Pete's Scratch Pad

  • Cyril the Dragon: The After Years – 1

    [Author’s Note: When I was a kid, a recurring character in my creative writing was Cyril the Dragon, who I primarily used to express stories about other pieces of media such as films, TV shows and computer games that I had recently enjoyed. I thought I’d give him his first outing in more than 30 years today.]

    It was morning. Cyril knew that, and he knew that it was time he got himself out of bed, but it just felt so difficult these days. His eyelids felt heavy, his joints ached, his back hurt.

    He had found that, these days, it was near impossible to get an unbroken night’s sleep, because if he lay in one position, his tail would hurt, while in another position, he didn’t know where to put his arms. He’d sleep for maybe an hour or two, wake up with something hurting, shift position, then repeat the process. It was no wonder that mornings were such an effort.

    After his obligatory contemplations of the day ahead — inevitably assuming the worst about what was about to transpire, even when he had no reason to do so — he managed to force himself upright and begin his mental startup process.

    “Coffee,” he said to himself, standing unsteadily and tottering out of the room, then clumping heavily down the stairs.

    “Afternoon,” came a voice from the corner as he entered the living room. It was Bucker, his one true friend; the one who had always stood by him, through thick and thin. He didn’t really know why; there had been many times where he hadn’t been all that good to Bucker, and yet here he still was, so many years later.

    They were an unlikely pair; Cyril, a green dragon with golden eyes and an expression he himself always assumed would be interpreted by others as “gormless”; Bucker, once just a baby chicken when the pair had first met, but now a proud rooster who, right now, was sitting in his favourite chair in the corner of the room, holding today’s newspaper.

    “Hello,” said Cyril. “I guess I needed to sleep.”

    “Well, I’m glad you’re up,” said Bucker. “I have a plan for us today.”

    Bucker had noticed that Cyril was not the dragon he once was. Many years ago, Cyril had always joyfully been the centre of attention, and had loved to go on adventures, help solve other people’s problems and just generally enjoy life. More recently, though, he had grown lethargic, cynical, frustrated. He seemed more than anything like he had been utterly defeated, and Bucker didn’t like to see that.

    “What is it?” asked Cyril. “You don’t want me to go in the loft again, do you?” Cyril hated going in the loft. The loft really wasn’t designed for dragons.

    “No,” said Bucker, putting down his paper. “We, my friend, are going on an adventure.”

    Cyril blinked a couple of times before responding.

    “An adventure?”

    “An adventure.”

    Another pause.

    “So, uh, what is this adventure?” Cyril eventually asked.

    “It wouldn’t be much of an adventure if I told you everything right away, would it?” responded Bucker with a sly smile.

    “I guess not,” said Cyril. He wasn’t sure how to feel about this development. “Going on an adventure” sounded like it would be a lot of effort, and he wasn’t sure he was up for that, when he could be staying at home, lounging on the sofa and reading a nice book.

    At the same time, though, part of him was curious. Part of him wanted to know what his oldest friend had cooked up for him. And he wasn’t too proud to admit that the prospect of a day that wouldn’t just be like every other day was quite appealing.

    So with that, he resolved to at least go along with Bucker’s plan to begin with, to see what he had planned. A change would do him good, he felt, so what would be the harm?

    Some time later, Cyril and Bucker were in the depths of a wood. The wood was just a few minutes’ walk away from their house, but Cyril had never given it much thought. It was just part of the background scenery. But now he was in it, and he had to admit, it was nice to be out in nature, getting some fresh air. And the fact that, as deep into the wood as they were, they could see absolutely no sign of civilisation in any direction — well, that was rather refreshing.

    Although Cyril had grown comfortable living a normal sort of life in a normal sort of house on a normal sort of street, he had to admit that civilisation was just a bit boring, really. Out here, it felt like anything could happen.

    “Ah, here we are,” said Bucker, pointing ahead of them on the trail to a natural rocky outcropping with a wide opening in it.

    “A cave?” said Cyril.

    “Yeah,” said Bucker. “I thought it looked interesting, but I didn’t really want to go in there by myself. You up for it?”

    Cyril’s interest was well and truly piqued now. He had always felt something of an affinity for caves. He knew that a dragon hanging out in a cave was something of a stereotype — dragons hadn’t sat around in caves hoarding treasure for a very long time now — and yet he often, during quiet moments, found himself thinking about caves he had known, and sometimes caves he had never known; completely imaginary caves that his mind conjured up.

    And now here he was in front of a real one, barely thirty minutes’ walk from his house.

    “You good?” asked Bucker.

    “Yeah,” said Cyril, cracking what he felt like was his first smile in weeks.

    The pair crossed the threshold of the cave. The air smelled a little damp and musty, but it wasn’t unpleasant. It was, however, dark; the already dappled sunlight from the wood didn’t reach far inside the mouth of the cave.

    “You got a light?” asked Cyril.

    Bucker reached into the pack he had been carrying on his back and pulled out a lump of wood with a rag wrapped around the end of it, proffering it to Cyril.

    “I thought we’d do this properly old-school,” he said, with a wink. “Well, go on then.”

    Cyril looked back at him blankly.

    “What?” he asked. Bucker said nothing. “Oh, right.”

    It had been a while since he had done it, but he thought he remembered how. A deep breath in until he felt the familiar heat at the back of his throat, and then just exhale…

    Flames blasted out of Cyril’s mouth rather more forcefully than he intended, but they had the intended effect.

    “Good grief,” said Bucker, now holding the torch well away from his face. “Just a little puff would have been fine.”

    “Sorry,” said Cyril. “It’s been a while.”

    “I wasn’t aware that you got, ah, backed up,” said Bucker. “But no worries.”

    Cyril felt a little embarrassed, but he wasn’t quite sure why.

    “Well then,” said Bucker, holding up the now-flaming torch. “Shall we?”

    “You know what?” said Cyril. “I think we shall.”

  • Project A, Chapter 1

    [Author’s note: As a general convention on this site, prior to thinking of a name for various projects, I will simply give them an identifier to distinguish them from one another. As the first project on this site, this is “Project A” until such a time as I come up with a title for it.]

    We were in the midst of a Maths lesson, my least favourite subject, and I could feel my stress levels rising as I attempted to wrap my brain around the latest set of problems that had been placed in front of me.

    I had always found Maths difficult, and yet I was somehow considered to be “good” at it. But it was always an effort, and it always put me on edge. Even from a young age, I always preferred creative pursuits where there weren’t necessarily concrete, correct answers. I would always rather use my imagination to solve a problem than attempt to work things out on the way to only one possible solution.

    As was the case for many of my peers in those early years of schooling, I didn’t necessarily recognise “stress” for what it was. More often than not, it manifested itself as a sudden, urgent need to go to the toilet. And so it was in this instance that I found myself putting my hand up and urgently begging the teacher that I should be able to go and relieve myself.

    Mrs. Robbins didn’t like letting people out of the classroom during lessons. She was one of those particularly old-school teachers, where she believed that once the bell had rung and everyone was seated, everyone should remain seated for the duration of the lesson. Breaktime and lunchtime was for going to the toilet, and woe betide you if you needed to go while she was actively teaching.

    This had led to more than one accident among my peers, so in more recent months, she had relaxed her rules a little. There was still no leaving the classroom while she was standing at the front explaining our tasks to us, but once we were settled and, in theory, getting to work, she might allow one of us at a time to go to the toilet if we really needed to.

    On this occasion, I had somehow convinced her that I really needed to. I’m not sure how I had achieved it, but I was grateful that I had. After gaining her approval, I got up out of my chair and headed straight for the cloakroom just outside the classroom, then ensconced myself in one of the cubicles away from prying eyes.

    It was then that it happened, though I didn’t realise until I took my trousers down and, inexplicably, something was absent.

    My young brain struggled to process what was going on. What was I supposed to do now? Had it fallen off? Was it possible for it to fall off? I didn’t remember anyone ever telling you that was a risk. More importantly, how was I supposed to go to the toilet without one of them?

    I sat down, confused, and the answer to at least some of my questions revealed itself as I somehow successfully relieved myself without the implement that, up until now, I had believed essential to such a procedure. I felt strange, dirty, so I grabbed some toilet roll and cleaned myself off. Then, I pulled my trousers back up, feeling thoroughly confused by the situation, but also worrying that I shouldn’t take too long, lest Mrs. Robbins come looking for me. And I didn’t want that humiliation.

    I emerged from the cubicle and headed for the sink to wash my hands. And it was then that I really understood something very strange had happened. Because looking back at me from the mirror was an unfamiliar face, framed by an unfamiliar hairstyle. And, perhaps most mortifyingly of all, it was clearly a girl’s face.

    I knew right away that I couldn’t go back to the classroom like this. How had this happened? Had it really happened at all? I thought back to using the toilet, and the absence of that. Clearly something had actually happened, but, oddly enough, no-one had prepared me for the possibility this was something that was even possible to happen.

    I looked in the mirror again. As a child, I hadn’t yet developed a romantic or sexual interest in others, but I still recognised when a boy was handsome and a girl was pretty. Among other things, people seemed to treat the good-looking people better. They didn’t get bullied, they always had lots of friends surrounding them, and their lives always seemed to be happy. I would come to know many years later that this was by no means a universal state of affairs, but to my simple, childish mind, that was how the world attempted to work.

    I found myself thinking that the girl looking back at me was actually quite pretty. She had short, slightly wavy, mousy-blonde hair that came down the side of her head and covered her ears. She had a nice smile. And her blue-green eyes, a stark contrast to my own dark brown ones, were somewhat piercing. I found myself staring deep into them for quite some time before I realised that maybe I shouldn’t be thinking of this girl as some sort of other person, because apparently she was the reflection of me in my current state, even if I didn’t understand why.

    I gingerly raised my hand. As it passed before my eyes, I noted that the fingers seemed to be slimmer, more delicate than the hands I was used to seeing in front of me, doing things. I raised the hand to the side of my head and felt the wavy hair I could see in the mirror. My blood ran cold. This was real. How could I possibly explain this? How, exactly, was I supposed to walk out of the cloakroom as what appeared to be a completely different person to the one that I entered as?

    The answer never came to me. Because it was at that point my eyes flicked open, and the familiar sight of my alarm clock’s aggressively glowing red LED digits confronted me, helpfully informing me that it was far too early in the morning to even contemplate getting up.

    It took me a moment to reboot my brain, but I realised that this was what was real. This was the here and now, and what I had just experienced…

    It had all been a dream. Of course it was. Nothing about what I had just been through was possible. But how vivid it was! The sensations I had felt! They were strange. Unfamiliar. And, I don’t mind admitting it, a little exciting.

    But they were just a dream. That was all.

    I closed my eyes again, wondering if I might be able to pick up where I left off. But instead, I sank into a dreamless sleep, until the morning, unwelcome, eventually came.