Un, My Pet Alligator

Ducks and Tuna

"Quack quack, go the duckies! The ducks go quack quack! Repeat after me kids! Quack, quack, quack, quack, sing along~to the ducky song!"

I couldn't help but smile at the song that had annoyed me so the past few weeks. The melody was awful, and the lyrics stupid and repetitive. A person in a giant yellow duck suit did an "interesting" dance while his duckling minions followed suit, twirling all over the television screen. You know, it's really easy for you to get over things once you've heard them enough. But that wasn't the reason I, Gene Kadversky, a single (and sadly virgin) 25-year old med school student, was sitting on the floor of my apartment at 11:45AM, watching the "Duckies go Quack" song instead of writing a research paper or finding a thesis.

No, the reason for that lay right next to me.

His golden, flax hair fell around his head in little tufts, perfectly framing big, olive green eyes. A little blue ball was stuffed in his mouth, covered with puncture holes made by his unusually sharp teeth. His head remained stationary in my lap while he twisted his body and tapped his little feet to the beat. This had been the third time that the song had played today, and yet he still enjoyed watching the wretched thing.

My fingers intertwined with strands of his hair. A soft whine escaped his mouth, and he tried to slap my hand away. I decided to mess with him some more. Bouncing my fingers off beat, I earned more attempted slaps from him. I smiled, pleased at the reaction, and continued messing up his hair: this time my fingers marched like angry ants. The slaps increased in frequency, accuracy and ferocity. I matched the increase accordingly, throwing my other hand in messing up his hair. Giggles tumbled out of me; I was now no longer annoyed by the blaring television. However, the little one was very annoyed at me, grabbing one of my arms and trying to rip it off of his head. He started to make a little growling noise, muffled by the ball still inside his mouth.

I laughed at his futile attempts. "Listen, you're going to have to try harder than that! The hair monster's going to eat your hair if you don't~" I started to give him a noogie and earned a couple of grunts. A second or two later, the blue ball formerly in his mouth rolled over too my left foot, covered in saliva. I froze as the wet, very cold ball touched my skin. My hands became empty, and my right hand's fingers tinged with pain that traveled all the way down my arm. Slowly, I turned my head over to my right. Down on all fours, the little boy's tail swished side to side while he looked up at me with frustration and extreme annoyance. His unusually large mouth and unusually sharp teeth were clamped down on my right hand. He had the eyes of a predator, of something not human. A genuine growling noise came from him, his flat nose twitching and his very reptilian tail swishing slowly. I steeled myself on the floor, fighting panic, wishing to run away from this...child...?

Just kidding. I flicked him square in the forehead and he released his bite on my hand. His green eyes started tearing up and he rubbed where I flicked him. He whimpered.

"Owieeee! No fair, Deenie stawted it!" He sniffled, boogers coming out of his nose. Ignoring his pleas, I checked my hand scrupulously. All fingers but my thumb had red welts where he'd bit down. Good, I thought, thanking God he didn't draw blood. Shoving my hand away, I gave the boy a scolding look.

"You do remember what I told you about biting, right?"

"...hn..."

"Don't make me repeat it."

"...to not to..."

"Not to what?"

"To not bite Deenie or anyone else." His tears were gone now, and he was nursing his forehead. I sighed, and took out a piece of hard candy and pulled the ends of the wrapper, spinning the candy into the air. He launched upward from the floor and grabbed the candy with his mouth in midair. A thud sounded as he landed on the carpet. By now, the accursed "Duck Song" had ended, of which I was infinitely grateful. I pushed up on my knee to stand up.

"Alright, that's enough of this," I mumbled as I turned off the TV. "What do you want for lunch?" I shuffled over to the kitchen. The little boy rolled over and sat up halfway on the carpet.

"Tuuna~Deenie, can I have tuna?" He crunched the remaining candy to bits and swallowed noisily.

"You haven't been very good today though." I reached into a cupboard and pulled out a can, pausing to look at it. "I may as well just give you fish oil and send you off to take a nap."

"But fish oil is yucky! A-and Deenie gave me candy!" He waddled over to where I was standing and hugged my leg. I glanced downwards right into full-blown puppy-eyes. I hesitated. "Pwease, Deenie? I promise I'll be good!"

The can I held felt very heavy. I narrowed my eyes at it. The label read "White fin Tuna". Ah, whatever. I'm a bad parent; so sue me.

While the little one nibbled away at his tuna fish, I absently stirred a quick iced coffee I made. We were sitting at the small marble top dining table I had gotten as a house-warming gift from my cousin. Though I couldn't really call it a house-warming gift, since I was moving into a college dorm when I got it, forcing me to keep it in storage as soon as the school year began. But that's what my cousin kept on insisting it was; he's kind of weird like that. My eyes flicked over to the child before me.

Experiment UNF-RGC4271, a reptilian chimera. A cross between a human being and an alligator. The very stuff of medieval science fiction. Where I'd found him may be a bit long of a story to tell. I'm pretty sure one of us will get trauma from all the things we've gone through, whether that be me or Un.

Un.

Yes, that's his name.

Don't ask me why it stuck. It just did, and it fits him.