My Weekend With Diego
By: Mylo Wilkin
Tags: Comedy Writing, Fiction, Humour, Fiction Writing, Humor

I once dated a girl with a pet dragon. Her name was Holly. The girl that is, not the dragon. His name was Diego. He was about a foot long, beige and scaly, with his beady little eyes always watching, analysing.

When we first met, I felt him assessing the best ways to take me down and chew me up for dinner. “What do dragons eat?” I asked Holly, not taking my eyes off Diego.

“Grasshoppers,” she replied. “Crickets. Mealworms.”

I thought she was done, but she wasn’t: “Some vegetables too. He really likes peas at the moment.”

“So, not humans then?” I asked, still locked into a staring match with the little reptile.

Holly laughed. “Not humans, don’t worry.”

I was worried. I was also more than a little concerned that Diego didn’t have a cage. Well he did have a cage, but it only had three walls. It was like a fish-tank without the lid, then turned on its side so he could come and go as he pleased. It had some gravel to sleep in and some rocks to bask on and some other rocks to hide under when he felt threatened, which I doubted was ever because he was a fucking dragon.

****

It’s safe to say that sleeping in the same room as a dragon would be hard enough even if he was locked inside some sort of enclosure, so just imagine how little sleep I got knowing that Diego the dragon was just roaming around the flat, looking for moths or spiders or human flesh to eat. It was hot in Holly’s room, but I wrapped myself firmly under the duvet, making sure as little of me was poking out of the bedclothes and therefore available to be chomped while I slept.

At around 4am I decided I had to break up with Holly. I’m not even sure it was called “breaking up,” as we’d only been dating a few weeks, but it was fairly obvious it wasn’t going to work out — the only two options available to me were to sleep safely in my own bed, or lying awake in this bed worrying about a dragon.

At around 5am I fell asleep. Three warm hours later I woke up, and found Diego sleeping on my chest. Sleeping on my chest. I stared at him, wide-eyed with terror, my brain racing whilst I stayed as still as I could so as not to wake him up. I carefully inventoried my motionless body. No obvious feeling of pain or dismemberment. I slowly checked my face. No open wounds or massive amounts of bleeding. I wiggled my toes. I think I still had all ten. Maybe the dragon was full?

Or maybe, he wants you to think he’s full.

Holly woke up, turning over sleepily to face me. “Careful!” I whispered loudly. “Diego is on me!”

“Aww! He likes you!”

“He what?” I replied.

“He wouldn’t sleep on you if he didn’t trust you!”

I looked down at the sleeping dragon. He was curled up like a cat. A smaller, much-less-stroke-able version of a cat. He was kind of cute, his predatory eyes shut up behind scaly eyelids. Maybe if he trusted me, I should trust him? I reached down and gave him a little rub with my forefinger.

“Is he…is he purring?” I asked.

“No,” Holly replied. “Dragons don’t purr.”

****

Three weeks went by before Diego’s and my relationship went to the next level. Holly was going on a hen-do for the weekend. To Newcastle. She asked me to look after Diego.

“He’s not very demanding,” she assured me. “He just needs some food twice a day and his water refilling.”

“And lots and lots of cuddles,” I said, pulling my dragon best friend into my chest.

Holly walked out of the door and got into an Uber. I turned to Diego. “It’s just you and me now buddy,” I said. “What do you want to do?”

He didn’t reply.

I decided for both of us that we needed to go to the shops. I slipped Diego into the inside pocket of my jacket and strolled out of the house. I kept the jacket shut until we got to the end of the street, where I opened it slightly as I walked. His little head peeked out. “This,” I said gently, “is Hammersmith Broadway.” He recoiled back inside my pocket. I don’t think he was used to London just yet.

I decided we needed a trolley for all the food we would be getting. Plus, Diego would want a place to sit. Admittedly the blue seatbelt didn’t quite fit him seeing as it was designed for toddlers and not dragons, but nonetheless he seemed happy with his little perch.

That is, until we reached the meat counter.

Suddenly he was agitated, his head poking up excitedly, looking around using his full field of vision. “I knew you wanted some flesh you little savage!”

“Sorry, what do you want?” the man behind counter asked, his greying scalp covered by a blue hairnet.

“Oh…um…no,” I fumbled. “Nothing, sorry. I was talking to my…friend.” I looked round as if I had lost the person I was with, whilst trying to use a bunch of bananas to hide the dragon in the child’s seat in front of me. The meat-counter man looked a little bewildered, but turned away to serve another customer.

I quickly placed Diego in the main part of the trolley and tried to hurry away from the mountains of raw meat, but he climbed up the metal bars and was out of the cage before I had a chance to stop him.

He scurried under some boxes of Cornflakes. I noted that they were half price. “Diego!” I whispered. “Diego come here!” I clicked my fingers. As if that’s going to work you moron, I thought to myself. He poked his head out. Well, what do you know?

“If you come here…I’ll give you some nice juicy peas!”

He ducked back under the Cornflakes.

“Excuse me, sir,” a voice behind me said. I turned round. The security guard. He had a dark blue uniform on and a matching cap that said SECURITY on it. He had a truncheon in a belt holster. I wondered if he had ever had to use it.

“What are you looking for?” he asked.

“My, er, pet,” I said, only half-lying. The security man looked down at me. “My pet…dog,” I said, now fully lying.

Just then Diego decided to make a break for it, scurrying out from under the boxes of cut-price dried-corn, across the nearest aisle and up into the cheese fridge.

Mr Security was looking scornfully at me.

“That…isn’t a dog,” he said. I felt like asking when he would be upgrading to detective, but felt that it probably wasn’t the time to be being sarcastic, what with having just accidentally released a dragon into Tesco Metro.

“Don’t worry,” I said, moving towards the cheese, “he doesn’t bite.” I felt it would help, even if it was almost certainly a lie.

Jumping into the fridge was Diego’s big mistake. I found him at the back, standing dead still next to a piece of gouda. “You’re cold blooded you daft creature,” I said, reaching to pick him up. “You wouldn’t last very long in here pal. If you were more intelligent you would have gone for the rotisserie chicken counter.”

By now there was a crowd. The security detective had brought in reinforcements in the form of two teenagers in oversized uniforms, a cleaner with a mop and bucket and a balding man in a pinstripe suit who was probably the deputy store-manager. There were some boys taking photos, undoubtedly to post on social media. I didn’t think Diego was ready to be Insta-famous. Some shocked parents scowled open-mouthed at me. “You brought a dragon into a supermarket?!” they would have probably been shouting had they not been too outraged to speak.

Diego and I were escorted out of the shop. He was safely back inside my jacket pocket, warming up after his frosty trip into the dairy products. “Listen mate,” the security guy said as I left, “don’t bring your…dog in here again.”

Holly and I broke up on Monday. I think she realised I was only with her for her dragon.

I am yet to find another Diego.