Jamie puffed into his floatie. Air whooshed into the plastic like he was Darth Vader. The beach was warm but the sound caused gosebumps on his arms. The dinosaur had been packed away after their last holiday. Jamie had dug it out, when his parents weren’t watching. They were at a different beach, in a different country. Jamie had different swimming trunks, and his parents would have bought him a different floatie if he’d asked. But the only thing that made the holidays bearable was his dinosaur. He’d pulled it out of his backpack this morning. His mother’s lips had disappeared when she saw it, his father had shied back from the flattened wrinkles of Jamie’s brashly coloured T-Rex.
They sat behind him on the hotel’s branded loungers on the sand. Jamie took a break, inflating the dinosaur was hard work and if he took really big breaths, then it left him dizzy, like spinning around. His lips were tangy from the suncream his mother had smeared over him. The dinosaur stuck to his arms. It was taking shape, the monster’s round red eye looking excited.
Happy to be back.
“Good to have you back,” said Jamie.
“What’s that?” his father asked. Jamie ignored it. He didn’t have to explain himself to them. Not after last year. Occasionally someone walked by, usually another tourist. Didn’t the locals go to the beach?
Jamie kept puffing into the dinosaur. The plastic nozzle was built into the dinosaur’s leg and the dinosaur was now big enough to stand lop-sidedly, while Jamie knelt.
“Are you sure you wouldn’t like a new floatie, James?” But his mother’s question had the defeated air of one who already knew the answer.
“Don’t overinflate it or…,” his father warned.
As if.
His blood rushed through his ears, the same way air rushed intpo the dinosaur: J-Rex. The most fearsome animal to have ever lived. He took a break from watching the rise and fall of the plastic skin of the J-Rex to eye the people in the ocean.
Enjoy it while it lasts!
“It’s impolite to stare, James.” He wasn’t staring, he had called and called, and she hadn’t answered. She sounded sleepy, the way his parents always did on holidays. As if they felt the exhaustion of the bar staff who raced back and forth, bringing food and drinks, and drinks.
“Please! Can you help me onto my dinosaur?”
James had been on tiptoe, blowing into the magnificent beast. It had a sand-brown belly and a crocodile green colouring along it’s back and sides. A red slash for a mouth and those red eyes. It was twice as tall as his father and he couldn’t climb up, the plastic was too smooth. There was still air leaking through the nozzle. He needed to get onto the huge chicken drumstick-like leg, so he could continue inflating it. From there he could use the black plastic handles to get on its back.
His father pretended to wake, and lifted Jamie onto the dinosaur’s leg. “If you fall…,” he said. All of his father’s warnings ended without being finished. His parents fell asleep again fairly quickly. They didn’t hear the roar as Jamie closed the nozzle. Nor did they hear the screams of the swimmers, as he rode J-Rex into the waves, gobbling down people in gaily coloured holiday wrappings.
The beach was awash with blood and the police had sent a helicoptor, which J-Rex had also eaten, when it flew too close. The carnage had attracted sharks and killer whales and J-Rex had eaten those too. Now Jamie was hungry for chips and woke his parents. Besides it was surely only a matter of minutes before the army sent out a strike team, or perhaps deployed a tactical nuclear weapon to get rid of the holiday menace.
“Don’t stare!” His mother no longer sounded sleepy, but irritated. His father was worse. Jamie had ridden J-Rex back to their loungers and then slid down to the bloody chicken-drumstick leg and from thereto the ground.
Jamie helped her up and together they tugged his fther out of his lounger. They couldn’t walk and he couldn’t carry them back to the hotel, so he let them sit on the dinosaur’s tail and they rode back. Blowing the dinosaur’s cover, if anyone came looking.
Once his parents were in bed and definitely sleeping Jamie allowed himself one little swear.
“Every bloody year,” he said.
