My Artemis Fowl fan fiction

Chapter 15

Chapter 15

Poor Mr. Hoagie. Taken from his tropical island home as a young lizard, he spent most of his life in a degrading pet shop, trapped behind clear glass walls to be stared at by hideous monsters all day. Of course, one of these monsters had to take him away from that place and put Mr. Hoagie in another cage. This one was very nice, however; it almost identical to his old home as a baby, but it still wasn't the same. The monster came and fed him every day, calling him Mr. Hoagie and perching him on her shoulder. He didn't like that name, or being on the monster's shoulder. He wanted to go home.

Seraphina was excruciatingly bored. She sat in her room on her bed, trying to teach Mr. Hoagie to roll over, but he wouldn't budge for anything! Not even his favorite chocolate covered crickets! She let out a long and exaggerated sigh and began talking to her pet lizard.

"Mr. Hoagie, daddy has been with Dr. Raven for days now, why can't I go in there? I want to see that girl too!" She whined. Mr. Hoagie stared at her blankly, and Seraphina imagined that he was saying,

"I know. I want to go too. You should go in there and see for yourself what they're doing. After all, princesses should be allowed to do whatever they want, and you are a princess." Mr. Hoagie darted out his tongue and cleaned his eyeball with it to conclude his point. Seraphina nodded in agreement with her intelligent lizard.

"You're right Mr. Hoagie, let's go now!" She said, scooping up the lizard and putting him on her right shoulder. He liked it up there.

Together they traveled through the hallways of the mansion to her father's new room that he had payed for just for Dr. Raven. Seraphina's father was very rich because of his job. He was the host of a TV show called Believe It Or Else. It was about things that Seraphina thought weren't real, like Bigfoot and ghosts and things like that. Her daddy was very interested in these things, and made a lot of money from his TV show. Seraphina didn't care. As long as she was still rich, her dad could host whatever TV show that he wanted.

Soon they reached the metal door that Seraphina had been instructed to avoid. No one told her why she wasn't allowed to go in it, so naturally she had to find out for herself. She slowly grabbed the handle of the door and pushed in, wondering what really was on the inside of the room.

"Daddy?" She asked sweetly. Her sweet voice always made her daddy cave.

"Seraphina! I told you to stay in your room." Her father scolded. It didn't matter. Seraphina never did what she was told. She frowned and stamped her foot on the ground, stirring Mr. Hoagie from his seat on her shoulder. Foot stomping usually got her what she wanted.

"I'm bored! I want to watch Dr. Raven and that girl!" she shouted.

"It's alright if she wants to watch, it's a very educational experience." Dr. Raven said to her dad, who shook his head regretfully.

"No, I'm sorry sweetie, daddy is very busy and so is Dr. Raven." He said sweetly, but Seraphina wasn't buying it. She was going to get what she wanted. She always did, after all.

"Mr. Hoagie is hungry!" Seraphina tried. Anything Mr. Hoagie related always worked, her father was scared to death of the beast. He hated reptiles.

"He just ate three pounds of hamburger meat! How can he be hungry?" Her father asked, surprised that the lizard could still be hungry after lunch. Seraphina looked down at her feet innocently, wishing Mr. Hoagie would do the same. All he did was look to the left and then sigh. He sighed often, even the world-class veterinarian that daddy payed to fix Mr. Hoagie didn't know what was wrong.

"He has a high metabolism, he can't help it." She said softly, then pat Mr. Hoagie on his head affectionately. He darted out his tongue to her in response. Her daddy sighed in relent and pointed his finger at one of those shiny seats he had just ordered.

"Fine! Just sit over there." He said sternly. "And close the door, will you?" Seraphina nodded at her father, but did not close the door.

"Okay." She trilled, and then scurried over to the tall chair to watch Dr. Raven. As soon as she was up there, she let Mr. Hoagie rest in her lap for a little while.

"Now, watch closely Seraphina. If you ever get into the medical field, you have to know how to do this right..." Dr. Raven said enthusiastically, moving a bit to the left so that Seraphina could see better. She rolled her eyes. Apparently Dr. Raven never got the memo. Doctors were not Seraphina's thing. She was all royalty.

"I want to be a princess, not a doctor!" Seraphina told Raven, even though it was obvious to begin with. "Princesses get to turn their noses up at the commoners and kill people they don't like." She turned and smiled sweetly at her father, who smiled right back, but Dr. Raven just stared at her weirdly. Clearly he'd never seen a future princess before and was basking in her magnificent glory.

"Of course, sweetie. Raven, is she ready?" Her father asked Dr. Raven. He nodded, and Seraphina leaned in as close as she could without disturbing Mr. Hoagie from his seat. She was about to see a real live person get cut open! Only doctors get to see this! Maybe she could be a princess and a doctor...

"Yes, I just need to make sure that she's asleep." Raven said, interrupting Seraphina's daydreams of being a doctor princess. He started rubbing a part on the girl's arm with a little cotton ball and then wrapped some thick rubber band around it. She knew that he was about to stick a needle in her arm because that's what the nurse did when she got her chicken pox shot before starting kindergarten. She didn't even cry that day.

"What, are you saying that she's not asleep?" Seraphina's father shouted at Dr. Raven. She smiled sinisterly. Seraphina liked to watch daddy get mad at other people.

"I just need to make sure, she's probably asleep, it's just a precaution." Raven said, which calmed her father down a little. He harrumphed and told him to go ahead and stick the needle in her arm now. He would have got it all the way in, if the girl hadn't woken up and gone crazy all of a sudden. She started shaking her arms and legs all over the place, she even kicked Dr. Raven in the nose. It started bleeding. Seraphina was too busy laughing at Dr. Raven who was stumbling around and crying to notice that the girl had jumped off the table and was sprinting for the door that she had left open. It sounded like Dr. Raven was honking.

"Mr. Hoagie, look! Dr. Raven looks like a goose!" Seraphina said while gasping for oxygen. She'd never laughed so much in her entire life at anything! She might have kept laughing too, if the alarm hadn't gone off. It was so loud, even Seraphina had to cover her ears. It sounded like her daddy's alarm clock, only six thousand times louder. Then, all the lights went out. Only the emergency red light in the corner of the room was lit, and it made the room seem even scarier than if it was just dark.

"SERAPHINA, I TOLD YOU NOT TO LEAVE THE DOOR OPEN!" Her daddy yelled at her in the dark. He never yelled at her. She caught glimpses of his face whenever the red light flashed very brightly. It wasn't a happy face, and it scared Seraphina. Of course, no one in the room was as scared as Mr. Hoagie. He quickly scrambled out of Seraphina's lap and up the front of her dress, his sharp class digging through the material as he went. As soon as he was on his familiar perch on her shoulder, he was calmer... or at least he was until Seraphina's father started screaming. He panicked and bit poor Seraphina on the nose.

"MR. HOAGIE! OWW! THAT HURTS! DADDYYYYY!" She screamed, thrashing about to try and shake the lizard off of her face. Mr. Bowler had bigger things to worry about than his daughter's pet reptile, however. His ticket to fame was escaping! If she got one step out of the room, she would go back to wherever Raven had found her, and may not be able to get her back again. Not with that broken linking wire. She wasn't even asleep when she arrived. The slam of the metal door confirmed her escape, and brought all of his plans crashing down on his rich, arrogant head. Someone was going to pay for this...