Warning! Do Not Read In Bed

Passage One

An interesting incident happened recently, amusing for me not for the participants. It was the deaths of the dinosaurs whose fossilised footprints are now on display in the Natural History Museum in a place that is now called London. I was responsible for their demise, a sad occasion yet necessary for me to triumph in my important objective.

My hilarity was created by the initial interpretation of the palaeoecologist; they concluded that the dinosaur whose footprints they had found had been: Walking on hocks the size of woks. Thinner than a giraffe being numerous kilograms heavier, with a strange stride pattern crossed between an ostrich and a horse.  The palaeoecologist's imagination was not their greatest asset. It took a lot of flitting about on my part to reveal the facts. Two dinosaurs had been walking side by side. Just their inner hooves had been fossilised. I had surreptitiously arranged for the dinosaurs to be engulfed by a tsunami.  

After this excitement I needed a quiet relaxing sabbatical avoiding my oppressor. I ended up in my Caribbean Sea crustacean relaxing. I didn't know my oppressor, The Fiend, was so close: like a leopard in long grass lurking, a sparrow-hawk hovering, an alligator poised in muddy shallow water.

PASSAGE TWO

Spirits overwrought

Were making night do penance for a day

Spent in a round of idleness.

WORDSWORTH

My being began a long-time before that incident. Billions of years from now before oxygen existed on earth. Even before methanogen, a single celled organism, was farting methane as a by-product of metabolism. No one to say:

'I wasn't silent but deadly, I was nearly a big bang.' 

Oxygen arrived five billion years later, the time scale seemingly comparable to the wait for a kettle to boil in the Artic, when you have been there a million years, trust me I have, watching a kettle is like being engrossed in a dramatic episode of Keeping Up With The Kardashians. A little bit of similar fabrication in the dull Artic would be extremely beneficial. Actually it was the introduction of oxygen to earth when my adventures start. Up to that point my life had been: languid, listless, faint, flagging, inert, relaxed, slack, spiritless - spiritless! Not spiritless because that is what I am; a spirit. Anyway it will suffice as a simple explanation.

Let me expand.

My life-force is survival, my survival and that of my contemporaries. I am élan vital. Not as prissy as a sylph or an ariel, or as butch as a jinn and nix. I am embarrassed to repeat my supporters' description of me as the magnanimous animus. Let me confirm Higgs's field and boson do exist, and when matter and anti-matter meet again they do destroy each other as explained in the standard model, a collection of theories that represents the behaviour of fundamental particles. Which is, I can confirm, correct. It seems, surprisingly, particle physicists have doubts, although you would not think that if you have seen them in a pub quiz; needing in this instance of proving the existence of Higgs boson to use a six sigma effect opposed to the lesser, gold standard five sigma effect. A six sigma effect corresponds to one chance in half a billion that the result is a fluke. The chances of winning the Euro lottery main prize is one hundred and sixteen million five hundred and thirty one thousand eight hundred.  So as I said I can confirm Higgs field and boson do exist, without doubt, one hundred per cent. Now you have this information you have a better chance of winning a pub quiz in Meyrin, Geneva.

As a spirit we occupy an individual quark or lepton. These are elementary subatomic particles. With negotiated agreement with another spirit we can transfer between a quark or lepton using Higgs field. This transfer agreement has made my survival difficult since the dinosaur incident. My omnipresent oppressor, The Fiend, has been determined to ensure my demise.

I learnt through the years the most boring bodies for me to occupy are the inanimate objects. Bedroom doors swing and slide. Wardrobes collect clothes and dust. Dressing-tables collect perfume, after shave, hair brushes, make up, shavers; and dust. Bed side tables collect lamps, alarm radios, false teeth; and dust. Beds collect pillows, sheets, plus a varied number of humans alive and dead; and dust. Apart from the living humans not much happens for me there. Plants, trees, mosses, and lichens grow propagate then die. Tediously they all stay in the same place. Again not much happens there. Most of these objects are occupied by mundane, stay at home spirits, happy to live till their objects die. Then move to where their hierarchy tells them to go. That is how The Fiend maintains power.

My desire is to embrace change. My supporters say this makes me charismatic, a brilliant leader to follow.

   The Fiend pounced.

End of passage two.

NOTES FROM PETE

Hi. Thanks for reading so far.

My intention is to convert this short story into a film script. I need your help to identify film snippets, approximately 30 seconds in length, to be edited into a 90 minute video as visualization to this narrated story.

Your snippet advice may be specific to the time and place within the film or just the title of the social media, television drama and documentary, cinema film, and cartoon your snippet is in. For example to visualize the opening two paragraphs of Passage One a film snippet of two dinosaurs walking side by side from the BBC's documentary: Walking with Dinosaurs, or Jurassic Park would be excellent.

It would also be brilliant if you voted and added 'Warning' to your read list.

I will be posting again in five days time.

Cheers

Pete