Dragon Baby

Chapter 1

"Desmond! Where the hell are you!" a voice shouted, young man jolting awake in his bed throwing his head back which caused his long blonde hair to fly up in the air. "Desmond!" the shrill voice screeched again just before the bedroom door flew open crashing noisily against the dresser sitting next to the door. There were four dressers against the wall on either side of the door, another four on the other side of the room, with six bunkbeds standing in between, three against either wall on either side of the room. The blonde was lying on the bottom bunk in the back corner, the other children stirring from their sleep as their caretaker none too gently yanked Desmond out of his bed still screeching like a banshee. "What part of 'I need you to watch the kids while I dine with the mayor' did you not understand?" the woman with the shrill voice asked, Janet Rosemary's greying black hair up in curlers with only a slip of a nightgown on.

"I'm going to watch the kids like you told me to," Desmond said through a yawn, covering his mouth with his hand as Janet dragged him toward the door.

"Then why aren't you up already?" Janet hissed, dragging Desmond to her bedroom where she had a bunch of clothes thrown around the room most of which were piled up on her bed.

Desmond glanced at the alarm clock on the bedside table and held in a groan. "It's five in the morning. Doesn't the event start at eight?" Desmond asked through another yawn when a dress smacked him in the face.

"Yes it starts at eight. Are you a moron?" Janet asked as she tossed more clothes at him, holding up a few gowns up to her body before tossing them at Desmond. "The dress I bought for the occasion is absolutely ruined so I have to find another outfit. What do you think? Pantsuit or dress?" Janet asked, holding up a striped indigo suit and a red glittery dress.

"What happened to the dress you chose? You looked really good in it," Desmond said kindly even as the woman's almost pregnant paunch stuck out of her too small pantsuit. It seemed as though the woman thought she could fit into a smaller size if she just believed hard enough but she couldn't even get the pants up her thighs so she had to chuck those too and try on the dress.

"Just look at it! It's so obvious, even a blind man could see what's wrong with it," Janet snapped, gesturing at the pink dress hanging off a chair. Desmond picked it up carefully, holding it up in the air and looked it over but there was nothing he could see. No holes, no dirt. There didn't seem to be anything wrong until Janet came over, pointing at a single small thread, as long as a bread crumb, sticking out from a seam at the waist. "It's trash! Utterly ridiculous! Do you know how much I paid for that only to have it ruined?" Janet said with a dramatic scoff, snatching the dress out of Desmond's hand throwing it on the floor before stomping back over to her walk-in closet.