| Dragon Holiday, part 6
Posted by Jonah on May 23, 2009, 1:04 am, in reply to "Dragon Holiday, part 5"
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“Three years ago I would not have hesitated to eat you, erasing your existence from the world, my dear,” said Dax seriously, approximating a very toothy, wide grin a few feet from Val’s smooth and vulnerable face.
She stopped hanging from his arm. “But you said you began eating people two years ago,” said Susan silently, looking up at the array of pointed teeth.
“I said I have eaten humans almost exclusively the last two years. Until now I have not given any erstwhile indication of my behavior before then.”
“I-would you eat Susan or I if Seth wasn’t here?” said Val, no longer holding onto Dax’s arm.
“The usual rules do not apply with you two,” said Dax with a tone reservation in his voice. “However, the bedamn that is your very human existence will not be quelled until your master approves of it, and by the looks of things, that is apparently no time soon.” He cut Susan a hard look.
“I think he’s saying we’re safe,” said Susan, ignoring Dax’s intimidating stare. Val nodded and smiled, and climbed boldly onto Dax’s lap, reached up and wrapped her right arm around his large neck, hugging him.
“Dax, do you ever get tired always being on the run, unable to settle down and live a normal life like other dragons? Maybe find a mate?” said Val, snuggling into Dax, resting her hand casually on his engorged belly.
“What’s the point of that?” rumbled Dax. “Another witness at my inevitable trial? No, I have gone too far to even think about something like that. The only way I can avoid getting caught is if I keep moving, and I cannot do that with a mate and young and other ... dependants.”
“Fair enough,” said Val coolly, running her newly manicured fingernails across the heavily thickened pebbled scales of his neck. “Dax, I’m curious, and I’ve been wondering this ever since your visit here last August, right after you left, a 7-year old child was kidnapped by a dragon at the Prien Lake Park, and is still missing. Dax, did you take that child?” She spoke in a very soft, respectful tone.
“Of course,” the dragon said off-handedly. “After seeing you and Seth I thought I’d dabble in having a pet human myself. Like a human would have a pet hamster. I thought a younger specimen would be easier to train.”
“And?” said Val.
Dax’s expression soured. “And I quickly learned that I have no patience for such things, especially when the little monkey seemed to be only capable of crying for his mommy. So I got rid of him.”
Both women looked stricken, especially Susan. Even Seth and Shadow frowned deeply. “I thought you said you don’t prey on the young,” said Val, this time forcing her voice to sound calm and unruffled.
“Of course not!” Dax exclaimed. “You thought I ate him? Please! He was worth more to me alive than dead.”
“Then what did you do with him?” Susan barked.
The dragon flicked his hand dismissively. “There are parties who will pay for a healthy human child. I’ve dealt with them before, when I have a surplus of victims and need some money. It happens sometimes, and I’ll keep one alive to sell. They were quite delighted to get their hands on ‘merchandise’ so young.”
Susan looked aghast. “You are a ####ing monster through and through! What did they do to that little child?”
Dax rubbed his chin. “The parties I deal with are middlemen only, who would have in turn sold him to his eventual new owners for a profit. Truthfully, I don’t know where little Kenny eventually ended up. Maybe he’s with some unscrupulous adoption agency, or a slave in some country or religious dragon compound. Maybe he’s a lab experiment. Who knows? The monkey’s no longer my problem.”
“Do you have any conscience at all, Dax? Haven’t you ever felt bad about how you treat humans?” said Susan, shaking her head.
He grumbled discontentedly. “Only afterward, if they proved difficult to digest —”
Susan raised her hand, knowing where this was going, cutting him off. “I don’t want to hear anymore....”
Dax seemed to take pleasure in continuing on. “There was an elder female who had old-style silicone breast implants. Urg. Like trying to pass sacks of sand….”
“Really?” asked Goggles, his bright eyes looking at Seth through green tinted eyewear. Susan thought they were continuing this topic solely for her benefit. “Ever had trouble passing anything else?”
“Certainly. Piercings can cause trouble, as can some of those electronics people have implanted nowadays. There was even this one person who had substantial gold dental work that I saw had passed all the way through me.
“Hey, profit!” snapped Shadow.
He raised his hand again. “I thought about harvesting them as I know other dragons have, but I do not see myself rooting through my own waste, Shadow. Even I have limits to my predatory habits.”
Val joined in. “Interesting. And were you always like this, Dax? You know, a human eater?”
“No, I wasn’t. Let’s say it has been an acquired talent. My very first victim was rather accidental.”
Val closed her eyes thinking about it. She gave Susan the impression of being in a state of arousal. Her eyes flew open. “Accidental, really? Well, what happened, Dax? Give us all the juicy details!”
“For heavens sake!” Susan said violently, clearly outraged at where her friend was taking all this.
Dax cleared his throat ostentatiously before continuing. “I was young and had overstated my experience with humans to an equally young and inexperienced prostitute herself; it resulted in an unexpected fatal outcome for the poor, unfortunate woman. Pity though, so eager to perform — unfortunately so was I,” he chuckled casually.
“You killed her, how?”
“I rutted her.”
“You ####ed the woman to death?” Susan said angrily. “Jesus, Dax.”
He nodded indifferently, as if they were talking about the weather.
“Whoa,” said Goggles, looking impressed, now sitting up in his chair. “Isn’t that what you did to that old Herakles woman?”
He nodded again, smiling.
“I did her on this very spot, as I recall. Delicious.” He winked in Susan’s direction.
Susan turned her head away and refused to look at any of the dragons.
“So you swallowed her to get rid of the evidence,” said Val appreciatively. “Was she still alive — I mean, could you feel her squirm inside you? How long was it until —”
Dax raised his claw again. “I was nervous my first time, it was unexpected. I bet the dragons in this room can easily remember the first time they took human prey.” Val looked around.
The dragons nodded in unison. Including Seth, who Val noticed seemed to grin just a bit.
“You know what this reminds me of?” Susan said shortly.
“No, what’s that, hon?”
“You see them in prison group therapies. A meeting of sociopaths. A meeting where nobody cares of the lives of others. But they all talk nice because they think that’s what they’re supposed to do. But in reality, they’re all monsters who deserve to be locked up.”
A silence greeted Susan’s words. She looked around at all the blank, disconcerted faces.
“Well — Val — ‘you’ must know I’m right,” she said with uncertainty in her voice, “I mean, even dragons must feel guilt over eating people. And I don’t think even a dragon could believe rutting a woman until she bleeds out is a very dragonesque thing to do.”
Dax cut Seth a disapproving look.
Val looked questioningly at her, blinking, as she removed her hand from behind Dax’s thick neck, pausing before speaking. “Sue, I understand what you’re saying, but dragons aren’t like us. They’re literally aliens from another world. Personally, I think they should be the true masters of this lopsided world we live in. When we look at things through their eyes, we can see how screwed up we humans are.”
“So the dragons are the moral ones?” Susan barked. “Oh please, girlfriend, you’re as delusional as they are if you think treating people as ragdolls for their amusement is anything other than wrong, and I’ll be damned if I’ll allow any dragon to take advantage of ‘me’ like that again, ever.”
Seth narrowed his eyes down at Susan, who was still sitting across his lap. Dax raised an eye ridge.
“But hon, you surrendered your rights to Seth. We both did.”
Her eyes flickered up at Seth, “Yeah, I did, I suppose, but any other dragon so much as looks at me wrong and they risk getting a big hole blown straight through ‘em.” Her eyes cut across the dragons.
Shadow sat straighter in his chair, a broad toothy grin only growing wider at Susan’s words.
Susan suddenly glanced at Shadow, who was staring at her, and in turn stared back at him, frowning, cutting a hard look at him up and down. “Who the hell are you looking at?”
“You a firecracker,” snapped Shadow.
“Yes I am,” said Susan forcefully, “and you better keep your distance you black-skinned scalie.”
“I got red scales, too. See!” He turned in his chair and showed her a bright red diamond-like pattern of scales down his back. They tapered down the top of his long, whip-like tail. The tip moved around the side of his chair like an exceptionally thin snake. Susan knew dragons moved their tails when agitated or happy, and all the dragons appeared to be in good spirits. “You can feel them if you want, they’re smooth like the rest of me,” he said enticingly, holding out his thinly muscular arms for effect.
Shadow’s bright white eyes constantly snapped and flickered in their sockets like a bird on the edge of flying away. His speech was always sudden and rapid. His black, raptor-like head always seem to twitch when he spoke, giving the dragon the impression of acting nervous and flightly.
She only snuggled closer to Seth. “I wouldn’t touch you if you were the last dragon on earth,” she said savagely. “Now leave me the hell alone.”
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