The Dragon
One gloomy winter’s day, Heather was walking home across a playing field when an extremely large dragon landed in front of her. It was a very elegant dragon, with shiny blue-black scales and deep, whirling red eyes. Heather was in no mood to notice this however, as the wind of the dragon’s landing had knocked her onto her backside in a most unladylike manner.
“Oh great,” said Heather, with sarcasm oozing out of every pore in her body, “Here we go with yet another one of Heather’s crazy adventures. Are you going to turn me into some sort of creature, or will we sit down and have a nice little chat about the meaning of life? I’ll bet one of my loving brothers and perhaps some of their ever-so-charming friends are lurking about here somewhere too. Ready to save the world from Heather’s hysterics.”
The dragon looked puzzled, but said nothing.
“Oh, not talking to me are we? Well fine then. Just hurry up and get it over with. Cast your horrible little spell or whatever it is you’re going to do. See if I care. Nobody ever asked me if I wanted to have adventures, they just...” Heather kept on rambling like this for some time. Faced with such ludicrous inanity, the dragon decided that Heather probably wasn’t even worth the trouble of charring to a blackened cinder, let alone eating. She would probably give him an extreme case of indigestion. So he calmly picked something out of his teeth with one long black claw, then flew off to find something more edible, knocking Heather over again in the process.
Eventually Heather calmed down enough from her fit of sarcasm to notice that she was on the ground again and the dragon had gone. Picking herself up, she noticed that whatever it was that the dragon had picked out of it’s teeth was lying on the ground nearby. Now Heather, having more curiosity than a suicidal cat and a lot less sense, could not resist going over to see what it was.
If Heather were a more sensible creature, she would have expected to see some grizly piece of rotting meat, or perhaps a bit of shattered bone. Not being so bright, however, and having had too many fairy stories read to her, she was expecting some kind of magical ring, talisman or shard of broken sword. What she did find amazed even her.
Lying on the ground, smelling horribly of draconic halitosis, was a toilet brush - complete with cheap plastic stand. At this point, even the most determined romantic would have had the sense to be horribly dissapointed and continue on their way home (or put the thing in the bin if they were particularly good natured). Heather, however, somehow managed to take sheer bloody-minded romanticism to new heights by imagining it to have some sort of magical property. Without even a nanosecond of hesitation, she tied it round her neck with a piece of string. It never occured to her to wonder how a toilet brush may have got stuck in a dragon’s teeth. Not even the noxious fumes wafting from it could put a dint in her certainty of its magical powers.
Heather’s kind mother however, threatened to put a dint in Heather once she caught a whiff of the toilet brush and made her scrub it thoroughly with disinfectant. While scrubbing the brush, Heather was suprised to find that while the stand was cheap plastic, the brush handle was made out of some kind of very light metal, and was actually quite stylish - for a toilet brush. Needless to say, this did nothing to quash Heather’s notion of it being a magical toilet brush.
Later that night, Heather was snoring peacefully away in her bed, and the rest of the family were adjusting their ear plugs. The toilet brush glistened gently in the moonlight through Heather’s window. Nobody noticed the little red light begin to flash amongst the bristles.
Suddenly the house was full of men in bullet-proof vests, shouting and waving the torches on the ends of their large guns. The noise was added to by sleek looking helicopters circling the house and shining search lights through the windows. Pretty soon the entire family was outside and some efficient looking men were trying to enclose Heather in some very large metal clamps.
Heather’s wise and sensible father found someone who looked as if they were in charge and demanded to know what was going on, and what they were doing with his daughter. “I’m sorry sir,” replied the man as he adjusted his ear piece, “we have reason to believe that your ’daughter’ is a man-eating dragon.”
“That’s ludicrous!” exclaimed Heather’s wise and sensible father. “She can throw quite a good tantrum at times, but she’s certainly no dragon. I mean, there was that incident with the neighbour’s dog, but his hair is growing back nicely now, and she certainly didn’t eat it.”
“I’m sure your quite sincere sir,” said the man in an emotionless voice, “and the rest of your family won’t be charged at this stage, but we just recovered our stealth dragon tracking device from your daughter’s bedroom. Good men died getting this inside the dragon. We’re going to have to take your daughter into custody.”
And so, there was nothing more Heather’s loving family could do other than sadly watch her being taken away. They were informed that Heather would be subjected to some tests to determine if she actually was a dragon and if not, she would be returned home safely.
It took some time for the scientists to declare Heather wasn’t actually a dragon. They found some puzzling similarities to a turtle in parts of her DNA. Eventually, however, they had to let her go. Heather would never speak of what actually went on while she was being tested, but from that day forward, she would never fail to run away screaming at the sight of a toilet brush.
THE END.