What do you mean? Of course he could clap his hands.

Ever since that gigantic asteroid collided with the surface of the Earth, nothing had been the same. The whole world had leapt from one state to another in a blink of the eye. A new era dawned upon the few survivors, one they feared, yea, hoped would end soon enough.

Among this handful of survivors was the mighty Tyrannosaurus Rex, who despite his abnormally short arms could only and did only communicate by putting his tiny little palms together repeatedly, with varying frequencies and intensities creating word-like structures that made up its language. Hereinafter, I should translate Rex’s clapping as accurately as I can to modern day English.

“Oh, forlorn am I!” clapped Rex, walking across a barren shoreline. “Be me as solitary a reptile as a serpent caught betwixt tempestuous tides?”

Rex was unhappy, because he was lonely. I am forced to violate the “Show, don’t tell” law in favor of making this as straightforward as can be. Rex hoped for nothing more than a friend, though he could also do with a girlfriend, or a boyfriend. Rex was straight, but he decided some time ago that if he were to find a gay dinosaur he would agree to nonetheless settle down.

One day, while wandering along the outskirts of a crater, a thought occurred to him. Having only ever communicated with claps, this thought, too, manifested in his mind as a series of claps. If he were to communicate these claps in reality, they would sound something like this: clap, clap clap clap clap clap clap; clap clap clap, clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap, clap clap clap clap. Or, in English: “O, thou great abyss, Behemoth! Doth thy enormity be tantamount to that of the Rock who hath hewn thee? Or dost thou dwarf its minuscule form?” This was an interesting question, however as Rex had little to no knowledge in the field, he soon tossed the thought aside as a mystery unsolvable, however intriguing it may have been.

He resumed his constitutional round the crater, till he spotted a beautiful evergreen tree, with large, lovely, lustrous, bulging, illustrious, boisterous, voluptuous, bulstruous leaves, and a small herbivore lying in its shade. Having long been denied the taste of animal flesh, Rex, of course, opted for the nutritional green meal, and made his way towards the—oh, no. Sorry. He slaughtered the herbivore and tore it apart, then began swallowing its guts handful by handful. Oh, dear. That is… that is quite gruesome. Okay.

Yep. He’s still going at it. Good ol’ Rex, uh…

Huh.

Alright. Rex finished his meal at last, and lay down in the light of the sunset, the view of a mountainous valley spread out before him, as if ready to serve his every command. He took his hands off his belly and clapped, “Oh, for shame! A scoundrel am I, a fiend like none other! Scourge I did the soul of a scrawny critter, and snatch I did the breath of life from its nostrils! Pity, how villainous mine disposition be!” He couldn’t finish the next clap-sentence, because he promptly fell asleep, and so I could not translate even what he had begun saying.

The next morning, Rex woke up with a strange feeling. He tried to get up, but he forgot where his feet were. He tried to look around, but he forgot how his eyelids opened. He tried to breathe, but he forgot how the inflow of air felt.

And suddenly, he realized he was gone.

At first, panic set in. Then relief settled in his non-existent heart. Then panic overtook it again, and so these feelings alternated for a while. Rex was very confused.

“By the heavens, can this be but Limbo? ‘Tis the damnation mine own vice hath meriteth!”

These words are perhaps what Rex would’ve wanted to communicate there and then, but his hands were gone as well. Beyond that I am unsure what went on in his little dinosaur mind. Now he is caught in the white mist forevermore.

This is the eternal fate of Rex the Tyrannosaurus, for his egregious acts had upset the Shadow Master and landed him not in Limbo, but in a place known only as ​, where nothing exists, ever will exist or ever has existed. ​ is nothingness. It is the most intense nothingness across all realities, and as such it is the only true nothingness. Rex isn’t merely trapped in ​—he has already become a part of it, and therefore his existence has been reduced to a perfect zero. He is nothingness itself.

Goodbye, Rex.