Dragon Pox
by Sarina Dorie
Horrific Scribes Extremity Rating:
When Nikki sat down next to the elderly woman sneaking bits of food to a dragon in the pet carrier in the lobby at the train station, she had a scheme in mind.
She planned to steal the dragon.
Nikki’s mom was in a long line of people buying tickets, trying to make a mass exodus out of the city. The station was hot and suffocatingly warm. It smelled like body odor and urine. A huge number of people were crowded into the large lobby, but the elderly woman still stood out as the most interesting one.
Nikki’s fourteen-year-old sister, McKenzie, was supposed to be watching Nikki. Instead, she lingered next to the vending machine, on her phone with her annoying boyfriend.
McKenzie spoke loudly into her phone to be heard over the crowd. “Yeah, it’s totally unfair my mom is making us leave the city just because of the newest pandemic. Aunt Velma’s house smells like mothballs, and she has eight cats. She lives in the middle of nowhere in the desert. It’s uber lame.”
Nikki was too old for a babysitter anyway now that she was eight. Especially one as crabby as her sister.
Nikki wanted lots of things that her mom didn’t have money for, but Nikki had never wanted anything enough to steal. Until now.
Nikki scooted closer to the woman on the bench. The woman had slipped her hand into the pet carrier and was petting her dragon. She smoothed out the pink ruffles of her dress. “Can I hold your dragon?” Her voice was muffled by her face mask. The only good thing about it was that it had unicorns on it.
The elderly woman withdrew her hand from the box, her gaze flitting over Nikki. Her eyes were golden just like her dragon’s. The shimmer of her green eyeshadow was as iridescent as dragon scales. The woman’s gray hair was short and curly under a pretty hat with feathers and netting that gave her an old-fashioned look. The glisten of her curls was too perfect, the color too uniform. It reminded Nikki of doll hair.
Unlike many of the other people in the train station, this woman didn’t wear a face mask.
“He is a baby,” the woman said in a thick German accent. “Do you know how to hold a baby?”
Nikki bit her lip. She desperately wanted the dragon, but she didn’t want to hurt him. “I held my friend’s special cat-puppies when she brought them to show and tell.” That was last year when Nikki had been in first grade and the newest hybrids that had been genetically engineered had been the latest rage.
She’d never realized scientists could make dragons, too.
Carefully, the woman set the baby dragon in Nikki’s arms. He was only the size of a puppy, but he was heavier than he looked. He snuggled into Nikki’s arms, his black claws digging into her skin. He draped his long tail over her shoulder.
“What’s his name?” Nikki asked.
“Horatio. Have a care. He likes the taste of human flesh.”
Nikki’s eyes went wide with fear. She couldn’t tell if the woman was teasing her like her dad used to do back before her parents had split up. In those days, he’d always been joking about something.
The dragon’s scales shimmered like insect wings. Nikki wanted to keep him forever. Nikki thought she could slip him under her coat, but the woman watched her like a cat about to pounce on a mouse.
The woman opened her purse, still not taking her gaze off Nikki. The purse fabric looked like it was made from actual dalmatian fur. Nikki wondered if the dragon had eaten someone’s dog.
The dragon lady reached into her purse and pulled out a syringe filled with neon green liquid. She lifted her skirt, exposing a skinny knee. Nikki stared in fascination as the woman pinched the flesh above her knee and injected herself with the fluorescent fluid. The woman was quick, and she twisted to hide what she was doing from the crowd. Nikki didn’t think anyone else saw.
Nikki knew all about insulin injections. Her mother had caught the diabetes the year before. “What’s that?”
“My medicine.”
“Are you sick?” Nikki asked.
“Not at all. I’ve never felt better in my life.” The woman’s smile stretched tight across cheeks that didn’t wrinkle quite right. Her skin almost looked leathery under her makeup, or more like scales, but not quite.
Nikki tried to shift the dragon under her coat when the woman was putting away her medicine, but the dragon squirmed and crawled onto her shoulder. He was heavy, and his nails snagged on her pretty pink coat. Her plan for stealing the dragon wasn’t working.
“So is that like drugs?” Nikki knew about people using drugs in syringes from jokes her parents used to make about the insulin. Maybe drugs were bright green.
The woman arched a pencil-drawn eyebrow at her. “This is medicine I use so I can fit in more comfortably among humans. It minimizes the most obvious symptoms of dragon pox.”
“What’s that?” It sounded way more interesting than chickenpox.
One side of the woman’s mouth lifted into a smile. “You’ll find out eventually.”
“Like in school?” Nikki asked.
“Or sooner.” The woman removed the dragon from Nikki’s lap. “Excuse me, dear. I have other matters to attend.”
“Can’t you stay?” Nikki’s eyes were glued on the dragon as the woman placed him in the pet carrier. “Please, I don’t want Horatio to go.”
The dragon stared at Nikki with large, liquid black eyes. Nikki was certain he was meant to be hers. She knew he would love her, and she would love him as her special pet. Nothing in the world was more magical and wonderful than dragons.
“I’m sorry.” A stiff smile curled the woman’s lips upward, revealing sharp teeth. She didn’t look sorry. “I must go and spread… the commandments of our lord and savior to others.”
Nikki hadn’t realized she was a church lady. She would do anything to hold the dragon a little longer. “You can tell me about the commandments. I’m a good listener.”
The dragon lady lifted the pet carrier like it weighed nothing to her. “Child, I have already given you enough.”
Nikki sat on the train next to her sister. McKenzie stared out the window, plugged into her iPod. Mom sat directly across from her. Beside her, the woman in a trench coat with multiple facial piercings was far less interesting than the dragon lady. All she wanted to do was read. Mom kept texting people on her phone.
Nikki’s tablet didn’t have wi-fi. The trip was long and boring. She wished she had her books, but they were in her suitcase. Traveling would have been so much easier if her mother had a functional car.
Before long, Nikki’s skin began to itch.
Mom leaned forward and took Nikki’s hand, examining the rash on her wrist. “What’s that? What did you touch in the train station?”
“Nothing!” Nikki said. Her mother was a worrywart, just like Dad used to say.
McKenzie huffed and rolled her eyes. “It’s probably fleas from petting some weird old lady’s cat.”
Nikki lifted her chin, which shifted her mask out of place. “It wasn’t a cat. It was a dragon.”
Mom adjusted Nikki’s mask back over her nose.
“There’s no such thing as dragons,” McKenzie said.
“Yeah-huh, there is!”
“Is not!”
“There is,” Nikki said. “It was gen-engineered.”
The woman seated next to Mom glared at them.
“Shush,” Mom said, rummaging in her oversized purse before extracting a tube of cortisone ointment. “Don’t talk about dragons or genetically engineered animals. It will make people nervous.”
“Why?” Nikki asked.
McKenzie groaned. “Because the virus comes from gen-engineered lizards. Duh.”
Mom lowered her voice. “We don’t want people to think you have the lizard flu.”
Nikki remembered the elderly woman had given herself a shot for her dragon disease. “Do I have dragon pox?”
McKenzie shook her head in disgust. Teenagers were always disgusted about something. “That isn’t what the virus is called.” McKenzie snorted in the same way all her snotty friends did. “Lizard flu gives you a cough and a stomach ache, not a rash.”
That wasn’t what the woman had called her illness.
Mom spoke louder, more confidently. “It’s probably just your eczema acting up.”
During the trip from Portland to California, the rash worsened. Mom’s forehead crinkled in confusion. “This looks like chicken pox. But it’s only on your hands and wrists.”
“Do you think it’s the lizard flu?” McKenzie whispered.
“A rash isn’t one of the symptoms,” Mom said.
Nikki thought about the elderly woman who had said she had dragon pox. That was totally different from the latest flu that was causing people to flee the city in panic, wasn’t it? What if Nikki had a different, dragon disease?
Mom made Nikki wash her hands in the bathroom before reapplying the ointment. When they arrived in California and transferred to a bus, her mom made her put gloves on.
“But it’s hot!” Nikki complained.
“I don’t want anyone to see your rash,” her mother whispered. “They might not let us board.”
“Why would they care about a rash?” she asked.
“Because it might be contagious, moron,” McKenzie said.
Mom gave her a stern look. “Be nice to your sister, please.”
Nikki wore the gloves while boarding the next bus. Her face itched, and she hated wearing her mask, but she knew she needed to keep it on so she wouldn’t catch other people’s germs.
Across the aisle on the bus, Nikki caught glimpses of her Mom reading articles on her phone about the lizard disease. Mom’s eyes crinkled up in concern, and she kept sneaking glances at Nikki. Every time Nikki tried to look at the phone, Mom hid the screen from her.
When her mom fell asleep on the way to Nevada, Nikki removed her gloves. Her rash had turned green. She stared at the shimmering scales in wonder. It didn’t itch like it had earlier.
“Mooooom!” McKenzie said, shaking their mother. “Look!”
“What?”
Nikki showed off her beautiful hands. They resembled green gloves, iridescent like dragonfly wings. Mom removed Nikki’s mask.
Mom gasped. “Your face!”
Nikki smoothed a hand over her cheeks. It reminded her of the texture of the dragon she’d been petting earlier.
“Oh my god!” a woman across the aisle shouted. “She has the virus! It’s the lizard flu!”
A man stood up, his mask puffing in and out as he hyperventilated. “Green scales are the latest symptom of the newest wave, isn’t it?”
Nikki didn’t feel like she had the flu. She felt great. Almost great.
“I’m hungry,” Nikki said.
Her sister’s arm looked especially tasty.
Want another gripping story by Sarina Dorie? Read “The Virtues and Vices of Vegan Vampires” In Horrific Scribes, May 2025.