A Modern Day Knight. Chapter 3.

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 Chapter 3.

I woke up to a scratching noise. The sound of something clicking against glass. For a few breaths I laid perfectly still. Completely tense, my eyes stared wildly into the darkness as my sleepy mind tried to figure out where the noise could be coming from. For a few moments I lay there in unbridled panic, during which my heart ran a marathon while it wait for my brain to catch up with what was going on. My mouth had already gone dry as a bone when I remembered Bow-Bow. Relief seeped in to my muscles and even though my body was still pretty tense, relieve flooded my mind.

Turning on my lamp I made my way, shuffling, to Bow-Bow’s tank. Sure enough the lizard looked as though it had worked itself into a frenzy, scratching at the glass, running in circles and bumping in to the box’s walls before starting right back at the scratching. I watched him for a little while but couldn’t tell that anything was wrong with him. I tapped on the tank.

“Go to sleep.” I muttered at him before crawling back to my own comforter.

Bow-Bow didn’t listen. Over the next hour it just got worse. By one thirty AM. He had managed to tip over his own box over on to its side. Lucky the tank didn’t break and the lid stayed on but that was when I gave in. After sitting up the cage again. I set it on my desk and grabbed Droves note.

“This better work, Bow-Bow.” I growled at the lizard. Brushing my mop of hair out of my eyes I rubbed the sleep from them and yawned. Squinting at the the messy writing I read the first line out loud.

“ Shed thy skin, thou beast from hell.”

I raised a brow at that line and looked at Bow-Bow. “ This helps you go to sleep? He reads this to you every night? No wonder you peel so much.” The lizard just stared at me unblinking for a few second before he went back to clicking his tiny claws on the glass. “ Okay, I’ll read the next line.” I yawned again and then started once more.

“For thou or I, it shall not go well.”

I couldn’t help commenting again. “Wow, I hope Mr. Droves didn’t write this because this, my friend, is complete crap.” I thought I might have imagined Bow-Bow nodding in agreement but I couldn’t be sure, because the next minute he had run into the glass again. I drew my eyes back to the page, muttering the first two lines to my self.

“Shed thy skin, thou beast from hell. For thou or I, it shall not go well.”

The next line came easily.

“Whether it be delayed or be it soon,”

The words seem to suck me in and the last lines words fell from my lip as though each weighed a hundred pounds.

“A death we must have before the third new moon”

The air in the room seen to swell and I clutched my head as the pressure became too much. Just as I was beginning to think my eardrums were going to bust the pressure subsided and I slowly uncurled from the ball I had made from my body. Only to go ridged at a sudden voice. Deep and rich it seem to fill the whole room and had an sadistic undertone to it.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

***

Slowly, I let my eyes travel along the floor board, past the crushed glass tank that had once been Bow-Bow’s home and up to the source. Trembling, I found myself looking into the golden eyes of the dragon from my drawing. I stared at the dragon in awe, my mind somewhere left behind on the floor with my jaw. The dragon looked down at me with distaste, like I was a chore that he couldn’t believe he had to take care of.

The dragon’s words registered somewhat and I frowned and pushed myself to my feet.

“You think you’re the one that’s had a joke played on them.” The dragon’s head snapped back as though surprise I could even speak. I was a little surprised myself.

“Tell me boy, why do you believe that I am nothing more than a jest.” The dragon’s neck arched as he lowered his head to the same level as mine. His face was so close that I could feel his hot breath and smell the sharp sulfur stench of it. His black leather like lips stretched into a smile, revealing so many razor sharp white teeth that I had to suppress the urge to count them.

Wetting my own lips I fought the desire to inch away but failed and I found myself back up slowly. “Oh, I don’t know, you tell me. Could be that someone gave me a creepy poem to read to my lizard and when I do, a dragon appears in my bedroom and there is no such thing as dragons.” My butt hit the wall of my room and I finished. “Yeah, I’d say someone’s been messing with me, either that or I’ve been smoking something and I don’t know it.”I couldn’t believe the words spilling out of my mouth. Then it hit me. “This is a dream.”

The dragon snorted and I saw orange glow light up his nostril. “I knew it. Another one in shock” He pulled back suddenly sticking his head out of my bedroom window, I had left it open because Mom hadn’t turned on the air conditioner yet this year. She said it was a way to toughen us up but I knew it was just another way to save money. Now I stared at the dragon sticking his head out them and the only thing I was notice was the GI Joe curtains Mom has made me five years ago were wrapped around a scaly neck.

“This is a joke, right Droves?” The dragon yelled into the night. “I mean come on, some fat kid not smart enough to know his head from his-” He suddenly pause as though hearing something, then started talking again. “No-That’s what you told me last time-” there was another pause and then a long string of curse words, most of which I’d never heard before, followed by a roar. Finally I tugged on his tail.

“Excuse me, but could you tone it down, my mom is slee-” The tail whipped out and slammed into me into my desk. I felt my lava lamp crack as I hit it, but I was too dazzled to really register it.

The dragon has spun back to face me. “One, don’t touch my tail and two,” He grinned wickedly at me. “Still think this is a dream?”

I rubbed my head, which had begun to ache. “More like a nightmare but yes.”

“And why is that?” The beast drew closed, his forked tongue flicking centimeters from my face. Tasting my fear.

“Because I drew you.”

That stopped him. The dragon blinked at me several time before drawing back. His head tilted to one side. “Well, I never heard that one before. It‘s sad really how fast minds crack these days.” He opened his mouth and I could see the red of flames growing in the back of his throat.

I fumbled with the knob of the bottom drawer of my desk desperate to get it open. The air around me changed to a burning heat. I could see the actual flames now. Finally I wrenched the drawer from the desk and tore the sketch book open. Sweat dripped from my fingers onto the pages as I flipped wildly to the last one I’d used. The fire was now a raging ball just behind the Dragon’s teeth and I flung the book up, pages out as a last resort shield and squeezed my eyes shut, waiting for the inferno to descend. Instead I hear a sort of whoosh in sound and peeked out from the sketchbook to see the dragon performing a kind of hiccup in reverse.Smoke and sparks escaping from his nostrils as he swallowed, his golden eyes glued to my drawing. Leaning so close that his snout almost touched the page, he studied it. I’d like to say that I sat unmoving as he breathed his scorching breath down my neck but unfortunately my arms started to tremble so badly that the dragon turned his gaze back to me with a withering glare before taking the sketch book roughly from me with his tail. I slumped back my arms and legs turning to marshmallow.

The dragon was totally absorbed in the picture, tilting it at different angles and inspecting it so closely that I thought maybe he had forgot I was even in the room. That why when he jerked his eyes up from the notebook and back to me, I jumped a little.

“When did you draw this?” The dragon’s golden eyes glowed in the dark room as he narrowed them to thin slits. His armored nose an inch from my own unprotected one. I tried to answer him but the words seemed out of reach and all I could do was stare at him. A black monster from hell that was currently filling my room. As my eyes roamed over the plated tail and bat like leathery wing I was utterly unable to do anything. My vision focused tunnel like on the dragon. Who was rolling it’s slitted eyes.

“Oh great now he’s in shock for real. I’ll never get anything out of him now.” His voice seem to deepen and he looked wavy, like the way a reflection looks in a rippled pool. I attempted to focus on him but finally let go, subduing to the darkness. Relieved this dream was finally over.

***