Brave the Dragon

SHORT STORY
THEMES: Contains mature content
READ TIME: less than 5 Minutes

Janey loved dragons. At fifty she had amassed quite a collection of them: on the walls, in her wardrobe and drawers, on tables and shelves, they cluttered every conceivable space.  She even had a tattoo of one just above her pubic bone. I took her for her word on that. A few - a fair few - knew it for themselves.

In many ways Janey resembled a dragon herself: fiery, muscular - passion deep as her tan. Her house, with its stone floors, large rooms, and ornamental riches, resembled as much a dragon’s den as it did a family home. Into this space she would entice gamely knights and peasants alike: first to inflame, then slay, their lascivious cravings. “I’m a fearless dragon,” Janey once blurted to me. And in that moment she looked just like one. Not fierce, rather radiant and strong - powerful.

But as much as she worshipped, and much as she resembled, Janey was no dragon. Indeed in many ways Janey was as much a fledgling as the indomitable creature she purported herself to be. And now, high in the wide-open skies of adulthood, Janey was tumbling.

Janey believed people couldn’t change who they were. “A leopard can’t change its spots,” she would assert, only to then lament the reasons as to why the same unfortunate patterns, the same painful lessons, continued to recur throughout her lifetime.

Janey said that you should forgive those who have hurt you. But when Janey said forgive she really meant forget and so another dragon was placed safely on the shelf.

One time, not so long after we first met, Janey called up in tears to say one of her cats had died. She had run over it after he had fallen asleep in the engine bay of her car and was so wracked with grief that I headed over to comfort her. I took with me an old pewter figurine – the fighting dragons - not so much a consolatory gift but, in truth, an old, discarded collectable in need of a more appreciative home.

What I remember most about that evening was not her cat’s limp, empty body, or the astonishing burst of joy that ejaculated from Janey upon receiving her gift, but the conflict raging behind Janey’s enormous eyes. Gone were the tears of earlier. In their place was now a confused jumble of stoic indifference and inveterate emotion. It was a look I would become familiar with over the years: one of a spirit deeply embroiled. And such were the hopelessly arid airs of denial in which Janey reigned, there seemed little promise that her own demons – much like those embattled pewter dragons – would ever disengage.

But then, the following spring, something extraordinary happened. Janey’s husband (her 5th to be precise) returned after a weekend away to an empty ransacked home. Nothing was taken and nothing touched but for Janey’s beloved dragon collection: all of which now lay slashed, hacked and broken before him. And in each room, on each door, and every wall, ceiling and floor, the scarlet words Brave the Dragon! spray painted derisively, like a dare.

According to Janey's husband, not a single dragon survived that night: except the one that erupted of Janey that evening. For three days and three nights, Janey swirled, heaved and hissed: a cascade of incandescent rage. So intense was her enmity, so visceral her grief, she burst a blood vessel in her left eye.  Then, for four months, all went silent. Nothing was heard of Janey. Nobody saw her; no one could reach her. She had slunk away into her lair - smouldering, reproachful, alone.

It was during this time that I moved away and I never saw Janey again. Then, about three years ago, I met by chance with an old friend who had recently reconnected with her. She told me that six months after that momentous night Janey had left her husband: “not find a new someone new this time but to find herself”. She also told me that Janey had recently rekindled her greatest passion - that of painting ... "Dragons?" I inquired, remembering the visceral artwork adorning the walls of her old home. “She uses a lot of red,” was all her friend could offer.

Then recently I learned, from the same friend, that Janey is now exhibiting her works under the name Scarlett Stave, and that in June she will be ‘taking flight’ to show her work in a respected London gallery. Taking flight. I loved to hear that and I feel good for her.

Lately I've been thinking how interesting it would be to meet Janey again. To look in those enormous eyes and see what they now have to say. One thing is for sure, she won’t be hard to find. In my experience dragons are seldom concerned with covering their tracks.