by Amir Naaman
The dragon hissed.
“I don’t think he likes that name.” Joanne regarded the dragon as though he were a particularly difficult client whose financial problems she had to tackle. “How about George? Timothy? Martin?”
The dragon shook itself and turned away from the glass.
She suggested, “What about Daisy? Lily? Petunia?”
The dragon swiveled his head around and blinked.
“Petunia?” Joanne repeated. “I think he likes that one.”
Jackson sat on the couch, getting a better view of Joanne’s round behind. “Those are girl dragon names. I’m not naming him after a flower.”
The dragon cooed and nuzzled up to the glass.
“Petunia,” Joanne said.
The dragon cooed again.
“Can I hold Petunia?” she asked.
“His name isn’t Petunia,” Jackson said. “And I don’t think that’s a good idea to take him out of the aquarium. He’s a biter.” He held up his bandaged hand.
The dragon stared out at them with black eyes. Jackson would swear they grew bigger and rounder by the second, like they were dark voids sucking him in. Joanne pushed the aquarium lid aside.
“No! What are you doing?” Jackson launched himself forward but it was too late. The dragon half fluttered, half leapt into Joanne’s arms.
“Well, hello, Petunia. Aren’t you a good boy?” Joanne said. She stroked the dragon’s long neck.
The dragon leaned his head across Joanne’s shoulder. His tail curled around her breast. He seemed to be shaking with laughter as he gazed at Jackson.
Tip Number Four:
In order to promote strong bones and healthy development in a dragon, make sure to provide half its body weight in food daily. It’s also important to feed dragons fatty meat so that they will be less likely to develop gastric distress. Breathing fire is rare in dragons, but when present, it is usually the result of an improper diet.
Also, dragons prefer organic, free-range meat.
—Dragons for Dummies
In a matter of a week the dragon grew from the size of a small cat to a golden retriever. “Petunia” escaped from his cage three times. Jackson bought a larger aquarium.
One night Jackson woke up around midnight feeling hungry. He slipped out from under Rachel’s arm—she was the latest secretary he’d showed his new dragon. If there was one good thing about owning an exotic pet, it was that they were chick magnets.
Jackson padded out to the kitchen, halting when he saw the refrigerator door open. His dragon glittered like rubies in the artificial light. He stood there gulping down half and half from the carton.
“Bruno, get back in your aquarium!” Jackson shouted. He pointed to the glass box in the other room.
His dragon’s black eyes narrowed. He wiped the milk mustache off his upper lip and replaced the now empty carton back in the fridge.
“You’re out of milk,” he said in a distinctly refined Mexican accent.
Jackson gaped at the dragon. If a dragon could talk, it wasn’t really a dinosaur, was it? It meant dragons were magic. It meant everything he’d been reading was incorrect. Wait…. Unless he was dreaming.
The dragon closed the refrigerator door and leaned against it. “When are you going to invite Joanne over again? She’s special. She knew my true name. Perhaps she’s a princess. Or at least descended from royalty. Either way, I’d like to add her to my horde.” He waited for an answer.
Jackson shook his head in disbelief.
His dragon rolled his eyes in disgust and sauntered off. He called over his shoulder. “By the way, I prefer being called Petunia.”
Tip Number Five:
Most dragons are incapable of speech. The rare breeds that do, however, will only speak when they feel they have something worth sharing. Pay attention to what they say.
—Dragons for Dummies
Weeks passed. The dragon didn’t speak again, and Jackson wondered if the incident had been a hallucination.
Much to Jackson’s consternation, the dragon kept growing. At the size of a Doberman, he didn’t fit into the glass cage very well anymore. Most mornings Jackson found him snuggled up on the couch.
Online forums suggested he cut the dragon’s diet in half. Jackson removed all snack food from his kitchen and only bought chicken, tuna and steak hours before feeding.
Incidentally, Jackson noticed a poster for a missing cat in the condo’s lobby.
Mrs. Johnson, his neighbor with the yappy poodle, knocked at his door a few days later. “Have you seen Duchess? She’s gone missing.” She waved a hand toward the courtyard. “I thought she must have gotten out again, but she always comes when I call her. You haven’t seen her, have you?”
Jackson recalled it had been especially quiet the last two days.
“I’ll let you know if I see her.” Jackson closed the door.
Petunia belched.
“Did you eat my neighbor’s poodle? How’d you get out of the apartment?”
The dragon crossed his arms and smirked. The deep rumble of his voice was like Antonia Banderas on steroids. “I prefer terriers.”
Tip Number Six:
A well-loved dragon is a loyal dragon. Show your pet how much she or he means to you by reading to her or him. Take your pet on frequent outings to the park. Shower your precious with gifts of shiny metal objects, preferably 24 carat gold.
—Dragons for Dummies
Jackson noticed charges on his credit card bill from three jewelry stores. When he came home, he found the television playing Mexican soap operas and Petunia reading Cincuenta Sombras de Grey on his Kindle, which he was pretty sure was Fifty Shades of Grey in Spanish. The Twilight series was stacked on his coffee table.
Petunia glanced up from the Kindle. “Rachel called for you again. She left two messages. Personally, I prefer Joanne. But that might be because she’s smarter than you and could probably do your job better than you while blindfolded and shackled to your bed. Are you going to call her back?”
“No more S & M talk for you.” Jackson turned off the television and tore the Kindle out of Petunia’s hands.
“Rachel isn’t as smart; she actually likes you for some reason.”
Jackson threw down the Kindle. “This has got to stop. You are out of control. Good dragons do not give their owners love advice or read stupid romance novels.”
Petunia swiveled his neck toward Jackson. “Twilight was on your bookshelf. Don’t tell me you didn’t read them. Pages were dog-eared.” His lips curled back in a wicked smile.
Jackson could feel his face growing hot. “I’m sure one of my girlfriends must have left them here.”
“Fortunately your girlfriends and I have the same taste in literature.” The dragon reclined against the couch, his long, lithe tail dangling off the end. “I think we need a bigger couch. I picked one out covered in gold vinyl.”
“You’ve been making purchases on my credit card?” Jackson tore at his hair.
“You really shouldn’t do that. You have so little hair left as it is.” Petunia wagged his tail lazily. “Anyhow, you could always take the couch and I could sleep in the bedroom. A king-sized bed would be perfect for me. I’m a growing boy.”
Jackson spotted the gold necklace around the dragon’s neck. He pointed. “That!” By this point he was so angry he didn’t think he could speak.
“If we’re going to talk fashion, we might start with you.” The dragon eyed Jackson’s boots. “I hope those aren’t real dragon skin. It would be a tragedy if someone reported you for buying products made from endangered animals.”
Jackson couldn’t take the dragon back to Mexico, and he was too big to flush down the toilet. He didn’t think he could sneak Petunia out of the apartment and abandon him in the park. He was as big as a Great Dane.
He had no idea what to do. He read the rest of Dragons for Dummies, hoping he might find advice that could help him train his dragon to be more obedient.
Tip Numbe
r Seven:
Dragon training is especially important. Keep in mind who’s in charge. Nine times out of ten it’s the dragon.
—Dragons for Dummies
“I didn’t come here to be mocked,” Rachel screamed. She threw down her wine glass. It shattered on the gray tile floor and splattered onto the white carpet. Jackson groaned. That wasn’t going to come out.
“I’m sick and tired of hearing you belittle me,” she said. “I want you to take me home. Now.”
“Sweetie, I wasn’t mocking you,” Jackson said. “I was just teasing.”
Petunia’s head peeked out from the other side of the couch. One side of his mouth drew back into a smirk.
This was so embarrassing.
She stomped her foot. “Take me home.”
The problem with high-maintenance women was that they were high maintenance. Just like his damned dragon. Maybe he should have listened to Petunia and called Joanne instead. She didn’t seem like the type to throw a drunken tantrum. Then again, she didn’t seem like the type who would come over for a drink either.
“We’ve both had too much to drink tonight. Call a taxi.” Jackson tipped back his remaining wine.
Rachel turned away and began to sob. “I don’t have any money for a taxi.”
“Then take the bus.”
Rachel’s fingers curled like claws. “It’s two in the morning.”
Jackson swaggered off toward the bedroom. “You can come to bed when you’ve calmed down.”
“You’re leaving me out here with that thing? I hate you!” she called after him.
Jackson was pretty sure women and dragons weren’t that different. The important thing was to train them before they trained you. Sometimes it was simply a matter of patience and persistence. That’s what the book said anyway.
Jackson went to bed. He expected Rachel would join him when she tired of sleeping on the floor of the living room.
In the morning he woke to the aroma of coffee and frying bacon. He was surprised to be treated to breakfast in bed. He eyed the food suspiciously.
Rachel tried to feed him a bite of eggs but he shook his head. She bit in, so he suspected it wasn’t poisoned. What was up with her? Was she bipolar?
Rachel cuddled up next to him. She wore one of his white button-up shirts. More buttons were unbuttoned than not. “That was the best night of my life,” she purred. “I thought you were kind of an asshole in bed, but last night changed everything. You are going to call me back, right?”
Jackson stiffened. “I don’t remember last night.”
“Well, we were a little drunk.” She giggled and kissed his cheek. She stretched and yawned. “I’m so tired. You really wore me out.” A few seconds later she fell asleep.
Jackson stormed out to the living room where Petunia sat out on the couch eating eggs and bacon from the pan.
“You hypnotized her and slept with her, didn’t you?”
Petunia slurped up an egg. “No hypnosis was needed. Rachel simply wanted a shoulder to cry on and someone to listen to her. All initiation done was by her.”
“Then you did sleep with my girlfriend?”
Petunia dabbed at his mouth with a cloth napkin. “A noble, gentle dragon doesn’t kiss and tell. Though, I would hardly call her yours after how you treated her last night.”
“That’s disgusting. That’s like bestiality or something.”
Petunia flicked his tail at Jackson and pushed him away. “Only when she has sex with you is it akin to bestiality. Ugh, you’re like a disgusting animal.”
“I’m your owner. Don’t insult me like that!”
“When are you going to call Joanne back?”
“Never. She won’t sleep with me.”
“Of course not. She’s a virgin. She’s saving herself for the right man.” Petunia flicked a forked tongue from his mouth and licked his lips. “I bet she’d sleep with me.”
“Stay away from my girlfriends.”
Petunia belched. A giant flame erupted from his mouth. Jackson leapt back. The curtains caught on fire. Jackson ran to the kitchen and used the fire extinguisher to put out the flames. The wall was black and the paint had peeled.
“Pardon me, I have indigestion,” Petunia said. He picked up a Cosmopolitan magazine and buried his nose in it.
“I thought the book said to curb a dragon’s fire tendencies you have to feed him lots of fatty meat?”
“Did it? It must have been a typo. Fats make me gassy. On the other hand, I didn’t belch flames the other night when I had that overweight German Sheppard down the street.”
Tip Number Eight:
It’s important to know what kind of dragon you wish to own. There are three breeds of dragons:
The stupid kind that are about as smart as a human ten-year-old. These are easy to manage if you bribe them with gold, human virgins and cattle.
The evil ones who live to terrorize villages and go on killing rampages. They breathe out toxic gases, are considered to be incarnates of the devil, and typically grow to be the size of a giraffe. Or larger.
The noble dragon who will seek out injustice in the world and strive to remedy it. The kind of justice the dragon attempts to assist with is primarily influenced by the kinds of literature it reads early in life. (See the footnote on Cornbread the Destroyer, who read Uncle Tom’s Cabin and then burst in on a KKK meeting in 1936.)
—Dragons for Dummies
Jackson considered moving, hiring an animal exterminator, or even calling a hit man. He read forums and corresponded by email but no one else out there had the kind of dragon problems he had. This became more difficult when Jackson realized the password for his email account didn’t work. His key didn’t fit in the lock of his condo. Was the door jammed? He knocked at the door.
Petunia answered. The dragon crossed his arms. “Oh, it’s you. I thought it was Joanne. I need you to leave so I can get ready for my date.” His voice was different, not quite as deep and rumbling but the Mexican accent was still there. If anything, he sounded a little more human.
Jackson pushed the door open wider. “This is my condo. You can’t change the locks on me and kick me out.” He strode in.
“Hmm. But I did.” Petunia’s tale wagged lazily behind him. He didn’t use it to flick Jackson out, and Jackson suspected that was a good thing. Petunia closed the door.
“I am the master here,” Jackson said. “You will obey me. And if anyone is going to sleep with Joanne, it’s going to be me, damn it. A human.”
“No, I don’t think so. You don’t appreciate her the way I do.” Petunia picked up a copy of Pride and Prejudice, skimming the pages as though bored.
Petunia’s red skin paled to pink. The sparkling scales smoothed and dulled. His wings and tail receded to nothingness while his neck shrank to the size of a human neck. Brown hair just like Jackson’s sprouted up on his head, though he didn’t grow any on his chest or washboard abs. The dragon now looked like a naked, mirror image of Jackson, only a little more handsome, his jaw more square and cheeks higher and more chiseled. He had to be at least three inches taller than Jackson, his hairline not yet receding, and he possessed the figure of a body builder.
Petunia’s black eyes remained the same dark voids. His lips curled into a wicked smile.
Jackson shook with rage. “Whoa! Not okay. You can’t just change shape and mimic my appearance, hack into my email account, steal my identity—and look better than me, have sex with the woman I’ve been trying to seduce for five years and ruin my life.”
Petunia stroked his chin. “I haven’t done the latter. Challenge accepted.”
Jackson stumbled back. “There are three types of dragons. You’re one of the evil ones, aren’t you?”
“In a certain light, one might think I come across as quite noble. But really, I don’t believe in stereotypes. Can’t I be all three dragons in one?”
“No, no, no! I can’t believe this is happening.” Jackson stopped himself from pulling out his hair. �
�I did everything Dragons for Dummies told me to do! Where did I go wrong? Who wrote that worthless piece of crap anyway?”
“A dragon. A fitting title, wouldn’t you say?” Petunia’s grin widened. “Now enough about you, let’s talk about me … and my new identity.”
“Are you kidding me? You can’t be me. There can be only one Jackson George in the world.”
“You’re right.” Petunia licked his lips.
Sarina Dorie has sold over 90 short stories to markets like Daily Science Fiction, Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Orson Scott Card’s IGMS, and Cosmos. Her novels include: Silent Moon, Dawn of the Morning Star, and Urban Changeling. You can find info about her short stories and novels on her website: www.sarinadorie.com
Like Bogart
Lavie Tidhar
His name was Bogdan, or Bojan. I didn’t know much more about him than most other people: no one did. He liked it that way. He wasn’t one of the famous ones, he wasn’t even a shadow man, as such. He did his own thing, quietly, trying not to be noticed by any of the major powers. I don’t know if he was entirely successful in that. I don’t even know what he did in the war. No one did. I heard he’d been a partisan under Tito in Yugoslavia. Others said he’d worked with the S.S. Other still said he’d left Europe when war broke out and weathered it somewhere in the tropics, somewhere with palm trees and warm rum and pretty sunsets.
He liked cards. He aged imperceptively. His talent, if you could call it that, wasn’t spectacular. He liked close-up magic, his speciality was materialisation and dematerialisation, and no one ever quite knew if it was his talent or sleight of hand. He never said. For some reason all he ever did tricks with were cigarettes. He once confided to me in he didn’t even like to smoke. But whenever you’d see him he’d have a lit cigarette between his fingers, like Bogart, and then he’d make it disappear, and then he’d pull it out, still burning, from inside his mouth or behind your ear. It could get irritating after a while. Once he told me he survived the war doing his act in bars, moving often, never staying in the same place twice. Like everything about him it could have been true and probably wasn’t.