Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-26425680-20150801081016

This is a very rough draft of a story a wrote this evening. Basically what I want to know:

Is it interesting? Is it creepy? Does the ending make sense? Is it worth spending the time to polish this up?

At this point, I'm not really looking for feedback on grammar, pacing, sentence structure, etc. Like I said, this is a rough draft, and I usually go over my stories 10+ times over the course of a month to work all those things out. I just want to know if the basic premise is worthwhile before I put any more time into it.

The Skeleton (working title)

Kyle pulled his car into one of the many parking lots of Gates University and slowly eased into an empty spot. Tall buildings surrounded him, and students hustled to their classes on the busy campus. The university was renowned for many of its programs, but more than anything else, it was known for its underground particle collider, which was one of the biggest in the world. There, scientists worked on discovering the mysteries of time and space itself, and it seemed as if they were reporting new breakthroughs almost daily. However, the particle collider wasn't what interested Kyle, and it wasn't the reason for his visit. He was a paleontologist, one who specialized in early man. He'd been asked there by his friend Pietro, who worked as a professor at the university. The two men had known each other since their days as undergraduate students, and while they both had interest in fossils, Pietro's specialty ended up being dinosaurs.

Pietro's request for his friend to visit had been urgent. He wanted Kyle to come visit him at the university as soon as possible. He wouldn't explain his reasons over the phone, but he assured Kyle it was important. Kyle had taken the day off from his job at the museum and drove the one hundred mile distance to the campus.

He worked his way towards the paleontology building. It'd been at least a year since he'd been on the campus, but he easily remembered the way to Pietro's office. When he got there, the office door was open, and Pietro sat at his desk leaning all the way back in his chair. He was staring straight at the ceiling and he appeared to be deep in thought.

Kyle entered his friend's office, and his friendly voice sounded out. "Hello Pietro."

Pietro sat up straight, and his response came curtly and quickly. "I have a mystery for you." The seriousness of Pietro's voice struck Kyle. It wasn't his usual tone.

Kyle smiled in an attempt to get his friend to lighten up. It didn't work. "Pietro, mysteries are supposed to be fun. It's why we got into this field. Remember?"

Instead of answering, Pietro stood up from behind his desk and motioned to Kyle. "Follow me."

He made it halfway down the hall before he stopped and spoke again, "It is good to see you Kyle." A half smile crossed his lips. "I'm sorry if I'm being rude, but I've found something that goes against everything we know about paleontology. Everything. And I have no explanation for it. It's been frustrating."

The two men walked to the nearby exam room. On the table, the shapes of various small object showed their forms underneath the sheet that covered them. Pietro put on gloves, and Kyle followed his lead.

"Here it is." Pietro removed the sheet from the table.

Kyle glanced down at what was before him. It was the top half of a human skeleton. It was worn down to the point that an average person on the street might not even recognize it as human, but Kyle knew right away. The arm bones were probably the best preserved parts of the skeleton, with both ulnae being near fully intact. The skull was in three different parts, but it was obvious what they were. The shoulder blades were both recognizable too. Various rib pieces were lined up in their assumed positions. Vertebrae lined the middle of the table.

Kyle gasped, his trained eye knew he was seeing something special. He carefully picked up one of the ulnae.

"It's heavy. This is completely fossilized. How old is this? And when did you switch your focus from dinosaurs to humans?"

Pietro shook his head, "I didn't, you know that kind of thing doesn't happen. We found this on a dig a few months ago down at Packerson's Ranch. We weren't looking for human remains, and we shouldn't have found any."

"Packerson's Ranch? That's the dig site just a few miles from here, right?

"Yeah. Mr. Packerson's been really good to this department. It's the first dig site for most of our students."

"Okay, so you found a human in an area where you've only found dinosaurs before. Weird, but stranger things have happened."

Pietro shook his head emphatically, "No, not just in the same area, but in the exact same spot. Kyle, this skeleton was pulled out of earth that's been dated as sixty six million years old."

Kyle laughed aloud, but then stifled it as he noticed that Pietro wasn't laughing. "Okay, Pietro, here's what happened, someone long ago dug a hole down to that particular layer of earth, and died next to a dinosaur skeleton. That's the only possibility."

Pietro kept shaking his head, "No. The ground hadn't been disturbed. I chipped this skeleton out of rock myself. The spot where this was found, there were actually other dinosaur fossils found above it earlier in the dig. There's no way that a human could've dug past that. No Kyle, this human skeleton has been in the earth for sixty six million years. It was in the same layer we pulled a t-rex skull out of a couple of years ago."

"But that's impossible."

"Yeah, Kyle, it's impossible. And I hate to tell you, but it gets even stranger. Look closely at that ulna you're holding."

Kyle held the fossilized bone close to his eyes. He turned it in his hands to examine both sides. Buried deep within the bone, he saw what looked to be a small piece of metal.

Pietro answered the question before Kyle could even ask it, "It's a surgical screw. Titanium. This guy broke his arm." Pietro pointed to a small fissure along the fossilized ulna. "And somebody surgically repaired it. You can see where the bone grew around the screw as it healed."

Subconsciously, Kyle rubbed a spot on his own left arm.

Pietro picked up the second ulna, "This one was broken too, it didn't get a screw, but you can see here that it was perfectly set." He handed Kyle a magnifying glass and pointed to the spot where the bone had mended itself.

Kyle gasped at what he saw. If anyone else had been telling him this, he would've thought they were playing a joke on him, or that they had just been sloppy in their work. But Pietro? He was too good to make stupid mistakes, and he took paleontology too seriously to joke about it.

Pietro picked up the largest piece of the skull and handed it to Kyle. "Welcome to Wonderland, the hole only goes deeper. Take a look."

Kyle adjusted his glasses and peered into the mouth. "Are those fillings?"

"Yes. It looks like our friend not only had access to modern medicine, but to modern dentistry as well."

Kyle's hand were shaking. Slowly, he put the skull up to his face, and looked deeply into the eye sockets. "Who. Are. You?" After staring intently into the skull for nearly a minute, he slowly lowered it back to the table.

"There has to be an explanation for this, Pietro! Did you get a carbon date on this?"

"C'mon, you don't think that was the first thing I thought of? No, it's solid stone. It's too old to date. I tried sending samples to three labs. They all returned them telling me the same thing."

"Well you didn't dig him out by yourself. What did everyone else say?"

"It was just me and a few grad students. They know something's really wrong with this. I told them there would be a reasonable answer. They don't even know about the titanium screw and dental fillings, but they're still scared. I swore them to secrecy until I could find some answers. You're the first person I've shown this to."

"You don't want to go public with this?"

Pietro laughed at the question, "And get laughed out of academia? Even with this proof here, you know it'd be an uphill battle to get others to believe me. I'll be labeled a fraud. No, I need more answers before I can tell others. There has to be something I'm missing. That's why I asked you here Kyle."

Kyle had no answers, only more questions. "Did you find the bottom half of the skeleton?

"No. Look right here." Pietro pointed to a spot along the lowest vertebrae. "You see that? That's a tooth mark. It looks like something big tore our friend in half. There similar marks along the ribs."

Kyle's tongue glided silently and subconsciously over his teeth. A sudden wave of nausea overtook him, and an ominous feeling settled over him. He suddenly felt as if he should be anywhere but there. "I... I need to go now." He ran out of the room and quickly entered the bathroom down the hall. From the exam room, Pietro could hear him vomiting.

"Are you alright Kyle?" Pietro had followed him to the bathroom.

He finished vomiting and rinsed him mouth out. "I'm sorry Pietro, I have to get out of here. I'm sorry. I'll call you."

A feeling of near panic filled Kyle, and Pietro watched in confusion as he darted out of the building, walking as fast as he could. He made it to his car and slunk down in the driver's seat. Unbuttoning both of his long sleeves, he felt along his forearms, alternately rubbing the scars that ran along both of them.

When he was seventeen, Kyle had crashed his dirt bike. Both of his arms had been broken, in the exact same spots as the skeleton he'd just seen. His left ulna had been fixed with a titanium screw. The fillings in his teeth were identical to those of the skeleton as well. The coincidence filled him with dread.

He fumbled for his keys, and his only thought was to get out of that area. He would call Pietro when he got home. They'd discuss his findings, rationally. But right then, he just wanted to leave.

Before he could start his car, a deep rumbling sound emanated from the Earth itself. The buildings of the university shook for several seconds. Then, there was stillness and silence. From his car, Kyle could see students look around and laugh nervously. Just when everyone seemed to relax again, the building that housed the control center for the particle collider exploded outwards. The top floor of the three story building was blown clean off. Kyle felt the intense heat burn his skin. He heard screams and saw people on fire. A young woman who had been walking directly in front of his car was crushed by falling debris. With his car's exit blocked by wreckage, Kyle got out and began running. Behind him, he could hear the sound of electrical arcing. He turned to look, and saw what looked like green bolts of lightning emanating from the destroyed building. They shot outwards and upwards, at least a half mile in distance. Before he could run any further, a huge bolt shot out directly towards him. It hit Kyle, and he lost consciousness. ______________________________

Humidity. That's what Kyle felt. Hot, warm air surrounding his body. He pulled himself up from the mud and looked at his surroundings. He was in a swamp. Large ferns surrounded him, they were unlike anything he'd ever seen before. Above him, he saw a large, lizard-like creature fly through the air. In the distance, he could hear the sound of a massive creature stomping its way around the swamp. He yelled out for help. The stomping sound paused for a moment, then began again, but this time it sounded as if it was drawing closer. Kyle tried to run, but the marshy ground made movement difficult for a creature of his size. He heard the roar of the stomping creature behind him. His last thought, before being torn in two, is that at least he understood the mystery of the skeleton. 