The children were walking through the second tunnel, which was notably longer and quieter than the train cars usually were. Buddy's good nose picked up something much different in this hallway than the last hallway. "What's all this now? I'm feeling weird."

The conductor twirled his baton once. "That's the fresh scent of pheromones, Buddy. We're pumping this car full of every single kind we could find."

"Could you SPEAK UP?" Don yelled in unbridled fury. "I'm getting kind of TIRED of having to STRAIN my ears to MAKE out whatever the FFFUCK you're saying."

Shiny toppled into her brother's arms. "Don, I feel so sorry you have to deal with this problem. I understand how you feel, and I want to do everything in my power to make you and everyone else feel safe and loved." She petted Don's head and cried for him.

Tiny was struggling to keep up with her family as saliva dripped from her mouth, mucus dripped from her nose, viscous tears dripped from her eyes, and sweat drenched her frail body. "Why ish thith habbening?" she struggled to say.

By the time they made it out of the chemical cave, Buddy had resolved to live and die for the good of the colony. Luckily, these feelings were quickly dispelled when the conductor flicked a switch on the wall that turned off the sprinklers and opened the elevator-like door. "You've seen the pheromones, now get ready for the hormones."

A line of five curtained doors were spread out in front of the tweens. "Alright, contestants. Behind four of these doors is the time of your life. But one of them contains the Zonk. Which door do you choose?"

Tiny pulled the last of the fluids out of her nose. "Are you serious? Do we actually have to do this?"

The Conductor gave her the business look. "I don't think you understand just how important this is, Tiny. It is tradition."

Don sighed. "We might as well get it over with." He took it upon himself to take the first step. He waited in front of his curtain for his siblings to choose.

After they had all decided on their destinies, the Conductor flicked back the leftover curtain. "You could've won the noose 'n' knife! Congratulations on dodging that Zonk," he smiled emptily. "Now go enjoy your prize."

Buddy pushed his hands through the silken drapes and entered the moist room. A high-pitched electronic whir filled the area, and every step Buddy took created a loud splash in whatever lukewarm liquid covered the floor. "This place looks like it hasn't been used for a long time," Buddy hypothesized.

He crept forward until his head bumped into a metal pipe, echoing off the tinny metal walls of the room, giving him some perspective on its size. "This must be a pretty wide car," he deduced. "How can this even fit on the train?"

As the orange theropod felt along the wall for some sort of clue, he could feel his pubic urges creeping down his shaft. "Dang it. With this shit again," he grumbled, starting to do a few more things to the wall.

As he subconsciously humped, he felt a small protrusion from the wall. "What was that?" Buddy thought for a moment before replacing that thought with "Man, that felt good on my schlong." He grazed the protrusion again with his hand and realized it was switch. He flicked it in hopes it would turn on the lights. It didn't.

A loud feedback noise screeched from the ceiling. "Hello, hello! Welcome to the sideshow!" a voice coughed from the speaker. "You must be here on the Grand Conductor Special Course. Please make yourself comfortable in the deluxe seating area." A faded yellow spotlight shone down from above, illuminating a single rotting tree stump.

Buddy reluctantly sat down on the decayed wood, and then sat next to it instead. "Now sit back and enjoy. I hope you brought an umbrella, because you might get a little wet," the voice said. Buddy had little time to process how similar the voice was to the Conductor's before an out-of-tune piano blared his concerns away.

The spotlight moved shakily from Buddy's chair to the stage. A lone figure stood dead center, completely shrouded by a green cape. A foghorn sounded as an indication to begin the show. A strobe light lit up behind the stranger, and they whisked their cape in away in one fell swoop. As they began to rotate rapidly on a string, spraying piss in all directions, Buddy quickly managed to distinguish who it was.

"Mom…?" Buddy stammered just moments before his peepers were hosed down with The Piss. "Mom, what the fuck are you doing here?" he screamed through slight eye pain and severe emotional pain.

"Oh, hello, son of mine!" Mrs. Pteranodon called out as she continued spinning. "So nice to see you here. How have you been?"

Buddy rubbed the urine from his face, "Mom, what is this? How did you get here? How long has this been going on? Is this why you haven't been coming home?"

Mom aimed her lemonade stream back at Buddy's face. "Are you here alone or are your brother and sisters here? Sometimes I miss you guys."

"Yeah, they're in the other room, but why are you dodging my questions?" Buddy gagged. Mom excitedly undid her straps and whirlpooled to the floor in a helix pattern. She gave her adopted son a wet hug and pulled him along through the now-illuminated exit.

The others were there, waiting uncomfortably. The Conductor was leading them in a group discussion on their experiences. "So, kids," he conducted, "describe what happened."

Tiny sparked the topic, "I was given two ropes and a triceratops walked up to me and started screaming 'whip me, whip me,' endlessly. He didn't stop until I gave him the whips and told him to whip himself, and then he said 'Thank you, master,' and then I left."

Shiny continued, visibly uneasy. "I went in there and it was like, an empty classroom, and I heard someone whisper the word 'intercourse' once, but I don't know who it was or what I was supposed to do with that information."

"And how did that make you feel, Shiny?" the Conductor wrote this down and showed it to Shiny.

"Well-" Shiny started.

"WITH THE PAPER," the Conductor reiterated. Shiny groaned and wrote the answer.

Don shrugged. "Nothing that bad happened in mine. Someone in a gimp mask told me to lay down on the slab of meat in front of me and wait for further instruction. Then the birds fell from the ceiling, some of them dead and some alive. The living birds ate the dead birds and the dead birds got eaten by the living birds. Then three more masked dinos came out and started cutting the meat around me until it was perfectly shaped like me. They told me to sit tight while they put the meat on the grill and chanted my name. Then one of them whipped out the hummus and started rubbing it on their crotch and I was like 'Oh I know where this is going.' But then my watch was beeping and I knew I had to go take my afternoon multivitamin so I had to leave before anything cool could happen."

His sisters didn't want to look at him right now. The Conductor stood up and motioned to the door. "Well done. Shall we move on?"

But Tiny said, "Wait, there's one more… Mom?"

"Hi, kids!" Mrs. Pteranodon smiled, one hand on Buddy, who clearly needed a moment.

The other hand…


The father's eyes slowly opened and were immediately shielded by his wing. It was way too bright. It was much brighter than his future was ever going to be. The rickety train tracks did not do his full-body migraine any favors. A thoughtful Troodon wiped his forehead with a wet cloth and softly asked, "How are you feeling, Mr. Pteranodon?"

Dad moaned in pain. "For the suck of fuck, get these ice cubes off of my head and stop screaming at me." He rolled off the makeshift bed. "UUUUUUGH," he moaned once more, "Why am I on the Dinosaur Train? Why does it hurt? What happened? I'm so fucking hungry but I still need to throw up."

One of the Troodons sympathetically handed him a bucket but was thanked only with horrid dry heaves. "Well, sir," the worker said, "You blacked out after Laura rejected you and you tried to vent your frustration by screaming into the smokestack. You must have lost consciousness from the fumes because you fell off the train. You're super lucky she still had it in her to save you. To put it lightly, Mr. Pteranodon, well, you were being kind of a major-league douche-stack. We had to confiscate the rest of your vodka for the safety of the passengers."

Dad covered his ruined mug in shame. "Aw, shucks," he burped. "I am so sorry. What are the damages?"

"$10,000 in property damage and immeasurable amounts in disturbing the peace. But we've taken care of it."

"Mmmuuuh," Dad bawled. "Why aren't you making me pay for this? It's my fault."

The worker nudged another one, not wanting to be the one to deal with this. The other one sat down, legs crossed. "We see the kind of shit you have to put up with." The other Troodons all nodded together at the same time. "We figured there might be some deeper stuff happening when we saw all those bottles."

"You didn't even buy the good jazz!" another employee interrupted from the back of the room.

"We just wanted to let you know that we're here to talk if you need us. But make it snappy, we've all gotta get back to work in like 20 minutes."

"Time Tunnel!" Laura announced.

"15 minutes."

Dad sat up - the most difficult thing he'd ever done - and looked around the room. "I'm a travesty," he said.

"We're well aware of that," said a more frustrated Troodon. "We need specifics, damn it. This isn't a charity. We need the juicy bits for my article in the Troobune (Troodon Tribune)."

Mr. Pteranodon rubbed his eyes for the third time. "Well, guys, I've gotta come clean. It's something I haven't told anybody, and it's something I've been struggling with for the past six months. My life is misery."

"Cut the shit, cumsack, we're running out of time and nobody's steering the train."

"The real truth... is that my…" he sniffled and held back tears. "My clock isn't ticking."

"...What?"

"You know... my guitar is out-of-tune."

"...What?"

"You know… my champagne is flat."

"What are trying to SAY?"

"You know… my rocket won't launch."

"Just give us a straight answer!"

Mr. Pteranodon stood up. "I'm talking about my phallus, dick, prick, member, tool, organ, cock, wang, knob, chopper, plonker, dong, winkle, joystick, pecker, John Thomas, weenie, whang, tadger, schlong, pizzle, willie, willy, tockley. I. CANNOT. GET. ERECT."

The workers all reacted differently. One fell to the floor laughing uncontrollably. One insulted him and made fun of his condition. One sidled away as they had the same problem. One sidled away as they were getting horny just thinking about it. And a group of them stormed off, grumbling about how they'd wasted so much time. None remained.

Mr. Pteranodon curled up in the fetal position. It had gone a little better than he had expected it to.