Writing for Fun
May 2015
The First Time - Jan Osborne
I was escorted to the waiting police car perched atop the cliffs at Dover and eased into the back seat next to a police escort. No word was spoken. I had already been cautioned and was under arrest for the murder of my twin brother. His body was just out of my line of vision in a trench where excavations had been abruptly brought to a halt by my explosive outburst of religious rage and, I had to admit, jealousy.
Still in shock I slumped down in my seat trying to avoid the accusing glares of the huddled group of archaeologists: the dishevelled and dust covered students brought in to help on the dig, who a few hours ago had been laughing and joking with us both. Police were still investigating the crime scene and taking notes and photographs. I closed my eyes to shut out the unbearable sights and sounds.
This was the first time I had had the chance to take stock of my situation and the horror of it all hit me like a physical wave. I put my head in my hands, and burst into tears. Salt water ran over my bruised and battered fingers exacerbating the pain I was now beginning to feel as shock and numbness began to wear off. Exhausted after my outburst I wiped my shaking hands across my reddened eyes and slowly the realisation of the seriousness of my situation hit me. I had to think.
I looked back over the events that had led to this dreadful day. Ben and I were identical twins who had been inseparable as children but split apart when our parents divorced when we were eight. Mother had gone to Norwich taking me with her. There she had met and married a Creationist. Naturally I had absorbed the doctrines of this religion and believed in divine creation and not evolution. The bible, to me, was the spoken word of God and was meant to be taken literally: God had created the world, then plants, then animals and finally humans.
Ben, however, had to stay with his father in Kent. Although we visited each other as children, eventually university and careers meant we saw each other less and less frequently, but the bond between us was still stronger than our different lifestyles and beliefs . . . or so I thought!
We both shared a love of history. Ben had become a very successful palaeontologist and of course believed in evolution. I, on the other hand, had become an historian specializing in the Tudor period.
Then it happened. A few weeks ago fierce storms and torrential gales had lashed the south coast causing a large area of the white cliffs at Dover to collapse exposing huge deposits of dinosaur skeletons from the Cretaceous period. Ben had been asked to lead a team to excavate this extraordinary fossil cache.
Two months later, at his invitation, I was on my knees, a few yards away from Ben at the dig happily scraping and brushing away the chalky sediment from my very own velociraptor which was a vicious, turkey sized dinosaur that flew on leathery, bat like wings some sixty five million years ago.
It was a hot summer's day and we had both discarded our white T-shirts. In just blue jeans and boots we caused a laugh amongst the students as they really could not tell us apart and I was frequently mistaken for Ben and asked for my professional opinion on their work. I must admit I got a kick from being thought of as their team leader instead of Ben.
However, Ben was getting more and more excited as the well preserved fossil remains he was working on made him believe they would turn out to be a new species of velociraptor. Suddenly he sat back on his heels, his trowel dangling uselessly from limp fingers. 'Harry will you come and look at this. If what I am seeing is true then this is the discovery of a lifetime. It will rock the world and I will go down in posterity as the man who changed history.'
What I saw blew my mind. Carefully exposed by Ben was what looked like a fossilised arrow head buried deep within the chest cavity. No, this could not possibly be. Man could not have walked with dinosaurs . . . surely? The rationalist in me cried, 'Yes!' but the creationist in me cried out in disbelief. Red rage then overtook me. This discovery would make a laughing stock of me and my religion and a hero of my brother.
I had to stop this. I picked up a rock and lashed out at the fossil remains trying to destroy the evidence. Ben cried out in horror and threw himself at me forcing me to drop the weapon and somehow twisting us to bring us both crashing to the ground with him underneath me. He had fallen hard onto his back with my weight on him. His head struck the rock I had dropped with a sickening thud. I felt his body go limp and still. I jumped to my feet to be confronted with a sea of horrified faces. I could not move. I slumped to the ground beside my brother and clasped his lifeless hand in mine. It was in this position that the police found me.
Back in the car self preservation made me conceive of a plan that might save me from a long prison sentence and give me a better life and career in the future. It is amazing that when your life is in jeopardy, sometimes religious zealotry can take a back seat.
When questioned in the police station I, Ben Mason, senior archaeologist of the Dover dig confessed to accidently killing my beloved brother whilst defending the archaeological find of the century.
