Saving John
by Gabe Sluis
In the vein of Ray Bradbury's "The Halloween Tree," this fantasy adventure follows three friends on their quest to stop a deranged survivalist that has eluded capture and is known as the Redwood Reaper.The Last Dinosaur is totally fiction from the beginning to the end. It's from the warped mind of TJ Daniels Poet. It's filled with humor throughout.A long, long time ago, in a land far away, on a desert covered rain forest lived A Giant. (we don't know what kind of giant it was, it was just called A Giant).One day, the giant was cruising along on his rolling stone, (the stone was the size of Mount Rushmore), but it was round and he had discovered that by balancing on it, he could make it move. And that became his mode of transport. He hadn't yet discovered that he could use two, like inline roller skates. This was the forerunner of the unicycle, pogo stick, big wheel and many other fine inventions, including the wheel and the one wheeled scooter.He was going too fast one day when too late, he saw an egg, just laying there in the rain forest covered desert, but now it looked like a one egg omelet and that was 'The Last Dinosaur'.When the last dinosaur egg was squished, it went to dinosaur heaven and was greeted by all of his/her ancestors. You couldn't tell male from female dinosaurs, but they had a special code, or maybe a special smell so they knew the difference, maybe not. Maybe whenever they met another dinosaur, one would say: 'I'm male' and the other would say: 'Me too, glad to meet you'.There were squirrel dinos, flying dinos, rawling dinos, chicken dinos, and there were even a few Pet Rock dinos that had turned to stone because of age.Dino Heaven looked much the same as Arizona, with blue skies, and a lot of sand and sand castles. It almost looked like a desert, except there weren't any trees. Otherwise it would look like a desert without trees.It was a very peaceful place and very flat, with mountains from horizon to horizon, covered with water filled sand. In the middle, there was a majestic fountain, flowing with sand colored water.This was a very special sand, 'cause you could drink it, eat it and you pooped beautiful hand-carved sandcastles.There were piles of sandcastles everywhere.Everyone that lived in this desert was very rich, because they used sand as currency. Whenever you ran out, all you had to do was reach down and grab a handful, put it in your pocket and you were no longer poor. Many pocketswere filled to bulging. The greedy even had bulging back packs, and they called themselves 'bankers'.At the end of this desert, there was a giant forest, with all sorts of vegetable and fruit trees. The watermelon trees only grew a few inches off the ground though, because of the weight of the watermelons, so you didn't have to climb the trees to harvest the melons. In the middle of the desert/forest, hidden in plain sight, deep in the mountains was a magic sand castle.It was so magical that it was invisible and you could only find it by touch, or by bumping into it. One night, The Giant tripped over it and fell on it and the sand made him sneeze. He sneezed so loud that he created an earthquake and the earthquake created a giant black hole.As The Giant and the desert/forest and everything that existed was sucked into the black hole, The Giant was so startled, angry, sad and happy, that he cursed in a language understood only by him. It could have been ahappy curse, no one knows, since no one understood the language.Then, as if by magic, everything that was in the black hole came shooting out as fast as light and instantly reassembled itself as it was before. Except that in the middle, there was a space ship.