The Existence(Terence Morais) It was Monday. It was the worst day with the worst climate. It was snowing heavily. Of course, the lecturer was relentless in his ranting. David was bored and was spinning his pen in his fingers. At one point when he got very frustrated with the lecture, he flicked his pen. The pen fell down and when he bent down to pick it up, another hand reached for it, too. It was the new student. He had joined the course Mid-year.

David took the pen from the new guy and thanked him. David did not find out his name yet and he didn’t bother to. He just started spinning it again. But this time he felt something unusual about the pen. The pen was warmer now. When he was about examine it, the lunch bell rang and his friends pulled him to the locker area. David tucked the pen into his pocket and left.

David had three friends- Peter, Jane and Gillian. They gathered at the locker area.
“What’s the name of the new guy?” David asked.
“I don’t know.” said Peter.
“Neither do I.” said Gillian.
“I’d like to know.” said Jane, smiling.
“Somebody has a crush on the new guy!” David mocked.
“Go and talk to him.” suggested Peter.
“Yeah. Go ahead.” encouraged Gillian.
Jane hesitated and bit her nails.
“I dare you to talk to him.” David nudged.
“Ok, I’m going.”

Jane walked towards the new guy.
David watched them from a distance. The new guy had a body of an athlete and he wore a sweatshirt underneath a leather jacket and jeans. David watched as Jane spoke to him. She was blushing. After a bit of chit chat their elbows rubbed each other accidentally but Jane pulled her elbow away in a reflex. Then, Jane smiled at him and walked towards her gang clutching her elbow, leaving the new guy to ruffle thought his locker.
“I've got a date with him tonight.”
“Whoa! We just wanted to know his name and you’ve gotten yourself a date?” David was flabbergasted.
“Yeah, I know. He asked me and I couldn’t refuse. He has a bad-boy look with a good-guy character.” Jane said with a smile.
“Okay, Smiley Laughterson, What’s his name?” asked Peter.
“His name is Victor Lennox.”
“What? Was he born with the caveman? His name sounds very rustic.” Said Gillian.
“Whatever! I’m going on a date. I don’t care what you guys think.”
“Chill. Fine with us.” David controlled the argument and everyone went to the cafeteria chatting about the heavily snowing day and how it made things that could cut through glass.
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It took David nearly two hours to complete his assignment. He was feeling sleepy by the end of the work. He decided to go to bed. He pounced on to his bed when something in his pocket hurt his pelvic bone.
“Ouch! What the hell was that?” He pulled out the pen from his pocket. It was the pen which he had dropped and later he had stuffed into his pocket but forgot about it later. He was about to throw the pen away and that is when he saw it. Something was wrong with the pen. And he saw it. His eyes widened and his jaw dropped. He reached for his cellphone and called Peter and Gillian. He asked them to come to school early.
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David pulled out the pen from his pocket to show it to Peter and Gillian. There was a thumb-and-index-finger shaped imprint on the plastic body of the pen. It was as if someone heated their thumb and index finger to boiling point and pressed it against the body of the pen.
Peter and Gillian were dumbstruck.
“Yeah, it was the new guy. I dropped my pen. He picked it up and handed it to me. I felt something warm. At that time I didn’t mind it but later at home when I looked at it, there was this.” David was shocked to his shell.
“This is creepy, man!” said Peter.
“Oh, damn!” exclaimed Gillian.
“What?” asked David.
“Jane went on a date with him.” Said Gillian with eyes filled with concern.

David and Peter were starting to feel the fear creep in. All three of them ran through the empty corridor and reached the bus stop. They caught a bus to Jane’s house. They reached Jane’s house and rapped on her door. After a series of incessant knocking, Jane’s mom opened the door.
“What happened, fellows? You look…” The trio cut her mid-sentence.
“Where’s Jane?” asked all three in unison.
“She’s upstairs in her room.”
They pushed aside her mom and ran to her room. They pushed open her door and walked right in. She was surfing the net, sipping a cola.
“What the hell? What happened?” Jane was flummoxed.
Peter, Gillian and David let out a sigh and all three hugged Jane in joy.
“Leave me, you bears!” Jane was still in her shocked state. “Why are you guys here?”
“We’ll tell you later. Tell us about your date, will you?” David asked hurriedly.
“You came all the way here to listen to my story about last night’s date?” Jane raised her eyebrows.
“Yeah, now tell.” said Peter.
“Weren’t you planning to come to school?” asked Gillian, confused.
“I didn’t complete the assignment, so I thought I could bunk and complete the work.”
“Now tell me about your date.” David was curious.
“Okay, I’ll tell.” Jane smiled in a dreamy way and started to tell about her date. “Victor is one of the sweetest guys I've ever met. He was very nice. He behaved like a gentleman. We had dinner and he walked me home. Ah! Then we had this most amazing kiss. It was the best. And it was hot, by the way.”
“We all know that it would have been hot.” Said David dismissively.
“No! No! It was literally hot. It was as if he was having an abnormally high fever. When I asked him whether he had fever, he told that he did and that it didn’t matter. He is very sweet, no?”

David looked at Peter and Gillian, shocked.
David handed the deformed pen to Jane and explained what happened to it. Now, Jane was shocked too.
“This whole thing is a bit creepy.” Cried Jane and covered her mouth with both her hands. Gillian noticed something on her elbow.
“Where did you hurt your elbow?” asked Gillian, confused.
“What about the elbow?” Jane looked at her elbow in the mirror opposite to her bed. There were two cut-like wounds on her left elbow. “What’s this?” Jane touched it and winced in pain.

Inside David’s mind, the picture of Jane and Victor’s elbows rubbing when they were talking in the locker area the previous day flashed. David told them about his thought. All of them reflected upon it for a while.
“Okay, we are confronting him.” ordered Gillian.
After much debate on that issue, they concluded that they would. Jane called him up later that day and set up the meeting with the offer of showing him the reserve forest.
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“I did a research online about these creepy happenings about Victor Lennox.” said Peter. They were all ears, standing beside a torn-down fence of the reserve forest. Peter, Gillian, David and Jane were waiting for Victor to arrive. “The only creature which can generate heat independently is a mythical one, a dragon. But you all know what dragons look like. So … I wasn’t able to conclude anything. Dragons have vanished mysteriously from the face of Earth according to mythology.” said Peter. Everyone gave him a look of disbelief.
“But Dragons did not exist.” said David with a sigh.
And Victor arrived.
“Hey, guys!” said Victor in a nice but deep voice.
“Hey! Come, let’s go in. We have a beautiful spot where we used to camp.” said David and led the group into the forest.
After a five-minute trek, they reached a clearing. Everyone turned towards Victor, with a confronting look.
“What?” Victor asked quizzically.
“We know that you are different. So, speak up.”
“We know.”
They told him about the deformed pen, the elbow wound and the fever kiss. Victor smiled at them. A wicked smile. He brought his fist up to his mouth and he coughed. And then they saw it.
He breathed fire.
“If you really want to know…” said Victor.

All four of them stepped back.

Victor bent down, balling his fists. Water vapour erupted through his sleeves. The snow around him started to melt. Spikes grew out of his elbow. A large pair of grey wings tore his jacket apart. Scales began to appear on his skin. He ripped away the rest of his clothes and he outgrew it. He transformed into a twelve feet tall creature with grey scales all over his body, with a long, spiked tail. His mouth was now a snout. The creature looked muscular with a series of spikes down his spine. He had transformed into a dragon.

“And you thought dragons didn’t exist?” said the dragon with a roar, looking down at David.

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