Please Don't Feed the Dragons

“Are you now suffering, or have you recently suffered, from anal bleeding? Skin lesions? Wild, uncontrollable flatulence that opens portals into the necrodimension? If any of these are true, and you have ever been spit on by a Sulphurilac at the Chicago Dragon Exhibit, please call O-W-M Y-B-U T-H-O-L, that’s 1 696 928 - 8465. Again, that’s 1 696 928 - 8465. You may be entitled to compensation.”

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“Well. But, Sir, the dragons are too big and too dangerous,” said a man in a tuxedo that looked like it had come straight from the Astor Club. “Humans can’t hope to control them, much less coexist. Harmony with nature, pfft. You can’t explain harmony to Ebola, forget dragons.”

The man took a drink from his coffee mug and put it down. “We’re… you know, flammable, and tasty, well, I know I am,” he said, giving the audience a wink to much clapping and laughter.

“Gawd will help us,” said the other weirdo.

“How. Shrink them? Is there even a God?”

“If you want to believe there’s a Gawd, you will find Him already in your heart,” said the curly-haired man with a half-grin that was indecipherably half-concern or full condescension.

“I don’t know, but I know there are enormous dragons out there very rudely stomping people’s faces that didn’t ask them to, and God doesn’t seem to be concerned enough to show up.”

Multitudinous clappature.

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“Dragonlicensure, the quickest and safest path to owning your very own dragon, now only 238 million dollars, made in easy payments over seven human lifetimes. Go to dravidia.com now to apply for a semi-free consultation, panel interview, preparation for generational background checks, DNA submission, retinal scraping, and oaths and flailings. Applicants responsible for dismemberment, development of any unwanted abilities or limbs, revenge fiction, acute bilateral ischemia, eruptions from the chest or abdomen, sudden unexplained evolution–.”

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“¡No eres mi mamá!” [You’re not my mother.] Throws a vase.

Unrealistically dodges the vase. “Claro que no, querida. El dragón es tu verdadera madre. ¡Siento haberte dicho!” [Of course not, dear. The dragon is your real mother. I’m sorry I never told you!]

“Te odio.” [I hate you.]

“¿Por qué María?” [What is going on, Maria?]

“Cállate, Roco, eres un inútil. No deberías haber tenido sexo con el dragón.” [Shut up, Roco, you’re useless. You shouldn’t have had sex with that dragon.]

Dum dum dum, roll in dramatic music. “La próxima vez: Mi Madre es un D-r-r-r-r-ragón—”

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“Dragons.”

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“Dragons!”

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“DRAGONS!!!”

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“And now for a word from popular children’s book writer and sex therapist, R. G. G. Tamrin.” Tamrin wore an ivy cap and sat in a little motorized wheelchair in front of a black background. He swigged a glass of Johnny Firewalker and said with heavy breath from behind large pilot sunglasses, “I freakin’ hate dragons.”

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Two stood and talked, taking turns at a microphone. Oh, that looks like the zoo, I thought. I recognized one of the exhibit signs.

“Beautiful creature,” said the one who looked like a reporter.

“Beautiful, yes, but remember, very old by now, and this one is a type we call a Slogbragh, known to sudden outbursts, as well as narcolepsy, and it is in the class we like to call Mucus Breathers. So, if you don’t mind, I’ll have you stand back.”

“Ok.” The reporter took a tiny step, but not wanting to get out of the shot, looked back at the camera nervously. “Now, Mister McQuinn. As you know, it is one of the most difficult and inaccessible things to get a dragon license and own a dragon-”

The interviewee was a man in his thirties, but with shockingly white hair and dressed in wildly colored clothing. Though ridiculous, the coat he wore was still a lab coat. He was carrying a face shield with a bucket of dead pigeons. Altogether, he looked the part of a dragon keeper,

He interrupted the reporter. “I agree, Right-wingers say they hate that. But what have they done about income disparity except serve their wealthy donors at the expense of voters, and then just turn around and lie about it?”

“I–”

“Leftists are even more foolish. They just run blanket opposition for vote bait. They want even more restrictions. It doesn’t address the real problem, though, of people who let their dragons grow too large, and either die by them or worse. So, it’s still true that not everyone can or should have a dragon. And the people making the laws, or paying for them to be made, are the worst offenders, intentionally. It never changes.”

“Let their… dragons… grow?” she said.

“Yeah. Well, I mean, not everyone can handle the responsibility. Something most people who don’t own one, or haven’t been around them enough, often forget is that dragons, well, they grow, and they keep growing.”

“I mean, sir, everything grows. Do you have a problem with non-dragon owning people?” she said.

“No,” he replied, now realizing she was stupid. “Listen…”

“Do you think it’s their fault they don’t own dragons or something?”

“Eh,” he stammered. He was about to hand the Mucus Breather its lunch but stopped, understandably.

“Don’t you think it’s kind of classist to think that just because some people don’t own dragons like you, they’re mentally deficient and can’t understand complex responsibilities?”

“Now, what? I didn’t say that. What kind of interview is this?” He clearly knew what kind of interview it was.

“I’m sorry. Go on, you were saying?”

He calmed himself and put his hands up. “Centuries ago, dragons were all wild, and they had to be fought off, because once a creature gets too big, it can’t feed properly, and it became the duty of those in my order–eh, my family, to dispatch them. That was the past, obviously, and since then we’ve had time to think about the problem.”

“I’m sorry, which problem?” She said. I began to wonder if she got her job the same way the keeper obviously had.

“Well, the problem of having to kill dragons. So, we started looking for ways to domesticate–”

“Excuse me. So am I to believe the very organization–”

“Family.”

By now, the mucus breather behind them both was showing frustration; it had been trying to take its lunch from the hand of the keeper to no avail. The interviewer said nothing, perhaps not noticing. The Mucus Breather began to protest, but I couldn’t help but smile as its grumbles sounded more like old man farts.

The reporter took that step back he’d asked her to, finally, and covered her nose.

“…A family that used to run the show on killing and dominating dragons for generations, a position of extreme privilege, now seeks the greater good of controlling the dragon population, and that you’re secretly the reason for all of us being able to live in this safe, advanced world of coexistence? For no other motivation than the ‘good of humanity?’” She coughed.

“Well, that’s a lot of words being shoved in my mouth, and if you can just give me a minute, I can explain myself a little more clearly,” he said, but was clearly flustered.

“Go on,” she sounded welcoming, but her arms were crossed.

“Well… The thing you have to understand about dragons is if you feed them, they grow.” He slowed down his words. “If you feed the dragons, they get bigger.”

The interviewer did not see the connection. “And…”

He started to look flustered and began to ramble. “And… and rightwingers always deplore the leftwingers about feeding, if they were really so concerned about living in harmony, yadda yadda, they wouldn’t starve the dragons and would let them exist in their natural state. Forgetting when it’s convenient that their natural state is huge, deadly, and unstoppable.”

The light had left the reporter’s eyes.

“Leftwingers point out accurately that this indicates a fundamental separation between how Rightwingers view one form of life versus another, that is, their own. And Right-wingers don’t see why that’s a problem. They’re huge, deadly, unstoppable dragons, you see.”

I couldn’t help but roll my own eyes. What a drone. He was about to feed the Mucus Breather, but stopped for the third time and shook a finger at the air. “I think educating more people on this does matter. Leftwingers are unrealistic because it’s not like you can slice up a dragon into smaller parts. You starve it, or it grows, and then we have to, at some point… kill it.” He held up his hands in a ‘what can you do?’ gesture.

The interviewer got a look on her face as if to say, ’You do what?’

I shifted on the bed because my school Chromebook was making my arm go to sleep.

He didn’t notice her alarm, “And to ignore that is kind of irresponsible–AHH!”

The mucus breather, frustrated with the keeper’s stalling with its lunch, roared and took the pigeon in a lunge, but also shot a stream of mucus, showering the interviewer and interviewee, and ensnaring the keeper’s pigeon-holding arm in its mucus tentacle, pulling him in like a fly in a frog’s mouth. The keeper screamed, and the interviewer was shoved away while the keeper’s assistants got to work removing him from the mouth of the Mucus Breather, as it took him and several others through the cage bars and began violently dry humping them. It got its pigeon.

“Interview over! Interview over!”

The mucus-covered dumb journalist turned slowly, wide-eyed, and looked into the camera. “You heard it here, folks, you can’t question the players behind the system, or you’ll get shoved out of the room. The ones keeping the gate can’t stand humanity, and they have no regard for dragons they keep, or safety, even their own, for the sake of greed. Back to you, Brim.”

The camera paused a moment while the Mucus breather passed into a peaceful slumber on top of the keeper and his assistants, and they all shouted frantically to get it off of them.

The screen switched. “Thanks, Kelly. Next, can kale better help us understand Wave Particle Duality? Then, how Rugal McChuggall both led the Sulphurilac to water, and made it give oral to a shotgun. Watch the spectator commentary, video evidence, along with a livestream of the arraignment, in the case of the decade. I’m Brim Stone, and… stay tuned for more after the break…”

What the eff.

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“Jayla! Get out of bed now, you have school. Come get your toast, and don’t be late,” you said just as my Chromebook died. I shut it knowing I would have to ask for a charger in first period and the teacher was going to give me crap about it, but whatever, no one cares.

Yeah… toast. Checked the time. 7:24.

Eyeroll. I dragged myself out of bed, wishing I had a phone. Or money. Any money. Wondering what it would be like to have what I never ever would, a dragon, and with it, maybe nice things, maybe acceptance. Friends, parties, a phone for God’s sakes. Instead, I was fated to be a slave–I mean, employee. And worse, a daughter.

What I didn’t know was that this day was the beginning of my story; the story of how I got my first job.