Fossil Fools

Chapter 9. Coma journey.

I giggled. Something was tickling me in the ribs. 

In my stupor I reached out to my side and pushed the something away. It nudged me again, wouldn't leave me alone. 

I half opened an eye. Slowly I became dimly aware. 

Red and green flashing lights, a dim blue glow. What was that hissing sound? What were all those beeps and distant hum?

A weird apparition emerged from the gloom to my side. My heart leaped, but my body couldn't move. 

Every nerve wanted me to jump up but I was pinned to a bed, as if a huge gravitational force was sitting on top of me, pushing me down. 

I lay helpless.

A huge silvery fishy beast was facing me. Its massive eyes the size of dinner plates staring unblinking. 

It stared at me, and I stared back. A creature with some kind of long bony silvery sword like snout pointing at me. 

It didn't seem threatening. I allowed my breathing to calm. What the hell was going on?

The more I calmed, the more I took in. 

The monster's big fore flippers gently paddled the night air. Behind its flippers a massive bony dolphin shaped body swayed side to side, sheathed in an ethereal silver cloak. 

It dimly occurred to me, this was the unmistakable skeleton of... of an Ichthyosaur?

I felt foggy and weird, frightened and confused. I didn't have a clue where I was or what was going on. 

The bony dinosaur looked surreal and quite beautiful. 

As I adjusted to the light, I noticed more and more detail. Wires and tubes, a monitor, white lines rising and falling like waves on the blue screen. 

I traced the tubes and wires and to my surprise they went back to me! My body, my arm, my head, my heart. What had happened to me? What was all this? 

I was clearly in a hospital bed. Why though? 

I tried to move my limbs again and this time I managed a few inches. Every part of me felt stiff, but the important bits seemed to work fine. I didn't feel any pain. 

Why was I here, and why was a fossil Ichthyosaur floating next to my bed? What did it want? I was so confused, my head hurt!

The reptile fish shook its head like a snorting horse and swam in a half turn, swishing its huge ghost-like tail around the room. 

It came to rest alongside my bed and nuzzled me under my chin. I couldn't work out at first how it hadn't knocked everything over. It was like a friendly ghost, a playful spirit.

The Ichthyosaur nudged and prised its beak between my back and the mattress. It wanted me out of bed. 

It got all too much for me. I shut my eyes tight and hoped it would all just go away.

I felt safeish again, and had a moment to think this through. 

It was like I'd woken from a dream within a dream. I was dreaming and awake at the same time. So if it was a dream, even a freaky one, it was safe, right? Dreams within dreams can't hurt you can they? 

It must therefore be safe to look around, anyway. I opened my eyes a crack. 

Shit! It was still there, the huge skeletal fossil fish. It's massive eyeball, surrounded by a ring of bones, was staring at me, right at me.