I’ve got a theory about why kids are so fascinated by dinosaurs, boys especially. Boys like making messes, and nothing makes a bigger mess than a huge dinosaur stomping around and knocking down everything in its path.
I can see that impulse in my own little boy, only five years old when he takes his stegosaurus and smashes its rotund body into the lego city we constructed not more than two hours ago.
I finished the tallest skyscraper while he takes his afternoon nap, wanting to have it completed for his post slumber Godzilla re-enactment.
It was all the time they allowed me to be with him in the compound. The rules, the micro-management, every level of my son’s life was boiled down to data and observation brought on by the company that was supposed to help Avery get better since the incident.
That morning was nothing short of the fall spectacle that any November brought, except that it was raining and cold up in the foothills of Vermont where we went to visit my family for Thanksgiving. I remember thinking it would be best to keep him inside for fear he would catch a draft; made worse by his drenched heavy clothes weighing down on his health as a result from his favorite game of smash-the-puddle.
I had just finished finding the perfect logs, dry enough to kindle the beginnings of a fire we would enjoy supper by, when I called his name.
No answer.
It had been twenty minutes since I sat him down to play with his dinosaurs in the other room. Twenty minutes I already felt guilty for wanting to myself.
“Avery?” I called again.
The boy loved to run rather than walk, and was vocal about most everything. The silence that still befell my call suddenly ran chills up my spine as if I had been outside in the frosty downpour.
“Avery James!?”
I had enough. I was already up on my feet before the third call left my lips.
The dinosaurs were all there.
The destroyed city of legos were all there.
But no Avery.
I moved with parental precision as I cleared the foyer, the bathroom, even the pantry. Every room of the one story ranch-style abode was checked; every door was locked and closed. My world went still, where could he be—
The sound of my mother’s dog snickers brought me back to the present.
The barks were coming from outside.
Mom and Dad were off at the market, and snickers only barked like that when someone was around not giving her the attention she demanded.
My eyes shot towards the small foyer where we left our muddy boots upon entering and exiting the house. The muddy paw prints were smeared, overlapped by the remnants of small hand prints that had crawled towards the flopping doggy door in the wind.
I bolted out of the house.
“AVERY?” My hoarse voice echoed against the crisp, sharp air; my warm breath already struggling to make puffy clouds as my face became soaked. Chilled to the bone in an instant. If I was cold within five minutes of being out here. There was no way a toddler would—
I was at the forest’s edge where snickers now barked like a mad woman at little bare feet laying beside a puddle ripe with potential for stomping.
“No, no, no. Avery wake up. Wake up!”
I held him close, his face starting to turn blue. His little chest still moved, slightly. I ran into the house. Ripping off his wet clothes; coddling him in all of the wool blankets my mother kept strung on the sofa. I sat with him, paying no attention to my own rain soaked body, as the fire’s heat glowed off his forehead while I stoked its heat with everything I had.
His tiny blue eyes peeked open; still sluggish, but a sign.
I barely could wipe a tear from my face as another took its place; kissing his forehead and wiping the cold water off instantly with relief.
“Why buddy, why? Why would you do that, you know better.”
“My…stego…walk away.” He whispered at me, full conviction in his infantile gaze, even while struggling against the hypothermia that was still deciding how deeply it wanted to settle in.
I was already calling 911 as he pointed back towards the forest.
“I touch it…stego alive and walked away.” He whispered again.
My cold fingers could barely work the phone but I fought through it.
“It’s okay bud. Stego is okay. You’re gonna be okay—“
“Daddy…” He pointed up at the shadow now looming over the house from the forest. Snickers whimpered through the doggy door from fright as the shadow of a long neck grew in size; starting atop the roof and stretching out over the damp ground below.
“Hello? 911 what’s your emergency, hello?” The operator called for me in vein.
I could barely believe my eyes as my son’s plastic, fake stegosaurus peeked it’s very alive head against the window.
Smiling…at my son.
I knew it to be the same toy from the marker stains he had drawn, now full-scale size on it’s neck.
“I touch stego, and stego came alive. I find him…sorry Daddy.”
Avery started to cry, from both frosty pain and my possible disappointment.
“Shh Shh it’s ok bud. I’m not mad. I’m not mad. I”m…”
In shock is what I was.
The brought-back-to-life toy garnered the attention of Psyllium industries rather quickly. The next week had been a blur. Being flown off to help my son “recover.” To make sure he was cured of his hypothermia and newly acquired skill; later to find out his near death experience had caused him to develop the ICG, or the Imagination Creation Gene as they dubbed it.
The week turned into months, and now they have spent more time trying to replicate Avery’s ICG rather than cure it. And replicating an ability from someone’s DNA isn’t exactly something that promises no harm to come to its subject. I can see the need to unlock its secret lingering behind their team of scientists’ eyes. Every feigned smile, every even-keel promise to take the best care of my son only getting harder each time they fail to steal his gifts for their own purpose. It’s only a matter of time before their ethics on how to treat a child are bought out by a thirst for knowledge. Or worse, money.
So I stayed up to build the rest of the lego city while Avery was asleep in order to hide the fastest looking hot wheels from his stockpile of toys they kept him pacified with. Along with a lovely little firecracker i’d slowly made over time from the debris littering the lab floors where they conduct their tests with Avery; aided by materials scraped from utensils, debris, anything I could find in my cell of a “dorm room.” The little fire starter’s boom wouldn’t be so little after meeting my son’s touch.
My chemist father would be proud to know his son actually paid attention all those years. And I’ll tell you myself once I get us out of here and find you and mom again.
Nap time would be over soon. And when he awoke, Avery and I would play a game; bring things daddy asks you to, to life.
Perhaps we’d even visit our friend stego they kept locked up in the adjacent chamber to experiment on. I’m sure he’d love to file a complaint about their hospitality as well, and would be eager to help.
Whatever happens after we get out, I’ll face it as it comes, but right now I had only one thing on my mind. And no one was going to stand in my way of achieving it.
I wasn’t going to let them put their hands on my son any longer.
