literature

Perspectives

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Literature Text

Perspectives - Dragon TF

The loud clanging sound of the school bell jolted Damien awake from his concurrent daydream, as it signalled the end of yet another tardy day in school.  As Damien's laggard vision cleared, the first thing that his eyes focused was the look of annoyance which befell on the teacher's face. Her arms were akimbo and her irises were primed at the student which dozed off. "Young man, you are to stay back after class." The teacher snapped before tilting her glasses into position. "For the rest of the class, you are dismissed."
Within that instant, loud screeching sounds of chairs filled the classroom as the student quickly vacated the area, eager to head back to their homes for the weekend.  Some students taunted Damien from the classroom exit, only to flee when the teacher noticed their presence. Damien could only sigh as he glared at the classroom clock. "Damien, this is unacceptable. I had stated from day one that nobody is allowed to doze off in class." The teacher reprimanded. "For your punishment, I want you to write a thousand word essay on perspectives." Damien groaned in frustration upon hearing the word essay but he could only nod his head.  He apologised to his teacher for dozing off before heading out of the classroom, dragging his backpack along the way.

"Hmm. What can I write about that?" Damien pondered hard in his mind to think of an idea, but only to no avail. As he continued walking out towards the school establishment, the light bulb in his head suddenly lit up. He immediately made a dash to the library, in an attempt to borrow some books for ideas. Upon reaching the library, Damien was greeted with a plethora of books, some of which are still in tip-top condition. After all, it was uncommon for most students to even visit the library lest the week before examinations. Furthermore, it was even less common for the students to loan books to read in their leisure time considering the tons of homework they receive daily.

After glancing about large collection of books, a book called 'A Dragon's Perspective' managed to pique his interest. By the name of the title, there was a high chance that the book would be able to assist him in his assignment.  Without much time to waste, he retrieved that book from the shelf before dashing his way to the checkout counter. As the librarian slowly scanned the barcode of the book, Damien caught a glimpse of the bright display screen of the librarian's computer and noticed that the loan history of this book was totally empty. "This must be a new book." He pondered to himself, before retrieving the book back from the librarian.

Although the book has never been loaned before, the condition of the book seemed as though it was read before. The book's plastic wrapping was torn and scratched in certain areas and the pages of the paper looked dull yellow. "Or someone could have just donated it." Muttering to himself, he brushed that thought aside before shoving the book quickly into his school bag. With that task accomplished, he eagerly made his way towards the school bus stop, his mind eagerly wanting to get home as quickly as possible.

Friday night and Saturday passed almost like an instant, as Damien found himself spending the weekend on video games. By the time he remembered about his assignment, it was already late Sunday afternoon. "Great. A thousand word essay." He lamented as he hesitantly dug for his pencil box and foolscap paper from his school bag, before crashing both of them onto his wooden study table. "Let's see, perspectives. What I can I write about…?" He muttered to himself, looking at the swaying trees in the distance, in an attempt to get some inspiration. Even after five minutes, with a sketchy mind-map drawn on his paper, his mind was still at a complete blank on what to write which could reach the word limit.

Growing increasingly frustrated by the minute, he suddenly remembered about that book he had borrowed from the library. "Maybe I could just plagiarize from the book…" An idea dawned upon Damien. After all, his teacher knew that he was an avid fan of fantasy books. She had a whole collection of fantasy books that were confiscated as Damien was reading them instead of listening to her lessons. Furthermore, upon searching on a search engine of the internet, there were no results of the book at all.

After moments of deliberation, he finally mustered up his courage as he retrieved that book from his bag. His intention was to paraphrase the content of the books itself, so that he could avoid claims of plagiarism from his teacher. As he observed the book carefully, he saw dead silverfishes on the top of the book cover and that the sheets of paper had already turned yellow. Without the durability of the plastic book wrap and some rubber bands, the book seemed to be rather ancient, as if it were from the 1800s.

Opening the books to check its contents, he was shocked to see the word 'thou' in the first word. Furthermore, the atrocious grammar the appalling sentence structure was similar to the format which Shakespeare's stories. He found himself unable to comprehend certain portions of the book. "Great. At this rate, I'm never going to finish." Damien lamented to himself, trying to think of another plan, but to no avail. He eventually decided just to copy the book entirely so as to give his teacher an impression that he had done his work. That is, until his teacher decides to read the gibberish words. Damien let out a sigh of frustration as he starting copying the book word by word, looking at the dull grey digital clock on his wall periodically to check the time. With his next encounter with his teacher on Tuesday, Damien found himself in a race against time.

Technically speaking, it was already Tuesday. The 24-hour clock on his wall read 01:24, and it was about the time that he should have been fast asleep. With less than five hours to finish what he was supposed to have done ages ago, Damien let out a string of curses and flipped the book, checking if he could skip anything to speed up the process.

As he flipped through the book, he hit something in the centre of the book; a drawing. It was a dragon, drawn in plain, black and white ink, posed in an eternal roar as it released a jet of flame, a knight clutched in its claws. Damien stared at the picture in awe for a moment, dragging a finger across the yellowed page, admiring the fine work. It was drawn in ridiculously vivid detail, being drawn down all the way to the little scratch marks on the individual scales of the dragon. Damien hummed in curiosity. The book looked like its contents were really scratched on by a quill, yet, how could a quill present such a fine drawing? Shrugging it off as a marvel of modern technology, Damien shifted his fingers to flip to the next page.

Suddenly, as he was about to do so, the claw of the dragon in the book almost literally came out of the book, grabbing onto his finger and curling around it. Like the two-dimensional image it was, the ink of the picture seemed to drain off the pages of the book and onto his hand, all the while keeping his finger stuck to the book.

Damien yelled out in surprise as he watched, waving his hand about in an attempt to dislodge the book as the ink seemed to burn on his skin. Within seconds, the black ink vanished from the surface of his finger, whereas a tingling sensation was felt on the same hand. "What in the world?" Damien muttered to himself as that hand started to itch. Instinctively, he scratched it repeatedly with sheer force, only to uncover an ebony layer of skin on his right hand starting to appear as it slowly hardened to form dark luminous scales. Damien realised that his right thumb was slowly merging into his hand as well as his fingernails started to grow broader and longer, turning into razor sharp black claws. The sensation surged down his arms as more and more scales erupted from skin, irritating it even more.

Damien watched with a rather morbid fascination as the scales marched up his right arm, forcing their way under his shirt sleeve and onto his chest. With his still unchanged hand, Damien took his shirt off, gasping at what he saw. He was appalled by the sight of white coloured and larger scales forming around his belly as the black scales continued spreading like wildfire. His muscles in his chest bulked up with what could only be described as a bubbling sensation, as his shoulders and chest widened in order to contain the abrupt surge in muscle mass, the scales continued to traverse up towards his head, the white scales specifically developing on the front of his neck, whilst the ebony scales surrounded the rest of it.

It was then that Damien knew what was happening to him. However, before he could utter a single word, he felt an immense pain on the lower jaw as it started to extended further forward. Damien clutched his jaw with both his arms in an effort the change to stop, but to no avail. His nasal area started to expand slowly and painfully, before stopping around the same length of the bottom jaw. There, his nose widened, forming a black muzzle. Feeling with his now forked tongue, Damien realised that his teeth were more apart, larger and sharper, as though they were all canines. His brown hair receded backwards, slowly falling away from his head as scales continued dislodging the follicles on his skin.

Damien then felt a burning sensation in his eyes, as though they were splashed by acid. He immediately closed both of them shut, as the pupils of his eyes became thinner and his irises shifting colour from dark brown to a lighter tint of yellow. Damien continued keeping his eyes closed as he felt an agonizing pain growing at the back of his head, as if he was being grinded by a mortar and pestle as two spikes began to sprout at the back of his head. In an attempt to alleviate the gruelling pain, Damien swung both his hands backwards to clutch his head. However, that plan only backfired as the momentum of the swing caused the chair to lose its equilibrium as it dropped backwards, causing Damien to smack the ground with a loud thud.

Groaning, Damien shook his head slightly, dazed by the fall.  "Is this a dream?", he thought, shaking his head. Surely, things like this do not happen to people on a regular basis, right? Damien groaned again as as rising pressure began to form in his back, causing him to shudder. Without warning, a pair of jet black appendages burst of of his back, making unpleasant squishing noises as flesh rapidly began to expand and contort, first in twisted, unrecognisable shapes, before slowly forming what looked like large arms, coupled with long fingers. A white, stretchy and slightly translucent membrane stretched between the 'fingers' of the arms on his back, slowly but surely forming what definitely looked like wings.

The sudden increase in mass almost caused Damien to fall from his side. Fortunately for him, he managed to regain his composure by stretching his arms forward, in turn causing him to fall to his fours. As he did so, he felt a pulsing sensation on his shoulders, quickly gaining muscle mass there as he hands and arms began to reform into a pair of forelegs, powerful and capable enough to support what he was turning into. Painfully, with a snap of his spine and shoulders, he became trapped in quadruped stance, unable to stand up straight anymore.

This was painfully followed up by a acute sharp pain as his spinal cord extended at the bottom end, as a tail began to grow on his lower spine, complete with an outer layer of the similar midnight black scales that his body was surrounded in.

With that, Damien collapsed to the floor, too shocked to say or do anything more. He laid there on the floor, eyes focused on the black muzzle that obstructed his view, watching as the nostrils at the tip of the muzzle expanded and contracted in sync with his breathing. It was hard to believe that... that monstrously gigantic thing (along with pretty much everything else) now belonged to him, or at better put, was him. Pushing himself off the floor with alien hands, he sat upright, now albeit uncomfortably with a long, black tail at the base of his spine. He looked himself over, which was slightly easier with a longer neck, completely bewildered at what he had become.

Flexing a wing curiously, Damien began to explore his new body, standing up and attempting to move his new appendages about, almost knocking over a lamp with his tail in the process. Quitely, Damien swore to himself, making a note not to attempt to unfurl the wings on his back until he had more room.

Looking back to the book, Damien stared at the now-empty page of the book. "Did I just... become... the dragon?" he wondered aloud, trying to bring up a mental image of the dragon that was on the book for a comparison. As he was about to do that, a scribbling sound registered itself in his now-sensitive ears, prompting him to reflexively look back at the book.

Damien's jaw dropped, watching as words began forming on the previously empty page on the book, word by word in strokes, as if someone was writing them. The words bent and stretched away, they too transforming into something else, strange, alien symbols that seemed vaguely familiar, like he'd seen them somewhere before...

Cocking a cynical head at them, he stared at the markings. He could... feel, if best put, what the words were trying to tell him. Shapes, a dragon, perhaps? He pictured the markings into shapes, like little images in his mind that seemed to tell him what the markings meant. One of a human, represented by a small, yellow blob, followed by the dragon, which was a larger, blackish sort of swirling blob. He interpreted the markings on the book just before it faded away, leaving Damien dumbfounded with disbelief. "Half of half, a dragon you are the day for..." He spoke to himself, trying to repeat what the markings had just told him, his voice reverberating in the form of growls. Looking towards the open front door, an idea struck him as he carefully made his way out of his house, not wanted to break any precious china along the corridor. Gently closing his front door, he looked up to the bright aquamarine sky and gleamed, before fully spreading his wings before lifting off, now running on pure instinct.

---------------

The shrill clanging sound of the school bell signalled the beginning of the new school week, with Damien's teacher sipping on a cup of cappuccino from the school cafeteria. Just as she was about to unfold the papers for that day, when Damien handed over the essay to her. "Here you go, a seven thousand word essay." Damien responded, his face beaming with a smile.

"Sounds like someone had too much time on their hands." responded the teacher, who was frowning at the amount of spelling mistakes she had to correct from the assignment. "What's with the beanie?" She questioned, pointing to the tuque Damien was wearing over his head.

Damien quickly thought of an excuse. "Just... trying to show support for my friend... due to his illness. I've known him for a long time."

"Fair enough, you may go." The teacher shooed him away, wanting to get back to her own personal time. As Damien disappeared from her sight, she then resumed her daily routine of reading the newspapers, a loud, eye-catching headline plastered across the front page

"Mysterious flying creature discovered and photographed by citizens; whereabouts unknown."
Just something to get off my load after months of procrastination.

Thanks to :iconsome-kind-of-name: for helping with a major part of the story. :D
© 2012 - 2024 Ice-Turtle
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