So the next day Brendan returned to Ricks house,totally
expecting police cars,fire trucks and perhaps a burnt down house.
The house still stood,it looked normal from the outside
but Brendans 35 year old mother was shaken by the eerie stillness of the place.
His mother fainted at the total demolition of the interior of the house but Brendan had a pretty good idea that a big
dragon had finally burst through the doorway of
Brendans ruined bedroom,gone down the stairs,knocking stuff over right left and center with its huge body,shredded the living room carpet with sharpening claws that were growing even as
Rick had dragged himself the 20 feet to the back doors
which were now smashed asunder on their hinges before Rick
had dragged himself into the back yard of Ricks rural property.
From the flattened to the ground wire fence three hundred feet
further back the dragon
-either didn't have wings yet
-or it didn't want to use them
and Rick had simply pushed the fence down with his immense body and escaped into the hilly craggy wilds beyond on
claw foot.
Brendan followed the trail easily enough,Ricks claws
and belly scutes tearing up the grass as he had dragged himself along made it pretty easy to tell that Rick had still been changing and growing by the time he'd reached the salty tides,
where the trail ended.
So Brendan and his mother got on with their life as best they could.Without a body they couldn't claim the Life Insurance
and Brendan certainly wasn't going to tell anyone why Rick
had turned into a Missing Persons file.
It was 39 days later that the cow seven miles south was found butchered and eaten by a big animal.
It was a week later that Brendan noticed the report in the newspaper about 39 lambs suddenly vanishing from a pasture
seven miles north.
The number '39' jogged a memory in Brendans brain
Rick had been 39 years old when he had transformed into a
dragon,actually the event had happened EXACTLY on
Ricks 39th birthday.
That was no coincidence so Brendan dug up older issues of
the newspaper for other instances of '39' in the news
and found them.
39 articles of clothing stolen from a clothesline the day after
Rick had transformed.
39 lawn ornaments stolen from a golf course the third day
after Rick went dragon.
39 marks in wet cement at a construction site that might have
read "NO MOARR SSTOP PLEESSS"
and then silence till the 14th day when the letters '3' and '9' had been torn off the clock face of the tower at the Shopping Mall
located at 39 Main.
A chill ran down Brendans spine as he realized what that meant
Rick had earned his 'wings' on the 14th day
quite literally
Rick wasn't merely a dragon,he was a dragon that
was still evolving and changing out there
somewheres.
It was on the 93 day that Brendn came across the first reports
of 39 year old women suddenly vanishing.
He knew what that meant.
That dragon that had once been Rick was either beginning
to start on a diet of virgins or turning them into dragons
themselves.
So Brendan thought about it and got a can of paint and
painted the number '39' on the roof,the hood,the back the
side of Ricks old van.
Then he drove seven miles north into the salty marshes,turned
off the engine and waited.
It was dark and Brendan was thinking he'd failed when
the loud thump of the vans roof told him he'd gotten noticed.Before he could escape a huge scaley claw smashed through the drivers side window and seized him and pulled him out.
Then the creature or creatures slammed a slimy skin covering
perhaps a cast off dragons skin over his face and before
Brendan could scream or fight back the foul pink dragons breath spwed into his lungs and saturated him with the pink
mist .
For a full 39 minutes during which time Brendan got bigger
and scalier and started to stretch out.
He tried to open his lengthening snout but his attackers
kept it clamped shut and kept pumping in the mist
till they knew the new dragon wouldn't revert back to a human.