I’m not usually the kind of guy who gets interrogated by the mob, or by dinosaurs, actually. That day, though, I found myself in a smoky speakeasy, surrounded by giant lizards in pinstripe suits and fedoras who all talked like Al Capone.

“Who’s da fink?” a skinny reptile with a long, pointed beak asked, a cigarette somehow suspended at the corner of its long mouth.

“Found him skulking out back,” a three-horned bruiser with a serious overbite and a distinctive blue suit said. Sure enough, that was the one that grabbed me. I was tied to an oversized dart board, my feet only barely scraping the floor. “Bet he’s with Ma’s crew.”

“Yeah, I sees it,” an enormous thing with a too-long neck said, peering down from above the tops of the hanging lamps. “He’s got them wrists above his ankles and that nose between his eyes. An’ where’s his tail? A real weirdo.”

“Shut it, Brick,” another, nearly identical long-necked goon said, elbowing the first. “Ma’s crew ‘ent like this twig. He’s more like one-a them Skydropper Boys.”

“His skin’s too dark, and his hair ain’t nearly dumb enough,” the beaked reptile cut in.

“It ain’t slicked back like the greasles across the roarin market, neither,” the horned one said.

It wasn’t in my nature to interrupt arguing lizards who were thrice my size. Something about being a pisces meant I didn’t cut in when I was liable to get cut up. Or maybe capricorn? Aries? I dunno, but I wasn’t gonna correct these thugs on what I was or wasn’t.

“Will you idiots can the twit!?” someone bellowed from down the bar. That’s right, these morons were shaking me down out in the open, four steps from the bartender and ten from the live music. “I can’t hear the Madame Cadenza over your spittle-swappin.”

The band on stage stopped short, and everybody else in the room suddenly got really quiet. I couldn’t see past the edge of the bright lamp swinging in my face, and even if I could, I think those two tall guys would’ve blocked my view of the guy who’d just cut in. The three-horned big guy, probably a triceratops or something, gritted his teeth and turned slowly, vanishing into the shadow just outside my limited field of view. The beaked one took a long drag on his cigarette and turned away, and the twin sauropods shifted uncomfortably.

“Rolf! Good to see you back on your feet you old so-n-so,” the trike’s voice was performatively friendly. “You know that little chat we had about not interrupting honest business?”

“Yeah, yeah, but you big lugs are always making-”

“Bah-bah-bah-bah, not your turn. Remember what I said I’d do next time it happened?” There was an uncomfortable pause. “Now it’s yer turn, Rolf.”

“Y-you said something about showing me yer phonograph?”

“Typewriter,” the big guy grunted. The three mobsters around me mouthed the word at the same instant their compatriot said it. This wasn’t the first time he’d apparently shown someone his typewriter. “My Cretaceous Typewriter, Rolf.”

“R-right.” The previously bold voice sounded small. It would’ve been lost in the noise of the underground bar before, but in the dead silence it was all I heard.

“C’mon, Rolfie boy,” the trike said, the smile crossing his face could be heard in his shifting tone. “I think you’ll get a kick out of it. Well… one of us will.”

“No-no, wait, no!” The band began to play again, and patrons returned to hushed conversations as the sound of a struggle came, muffled, from past the trio standing around me. There was a distinct honking sound mixed in among the grunts and shouts of the two. One of the tall mobsters around me shifted as a bar stool was knocked into the ring, likely kicked by the flailing Rolf as he was dragged away. His shouted pleas fell on a room full of deaf ears, and it wasn’t long before he was apparently dragged outside.

“So what are you?” one of the brachiosaurs, Brick I think, asked, leaning his head into the light. He wore a trilby with a hole in the front of the rim. I had to focus on that innocuous detail to keep my mind off whatever a “cretaceous typewriter” was.

“I’m a liberal arts major,” I replied instinctively. It was a response pre-loaded into my brain from participating in entirely too many ice breakers the week before.

“Oh, military,” the other brachiosaur remarked with a sneer. “Like them cloud-heads up top.”

“What kinda army is liberal arts, then, mister major?” the beaked pterosaur mockingly asked.

“And what side’s it on?” Brick asked.

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I tried to understand any of what was being asked of me, but before I could even string a sentence together, a loud series of bangs came from overhead in quick succession. The music rose to a crescendo with the first shot, the rhythm section going all out, as if that could even remotely cover up the sound of gunshots.

“Full auto,” a new voice remarked. A wide, flat head topped with a tiny bowler hat pushed into the bright ring around where I was bound. That was an… ankylosaurus, I think. He was holding a martini glass entirely full of the strongest smelling gin I’d ever encountered. I have a weird gene that makes juniper berries smell like chloroform to me, and I needed to focus on that and not on the fact that a murder had just occurred one floor above me. As long as I focussed on the fancy glass full of noxious juice, I could ignore– “he really had it in for Rolf this time.”

“It’s been a rough week for him,” the brach that wasn’t Brick said.

“Shovel Street went that bad, huh?” the armored figure took a sip of his foul drink, and I saw his fine tailored suit had been torn in several places by his own spiky plates. 

“Oi, don’t spill no beans in front of the prisoner!” The pterosaur demanded. He lifted a cigarette to his mouth with uncannily human hands and lit it. “Who knows who he’s with.”

“I bet he knows,” the triceratops’s gruff voice came from outside the circle, startling everyone there. “Brick, Brack, out of the way.” The enormously tall goons parted, and the thug stepped into view. His yellow scales and deep blue suit were both spattered in blood, and he was smoking a cigar.

“Careful, Tops, he’s a major,” the pterosaur said, his tone now half-joking, half-warning.

“A liberal arts major,” Brick added.

Tops eyed me for a while, looking me over, as if he hadn’t gotten a good enough gauge for me when he was carrying me like luggage earlier. “That anything like martial arts?”

There were probably a lot of really smart things I could’ve said in that moment. Some clever ones that would’ve resulted in me joining Rolf, some glaringly stupid ones that might’ve ingratiated me to these guys, but instead, I chose to open my mouth and say, “yeah, basically.”

“So you can fight,” Tops said, his grin rolling the cigar between his large, flat teeth. “And what side are you on, Major?”

“Your side,” I said in the best approximation of a confident tone that three weeks of improv classes could provide.

“You’re a Suit?”

Not in those clothes I wasn’t. I’m pretty sure I was wearing a They Might Be Giants tee and jeans. Not a bad look for me, but a very bad look for anybody called a “Suit.”

“Yes.” I lied.

“What were ya doing skulking around our beer flat?” The ankylosaur said, the rank smell of gin on his breath.

“I was… checking the perimeter.” I was pretty sure I’d heard a soldier say that in a movie once. “Clearly it was pretty solid, since Tops here caught me no problem.”

“Hhhhh, likely story,” Tops said, scowling at my casual use of his name. “Why ain’t you dressed like a Suit?”

“Undercover,” I said, a bit too quickly. “I’m… undercover. Didn’t want… Ma’s crew to know, y’know?”

Was that clever? Even now I’m not sure if that was clever or stupid, because after I said it, Tops and the ankylosaur eyed one another strangely.

“This seems like hot stuff,” the pterosaur said. “Maybe we should talk to Big Bos–”

“Shut it, Pippin,” Tops barked, nearly dropping his cigar, but apparently the damage had been done. There was a quiet sound like nails tapping on hard wood rapidly. “Shit,” Tops muttered, as the tapping came to a stop.

“Bruno,” a small, nasaly voice came from the direction I’d somewhat figured out was the bar. “Did you drop some of our definitely legally acquired beer?” 

“No, Siggy, I did not,” a low, slow voice replied.

“Odd,” Siggy’s little reply sounded both forced and practiced. “Then someone else must be spilling hops in our fine establishment.”

“Right here, Sig,” Tops said, clearly annoyed by the routine. The pattering of little feet resumed, and a besuited compsognathus – a little gentleman of a dinosaur – joined the ring. I had to crane my neck to see him, and he had to do the same to see me. He let out a long whistle.

“Lookit that stack of bones,” Siggy said. “You caught this thing out coppin a gander at our blind tiger and didn’t bring him right to Big Boss?”

“He was in a meeting,” Tops said. He’d pulled a kerchief from his suit coat pocket and was dabbing at the blood on his muzzle. “Figured I’d get the important gack outa the way first.”

“Aw, c’mon,” Siggy said, in a tone like he didn’t believe Tops’s excuse but didn’t mind all that much. “Boss’s always got time for you, Tops.” Tops grunted. “Brick, Brack, follow close. Pippin and Kyle, stick back. Got news some wet socks might give us a whistle tonight.” The ankylosaur and the pterosaur split off, and Brack reached forward, lifting me and the dartboard I was tied to off the hook on the wall. Brick reached up to dim the lamp that had been shining so brightly on me.

Once my eyes adjusted to the darkness of the room, I could see the patrons and the band more clearly. Somehow it came as a surprise that every single one of them was a dinosaur. The woman in the sparkling red dress on stage had horrifying spikes jutting from her thumbs. The black-tie-and-tophat-wearing ring of whispering aristocrats had crested heads and gnarled claws. The lone artist sketching in the corner was almost certainly a velociraptor, feathers and all.

Brack adjusted his grip on the dart board, and I was turned to face the bar, where an impossibly massive sauropod head was poking out from the door to the kitchen to take orders. His hands stuck through the order windows to pour drinks. Beside him, another compsognathus with a name plate labeled “Nathan” poured shots and mixed tiny cocktails. I don’t know why it came as such a shock, nor do I know why I only then began to ponder an important question or two.

Where was I?

How the hell did I get here?

An illustration of Tops, the triceratops bruiser. [https://www.deviantart.com/monstergenome/art/Mobster-Triceratops-1164171558]