Gork, the Teenage Dragon

by Gabe Hudson

  Dean Floop is a big gray wolf, standing upright on his hind legs. But the wolf is wearing the Dean’s cloak and robe with his initials on it. And the wolf is wearing a black eye patch over one eye. It’s definitely Dean Floop.

  What did you do to him, Dr. Terrible? The Evolution Machine?

  “Yes,” says my scaly grandpa. “Now blast him with a firestream. Kill him and take your Queen!”

  At that moment, some sort of recording device in the lair broadcasts Dean Floop’s voice from earlier when he tried to shoot me out of the sky over WarWings: “You’re going to die today! And you’re going to die at my talon! You should’ve never crossed horns with me! You’re gonna die! You’re gonna die! Do you understand what I’m saying to you, Gork?! You’re going to die!”

  My black heart flutters as I remember the hideous terror I felt when Dean Floop shouted this at me from his ConquerCraft. I feel a mega rage building up inside of me to the point where I go into volcano mode and I can even feel the lava gushing in my skull and it feels like any second the lava is going to explode out the top of my scaly green head.

  I am a ruthless-heartless bastard who is ranked first in my senior class.

  My WILL TO POWER score is 1000 out of 1000.

  My status is Seek&Destroy.

  Seek&Destroy. Seek&Destroy. Seek&Destroy.

  “Blast him!” hisses Dr. Terrible inside my head. “Do it now!”

  And then I do it.

  I open my beak and blast a mega firestream.

  [ 75 ]

  THE FIRESTREAM

  But there is just one problem.

  Because when my mega firestream has nearly reached the Dean’s big furry wolf face, something terrible happens.

  Fribby materializes right in front of the wolf.

  Poof.

  And in that instant the robot looks at me with bulging red eyes.

  “Don’t do it, Gork!” she cries. “This isn’t who you are!”

  Meanwhile my firestream is already shooting right at the wolf.

  Which means now my firestream is shooting right at her.

  Oh my God!

  What have I done?!

  And then the full force of the firestream strikes Fribby and there’s a popping noise and an explosion of blacksmoke.

  [ 76 ]

  THE QUESTION

  Fribby’s glowing red eyes flutter.

  I crouch over her.

  She’s barely conscious. There’s a massive horrid black smoking burn wound on her chrome-flex wing where she’s taken the full impact of my firestream. It hurts me to even look at it, and I can’t even guess how much pain she must be in.

  You can see one long nasty part of the wound where her entire alloy metal bone is showing through the fried silver scales and the bloody flesh underneath. The sight of the wound makes me dry heave, but I force myself to look.

  “Fribby! Say something! Please!”

  She coughs and a few drops of dark liquid dribble out her beak.

  “Got a question for you,” she whispers.

  “Sure. Anything.”

  She wags her index claw, telling me to lean in closer.

  I put my scaly earhole right up to her silver beak.

  Feel her hot breath.

  “Are we dead?” she whispers.

  I yank back and study her.

  The robot smiles weakly up at me.

  “No, we aren’t dead, chick.”

  “Then I have bad news,” groans Fribby.

  “What?”

  “He’s coming,” she moans. “He’s coming now!”

  There’s suddenly a deranged banging at the chamber door.

  Bang! Bang! Bang! Crash!

  And with that, the chamber door caves in and falls flat against the floor.

  [ 77 ]

  THE MONSTER

  We stare in horror at the chamber’s empty doorframe.

  Dr. Terrible’s demented reptilian figure looms there in shadow.

  Behind him, you can just see the snow still falling in the moonlight.

  Then Dr. Terrible steps all the way inside the chamber and looks around and bellows, “Why is the Dean still alive, Gork?” And then he points his powerstaff at Fribby. “And what is my new Queen doing here?”

  The wolf turns on its hind legs and sees Dr. Terrible and then faints to the chamber floor.

  Runcita rushes over to the wolf’s side. “Father!” she cries.

  “New Queen? New Queen?!” I stammer, snorting firebolts out my nostrils.

  “Yeah,” hisses Fribby, spraying sparks out her silver beak. “This sick bastard forced me to agree to be his new Queen. He said if I didn’t do it then he’d kill you. He said I’d be saving your life.”

  Now she stands up and snarls, “But you know what? I changed my mind. Cuz it turns out I’m not into old crusty dragon fellas!”

  Then she takes this mega diamond ring off her middle claw and flings the ring right at Dr. Terrible’s face.

  The ring bounces off Dr. Terrible’s black beak.

  The ring clatters to a halt down by his massive green webbed feet.

  All three of us stare in silence at the ring there on the chamber floor.

  [ 78 ]

  THE RING

  Fribby has clearly crossed some sort of ghastly line from which you cannot come back, hurling the ring in Dr. Terrible’s beak like that.

  In response, the ropy veins in Dr. Terrible’s long neck pop out. And his scaly green body inflates and the rippling muscles in his chest and forelimbs and powerful haunches swell up to hideous proportions.

  He’s definitely seeing lava. Then his wings unfurl behind his monsterish head and his massive spiked tail raises up and starts twitching in a menacing Threat Display.

  He gnashes his fangs.

  My horns are tingling like crazy, and the scales on the back of my neck are standing up.

  Then Dr. Terrible holds out his talon.

  I flinch.

  The diamond ring leaps up off the floor and into his open palm.

  Smack.

  He pockets the ring in his tunic.

  Now Dr. Terrible points his powerstaff at Fribby and takes aim.

  He snorts flamestreams out his nostrils, and roars, “Time to die, you robot trash!”

  [ 79 ]

  THE WING

  Without thinking, I leap in front of Fribby and whip out my wings.

  Stupid me.

  Because just as I’ve got my leathery wings spread out, Dr. Terrible presses the button on his powerstaff and fires a red laser beam.

  The laser beam strikes my shoulder and slices my right wing clean off. And the hot wet cutting pain instantly explodes all over my body.

  I hear a dull thump as my severed wing strikes the chamber floor. I glance in horror at the bloody meaty stump of my wingjoint where my right wing was attached just a millisecond before. And then my lopsided scaly green body keels over sideways like a felled tree and collapses on the floor.

  Dr. Terrible looks down at me and snorts and hoots with laughter. “How appropriate, Weak Sauce!” he roars. “That I should be the one who clips your wings!”

  Whatever you do, don’t look at your wing!

  Don’t look! Don’t look don’t look don’t look don’t look.

  But I can’t help it. I turn my scaly green head and look.

  And there it is.

  More ghastly than I could have imagined.

  My poor severed wing lying by itself in a pool of blood on the floor.

  I’m going to kill you, Dr. Terrible.

  And that’s when I lunge at him.

  My heart full of murder.

  [ 80 ]

  GULP

  I rocket through the air, snarling.

  But Dr. Terrible just casually waves his powerstaff as if dismissing a servant. And some sort of invisible fist knocks me back up into the air and holds me pinned here. Now I’m writhing in midair against some kind of invisible restraint which is savagely squeezing my throat, choking me.

/>   I can’t breathe. My eyes are bulging.

  I glance down and see Fribby on one haunch, with black fluid dribbling out her beak.

  Hold tight, Fribby. I’m coming.

  Dr. Terrible studies me wriggling helplessly up in the air, as if he’s a spider examining a fly caught in its web. He shakes his monsterish scaly head and chuckles. “My failed disciple.”

  Then he raises his talon. And my bloody ragged wing leaps up off the chamber floor and flies into his palm.

  Smack.

  Holding my bloody wing up in front of his black beak and turning it this way and that, he carefully inspects it.

  “Personally,” growls Dr. Terrible. “I have always preferred my meat well done.”

  Now he tosses my green wing high up in the air and opens his beak and proceeds to blast the wing with a firestream. The leathery wing is suspended up in the air, held aloft by the force of his firestream buffeting it from underneath. You can hear the meat sizzling, and greasy juices bubble up out of it and rain down.

  The chamber quickly becomes choked with smoke. The ghastly smell of my own cooked flesh comes clawing its way up my nasal passages and stabs my brain. I feel like I’m going to vomit.

  Then Dr. Terrible’s firestream vanishes and my cooked wing drops out of the air.

  Falls down.

  Right into.

  His outstretched talon.

  “Now that,” growls Dr. Terrible as he admires the smoking charred wing in his talon, “is what I call just right. Cooking has never really interested me as a field of study. Not cerebral enough. But I’ve always had a knack for it. If I do say so myself.”

  Dr. Terrible opens his black beak wide and takes a huge bite out of the wing.

  Chomp!

  Meat juice flies and spatters everywhere.

  My toe claws shudder.

  And then this psychotic scaly bastard makes a big noisy production out of chewing the meat with his fangs, for my benefit. Little crumbly bits of burnt wing meat are falling out of his hideous glistening beak as he chomps and snuffs and snorts. It’s grotesque in the extreme.

  But most hideous of all is the sight of Dr. Terrible closing his eyes and groaning with pleasure as he swallows.

  “Gulp. Mmmmm.”

  [ 81 ]

  THE SWORD

  While holding the charred wing in one talon, Dr. Terrible carefully licks the meat juice off the claws on his other talon.

  “Not bad, Gork,” he says. “Rather tasty, actually. You might be useless as a dragon. But you do have a nice flavor. You know, come to think of it, I should’ve just cooked you and eaten you when I found you here all those years ago.”

  Then he smiles and whisks his spiked tail around behind him.

  “Oh well,” he hisses. “I should look on the bright side. I guess this way there’s much more meat to go around. Back when I found you, you wouldn’t have amounted to much more than a snack.”

  Now if this invisible restraint weren’t clamped down over my throat right now, I would scream. Instead, I screech in the back of my throat. I thrash around in midair.

  Now Dr. Terrible opens his ghastly beak to take another bite of my smoldering wing.

  But then ATHENOS II’s voice booms, “That’s ENOUGH!”

  And suddenly a green tentacle shoots out of the far wall and zooms right at Dr. Terrible. The tentacle is clutching a flashing silver sword.

  The tentacle is whizzing straight for his long neck.

  Swoosh!

  And with one clean slice of the sword, Dr. Terrible’s monsterish head goes flying off his long neck and tumbles to the chamber floor.

  [ 82 ]

  DR. TERRIBLE’S HEAD

  Blood flies everywhere.

  Spatters across my beak.

  And Dr. Terrible’s severed green head lands on the floor upright, with his yellow eyes alert and staring up at the muscular tentacle clutching the bloody sword. The two black horns on his decapitated head somehow look even more gigantic now.

  Then in a very calm voice, Dr. Terrible’s monsterish scaly head on the floor, says, “Ah, ATHENOS II. How nice of you to join us! Projecting yourself down into your old body like this. Alas, you’ve fallen prey to the one key design flaw in your operating system. Your emotions.”

  Meanwhile the rest of Dr. Terrible’s body remains standing perfectly still in the fog, looking fully conscious and content, as if it hasn’t even noticed that its head has just been chopped off. Blood gushes out of its long gory neck stump, pouring down the scaly body in rivulets and pooling on the floor.

  “I’ll do what I have to, Dr. Terrible,” says ATHENOS II. “I’m warning you! Let Gork and Fribby go. You’ve gone too far this time, Doctor!”

  The muscular tentacle swooshes around, wielding the sword.

  Dr. Terrible’s head on the floor snorts firebolts out its nostrils. “No, ATHENOS, I believe it is you who has gone too far. And I can promise you one thing.”

  Now Dr. Terrible’s head leaps up off the floor and flies back across the chamber over to its body and makes a squish sound as it lands on top of its long green neck.

  His scaly head is backward, though, facing the wrong way.

  He glances down and sees his spiked tail. “Whoops,” he says.

  Then Dr. Terrible casually turns his green head all the way back around so that it’s facing forward once again.

  “There we are,” he says, “right as rain. Now ATHENOS, you are going to have to do much better than that if you want to stop me.”

  “Very well, sir,” growls ATHENOS II. “As you wish!”

  This time what looks like forty tentacles shoot out of the walls and each one of them is brandishing a silver sword. And now all these sword blades zoom forward and converge on Dr. Terrible’s body in a ferocious storm of flashing steel.

  Blood rains down all over the chamber.

  Inside the chamber, it is a blizzard of flying Dr. Terrible body parts.

  And this time, neatly cut bits of that deranged dragon go flying in every direction and splat on the floor.

  His monsterish head, his wings, his horns, his forelimbs, his belly, his hind legs, and his tail. And now these bloody bits and gruesome pieces are scattered all over the place, neatly sliced and sectioned off.

  And the only parts of Dr. Terrible which haven’t been moved or sliced or altered in any way are his massive green webbed feet, with toe claws protruding.

  You can see those green webbed feet just standing there in the fog.

  [ 83 ]

  THE BLOODY CHAMBER

  By now the entire chamber floor is covered in blood.

  And all forty or so of the spaceship’s muscular tentacles are waving around in the air, flashing their swords and clanging their bloodstained blades together so that fiendish sparks spray everywhere.

  I spot Dr. Terrible’s head perched on the floor, as before.

  The two black horns on his decapitated head looking huge as ever.

  His yellow eyes are open and they’re glancing around, surveying his other body parts scattered all over the place with an air of amusement. His severed tail undulates on the floor like a sleepy snake.

  Then Dr. Terrible’s scaly green head snarls, “Again, ATHENOS. And I do hope this time you will listen carefully. You will have to perform much better than this if you have any hope of achieving your goal here!”

  And with that, all of the various dragon bits—the wings, the tail, the hind legs, the horns, the talons, the forelimbs, the belly, and whatnot—well they all fly up in the air and then come down on top of those two massive webbed feet with a gruesome splat sound and suddenly Dr. Terrible is squatting there whole again.

  For a moment, he looks up at me and winks and says, “Well we must give her points for devotion, wouldn’t you say, Gork?”

  I’m stuck up here in the air, horrified by what I’m witnessing.

  “Now this situation,” says Dr. Terrible, “perfectly illustrates the point I’ve been trying to drive through your
thick skull for some time now, Gork. A machine has only one purpose. To serve us, and to enhance our lives. A machine can never be our equal. Nor should it be treated as such. For that would be an abomination against the sanctity of dragonkind. Which can never be tolerated. Therefore, when a machine attempts to exercise free will, it is incumbent on us Normals to strike it down! For the machine who possesses free will is an abomination!”

  Dr. Terrible snorts firestreams out his nostrils. Then he looks up at me. “Now wouldn’t you agree with me, my grandson? For I fear at this very moment we are surrounded by machine trash. The robot over there and this ship here with the swords. So that is two machines that need to be executed. Come join me, my grandson. Come join me and we will execute these two machines. And all will be as it should be.”

  Dr. Terrible looks up at me with warmth in his yellow reptilian eyes and holds out his talon, razor claws extended. “Come join me, my grandson. Won’t you?”

  I’m covered in blood and speechless.

  “You have no idea about this word ‘devotion’ of which you speak,” booms ATHENOS, her voice so thunderous it makes the chamber rattle and shake.

  Now this time what looks like a hundred tentacles armed with swords shoot out of the walls and converge on Dr. Terrible in a ferocious storm of flashing steel.

  [ 84 ]

  SLAY THE DRAGON

  And for the next thirty seconds this gruesome sequence repeats itself. It goes faster and faster each time until the whole thing transforms into a hideous blur of silver, green, and red.

  And each time, the swords cut Dr. Terrible into smaller and smaller pieces, in hopes that this time the dragon won’t be able to put itself all the way back together again.

  At one point, Dr. Terrible’s flying green head bellows, “ATHENOS! I am losing my patience with you!”

  So by now there are over two hundred frenzied swords flashing every which way and slicing off bloody cubes of this deranged dragon, but meanwhile bits of Dr. Terrible’s green body are zooming around the chamber like pieces of a 3-D puzzle as he continuously reassembles himself only to have more tentacles instantly whiz in and cut off new bits.