Here Be Dragons

by Bill Fawcett

  Every year, Jane would tell them what great costumes they had, like she was seeing them for the first time and ... well, Evan changed his costume every year, but she and Jason just always wore the zombie and pirate costumes. Cathy at least added accessories and changed pants and shirts. Jason didn’t even do that. He said what he had worked why change it?

  She adjusted her eye patch and ran her hand down the ragged scar that ran down her face and smiled. She felt sort of like Jason; she made a good pirate, so why change?

  Evan had to do something different every year, though. This year he was wearing a Spartan costume. Cathy didn’t mind that Evan felt he had to do a new costume every year, but she hated when it had accessories like a shield and a sword because it was a sure bet that she and Jason would be carrying them around as much as Evan was. As if on cue Evan asked Jason to carry his shield. Jason made a face, which made him look really hideous, but turned around and took the shield.

  “Why do you always have to pick costumes that have props? It’s such a huge pain in the ass,” Jason said, voicing her thoughts exactly, which was why she had such a huge crush on him. They just seemed to have so much in common and they could just sit and talk forever. There was no one in her regular life that she felt as connected to.

  The three of them had met here at DragonCon six years ago at one of the many concerts. The band on stage had sucked. They’d been standing together towards the back of the room that was just asses-to-elbows people, where they couldn’t really see the sucking band, and they had started talking about how crowded it was and how much the band sucked and why were so many people crammed in there to listen to a band that sucked so bad? Then all at once they’d realized that they were doing the same thing. They’d laughed at themselves, left to go get some coffee, and wound up just sitting around talking. They’d been the best of friends ever since.

  But it was when she’d seen Jason’s picture on his MySpace account that the crush had first started. She guessed that made her shallow because ’til then she’d only seen him in the makeup and had concluded that he must be ugly, but when she saw his picture on MySpace, he was beautiful and she was in love. Unfortunately, because he was so beautiful she could never let him know how she felt about him because he would never return those feelings and, well, that was probably why his attachment to the actress stung so much. Even drugged out and let go, she was beautiful and perfect, which meant that Jason was at least as shallow as she was.

  They ate at the food court, she and Jason going for pizza and ice tea while Evan went after oriental food, which took twice as long. In fact, by the time he joined them at the table they’d had to wait to get, they were mostly done eating and Evan was bitching.

  “Why do we always have to eat in the fucking food court?” He glared more than looked at Jason. “Dude, you live here, don’t you know where any decent restaurants are?”

  “I told you. I don’t work in the city. I never come here. Besides, do you really want to go to a regular restaurant dressed like this?”

  “Oh, like the regular restaurants aren’t serving anyone in costume during the con. And there is no rule that says we have to stay in costume for the entire con. What do you say we put on real clothes and go get some real food this evening?”

  “Screw that,” Jason said with a flip of his hand. “We can do that any time. DragonCon is the only time we get to let our inner selves out.”

  “So ... your inner self is a burnt-up zombie and,” he looked at Cathy, “you’re a pirate.”

  “Yep, and this is the only place I can wear all the cool shit I buy here every year,” Cathy said without missing a beat.

  Evan looked at Jason with meaning, and Jason shrugged, then sighed and said, “I like being special, all right? It’s why I never change my costume. I like everyone running up to me and going, Hey! It’s the zombie dude.”

  “Well ...” Even looked somewhat defeated. “All right, you guys do that, but tonight I’m going to put on real clothes, find a real restaurant, and sit down and eat food that doesn’t actually suck.”

  “I saw a Hooters a couple of blocks back,” Cathy said.

  “We could do dinner there,” Jason said. “They won’t care if we’re in costume.”

  “Hooters!” Evan said in disbelief. “Hooters?! I was talking about going someplace nice.”

  “Hooters is nice,” Jason said, then added with a smile, “Dude, I like Hooters.”

  “I do, too, but I don’t want to eat there. Come on, chicken wings?”

  “I love chicken wings,” Cathy said.

  “Great, it’s settled then, we’re having dinner at Hooters,” Jason declared.

  “I’m not eating at Hooters,” Evan objected.

  “Why the hell not?” Jason asked angrily.

  “I want to go to a real restaurant like an adult, sit down somewhere there isn’t any filth, and eat something that doesn’t come in a fucking Styrofoam container.” He shoved his food away from him then and stood up. “I was standing there in line between a Klingon and a fairy, and the fairy was talking to a guy dressed like Wolverine about a God damned D&D campaign like it was real life and ... I’m twenty-four years old and I’ve never been laid. I work in a book store and live on Star Trek chat rooms. Ever since I got here this time ... I just don’t feel like I fit in any more because I look around and I don’t want to be one of these people.

  “I don’t want to be doing this when I’m forty. I want to get married and have kids and get a good job and if I keep doing this ... well, then I’m never going to have a real life. I’m dressed like a Spartan. I spent two-hundred and fifty dollars on a costume so that I can look like a geek in a Spartan costume, and I’m hanging out with you two, and neither of you are even interested in having a real life and ... That’s it; I’m done.” He stood up and started to walk away.

  “Evan, come on, man,” Jason called after him. He picked up the shield and held it up. “Dude, you forgot your really grown-up shield.”

  “Keep it!” Evan screamed back and continued to stomp off.

  “Should I ... should I go after him?” Jason asked, sitting back down.

  “No, let him go. He’s been mostly a dick all day anyway,” Cathy said. She had noticed the change with Evan first online, when they were talking. “He’s been sort of upset ever since his mother died.”

  “Go figure,” Jason said lightly, and started to eat Evan’s discarded food.

  Cathy laughed. “That’s not what I meant. Of course he was upset about that, but then you remember he started talking about how he felt like he needed to make some real changes in his life?”

  “Well, it didn’t help that all his silly-assed gamer friends started basically living with him and eating all his food. Cathy ... well, I could be wrong, but I think he lives in make-believe land all year and DragonCon is just the pinnacle of that for him. Maybe he wants to live in reality now. I can’t speak for you, but me, I have to deal with reality three-hundred and sixty days a year. Four days a year I get to come here and live in make-believe, and I’m not going to let Evan or anyone else ruin that for me.”

  “Amen!” Cathy said with a sigh. She smiled. “So, you think we can get enough for that shield to buy dinner at Hooters?”

  “At least a couple of drinks. Come on.” He stood up, took her hand, and then they were walking through the maze of tables. For the moment, Cathy just pretended like he was as taken with her as she was with him. After all, that was what DragonCon was all about for her, leaving the real world behind for four days. Like Jason, it was what helped her get through the rest of the year.

  Of course, when they wound up at the gawk of fame, she had to deal with the “traditional” fawning over Jane Sinclair, who looked even older and more drugged-out and whose canned responses still hadn’t changed. And of course—yet again—she didn’t remember Jason, but pretended to as he gave her money for a pictu
re he already had and got Cathy to take his picture with her for his collection.

  Cathy looked around at the sea of humanity and the utter chaos all around her, and for a minute thought maybe Evan was right. The celebrities pretended to be happy they were there. The fans shelled out big bucks for autographed pictures so they could go home and prove they’d really seen this star or that one. They’d tell their friends how nice the star was in person, when most of the time they had interacted with them for less than five minutes.

  Cathy knew there were writers here, too, writers whose work she admired and who she’d love to meet, but finding the programming for their panels was nearly impossible. Even on the gawk of fame, the writers were stuck off behind a curtain at the end of the room, away from the media stars and mostly hidden from the general population. They were the people who wrote the books and shows the fans adored, they created the characters that TV and movie personalities played, yet they were ghettoed. Writers would sign books, even program books, for free, but when Cathy looked into the writers’ area the lines in that room were short or non-existent.

  People were all so superficial; it was all about the way things looked. It always came down to the appearance of things. No one seemed to care about how things really were as long as they looked good. It was always about who was the most visual, who had gotten the most attention from the right people, and who was the most beautiful. Right in that moment, it was hard for Cathy to pretend that people weren’t as shallow as she knew they were.

  Jane Sinclair’s line had shrunk over the years until now there were times when she just sat there, yet she still wanted them to get their picture, spend their money, and move on. She’d been out of the spotlight a long time and now only a few of her die-hard fans—like Jason—even remembered who she was. Still she was here year after year, no doubt because it made up half of her yearly income, and she hadn’t gotten any nicer. In fact, the truth was that she’d just gotten progressively more bitter.

  * * *

  They were both marching in the parade, though she’d be marching with the pirates and Jason would be marching with the zombies.

  “Great make-up,” a fellow pirate, whose badge said he was named Parker, announced.

  “Thanks,” Cathy said.

  “My patch,” he took it off and handed it to her, “I got it from a fellow in the dealers’ room. See? You can see right through it.”

  “Very cool,” she said and handed it back.

  “Don’t you usually hang out with the zombie guy?”

  Cathy smiled. “Jason, yes.”

  “He your boyfriend?”

  Cathy didn’t know what to say. If she said yes, Jason might find out and figure out she had a crush on him. If she said no, this guy was going to start hitting on her and she just wasn’t interested. “Yes,” she answered, quickly deciding that if Jason found out and asked her about it, she’d just explain that she didn’t want to have to fend off the guy’s unwanted attention.

  “Took you awhile to answer,” Parker said.

  Cathy shrugged then smiled. “I was trying to listen to what the parade coordinator was saying.”

  As luck would have it the zombies were just ahead of the pirates, and Jason came running back to her. “Guess what?” he asked excitedly, “What?” Cathy asked, caught up in his enthusiasm.

  “I get to lead the zombies and we’re going to be right behind the car Jane Sinclair is riding in.”

  “That’s great,” Cathy said, forcing a smile she suddenly didn’t feel.

  From her place in the parade she could barely make out the back of Jason’s head as he stumbled zombie-like down the street, but she had a clear view of the back of the actress riding like a high school homecoming queen perched on the back of the back seat of sorneone’s convertible.

  She ignored Jane Sinclair and just enjoyed being a pirate surrounded by her fellow buccaneers ’til she saw Jason take off running. Now Jason was in character and zombies don’t run, so she knew immediately that something wasn’t right. A man was running at the car carrying Jane Sinclair, a knife in plain sight, and Jason was running towards him. Cathy found herself running through the pirates and the zombies, untying her “peace-tied” sword as she went. She saw Jason grab the knife-wielding lunatic and the knife slice into Jason’s chest. Cathy’s sword was a cheap, dulled show blade, but when she smacked the attacker in the wrist he dropped the knife and Jason wrestled him to the ground.

  Security swarmed them all.

  Blood was running out of Jason’s chest.

  Cathy didn’t take time to think. She dropped the sword, grabbed the sash she’d been wearing around her waist, wadded it up in a ball and held it against Jason’s wound.

  There was screaming and people running in fifty different directions at once, and then a stretcher and paramedics and somehow Cathy got separated from Jason. Her heart was pounding, and she felt like she might puke. She ran back to her hotel room, quickly showered and changed into normal clothes. She looked in the mirror and looked quickly away; there was no time to worry about such crap.

  She found her keys, grabbed her purse, and headed for her car.

  At the hospital, it seemed to her like everyone was staring at her. They told her Jason was fine, that he was being stitched up. His wound was mostly superficial, but they were still going to put him into a room for observation for a few hours. They gave her a room number and told her she could wait for him there. Her guts were rumbling and she was a nervous wreck. She started to just leave and call a flower shop to bring him flowers but ... She needed to see him, to see that he was all right, and if the tables were turned she wouldn’t want him to send her flowers, to not be there. He was her friend, really her only friend, now that Evan had stormed off to become an adult.

  Still, she couldn’t bring herself to go to his room to be waiting when he got there. She was hungry and realized she hadn’t eaten since the day before so she followed the signs to the cafeteria.

  How sad was it to say that her best friends were guys she talked to online and only saw once a year, always in costume. She’d say Evan was right, except the truth was that Jason had been right. Cathy lived on her own. She worked, she paid her own bills, and every day just seemed to be about getting her job done so that she could go home, feed her cat, clean her apartment, pay some bills, and talk to her friends online. She had no social life; DragonCon was it, the only time of the year that she could just run the streets and have a good time. Put on a costume and just be someone besides Cathy Reagan.

  * * *

  She stood outside Jason’s door. Her palms were sweaty. She knew he was in there because she’d asked at the nurses’ station.

  Suddenly someone screamed, then there were some whispered words, and then Jane Sinclair was rushing out the door. She looked at her and almost jumped back. “Damn, well ... Tell your friend how sorry I am. I just wanted to thank him for what he did. I didn’t know ... I didn’t know.” She walked away, mumbling, and Cathy’s heart skipped a beat. How bad was he? What had happened? She didn’t hesitate now. She walked quickly into the room. He was lying with his back to her.

  “Jason, are you all right?” she asked, carefully staying at his back as she walked up to him.

  “I’m fine.” But he didn’t sound fine. “Evan was right about her, Cathy, she’s just a superficial bitch, not like her character at all.”

  Cathy put a shaky hand on his shoulder. “Are you really all right, Jason?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine. They’re just holding me for observation because the cut was deep and it nicked one of my ribs. It didn’t get inside, though, so they are going to let me out in a couple of hours. Guess I should call my mom to come take me home.”

  “I could take you home,” Cathy said nervously.

  “You aren’t going to want to take me home, Cathy.” He rolled over and was startled. She looked quickly away, not wanting
to see the look on his face. He reached up, grabbed her chin, and turned her face so he could look at her. “What happened?” he asked gently.

  “There was a tornado,” Cathy said, close to tears. “It ripped our house apart. I was just a kid so I don’t know what happened. My mother thought maybe a board with a nail in it or a piece of glass. The scar actually runs all the way down the left side of my body, too, and not that you can’t guess, but the eye is glass.”

  “Cathy,” Jason said, slowly letting go of her chin and smiling, “haven’t you noticed anything?”

  She shrugged. “What?”

  “Cathy, do you really think I’d still be in make-up now? Do you think they’d let me wear a bunch of plastic stuff stuck to my body while they’re cleaning blood off me and sewing me up?”

  It took a minute for what he was saying to soak in. “Your ... Your scars are real, too. But the picture on your MySpace account...”

  “Wallet model,” he said.

  Cathy relaxed. “What happened to you?”

  “Mom had a skillet of hot grease on the stove. I guess I was just old enough to reach it. They said it was like napalm. They’ve told me over and over all my life how lucky I am to be alive, but I don’t feel very lucky. People can’t stand to look at me, but they can’t help but stare.”

  Cathy knew exactly what he was talking about. When you were an otherwise attractive-looking girl with a good body and some guy whistled and you turned around and he saw you had an angry red scar that ran from your forehead down your face and to your chin with what was obviously a glass eye staring—usually the wrong way—in a mangled socket ... Well, it was the same thing.

  “It’s why I work at home,” Jason said. “So, no one has to see me. But once a year, once a year I come here and ...”