Tennessee Dragon

Chapter 1: Mysterious Beverages


It was around 2 a.m. and everyone had gone to bed except Lee. He was a true deviantArt fanatic and was on the site as much as possible. It was hard at first though since he had to keep his account secret for the first couple of weeks until his parents found out.

Suddenly, Lee heard a familiar sound, a rattling metal fence. He let it go assuming it was a cat; being that there were many felines in the area. Around 30 seconds later he heard it again, going the other way! Lee knew something was up and, knowing he was the only one who heard it, went to the back door to have a look. He knew he was the only one who had heard it due to his acute hearing which he assumed came from being half blind in one eye with an astigmatism.

Upon flipping on the porch light, Lee saw a case of Coke(the soda). He thought it odd that the company delivered the drinks to his home, especially at 2 in the morning. There was something odd about them though: the bottles were regular 20oz plastic bottles like you’d find in any vending machine right down to the label. The exception to this regularity was that the liquid was a dark shade of blue. Lee knew his mother to be an avid Coke drinker and figured they were a new product she’d ordered. He noted though, about the odd delivery time and where on the premises they’d been left. After all, few people knew about the back entrance to his house. The suspicion passed and Lee realized how thirsty all this thinking had made him. He thought to himself, “Mom won’t mind me having one. After all, I am HER son.” He did take very much after her although people told him of his resemblance to his father. Lee wrestled a bottle from the crate, cracked the seal, and had drank most of its contents down before realizing the awful taste. It was like drinking gasoline! He spat out what he could and threw the thing away, but not before swallowing some.

Lee had just gotten back to his computer and his chatroom when his stomach began to ache.” I really shouldn’t have drank that stuff!” he said, thinking out loud as he often did around that time of night. “I’ll warn mom about that stuff tomorrow.” He went to the kitchen and got an antacid and some water. After ascending the stairs however, Lee noticed something about his feet. He often walked digitigrade to be quieter soto not wake his family, but it usually displeasured his ankles to do so. Right now though, he couldn’t feel a thing. “I must be used to it now,” he thought. “Weird, I’ve only been walking like this for about a month.” Lee ignored it and took his medicine. Soon after he was back in #NFSfans chatting it up, stomachache subsided. Around 3 however, it came back and it was worse.

Lee told his friends he’d be right back and, knowing how to deal with a severe stomachache,(he knew the reactions to stomach pain he’d read about in dragon tf stories only compounded the pain)he laid down on the couch and waited for it to go away. It didn’t and he let out a small, quiet yelp and nothing more. The pain had changed from the “ouch” kind to the kind you get when riding a roller coaster or waterslide. It didn’t hurt Lee but caused his body to make adrenaline for the upcoming changes.

The first thing Lee noticed was a tightness in his house pants(warm pants some of us rednecks don when its cold)that wasn’t there before. He reached behind himself not knowing what he’d find. He couldn’t feel anything and reached inside his pants(not his underwear!)and felt something scaly! When Lee touched it, it jerked like a reflex and he could feel it in his back! His first thought was that he’d seen too many dragon pics and needed to get to bed. He decided he’d sleep there that night fearing further hallucination on the stairs. As he lay down his mid-section elevated! Lee was immensely frightened, thinking his body was being levitated by the unseen hand of the ghost he feared inhabited his house. What scared him more were the tearing sounds coming from beneath him. He nervously reached under himself and found a large hole in his pants, his most comfortable pants! The thing that filled the hole was the most frightening though. It was a long serpentine tail! Lee quietly exclaimed,” Cool, a tail; I alwaysss wanted a tail! I jussst wissh it hadn’t tore my pantssss sso badly though.”

He realized something about his voice upon saying this. His voice had recently stopped cracking so bad but now it was deeper than his father’s. Lee also lingered on his “s” sounds more than usual even with his southern accent. It sounded somewhat like a hiss! He proceeded to test this by reciting the familiar rhyme: She sells seashells by the sea shore. He was alarmed by how long it took to say it and how it came out. “Sssshe sssellss ssseassshells by the sseassssshore,” he repeated. After testing his new voice, Lee felt major hunger pains despite just having a snack. He went to the kitchen and surveyed the room. Lee was a known chocolahaulic but right this moment the Reeses-like chocolate covered peanut butter balls didn’t appeal to him. He used his newfound tail to open the fridge and took out an eight-pack of hotdogs. Lee had planned to only eat one or two franks but moments later he found himself throwing away the empty plastic pack. Strangely, this gorging flung a craving on him for that blue Coke. He found the case by the door and got a bottle from it. The liquid, he realized, was the same color as the scales on his tail! The connection was becoming clear.

Before he knew what happened, Lee found the case half-empty and a small pile of bottles beside him. He noticed the rest of the drinks were dark green in color. Though being groggy, he could still taste that awful gasoline flavor clinging to his tongue and decided to try and wash out his mouth. Something told him he’d need a bathroom anyway after drinking all that Coke(you would too, admit it). After slipping past his parents’ room in his familiar digitgrade posture; though he didn’t realize he was doing it; Lee ran into the bathroom. While in the bathroom he let out a yell that would have woken the neighbors had his tail moved to muffle it, hands busy elsewhere. His feet had grown scales like those on his tail and his freshly trimmed toenails were growing at around one millimeter a second, at his best guess. They were getting sharper and were turning solid white! All the while he could hear bones pop and crack as his ankles moved up the back of his legs. Lee could barely stomach all this plus the fact that he could see his little toes were shrinking back into his body.

Lee would often say he believed in dragons but he really didn’t. One of his friends, Skyler, did believe in them and if what Lee thought would happen did happen, Skyler would get the news ASAP. These assumption, unbeknownst to Lee, were correct and he began to think so as he was washing his hands; which was made harder by the added height his new feet gave him. He could see through the flowing water that his fingernails began to grow longer and sharper. He tried to hurry and finish washing but cut his left hand in the process. Lee stared at the cut expecting it to gush blood due to its size, but blue scales poured out onto his hand instead. A similar situation happened with his other hand moments later. About to scream from surprise, he willed his tail to cover his mouth so as to not cut his face worried what might happen.

As Lee exited the bathroom he noticed a feeling of “lightening”. He was never obesely large but he wasn’t an Olympic gymnast either. He could now feel fat burned off his body. “Mussst be being ussed asssss fuel,” he said with his lisp. It felt weird being skinny to him; he was large all his life and never felt this small before. Lee began to feel his spine press against his skin as plates punctured the scales on his tail, slowly making their way up his back. They were the same dark green as the rest of those Cokes and looked odd against his blue scales. “Wait, thosse ssscaless weren’t there before!” he screamed in his head. The lisp had even invaded his internal voice! He was right though, as the navy blue scales spread over his torso from the plates and nearly enclosed him in them. As they spread, they caused Lee’s torso to expand tearing off his night shirt(another southern custom)and revealed a five inch wide strip of skin from his chest to the base of his tail. This didn’t last long as the scuds from his tail filled the opening. He looked comical: scaly body, hands, feet, and tail with human arms, legs, and head. Just as he thought about this,(with no mirror he had to imagine it)scales from his body, arms, and legs began growing toward each other stretching his arms and legs as they went making more sickening popping and tearing the remains of the pants off. ”I really wisssh that didn’t have to happen,” he complained. Lee decided to go look in the mirror at his mostly new form.

Did you ever get that sinking feeling? Lee didn’t. He became aware of a rising sensation while staring at the “dragon” in the mirror. His neck began to elongate and become scaled and scudded. Lee almost burst out laughing at his reflection. Anyone would’ve had to laugh at a dragon with a human head and no wings. He immediately took notice of an immense pain in his dragonic shoulderblades. Long bony appendages were growing from them. He assumed they were wings as webbing grew between the bones. Lee dared not open them for fear that they were larger than the small room he was in. He ran back downstairs to the living room(den) and was amazed at their size! They were at least six feet each! In his rush, Lee failed to notice the final changes that took place, although he could plainly feel them. His near-perfect teeth had elongated into fangs and were becoming tight in his jaw as more and more grew in. Thankfully, his jaw had began to stretch and the teeth were much more comfortable. Unlike most dragon transformations he’d read, Lee’s hair did not fall out as his ears became holes in the sides of his head. He found his senses much more acute and, with the astigmatism gone, he could see better than ever in both eyes. The Coke did have a side effect though. It had unusual properties, (obviously) but it was still carbonated and Lee felt a huge urge to belch. He stepped into the middle of his front yard since he had seen a dragon belch before. The stream of fire that lept from his scaly maw would’ve torched the house across the street, had he aimed at it. He enjoyed the feeling of freedom but dove back inside for fear of being discovered. Once inside Lee tried to sum up what had happened. “Okay, firssst I drank the Coke,” he thought to himself. “Then I felt bad, then I transsssformed into a dragon? That’sss ssome good Coke!” He pulled the mirror off the wall and gazed at his new form. He was about eight feet tall with a seven foot tail, twelve foot wingspan, and was navy blue with green plates running down his back. His dirty-blonde hair and lack of horns seemed odd to him, but it passed.

The only question was how his parents, and more crucially Skyler, would react?