Pest Problem

by Vic Morton

"Is that a dragon?" Willard was standing in the doorway to the kitchen re-thinking his life choices that had led him to this exact moment. On the other side of the room near the door to the backyard, his roommate Sebastian was crouched behind the upturned dinner table. On the other side of the table was a creature about the size of a donkey that looked very dragonish to someone who had never thought dragons were a real thing. At this point a mouse happened to scurry across the floor only to be engulfed in a jet of flame that, at least appeared, to come from the dragon's mouth. Sebastian looked at Willard, he was holding a metal trashcan lid in one hand and a copper frying pan in the other. "Does it look like a dragon?" "I guess, it's just, dragons aren't real." The dragon shot another burst of flame, this one directed at Willard. His pant leg caught on fire. This caused an ancient mystic response. It was the same response that Willard’s ancestors had done all the way back to the first proto-monkey man, it was passed on without ever being taught through a sort of genetic-racial-memory-magic. It was the Holy-Shit-I'm-on-Fire dance and he danced it to a perfection that would have made his crispy ancestors proud. He then fell to one side of the door jam in the living room and finally beat the flames into submission. From the kitchen he heard, "Did that feel real?" Willard pushed his head around the jam and glared at Sebastian. "Where did it come from?" Sebastian shrugged. "When a mommy dragon and a daddy dragon love each other very much." A video game controller flew from the living room and smashed into the table next to Sebastian’s face. The dragon for his part was trotting around the kitchen sniffing the ground. "How did it get into our kitchen?" The pause from the other room caused Willard to poke his head around the jam again. Sebastian shot him a weak smile. "Dragon fairy?" Another controller smashed next to his head. "Ok I might, just might mind you have let in through the door." "What?" "Well, just suppose, for the sake of argument that I spotted it out in the yard and lured it into the house using bacon." Another controller smashed next Sebastian’s head. "Why the fuck did you do that?" There was a long silence broken only by the snuffles of the dragon and the click clack of his claws. "Because it’s a dragon," Sebastian said finally. "So how do we get rid of it?" "Um I thought you might tackle that one." "What?" "I mean I got it in here all by myself, no help from you at all. I think it’s only fair you nut up, do your share and get it out." Another controller smashed into the table. The dragon let out a noise that reminded Willard of brake pads in need of replacement on a car with a bad muffler. The puff of black smoke that floated past him only reinforced this association. "Dude, I think you made it mad...or it just backfired." Willard peered around the doorjam. He watched the dragon paw the floor several times, circle three or four times paw a bit more and then plop down curled into a ball. "I think it went to sleep." "What?" Sebastian poked his head over the table. A jet of flame blackened the table top. Sebastian managed to duck down just in time. "Not a sleep." "Getting ready to go to sleep then?" "Be precise, big difference man." "I got an idea, be ready to run." Seconds passed and Sebastian tensed his body ready to move. Willard leaned around the doorjamb. "Hey it’s Smaug!" The dragon looked out into the yard where Willard was pointing. By the time it turned back around both Willard and Sebastian were gone. "Great...what do we do now?" Willard shrugged. "I got you away from the dragon, I think it’s your turn again." They stared hard each other, but eventually Sebastian broke and looked away. "Fuck, I guess you're right." He looked at the piles of crap that was the garage. It was the typical American variety so full of stuff that there was no room for a car. A grill, an old bicycle, a tarp, flashlights, garden tools garages accumulate these things naturally, despite the owner of the garage never purchasing them. They just appear over time. After five minutes a gleam came into Sebastian’s eyes. "I have it." The thing that moved into the backyard was impossible to describe except by describing it. It had the hide of an old tarp and the burning eyes of flashlights. Its back end rolled like two bicycles while the front end pushed forward with the steady motor hum of an automated lawnmower. The mouth that was opening and closing as it moved revealed the burning fire of a gas grill. The dragon inside the house was intrigued by the emergence of this strange creature. It trotted out to the lawn and sat with its head cocked to one side staring at the bizarre beast. Its nose snuffled the whole time, eventually it started to let out loud urgent braying. It was meant to be a roar of fierce intimidation striking fear in the heart of any creature to hear it. And it would have sounded like that in dragon of say ten to twenty times the size of the one attempting it. Instead it sounded like the time Jimmy Teeth's dad took everyone to local armor one hot Saturday in the summer for a tour and during the tour Jimmy Teeth's dad swore he knew how to drive a tank. It sounded like the grinding and metal scraping of Jimmy Teeth's dad driving the tank. The dragon then sprinted and stood in front of the oncoming abomination and puffed itself up. When the two were about two feet apart the dragon let loose a wave of fire. The flames engulfed the strange creature, the tarp like skin began to melt like a tarp on fire. The holes this created revealed the eldritch bones below, which resembled two bicycles at the back, an automated lawnmower and a gas grill. It was about this time the flames found the propane tanks and introduced themselves. It was an explosive meeting. The sound of the explosion was similar to the one they used to blow the hatch on the tank Jimmy Teeth's dad was driving that summer day just before they began shooting through the now open hatch. Jimmy Teeth's dad was shot fifty three times and killed, but never spilled the beer he was holding. Every kid there that day had an excellent story for "What I Did on My Summer Vacation" when school started again and Jimmy Teeth always called it his favorite summer memory. Bits of dragon and bicycle and lawnmower and gas grill rained down. There was a blackened crater about five feet in diameter in the yard. Willard and Sebastian stood in the kitchen staring out at the yard. Each was sipping from a cup of coffee. "That worked well," Willard acknowledged. "Thanks dude." "Glad we weren't inside it though." "Yeah, that would have been stupid."