The Fleshy Book

The Land Before Time

The Land Before Time

I was just 13 when the "event" happened. I was over at my grandmother's house as usual---we went there every Friday. But this visit was extra special: It was my birthday. Me and my family always went to my grandma's house on my birthday. When we got there, she had strung colorful papers all throughout her porch. Luckily, none of my friends lived on that side of town. I walked up the stair and my grandma greeted me with a hug. 

"Happy Birthday, my Sugarpop!" She said in a cheerful, melodramatic tone of voice people of her age tend to have. She stopped hugging me and my dad and mother followed us into the her house.

It was worse on the inside---my grandmother outdone herself this year. She had removed all of her tacky nicknacks from the shelves and replaced them with pictures of creepy birthday animals saying random things. She had put up a series of banners and a whole bunch of balloons on the walls. I noticed there were a couple of presents laying on the couch. I sighed in depression. I haven't been feeling really happy this past year. Not since my grandpa died. After his death, I felt like my whole being was torn and burned from existence. I stopped hanging around with my friends and my family members all together. Almost every night, I would cry myself to sleep, thinking about my grandpa.

After my grandma had brought out a circular cake, that was when I noticed something strange. The dinosaurs that the cake was decorated with seemed to be dull in color, and they seemed to be... sad. Weird. My father lit the candles on the cake with his silver lighter that he always carried around with him. I was sitting on the couch when they brought the cake in front of me. They started singing 'Happy Birthday". When I blew out the 13 candles, a horrible stench hit me like a brick wall. The cake smelled like a rotting animal corpse that has been dunked in shit and left in the sun.

I reacted and smacked the cake out my grandma's hand. It flew and splattered on the wall beside me.

"What is the matter with you?!" my mom yelled.

"What's with the cake?! I think grandma put a dead dog in there!" I responded.

"I would never do such a thing! It was a simple vanilla icecream cake! I thought it was your favorite."

My grandmother said with a hint of sadness in her voice. I walked over and checked on the now destroyed cake. She was telling the truth---on close inspection, it had a couple of layers of icecream and vanilla cake.

"I'm sorry... I thought---"

"Oh, it's alright Sugarpop. We will buy a new cake after the party."

My grandma handed me one of the two presents that were laying on the couch beside me. I opened it. It was a Blueray movie, "The Land Before Time". Even though I liked dinosaurs, I thought this movie was too childish for me. "Uh... Thanks, grandma." Grandma handed me another B-Day present. This time it was a brand new pair of Nike shoes.

After the party had ended, I asked my parents if I could spend the night over at grandma's house. They said yes. After going home and getting the stuff that I needed, I brought the Land Before Time movie with me back to grandma's house in case I got bored or something. Several hours later, I was playing my Xbox on my grandma's Flatscreen TV. I got bored really quickly, so I slipped the Land Before Time into the Blueray player.

I pushed play and something strange happened, it started playing on the part where Littlefoot's mother dies. Littlefoot was immensely saddened by his mother's passing. He walked over to the now barren forest. Neither Ducky, Spike, nor Petrie were anywhere to be seen. Littlefoot was mumbling something over and over again. It sounded like he was saying, "they are coming, they are coming," in a very depressing tone. He walked to a small pond and dunked his head into the water. Several seconds pass. He still hasn't brought his head up from the water.

After 2 minutes pass. His body started thrash about, like Littlefoot was being drowned in the pond. He stopped thrashing and fell side-first on the ground---his head still in the water. "W-what the hell was that?" I couldn't believe what I had just seen. Did Littlefoot kill himself? No---that couldn't happen. Was this one of those hacked movies? But it was brand new. All the stress I've been under was making me see things. Yeah, that was it. The movie started to glitch and skip, like the DVD was dirty or something. I took out the DVD and washed it under some water, and dried it out with my shirt, and put it back into the Blueray player. 

Same thing happened as before: it started playing on a random part of the movie. This time, Littlefoot, 

Ducky, Spike, Petrie, Littlefoot's grandpa, and Sarah were running away from something out in the desert. I couldn't tell what it was. They all had faces of immense horror as a huge shadow was forming over the land. While they were running, Littlefoot's grandpa tripped and fell. He landed with a large 'crack' and he didn't move at all. The gang stopped to look at the fallen elder. They now had scowling faces.

"Let's leave the old fool behind," Sarah suggested. "He's just dead weight."

Everyone nodded with agreement, which surprised me. Everybody knows that the Land Before Time movies were about friendship and helping others. The gang started running again. After few minutes, they finally made it to the mountains. Right as they got into the mountains, a massive meteor struck the exact location where Littlefoot's grandpa had fallen.

There was a large explosion. It was so bright that I had to cover my eyes. After a few moments, the blinding lights died down. The land was nothing but burnt bodies and forests. The sun was blocked out. Ash was now falling like snow. The scene cut to an area of fallen trees. The dinosaur gang slowly pushed the trees off of them. They checked each other to see if anyone was hurt. They were all right. The scene slowly faded out into a black screen. I waited a few moments to see if it would fade back in.

Nothing happened. I got angry and slammed the Blueray player with my fist, and a strange noise came from it. I looked to see if the screen had changed---it was still black, but it appeared to have some sort of writing. I couldn't read what it said, due to the fact that the words were way too fuzzy. All of a sudden, they screen cut to a scene where it showed the gang walking through the now burnt forest. Ash was still falling. Everyone in the gang had faces that were now realistically depressing. They looked like they could just fall down and give up right there, but they just kept on walking through the ash. Somehow, this reminded me of myself.

The next scene showed the gang stumbling upon a giant Long-neck dinosaur corpse. I could already tell that it was the corpse of Littlefoot's mother. The gang looked upon the corpse for a very long time, then Spike walked up to the corpse and started taking huge bites off of it. I could hear all the bones and tendons crunching in his mouth. I covered my mouth in disgust as I noticed that Spike's body was getting more and more decayed as he continued to eat the corpse of Littlefoot's mother. One by one, each one of the dinosaur gang walked up and started tearing large chunks of meat from the Long-neck corpse. Their bodies becoming decomposed to the point where they were nothing but a pile of rotting organs and bones.

After completely eating the Long-neck corpse, Ducky had spotted a group of Sharp-teeth's struggling to cross the land. The scene suddenly showed Ducky attacking and biting one of the Sharp-teeth. It wailed in pain as it toppled over. The camera panned over to the rest of the gang attacking and biting the rest of the Sharp-teeth. Each one of them toppled over, screamed in agony, and died. I was now covering my mouth in disgust. I was dreaming. This couldn't be real. Instead of just shutting off the TV like any normal person would, I kept watching. Now instead of eating the dead bodies of the Tyrannosaurs---like they did to the corpse of Littlefoot's mother, they just stared at them. Suddenly, they started getting up, making low gurgling noise. Each one of the Tyrannosaurs were now puking up large portions of blood and internal organs.

They started attacking each and every dinosaur they found. Each one of them dying, and rising once again---the process continues. When everyone was a rotting corpse, they all formed a massive group in the middle of the desert. An extremely decomposed Littlefoot walked out of the group and faced the screen, looking directly at me with those cold, dead eyes. I was scared shitless now. How can a children's movie be this fucked up?

The undead Littlefoot started speaking in a blood-choked voice, "Death...comes to those who seek it." With that, the movie stopped playing and the Main Menu appeared. It was as though none of that really happened. I thought about what Littlefoot said... And I've been happy since.