The Dragon in Our Midst

I woke up from my dream about dragons because of my alarm blaring into my ears. At 6:30 in the morning my neighbours don't take too kindly to my alarm so I use earbuds now so nobody can hear the stupid thing but me. its smart but damn its loud and annoying. guess that's why it works so well I fall of the bed trying to stop the blaring and knock into the curtains causing them to part a smidge and reveal a very bright sun. the sun beamed into my bedroom and across all the shiny objects hanging in my room consisting of old CDs, prisms and glass. the light bounced off the surfaces of the hanging objects and showers the wall on a cascade of colour. my walls were a pastel purple which looks beautiful as the rainbow climbs the walls. my bedspread and closet match my walls in colour also. I was in a trance watching the shimmering colours and I snapped out of it when In remembered my clock. I look down at it on the floor, now silent, and note the time. its time to head to work. As I got ready for the day my dream kept popping into my head. I dreamt that I found a necklace. a necklace with shiny glass beads and colourful smoke. I touched the necklace and slowly began to turn into a dragon. A few scales at first, then my snout, then wings and soon I was 10 times larger than any human. then I woke up. as we established. People say I'm weird. not just because I worked as an animal cleaner but because I actually believe that dragons do exist. at least, in history they did. they could be extinct now. or in hiding. I constantly fantasize about them. almost believing I am a descendent of one at times. my notebooks and journals are filled with pictures and stories of them. whether I was one, or as a pet, or just in general. as for what an "animal cleaner" is, we do the nasty stuff that comes with the animals. brushing their teeth, cleaning the poop and their habitats, washing the animals. you know. the undesirable side to working with animals. I head out the door and ride my bike as fast as it can go to the zoo where I work. they house some of the most rare, endangered and viscious animals in the world. snakes, white tigers, Hippos, etc as I pedal to work my brain went back to dragons, as usual. the colourful scales, long tail and horde of gems they protect. I can almost imagine I'm souring through the sky, my dragon wings cutting through the air like a knife, trees and houses tiny dots below me. it takes me 15 minutes to get to work and I put on my work gloves and boots as I hang my bag in the cubby “Hello Ashley.” Said one of my co-workers. She’s the only friend I have in the workplace. Her name is Sophia. “Hey Soph. How was yesterday?” I ask as I clock in and put on my work boots and gloves and head to the snakes Den. We hold almost every breed of snake so the snake den is quite large. I remove any eggs and shed left behind and depending how good the condition of the shed is, sometimes I’m allowed to keep and preserve it. After a few hours I finish with the snakes and head to the hippos’ habitat. We are housing 3 hippos at the moment 1 boy and 2 girls. Both girls are heavily pregnant and keeps eating things they shouldn’t. no worker is allowed to wear jewellery around them for this reason. So it’s not surprising what happens a few hours later. In the middle of my shift I’m cleaning the Hippo’s Habitat when something shiny in the pile of poop I have yet to clean up. With my gloves on I remove the shiny object from the gunk around it. I took it to the tap on the side of the zoo and cleaned it up. I noticed it was a necklace with a small stack of bead-like pieces of glass hanging from the chain. Just like the necklace in my dream. I look at the colours swirling inside and feel compelled to touch the glass. and as soon as I did, I felt a power flow through me. The power was nothing I ever felt before. It was so powerful the smoke in the glass expanded past the glass without breaking it, the smoke expanded and swirled around me. Then, all of a sudden, the smoke disappears. I am left with a colourless version of the necklace, the smoke having escaped somehow. I am left speechless. In the 5 years I’ve worked here nothing and I mean NOTHING like this has ever happened. Whatever happened that is. I put the empty necklace in my back pocket and resume cleaning the hippos’ poop. About 5 minutes later I noticed a rough spot on my arm about the size of a small coin. I tried scratching and picking at it but it stayed put. I ignored the patch on my arm and kept cleaning. An hour later, more spots have appeared, I lean my back against the wall and jump off when something on my back shifts. I run to Sophia, who was playing with a Ball Python, Mercy. “Soph, can you please check my back?” I ask, knowing something is up. Sophia looks up and gasps loudly. “OMG What the hell is wrong with your face?” She asked. I shrug, not knowing what she is talking about. Sophia walks to the opposite side of the room, to her bag and brings out a small shiny object. Upon seeing the shine of the object, every cell in my body wanted to snatch it and run away. What the hell is wrong with me I think as Sophia re-emerges beside me. She hands me the shiny object, a picture of a human with the same rough patches on her face. Her nose looks like it’s been folded up on the bridge a few times, her eyes larger and green a stark contrast to my normal brown eyes, her pupils slitted like a cat’s. She blinks and she has two sets of eyelids like a lizard’s. This isn’t a picture. It’s a mirror. The rough patches start to peel off, showing a smooth, colourful surface underneath. Scales I think as a clawed hand touches the cool stones. Each scale was a different colour, the shades of pastels. Blue, green, purple, pink and reds fill my body as the scales grow and multiply to cover all of my skin. her nose and mouth stretching into a snout and I felt my head bursting with tingly pain like hitting your funny bone. Horns. The girl just grew horns. They bent back and was filed to a point on each side. Impossible to ignore. They were glossy and ranged from white at the base blending into black at the tips. The person in the mirror is me, but I don’t recognise her. She looks like a monster. I snap out of my daze as another co-worker, Sharon, comes up behind me. “Daaaamn Ashley. What the hell happened to your BACK?” she asked. I couldn’t see behind me but my back felt like it was moving. Sophia Lifted up my shirt slowly, revealing more scales on my sides and belly. When she got past my bra it unhooked and wings unfurled in their faces. Wings. Real wings. Dragon wings. My dream was now a reality. I was turning into a dragon.