Animalia by Cristian Johnson (free novels to read txt) 📕

As he walks through the streets of the industrial broken city Chris is greeted with his only two friends now, rain and the cold wind. His stomach has not stopped growling since he had left the savannah, that was the last time he ate something. He also did not want to murder innocent animals even if they were useless to fight against him. Chris continues to search in trash cans and other places for food, but nothing was there, only rats and other small critters. His eyes catch a glimpse of mushrooms growing off a corner of a building. He sniffs at it and snorts in disgust.

He shakes his head and says to himself. “I am not that hungry….. Yet” Then walks away from it.

Chris was hungry, somewhat banished, and alone with his thoughts that he messed up immensely. He begins to lose energy as his body begins to shut down, with no food no energy no strength. He starts to close his eyes but then sees a shadow of something limping towards him. Groaning and grunting noises seem to come from this shadow. He squints his eyes and gets another look. A palish creature continues to come closer to him. Chris could not make out what it looked like, it was too dark and well he still was too weak from starvation. The white creature had little to no hair, with eyes that looked void inside, and a bloody mouth filled with the brim with needle-like teeth. Its jaw looked as if it was fractured and then dislocated. Its body was twice the size of a human being. It has horrific disproportionate arms and legs that make it almost difficult for it to even move at all.

The white creature then stops, it stares directly at him while muttering words that he can not understand. It shakes its head while frothing in the mouth. Chris can only watch as he believes it is trying to communicate with him somehow. The creature walks toward him closer but as soon as it is within arms reach a loud screech coming from above stops the creature. Up in the sky a triangular-shaped animal was flying a circle around him and the creature. That's when it hit him, Chris closes his eyes and he feels his body go down. If the animal from above and the other creature decide to attack it is going to be the end for him.

It was morning again, the sun was up and high birds could be heard from above. Chris was still sleeping on the ground. He wakes up slowly, his eyes begin to open as he notices that the white creature is now dead on the ground. It's just a corpse with dozens of holes impaled all over its body. He quickly turns his head as he smells something. He looks down near him and notices fresh fish on the ground. He gulps it down quickly then his eyes move toward one of the buildings and notices something familiar. It's the animal he saw earlier, sitting on the rooftop watching him. He knows what kind of animal it is, he remembers from a book he read a long time ago. It was a dinosaur.

Chris mutters staring at the animal. “Thank...you.”

The flying animal hopped down to his level and spoke. “You know, you look familiar but I don’t know where I have seen someone like you..… Does not matter well other than that the name is Monroe.”

“Like me? Mmmm my name is Chris, nice to meet you.” Chris said softly. “Why did you help me?” he asks.

“Me and my friends saw what happened with the other animals out in the savannah. The fight you know with the jerk who was bullying you.” Monroe said.

“It's because I don't look like them. They think maybe I'm one of those spider mutants or faceless creatures that Isaac said were in the area. I know that what I did was wrong and I’m not even sure if that baboon's arm is going to even heal.” Chris looked down to the ground.

“You did what you had to do kid, sometimes people can be real douchebags. I do wish that someday they can see you differently…..” Monroe said while looking up to the sky.

“Say, how about I show you a couple of my friends...also you need more food anyway,” Monroe stated.

“Sure that would be good. Is that fish non-human though?” Chris smacked his lips.

“No, it isn’t, unless I gave you a family of mutes that is.” Monroe chuckled.

“Alrighty then, where's home?” Chris got up to his feet.

“Well, follow me ok. I'll be in the air and if you get lost just yell ok?” Monroe begins to flap his wings

“Ok, got it” Chris looks up as Monroe rises from the ground.

Monroe being who he is, a prankster decides to play a prank on Chris. He looks down to make sure Chris is following him down below. He then flies in a big circle going around Chris.

Chris yells at Monroe “What… what are you doing??”

In a blink of an eye Monroe then free falls into Chris and opens his claws of his legs and picks up Chris’s back and lifts him off. Chris screaming in fear and confusion of what is going on as he is being lifted up pretty high from the ground. Monroe flaps his wings and flies off as Chris can see the buildings glisten from the moonlight swimming in the reflection. The fear he had in his mind soon became more enthusiastic joy as he saw clouds rush against his body. Monroe smirks as he notices how much fun Chris is having of experiencing flight. As he flew they saw many trees and mountains as the roads and buildings began to disappear. Monroe looked down at Chris again as he is now snoozing. Monroe looks back up and continues to fly until he reaches a cliffside. There he landed down gently putting Chris on a flat rock. There Monroe was greeted by other strangers. Again the grey dog and a grey dinosaur that looked like him were watching at Chris with curiosity.

Chris began to wake up, his nostrils flared as he smelled a tantalizing aroma. It was the smell of fresh salmon that came from the river nearby. He quickly goes for it and eats the fish. Suddenly a grey dog walked toward him, it was not a dog like he taught at first but a coyote.

“Hi….” said the coyote.

“Well hiya” Chris manages to say as he tries to swallow the salmon whole.

“We don't- don't- normally have visitors around here... “ said the coyote looking around nervously. “What's your name?”

Chris grabs another salmon from the ground and decides to take a bite on the salmon instead of eating it whole. Then he looks at the coyote again happy. “My name is Chris”

“Nice to meet your erh- sir” the coyote shakes his body and looks up at Chris seeing he is much bigger than he expected.

“Hey, don't be scared, I don't bite,” Chris says taking another bite of the salmon.

“Sorry..I’m just really shy you know..my name is Sam. Sam Greyson.” Sam says.

Chris manages to finish the salmon meal that was given to him, enjoying every bite of it. He looks up and sees a familiar face.

Monroe walks up to Chris and Sam, “So I’m assuming you two have been acquainted with each other already?”

“Yeah we did” Chris says smiling noticing Sam nod and wag his tail.

Both Monroe and Sam quickly turn to see the other dinosaur come closer to them. Monroe offers a small nod and Sam offers a small dip of his head.

The other dinosaur walked up to Chris and stopped for a second then continued to walk away. In that instant you could see both were similar but had differences too. Compared to Chris the other dinosaur had a large crest on top of his head, and a broader head with more teeth inside. The coloring of their skin was different too, the other dinosaur had red iridescent stripes with orange scales overlapping all over. Overall he was larger than Chris, thicker tail, larger legs with much larger claws. With the final difference being his extremely small arms that looked useless as a whole. As he passed by he looked at Chris and began to open his mouth as if he wanted to say something but kept going. From afar he continued to look over at Monroe, Chris, and Sam just letting them talk to each other. He looked at Chris one more time then continued to his den.

“Who’s he?” Chris asks puzzled by the lack of interaction of the other dinosaur.

“Oh him...he’s our boss technically,” Monroe says. “He’s not much of a talker but he is a very great person to know. It’s weird usually he talks to the newcomers here though. I wonder what's up with him today?” Monore says thinking about it.

Chris' eyes open up widely in amazement. “Wait there's more of me? More dinosaurs like me?”

Monroe nods his head. “Well yeah there are a couple of people like us. We look like prehistoric creatures or dinosaurs if you know what I mean. We do not know why this happened to us but we exist. We Are not like the other animals, whether because we look different, or that we are powerful, or that people are just afraid of new things.”

“I understand but still, doesn’t explain why your boss just kinda dipped on me” Chris mutters.

“Maybe it's because you two look very similar and he feels conflicted somehow,” Sam says quietly. “Mmm he is just shy.” He quickly adds knowing something more than he says.

“Hmm.. he has been on a little edge since we saw you at that meeting. You don’t happen to have met him before haven’t you?” Monroe aks.

“No, this is my first time meeting him,” Chris replies.

Monroe looked out to the morning sky and decided to show Chris around the mountain area they called home. It was a large cliff with a large opening that led into a cavern. Many trees guarded this clifftop making it look more of a forest and that nothing lived here. Beneath the mountain was a stream of crystal clear water flowing through. Monroe covers up the river with his shadow as he is searching for fish. A couple of salmon are swimming downstream going inwards to a lake. Monroe takes a deep breath as he concentrates hard on a salmon, he plunges his break into the water as he is rewarded with a skewered flopping salmon. Monroe thrusts his beak towards the sky and swallows the salmon whole. Chris watches intensely as he wants to learn how to hunt.

“How did you do that Monroe? Chris asks as fishing is some skill that is learned instead of something that is part of him already.

“Well I just look at what I’m doing and I focus on what I'm hunting you know. I pick one fish and go for it.” Monroe says.

“Alright let me see if I can try,” Chris says. He walks up to the river and as he starts to look at a fish. He takes a deep breath and rushes his face into the water. All the salmon run away faster than him rushing into the water. Monroe laughs at Chris as he sees his first fish fail. Chris took a deep breath as he saw a couple more fish come up to him. He focuses on the salmon as he quickly grasps with fish with his claws. The slippery fish violently shakes in Chris’s hand as he is shocked in excitement to finally catch a fish. He looks at Monroe with a smile as the fish is still alive and punctured on his hand.

“You gotta kill it to make it count” Monroe states.

Chris looks back at the fish and laughs. “Oh yeah...I forgot. “Chris then bites down into the fish head and swallows it.