The Silurians

by Connor Coyne

1.

Hello. My name is Melanie Prior and I am a Silurian. ("Hello, Melanie") I have been a Silurian for three months now. I am powerless over my Silurianism and my life has become unmanageable.

It was only Day Two when Professor Peter figured out that there was time travel involved and told us that we'd landed some 400 or 450 million years Before Christ. More importantly, before the Holy Trinity of Beef, Pork, and Poultry. Not to mention string beans and corn on the cob. No sturgeon, no tuna, no pretty turkeys dressed up for Thanksgiving. No mashed potatoes or corn on the cob. No beets. I won't miss them. No skyscrapers. Shit. No subway. Shit shit. No internet. Fuck fuck. No pretty aspen trees reaching their skinny arms and waving their green hands into the sky. No trees at all. Ugly big moss. That's the only plant life we've seen in this god-forsaken valley.

When Professor Pete told us about the time travel, we didn't believe him. We almost killed him and threw him it in the water, but then he proved it in about a dozen ways, and we still pretended he was wrong for a while. When we finally realized he was right there was so much wailing and screaming and bitching that I'm sure we scared off whatever food we could have found on the beach. There were eighteen of us when we got here, but one guy died on arrival (asthma – the air's thin).

I don't know what they were making so much noise about. I held my shit together, and if anyone had a right to freak out it was me. I am a nicotine-caffeine-alcohol-24-7-365 kind of girl. Now, no nicotine, no caffeine, no alcohol, and the day isn't even 24 hours long. Professor Pete says the moon hasn't slowed the earth down enough yet, so if we think we've lived to the ripe old age of fifty, we're probably only forty-five. You'll wonder why I spelled out "sixty" and "fifty-five" but not 24, 7, or 365. It's because the CMS and MLA won't be written for 4 hundred 000,000 years. I can write however the fuck I want.

But actually, these are just the beginnings of my issues. You get sucked back in time to an age time when cockroaches haven't evolved, only to wind up with the biggest roach of them all. Seventeen people to spend the rest of my life with, and one of them is my Dick, the asshole, my ex-husband. At least the kids came along too. My Abbie, who thinks that a sports bra is as good as a tube top, and a tube top is as good as a shirt, so why not wear her bra around in front of the grandparents? My Chris, who thinks that my reputation will get him into whatever school he likes, even if he smokes in class and blows the smoke in the teacher's face. My reputation isn't that great, sweetie. The whole thing is very Sartre-like, actually.

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