of one the prominent fangs on Alan’s lower jaw.

“Hey, hang on,” Alan said.

With a firm grip and the chisel-shaped head of a screwdriver, the thief removed the tooth from Alan’s jaw. There was no pain of course but there was that familiar feeling of discombobulation as Alan found his mind freshly split between his assembled fossil and the tooth in the man’s hand that was then tucked inside his hoodie. The man jumped back onto the walkway then hurriedly made his way out of the room.

“That bloke’s got your tooth!” Murray said.

“Does that sort of thing happen a lot?” Alan asked.

“I know that guy, he’s stolen a couple of things before but he’s never been that bold!” Sarah said.

Alan followed the thief out of the museum inside the pocket of his hoodie, the man’s fist bunched around the tooth’s broken base. Back in the museum, Alan relayed the journey to the others. It was one of the more exciting things to happen around their part of the museum in some time.

The man walked for a while then caught a train, and then drove a short distance. When he finally stopped and removed Alan from his pocket, Alan found himself in a windowless warehouse space with bare metal walls and bare concrete floors, cluttered with workbenches and shelving. The thief slapped Alan’s stolen tooth down on one of the tables. Another man, lean and hard, turned from a bench on the other side of the room.

“You get it?” the second man asked.

“I got it,” the thief replied. “You going to tell me why it had to be one of those teeth specifically? Other than the fact people love teeth, I guess.”

“I told you, when you’re selling fossils, relics, whatever, you’re not really selling some old rock. You’re selling a story.”

The boss bent over Alan and took some measurements of his broken tooth. When he was satisfied, he went back across the room to a cabinet partially hidden beneath one of the benches. Unlocking it, he removed another hunk of bone-turned-rock, shapeless, and not immediately recognisable.

“Cast your mind back 100 million years, when dinosaurs roamed the Earth. Hot, humid, giant insects flitting through the air, and two titans squaring off on an ancient battleground. One, a meat eater, a predator, a t. rex, starving and snapping at this one, a giant plant eater, a titan. For hours they tear at one another until finally the predator gets a perfect strike on the base of the plant eater’s neck. Teeth like knives sink deep into the meat and get caught on this vertebra. But the plant eater pulls away and breaks off one of the meat eater’s teeth, rips it right out of the jaw. It gets away, heals, but it carries the evidence of that mighty battle with it for the rest of its life until it ends up in the ground, and turns into a fossil. The only evidence that a fight ever took place.”

“Wow, that’s something,” the thief said. “But won’t people be able to pull them apart?”

“Trust me, when I’m done they’ll never be able to tell these two weren’t part of the same fossil to begin with. They’ll never get them apart, even if they tried.”

The second man put the vertebra down on the bench beside Alan. As he did, Alan was struck by an extraordinary wave of familiarity.

“Is it really? Could it be, Tina?” Alan said.

“Alan? Oh, Alan, is it really you?” the voice of the vertebra said.

“I don’t believe it! I know you said some pieces of you had been stolen and spread around but I never thought-, I never-,”

The man in charge went to work with a chisel and a rock hammer and other tools. In short order, he’d cut a groove into Tina’s vertebra suited to Alan’s tooth. Deep in the gap, hidden, he emptied a small tube of superglue. Taking one fossil in each hand, he picked them up and began to bring them together.

“Oh, Alan, be gentle,” Tina said.

“Tina!”

Transcendental. A melding of minds, of souls, of hearts. A cool bath after a lifetime of scalding heat. A deep breath after a lifetime of drowning. Across continents, across the globe, across millenia, they were brought together, never to be parted again.

“There,” the man said, admiring his handicraft. “Who wouldn’t want to buy a story like that?”

======

Sean: I originally had this story scheduled to come later in the year but when I saw the fourth story for Mixtape would be releasing on Valentine’s Day, well, I couldn’t resist making it this one. In that spirit, I’d like to dedicate the story to my wonderful wife, Tess, who certainly brought sunshine into my life when we first met and continues to do so every morning I wake up beside her.

Actually, Tess and I went to see The Killers when they were playing in Sydney only a couple of months ago. Terrific gig, just a real performance on top of being great music. Was a little disappointed they didn’t play Bones though. Funnily enough, I’d had this story idea and written it before then. There happens to be a wedding venue near where we live and some nights you can hear them blaring music across the park. Was lying in bed when they played that perennial wedding playlist classic, Mr Brightside, which made me think of Bones, my personal favourite track from The Killers, which made me think of this story idea.

Some inspiration also coming from the Australian Museum, which is a terrific place to visit if you’re ever in Sydney. They host a lot of great exhibitions and I often try to make time to walk through their dinosaur exhibit if I’m there, like just a few weeks ago. It even hosts the actual full-sized Tyrannosaurus Rex replica from the 2015 documentary T. Rex Autopsy, one of the most insanely gruesome things you will ever see in a museum.

Oh, and if you’re reading this I’m sure you’ve already made it through all of the archives of stories hosted on this website. Especially since I worked so hard on making it much nicer and more accessible and gave everything proper categories. So I’m sure you recognise that the banner for this story is literally just a flipped and edited version of the one I made for another story in 2022. It’s not that I’m running out or anything, I just thought that would be funny. Just like I thought making Patrick the Parasaurolophus a thesaurus would be funny, I’m clearly on a roll.

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