Landis, Jonathan
JOURNAL ENTRY 02

By the time I checked myself into a hotel, I had forgotten everything in my life except the adultery. My wife Corrine and a man I had never seen before filling my living room with the thick musk of sweat and sebum. Corrine's name lighting up on my cell phone every fifteen minutes does nothing but slightly sharpen the razor edge of my hatred. The thought that she might be suffering is a breeze in the desert, but only that; the heat continues to punish me. To plan my next move beyond the night means further confronting the enormity of what's happened in my life. My only thoughts are to never lay eyes on my wife again and to somehow exist under the weight of this awful pain.

Once in the hotel room, I stare blankly at the wall, breathe slowly, inhale, exhale. When my phone buzzes in my pocket, I know it's Corrine calling, and I rear back and throw it at the wall with all my strength. The battery comes off, but other than that the phone survives. More of my weakness.

I recline against the bedpost and release the tension in my back. The strain chews at my shoulders and neck; I let my neck go limp and reach for the television's remote control. After three or four clicks I realize that the news has seized every station, all broadcasting from the same desert landscape. It isn't until I hear words like "the animal" and "cave" that I remembered the cacophony of suspicion at work and all the news coverage in Nevada. As the recollection streams into my consciousness, the upload is disrupted when the journalist on the screen says that they are about to "replay the dinosaur's speech."

Before the adequate amount of apprehension can set in I'm looking through the eye of a news camera as it jostles and rises over a dense thicket of baffled-looking police officers staring wide-eyed over the barrels of their rifles. In the eye of the crowd a large, carnivorous dinosaur-like creature is rising from under torn gurney restraints. The creature swells on its hind legs, standing some eight feet tall and whipping a tail almost twice as long around its feet. The animal's scaly, reptilian skin is a dull, sandy color that blends with the desert landscape, and its threatening, predatory head cocks sideways on the stalk of its long neck. Long muzzle gleaming with sharp, threatening teeth. Gleaming, fiery eyes staring out from either side of its head.

My heart jumps in my throat when the animal opens its mouth and speaks. It speaks in loud, throaty, and completely comprehensible well-put English. Holding both long arms in the air, humanoid hands with four fingers and opposable thumbs, the creature calls for silence in the crowd and literally delivers a speech.

And there in my hotel room, bogged in the mire of my wife's betrayal and feeling as if the floor has been pulled from underneath me, I start to believe that everything happens for a reason.

The complete insanity of everything on TV gets swallowed by the moment of clarity I experience. Like waking up. Like coming up for air. Like breathing hot, molten lava. Either by fate or just some serendipitous twist of haphazard and natural cruelty, I wake up. Had there not been the thick, viscous taste of betrayal stuck to the roof of my mouth, none of what the creature said would have made any sense to me. As it were, sitting there alone in the hotel room, image of the animal flickering over my slack face, what I heard made more sense than anything I had heard before.

They say love is like a fire; it consumes and purifies. Similarly, hatred is like a tsunami. It swallows and scrambles everything, leaving the world broken and misshapen. No cleansing, just chaos. No purification, just destruction. I had been a fool to overlook my capacity for hatred. Whereas before I had felt only love and contentment, I had now become racked with a fierce hatred and an agonizing pain. My love was doused and extinguished in one instant, but there in that hotel room I could imagine no drain big enough to ever empty the ocean of my hatred. Rather than allow it to flow—to empty into an ocean somewhere, perhaps where I might find peace—I bottled it up and watched the ocean rise.

Lifting my cell phone and clicking the battery back into place, it instantly jingles with voice mail notifications. The woman on the television says that the animal voluntarily joined a team of scientists and is on its way to a research center in Los Angeles. I leave my phone in the hotel room and start driving.