Everyone always wants to hear the hero’s side of a story. No one ever wants to hear things from our side...The dark, villainous, so-called evil side of the same story. Maybe if for once someone, anyone heard things from our side, they’d see that the side that’s set up on its mighty, glowing pedestal isn’t as perfect as it’s cracked up to be. Maybe they’d see that those who they thought were villains are actually the heroes...But even if one of us wrote our story, no one would want to hear it, right? I mean, obviously, we are all just lying scoundrels. Why listen to us? But for the sake of posterity, I will tell you all my story anyway. Ignore it if you want, it makes no difference to me.
When I was young, I lived in a little village near the heart of Komodo Island, Indonesia. It was hot and sunny and sandy, but it was my home. My father had left when I was an hatchling, leaving my mother and I alone to fend for ourselves. Everything was alright for my first few years. I spent the days climbing the surrounding trees while my mother hunted deer in the jungle below me.
My mother had been a beautiful creature. Eight and a half feet long from snout to tail tip, gray-brown scales, and bright green eyes. She was a smaller Komodo dragon, but she was no less of a fierce hunter and mother than any larger one. She was brilliant, too. She hunted with strategy. She didn't just chase her prey and allow it to tire her. No, no, my mother would fashion little traps and caught larger prey than many of the males of the village. I barely remember much else about her now though. I wish I had gotten to know her longer. But I have poachers to thank for her early demise.
You see, while I was still very young, a group of human poachers came across our village. Everyone scattered, mothers scampered to protect their eggs and infants, the fathers charged at the advancing humans...But it was all in vain. They came at us with guns, sacks, and cages. They killed the adults and stuffed the young ones into cages and the eggs into burlap sacks. I had to watch helpless in a cage as they rounded my mother into a corner and stabbed her repeatedly. She whipped her tail and snapped her jaws at them, and then she just stopped. The poachers stepped back from the crimson puddle that they had created around my mother before they dragged her limp body to the growing pile of murdered Komodo dragons. We, the fiercest predators on the island, were being killed so that these men could make a few extra bucks...
You may think now that it was this that prompted me to become a “villain,” no? If you do, you are wrong. It was only the first stick on the growing woodpile in my heart. Life is supposedly full of ups and downs, but it was many years after the day of my mother’s murder that I experienced an up, until I was a grown dragon, I had nothing but downs.
The poachers took me away with the other infants and sold me late at night on the black market. They sold me to a little circus bound for Europe, The Magnificent Meanderers. It was in this circus I spent many miserable years. To them I was Fangs, the ferocious man-eating dragon who played on a little pink toddler piano when he wasn't sitting in his cage to be admired. Don't let me confuse you, I was not admired. I was hated. Sure, they clapped at my little solos, and the occasional child might have oohed and ahhed over my size...But there were far more people who would throw food at my face—popcorn, half-eaten hotdogs on a decent day...Cotton candy cones and rocks on a bad day.
The animal trainers were brutal. Sometimes they wouldn't feed me for days. My cage was too small and kept in the dark most of the day and night to keep me lethargic and cold. They'd jab me with sharpened sticks if I ever messed up on my routine. Then one day, I saw them do the same to a friend I had. He was a python, longest in the world they claimed. They had called him Stretch, but to me he was Theo. They were trying to make him tie himself into a knot and he had refused. I watched in horror and anger as they tied him in the knot anyhow, too tightly for him to get out of himself, breaking his backbone. He died a few days later...I'm not sure if from the pain, his back, lack of food...Or if they may have poisoned him like they did the sick bear. After that night, I vowed I would avenge Theo...And I'd avenge my mother and village.
I had to wait a month before an opportunity arose for me to be able to make my escape. The circus troupe had made a stop in the desert area of Texas to practice our routines. The man opened my cage and prodded me out with his sharp stick and over to the little piano I abhorred. He jabbed at me again, but instead of going to it, I whipped around and grabbed hold of the stick in my jaws and snapped it in half, the force of my pull leaving the man on the ground. I growled at him and began to approach, but then turn and ran as I saw the ringmaster come out with his gun. I could hear him shooting after me, but I dared not look back. I ran and ran until I was sure that I was safe....Safe, but lost, alone, and without all of the things a lizard needs to live.
The next day came and I, for the first time since my youth, sunned myself on a rock. It was possibly the highest point of my life at that time. I had no food, no water, and no idea on how to find either one...But I was free. Of course, the happiness that came with my newfound freedom quickly dissipated as I grew hungrier. I hadn't been with my mother long enough for her to teach me how to hunt...And even worse, I had grown up in captivity. A lizard doomed by domestication.
I wandered for many hours out in the desert and finally came across a small woodlands. It was very different than the jungle I spent my infant hood in, but I knew that it must have water for these trees to have grown so tall. And where there is water, food is never too far away.
The river was easy to find, but it was muddy and tasted even worse than it looked. But I drank it anyway as though it was the best water I've ever tasted. Then I tried hunting....My first few tries ended in horrible failures. I turned to fishing instead. It was simple, just dangling my tail in the water as a lure, then grabbing them in my jaws. It wasn't as good as the deer my mother would catch, but it was filling and that's what mattered.
For three weeks, I lived in this way in the forest, building strength and energy that I had been kept from in the circus. I decided to finally leave the little forest and see if I could find a new abode from where I could start plotting my vengeance. I found a city after a couple hours of wandering. Never before had I been more thankful that Theo had taught me how to read at the circus. I made my way first to a restaurant whose dumpster I raided for lunch. Then I knew I had to find an electronics store. Theo had talked about these contraptions called computers that the humans used to become better educated--the better educated the humans were, the better plans they could make. I figured the same ideology could work with myself. I wandered around the city, but came to the conclusion that I did not know what an electronics store was to find one. I stopped by a cafe for another snack and that is where I saw a computer.
There was a girl sitting at a table inside, typing on a sleek black computer with a bag on the table beside her. I had to have it. I walked to the door and stood on my wobbly hind legs and pulled the door open with my claws like I had observed the humans doing, and walked in. I then wobbled over to her table and looked at her pleadingly. The woman shrieked and fell backwards in her chair. I was startled myself, but I didn’t forget to grab her computer in my mouth nor her bag in my claws before I scampered back out.
It took me longer than I am proud to say to master the computer. I at first thought wifi was magic and that the hotspots around the city were places where there were special magic currents...I was an uneducated idiot. I went some mornings to the library to secretly get books and read them to increase my understanding of the English language and then at night, hide and listen to computer-use seminars for extra instruction. I learned about online colleges and GEDs and doctorates. My GED was extremely simple to get, and again I was thankful for all that Theo had taught me before his death. He had been the pet of a college professor before he had been stolen by the circus. That’s how he was so smart and knew so much. Theo had been his experiment, seeing if certain pills could help improve memory and brain function...But the professor was killed the night Theo was kidnapped, no one will ever hear of that man’s discovery. Theo had the pills with him and had given me a few a day before he died. I had taken two, but I had saved the other one for experimenting later. Just because Theo’s owner had passed on, I had plans on finishing his studies in honor of Theo.
After achieving my GED, I began a fast track to a master degree in biology and chemistry and a PhD in engineering. Through a little lying and photoshopping, I was able to take all of my classes online. I had returned to the name my mother had given me, Nelson, and in honor of my birthplace, taken the last name Komodo after the island. I finished all of my college work in under six years. During those six years, I had mostly lived in the basement of the local library so that I had endless supply of wifi and printing paper. I only left the library for restroom and dumpster foraging.
It was on one of these foraging excursions that my life changed forever. I had just printed out my certification papers for my PhD and had decided I’d take myself out for real food--a hunting excursion, if you will. I prowled the alleys for rats or strays that could make an easy dinner but had no luck, so I decided to venture closer to the wild. I followed the road for a while and came across some roadkill...Usually, I’m not much for pre-killed carian, but I didn’t care at that moment, roadkill was still meat and meat was food. I opened my jaws and leaned over to start my meal but then I heard the gentlest little whimper, like the soft jingling of a bell. I looked over at a cardboard box to my left and put my head to it. There was another soft whimper inside. I lifted the box and discovered a tiny baby fox with wide violet-blue eyes, trembling with cold and fear. I looked at it and then at the roadkill and then back at it. I no longer felt very hungry. I instead curled my tail around the kit.
“Shh, little one,” I said. “You will be alright. I’ll take care of you.” I then gently picked her up in my jaws and carried her into the alley with me. I had no idea what foxes ate, so I brought her every piece of food I could find, hoping that something would appeal to her. She eventually started nibbling on a slice of anchovy pizza and I laid down and watched her. My mother would think I was crazy, taking care of what should be my prey...But I just couldn’t eat this one. She was too much like myself. An orphaned baby without anyone to care for her. Her mother had been murdered by the carelessness of man, like mine by the greed of man. She needed me and I had already decided that she would be my charge. I would be the father I had never had, I’d be a better father than the one I had dreamed of having when I was a hatchling.
“I’ll call you Sarah. Sarah Vixen Komodo...But of course, when you’re older you can drop the Komodo part, I won’t mind.” I smiled and nudged a hotdog over to her. “I’ll teach you everything I know and one day you can avenge your mother’s death, too, Sarah. We can wipe out the idiotic human race together. Yes, we will.” I chuckled as I softly rubbed her tummy. “Now we’ll go back to the library for me to get my things. I’ll find us a better place to live and begin our revenge.”
I swallowed my pride and allowed for myself to be captured and admitted into the San Antonio Zoo. I went back for Sarah that night and hid her in the cave of my habitat. Those were very long years as well, raising a child, having to be charismatic to the other zoo animals so that they’d connect my habitat to the zoo’s wifi. It was awful...But it was for Sarah the best I could think of. Free shelter, clockwork food, endless water...Yes, it was good for Sarah. I could put up with the neighbors and having popcorn thrown at my face again for her.
I watched as Sarah grew from a little fluff ball, into a pretty, headstrong, pain-in-the-tail teenager. Don’t even get me started on the day she decided to begin her “punk” phase. I had returned to the habitat after looking for materials to begin an experiment for the university that was paying me and she begins, “Daddy? I want a spike collar and a jean vest.”
“What?” I asked her, not believing her to be serious….She was very serious and I of course got them for her. Admittedly, it was hard to watch her grown up and not be the little defenseless furball she had been when I found her. She was a little knife-happy killer who I had to keep hidden away so she didn’t just go out and kill everyone. Her untapped enthusiasm I worried would get her killed before her common sense began to mature.
By the time she was in her late teens, I had hired two badgers and a fox as henchmen and had moved us from the zoo to an underground laboratory I had been building in my freetime. Finally, I began my plans for revenge on the humans. It had taken nearly thirty years since my abduction to fully begin, but it was going to be well worth it.
From here, you all know the story for the most part. Two young penguins burst into my lab one day and ruined my plans, forcing me to start over. My fox hench turned out to be a spy, causing Sarah to become bitter and sassy from betrayal and hatred, at her...And at me. Now Sarah has gone away to special training in the ways of mercenaries and I’m left in the Hoboken Zoo with two moronic badger henches. What’s worse is this female keeps trying to get sent here and doesn’t get the point I’m not interested...I mean, yes, Talia’s a fairly nice looking specimen, and she has no problems with my revenge….But...A relationship? Heh, no, that’s a little more than my plate can handle with all my revenge I need to plan. And especially, she’d expect mating….Scary thought.
But anyhow, this is my story in short. Think of it how you will, I don’t care. Maybe you all see things in a different light now, if you don’t that’s all fine and dandy too. Good day to you all.
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