Pteranodon Mall Read Online Free PDF

avoiding a speeding white van, leaving him standing there gazing at that piece of floating gum. He reached for it then stopped. Whatever was there had already made him feel like he’d dropped his guts into a cement mixer. Did he want to go through that again? Jefferson decided it wouldn’t be worth the pain.
    He turned around and slowly walked into the furniture store.
    If it wasn’t for his stomach behaving like he’d just spent the past few hours on a roller-coaster, Jefferson would feel pretty chilled. Better than he’d felt for weeks. Even the mall looking closed, or he’d just walked through a metal shutter, or seeing floating gum wasn’t dinting this weird high.
    “I love my job,” he said, strolling through the empty showroom. “I have great friends.” He stopped to admire a corner bookcase, thinking it would look great in his bedroom. Jefferson was aware that something was seriously wrong here, that nobody was about, and the coffee table next to him had four deep scratches across the previously polished mahogany surface. There was also the small matter of that lake of blood by the till-point number one. Yet all Jefferson could think about was that he was really happy with his life.
    The mall’s generic annoying music competed with this store’s own choice of classical. He found himself humming to Strauss while admiring a double bed. He was thinking he should still go to the library. Maybe he’ll meet a pretty girl in there.
    Jefferson looked over at the entrance which led outside the mall, then at the mall concourse behind the till-points, and wiped away hot tears. “I love my job. I have great friends.” He dropped to his knees again, and this time, he did empty his guts across the tiles. He fell onto his side and rolled under the bed while thinking that someone had just detonated a grenade between his ears.
    He screwed up his eyes, feverishly wishing that this weird nausea would leave him alone. What the hell had just happened to him? His thoughts were trapped in thick glue. His recent memory had separated into fragments, and no matter how hard he tried, they refuse to coalesce. His last reliable image was of sitting in some cafe while watching a pigeon crash into a building, then, pick itself up as if nothing had happened before pecking at the pavement in search of food. Even with his eyes shut, Jefferson could still hear it pecking away.
    He snapped open his eyes, realising that the sound wasn’t in his head. He looked in confusion at bedsprings a couple of inches from his nose before turning his head to the left. The question as to why he was lying under some bed flew out of his head when he saw some two-legged lizard with a long neck and tail pushing a lump of brown mush with its tiny head through a puddle of vomit.
    It jerked its head up, fastened him with a brief stare, and let out a squawk before returning to its previous task. Was that a…? Jefferson couldn’t even bring himself to utter the name, but what else could it be? He did know that if David was here, he’d be able to tell him for sure. The lad was almost as obsessed with dinosaurs as he was with toy cars and Star Wars.
    He thrust his hand into his pocket and pulled out a chocolate bar that Sandy had given to him at morning break. The rattling had already caught the attention of the little animal. It swallowed the brown lump first, and then slowly approached the bed, with its head bopping up and down. It took effort for him not to smile at its antics. The behaviour reminded Jefferson of the nodding dog that his dad had stuck on the back window of his car.
    “You want some of this?” he asked, peeling back the wrapper. “Sure you do, little guy.”
    It took one more step towards him then stopped, it froze.
    “Come on, don’t be shy.” Jefferson dropped the chocolate and clamped his hand over his mouth, this time to muffle a shocked scream as a huge pair of jaws appeared from nowhere and clamped over the little dinosaur’s