Read Online Pterodactyls! by David Halliday - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: David Halliday
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flapping and clanging of the doors, Woody Allen kept playing, never faltered. His watertight professionalism was never called into account. His eyes were closed and his fingers ran along the keys of his clarinet like over worn buttons on a remote control. He flicked through the channels of the tune expertly, ignoring the ambient noise of the interrupting pterodactyl.
The pterodactyl, hearing something enchanting and attractive in the music, (and still driven by the unnamable smell of unplaceable desire) thought the bird call of Woody Allen’s clarinet was what it had been searching for – nay, what it had been created for . This was surely the sound of its love in song, this was what had called it out from the chaos of a trillion years of non-existence.
In these beautiful notes, the long-skulled creature found its god. The giant winged reptile unleashed its most powerful screech of worship, temporarily rising above its stasis of confusion and inability to explain or rationalise anything of the world.
The tuxedoed crowd heard the screech in the key of terror.
Only in New York is the appearance of a dinosaur at a Monday night performance on East 76 th street less thrilling. No one hit the fire alarm. With the addition of a dinosaur to reality, not much time is wasted with incredulity. How quickly one adapts! How quickly life changes!
‘ Well, this is my life now,’ Woody Allen muttered to himself as he unhurriedly walked off stage. The presence of dinosaurs is adapted to remarkably easily.
Alone, Tommy Lee Jones sat still, his hands closeted in darkness. He had long since given up cracking his knuckles due to arthritis, but he did it once again now, cracking the thumb of his left hand. In this small action lay all the clues to the steadfastness of his metallic determination.
The crowd vanished through the exits, pressing and crushing like prairie animals stampeding to water, arms before their chests pressing and pushing those ahead, former friends who were now deadweights.
In the stage wings, Woody Allen stood before a ladder that led to the upper platforms suspended over the stage. He had a profound fear of heights but an equally profound love of ladders. It was the latter which enabled him to climb up to the lighting platform above the stage so he could see everything below.
The pterodactyl sat on the stage, scratching itself with its stupidly long beak, and looking about the auditorium-turned-cave with its big blank eyes of endless surprise. It knew nothing of where it was or what brought it there. Woody Allen saw the primeval beast as more infant than villain, more socially awkward nerd than jock, more Richie Cunningham than the Fonz. It was somehow less remarkable than all it had been made out to be. He saw it as little more than a spirited loaf of bread, like a fly, animated for a moment then forgetful of its alive-ness. What Woody Allen did not see was its love; its unyielding, uknowing and unmistakable love.
Tommy Lee Jones’s fingers worked lightly and harmoniously around the handle of a matte-black Glock 9mm he wore under his dinner jacket.
A brief word about Tommy Lee Jones’s Glock 9mm : It seems a little too convenient doesn’t it? It seems like a deus ex machina , that this might even be possible let alone probable. But next time you see Tommy Lee, look into those millennia-aged eyes of flint, those eyes of hard jungle wisdom that reach far back before time was conceptually initiated, and for a moment, dare to wonder whether he isn’t packing heat.
Woody Allen watched Tommy Lee Jones walk downstairs in a rolling gait, the exact same way he would walk to fetch a Samuel Adams from the fridge in his Upper West Side apartment.
Woody Allen had Netflix and was familiar with all Mr. Jones’s work, but never had he seen the man in any of his roles channel such cool, such fierceness, such titanium solidarity. The dwarfish figure of Jones approached the stage without hurry or hesitation. The sheen
The pterodactyl, hearing something enchanting and attractive in the music, (and still driven by the unnamable smell of unplaceable desire) thought the bird call of Woody Allen’s clarinet was what it had been searching for – nay, what it had been created for . This was surely the sound of its love in song, this was what had called it out from the chaos of a trillion years of non-existence.
In these beautiful notes, the long-skulled creature found its god. The giant winged reptile unleashed its most powerful screech of worship, temporarily rising above its stasis of confusion and inability to explain or rationalise anything of the world.
The tuxedoed crowd heard the screech in the key of terror.
Only in New York is the appearance of a dinosaur at a Monday night performance on East 76 th street less thrilling. No one hit the fire alarm. With the addition of a dinosaur to reality, not much time is wasted with incredulity. How quickly one adapts! How quickly life changes!
‘ Well, this is my life now,’ Woody Allen muttered to himself as he unhurriedly walked off stage. The presence of dinosaurs is adapted to remarkably easily.
Alone, Tommy Lee Jones sat still, his hands closeted in darkness. He had long since given up cracking his knuckles due to arthritis, but he did it once again now, cracking the thumb of his left hand. In this small action lay all the clues to the steadfastness of his metallic determination.
The crowd vanished through the exits, pressing and crushing like prairie animals stampeding to water, arms before their chests pressing and pushing those ahead, former friends who were now deadweights.
In the stage wings, Woody Allen stood before a ladder that led to the upper platforms suspended over the stage. He had a profound fear of heights but an equally profound love of ladders. It was the latter which enabled him to climb up to the lighting platform above the stage so he could see everything below.
The pterodactyl sat on the stage, scratching itself with its stupidly long beak, and looking about the auditorium-turned-cave with its big blank eyes of endless surprise. It knew nothing of where it was or what brought it there. Woody Allen saw the primeval beast as more infant than villain, more socially awkward nerd than jock, more Richie Cunningham than the Fonz. It was somehow less remarkable than all it had been made out to be. He saw it as little more than a spirited loaf of bread, like a fly, animated for a moment then forgetful of its alive-ness. What Woody Allen did not see was its love; its unyielding, uknowing and unmistakable love.
Tommy Lee Jones’s fingers worked lightly and harmoniously around the handle of a matte-black Glock 9mm he wore under his dinner jacket.
A brief word about Tommy Lee Jones’s Glock 9mm : It seems a little too convenient doesn’t it? It seems like a deus ex machina , that this might even be possible let alone probable. But next time you see Tommy Lee, look into those millennia-aged eyes of flint, those eyes of hard jungle wisdom that reach far back before time was conceptually initiated, and for a moment, dare to wonder whether he isn’t packing heat.
Woody Allen watched Tommy Lee Jones walk downstairs in a rolling gait, the exact same way he would walk to fetch a Samuel Adams from the fridge in his Upper West Side apartment.
Woody Allen had Netflix and was familiar with all Mr. Jones’s work, but never had he seen the man in any of his roles channel such cool, such fierceness, such titanium solidarity. The dwarfish figure of Jones approached the stage without hurry or hesitation. The sheen
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