Shasta County, California

XYLER DASCHUND

The lava below me boils and pops. Slow bubbles are melting, glossy and no doubt hot to the touch. I test out that theory to feel something, anything. My hand is too scared and I return to my desk.

I haven't slept for a week, a new record. My mind is too strong. The imagination explodes in dreams, lucid or otherwise. I try not to bring any manifestations of fantasy to reality. Keep it separate, I tell myself. And so developing games has become not just my payless job, but also my median between these two worlds.

Area 51 is real. It is not a ploy but it also isn't what the general public think. They are an enterprise built upon keeping secrets, shrouding intellectual properties of somewhat controversial subjects from the world. They don't just exist within a small base. They're everywhere.

Metaphysically, the men in black of the modern-day. They are called the "Fifty-One" as they always have 51 agents on hand in every country. I am one of their subjects, roughly benefitting from my human form.

I designed a VR game last month - "Lucid" - and it's gotten a million plays on Steam but no one seems to believe that it is an autobiography. I saved the Earth from a horde of apes as a dragon. It was also how I was discovered by the Fifty-One and this is how they treat an American hero. Stick them in a literal dragon's lair with a computer, a bed and a toilet. Feed them food like they're a savage. Give them fresh clothes each week as if they were always immediately dirty. The toilet water is flushed into the lava for goodness sake.

Nothing is keeping me from escaping. But I can't fit through the entrance as a dragon because of the stone parapet blocking the way. Leaving this cave as a human might be a risk because I could be shot down by Fifty-One agents, so I opted to stay and work on more games on the computer they had so kindly provided me.

Lucid was my call for help. The ending of the game, if all the right choices are made, has the player sleeping in a cave as a dragon. I coded every single detail of the cave, photo-realistic perhaps and hoped that someone would free me from these symbolic chains once they found the correct cavern in real life.

An egg hunt that proved to be pointless after everyone on Steam accused me of false advertising the game as a true story.

Then, as if upon a candle's wish, three people from three corners of the lair, file out from the magma like zombies coming back to life. My aspirations cannot be contained but they also cannot be present. I was still drowsy from not sleeping for a week. There hadn't been enough coffee in the latest supply drop by one of the Fifty-One agents.

Valery, the dimension-crossing man, played my newest game "Quarrycast" which was a retro adventure game that put players in a randomly-generated world where they could create structures and contraptions out of colourful squares. I had to teach him the basics - not just of the game, but also of the keyboard since he had never seen this operating tool before.

An hour passed, the females - Molly and Jennifer - sat on my bed worried that their friend wouldn't come. I quite enjoyed the company after long days of isolation but I was afraid if I dosed off, I would summon hell on earth, especially the dragon which I kept locked up in my chamber of secrets.

One of the Fifty-One agents - the only one who came down here and talked with me - arrived at the entrance with a supply drop. He had already seen us. There was no point in hiding.

He dropped the supplies which rolled down the steep and craggy exit. He pulled out an advanced rifle and descended to the parapet for cover. He wore a fire-proof suit as he always did, most likely to protect himself from my fire-breathing rather than for safety from the lava.

He spoke into his comms, "51 code red, I repeat code red. Lassen Peak over."

Lassen Peak? That was somewhere in California, I thought.

"Freeze! Hands on your head! Turn around!" Valery, Jennifer and Molly all did as told. I had had enough on the other hand. I began to walk towards the agent.

"I said 'Freeze'! Or so help me, I will put a bullet in your skull as you stand."

"I'm not standing still anymore!" I shouted. "I'm walking outta here! With my friends!"

"No, you're not. You know why? Because you belong to us, you piece of shit."

I pushed myself into a run despite my fatigue.

The individual pores of my skin hardened and jutted out in dark scales. My mouth projected and my nose pressed down into my snout, my jawline and face structure changed. Beady, hollow eyes appeared. Teeth sharpened.

My clothes ripped over the continuation of my transformation, adding body mass over a new skeleton. Out of my back sprouted two small flappers which grew into overarching wings. I embodied the dragon I had grown up playing as in fantasy games.

I loomed over the Fifty-One agent and engulfed the cave, blocking out all kinds of lighting. My flat cap bounced off of my head and I caught it in the dark with my short reptilia arms, my new set of eyes able to search and scour in the pitch black.

My neck craned forward, the agent firing blindly. Bullets hit my hide but none pierced the scales which resembled spikes. It gave away his location, the muzzle flashes looked like rave lights. I went for a bite in my vexation but the top of my head crashed against the ceiling of the entrance.

I shook it off but the cascading rocks from my collision had buried the agent underneath the rubble. I quickly morphed back into a human, the orange hue returning from the cavern's natural source of energy.

I was naked and crouched down to avoid exposure. The agent had shot into my mouth when I went in for a bite and the bullets had burst upon impact, but now there were small pockmarks on the inside. I looked back at my friends who were a mixture of terrified, shocked and disgusted.

"Can someone get me new clothes?"