Dragon Match

I was stocking shelves with colorful boxes of cereal when I felt someone tap me on the shoulder. I turned to see a…I don’t-know-what. She was clearly feminine, with a curvy, humanoid figure filling out her fitted black t-shirt and tight jeans, but her head looked reptilian, with a long snout, and she had green scaly skin. She blinked her big black eyes at me. Maybe a kobold? I thought to myself. I’d been reading about Kailanorian races since the very first day the portals opened a decade ago. But I lived in a mostly human city. I’d never seen any lizard people around–until now. But if I had to put money on it, I would guess she was some sort of kobold. “Excuse me, sir,” she said, her voice sounding soft and wispy. “Do you have any more Strawberry Snap Jacks?” Her obsidian eyes glanced at the noticeably empty spot on the shelf where the Snap Jacks usually were. We’d been short shipped the past few weeks. “Sorry, we don’t have any,” I said. “We haven’t received any in a while.” She made an annoyed hissing sound that sent a shiver up my spine. “Poo on a rock in the sun,” she muttered. I held back my smile. She had clearly mastered the English language, but it seemed like some of her cultural slang may have remained. “My son loves them and I haven’t been able to find them anywhere,” she added. “Sorry,” I said. “Maybe check back next week? Our deliveries from that supplier arrive every Wednesday.” She blinked at me again and then bowed her head. “Thank you,” she said. “I’ll do that.” I watched as she pushed her cart down the aisle, her thick green lizard tail poking out the back of her jeans where a hole had been neatly cut in the fabric. Once she rounded the corner, I turned back to my task and grabbed another cereal box. “What are you, some monster loving pervert?” a voice came from behind me. It was the smooth baritone of Zach, the new manager. He was a total nepo hire: the owner’s son. He hadn’t worked a day in his life, but the second he graduated from university with a business degree he landed the spot as manager. Meanwhile, I’d been working the same job since I was sixteen. Apparently, eight years of seniority meant nothing to the big bosses. Zach was also an annoying top-knot-vegan-gym-bro. “Zach,” I said, and gave him a curt nod before returning to my task. “I saw the way you were checking out that dino chick, Dennis,” Zach said. “Some of these monster women have smoking hot bodies, but damn…you won’t catch me cozying up with one of them.” “I wasn’t–” I began to say, but he cut me off. “What do you think she’s doing this far away from one of those monster camps?” Zach asked. The proper term was Kailanorians, not monsters. The name of the world they came from was Kailanoria. But I’d already tried to explain that to Zach and some of my other co-workers, and all it got me was eye rolls. Kailanorians commonly lived outside of the city, in small towns where they felt safer, not camps. “She was just looking for Strawberry Snap Jacks for her kid,” I told Zach. “Didn’t know lizard folk ate sugar cereal,” Zach said. “Unless she found some poor schmuck of a man to do the dirty and knock her up, and now she has some half-breed offspring running around.” I bit my tongue, but only because he was my boss. Zach was probably a self-righteous, misogynist racist before the portals opened and let refugee Kailanorians come to Earth, and now the current situation just amplified all his disgusting world views. But the people who came through the portals were just looking for a better life and a new home after their world had been destroyed by demons. They often lived in small towns that mostly had Kailanorian residents, because people like Zach made it difficult for them to integrate into human society and live in bigger cities. There was no law saying they couldn’t live in the city, but most kept to themselves. If the kobold woman had married a human man and had kids with him, chances were she was one of the few who had moved to the city, but it was actually much more common for human mates to move to the small towns. “Anyway, I didn’t come down here to shoot the shit,” Zach said. “Katie called in sick. I’m going to need you to stay on for the evening shift.” “I’ve been here since seven this morning,” I said. “I can’t stay.” “If you want to keep your job, you’ll stick around,” Zach said. I said nothing, but felt my heart rate rise. “I have a dog, you know,” I said. “I need to get home to feed her.” Zach shrugged. “Call a neighbor. Have them feed your mutt.” “I don’t–” I began, but stopped myself. I was ready to tell him I barely talked to any of the people in my apartment building, let alone knew one of them well enough to give them a key so they could feed my dog, but he’d just make fun of me even more if I told him that. “You’re on the clock until eleven, Dennis,” Zach said and slapped my shoulder. “I can count on you, right?” I didn’t answer. And because I really am a pushover and a poo on a rock in the sun, I ended up staying until eleven. As soon as I punched out, I went running out the door. I lived just down the street, which was convenient since I didn’t get paid enough to afford a car. I barely got paid enough to afford my tiny apartment, so in a way, maybe it was a good thing I got extra shifts forced on me every single week. I ran up the six flights of stairs instead of waiting for the elevator and sprinted down the hall. As soon as I opened my door, my dachshund-mix was jumping around and wagging her tail and thoroughly losing her happy little doggy mind. “Hey Biscuit,” I said, scritching her between the ears as she stood up on my leg, fiercely digging at my black polyester work pants. She had similar colored fur to a golden retriever, but she was a miniature dachshund mixed with a papillon. She had long, flowing fur on her legs and ears and a snout that wasn’t quite as long as a regular wiener dog, but her body still looked long and lean, and her ears were of the floppy variety. She was a small dog, barely fifteen pounds. I scooped her up in my arms and she immediately began licking my neck. “I’m sorry I’m sorry I'm sorry,” I told her as I walked over to the kitchen counter. “Is your belly hungry? Do you want some yum yums?” I was aware that I turned into a gibbering idiot around my dog, but I also didn’t really care, especially since it was in the privacy of my own home. This little ball of fur was the thing that got me through the loss of both my parents in a car accident two years before. She had been my parents' dog, so naturally I adopted her after they were gone. I wouldn’t have purposely got a dog in my current financial state and living arrangements, but I was grateful to have her. If it wasn’t for her giving me kisses on my nose every morning, eager for her breakfast, I may have just stayed in bed forever, slowly wasting away until I died, alone. But my doggo needed food and treatsies, so I had to get my ass out of bed and go to work so we had a roof over our heads and food on the table. Or in her dog dish, in her case. Or one of her many feeder mazes. My mom had a thing for fun feeding dishes and interactive mealtime toys, and Biscuit seemed to prefer to eat from them rather than a plain old dog dish, because apparently, she craved a bit of challenge in her life. And she was a spoiled princess pooch, so she got whatever made her happy. I took out one of the easier options, a little pink dish in the shape of a flower with different dips and grooves to scatter her food in, and quickly distributed her kibble. I popped a single-serve lasagna in the microwave for myself, and by the time my meal was ready, Biscuit was done eating her dinner. “You’re pretty good at that one, eh?” I said, picking up her empty dish and putting it in the sink. “We’ll do a more exciting one tomorrow, I promise.” We walked over to my futon together and I helped her up to sit beside me, so I had someone to share my lasagna with. Biscuit never turned down cheese. Or pasta. Or ground beef. Or any human food, come to think of it. But I had to be careful, because she’d become a little porker if I fed her as much as she wanted, especially when I got stuck working extra shifts and didn’t have the time or energy to take her for walks every day. Sometimes, during dinner, I would listen to an audiobook or a short and cozy ASMR story on UToob, but I felt too exhausted to set anything up. I was about to scoop a big bite of pasta into my mouth when my phone pinged with a notification. I paused, glancing at my phone where I had discarded it on the coffee table. The cracked screen lit up as it pinged with another notification. “That’s weird, eh?” I said to Biscuit. I had no friends. The few friends I used to have just kind of drifted away after high school ended, and it was nearly impossible to make friends as an adult. At least for me. I didn’t really click with any of my co-workers, and most of them had their own circles of friends outside of work. My phone almost never dared to utter a single noise. Half the time I wondered why I even bothered owning one. And now it had pinged twice during my late-night dinner. I finished up and then picked up my phone. There were two notifications from– “Holy shit!” I said, and then immediately apologized to Biscuit and her sensitive floppy puppy ears.