[ WP ] When everyone turns 18 , they receive a pet which is figurative of their personality . You 're the first person to receive a dragon ...

Cancer took my mother when I was ten. As a common tabby cat, I never understood how she and my father ( a Belgian Shepherd ) had ever once been close enough to have married. These things were supposed to make sense, that was the way of things: cats should wind up with cats the same way a falcon should wind up with another bird of prey. 
 
 
 As my mothers health deteriorated and after her passing my fathers propensity to turn to the bottle for answers that doctors could not provide us grew. He became cruel, the intelligent Shepherd began to curl it's lip and snarl. I cowered in fear from his belt for two years and finally left in the summer of the third. The beatings were too much, they had changed me. Where once was the mild nature of my mother grew a spite for the perfect families I saw all around me: kids with families dropping them at school in their metallic-red Priuses... Kids with lunches packed for them. 
 
 I killed my first man within a week of leaving the house. I was n't dumb, I owed at least that much to my father... And the vagrants shelter was too opportune to pass up in the pouring rain. He was passed out drunk by his pathetic fire and a part of me killed my father when I felt the last bit of fight leave his haggard throat. Nobody missed the man. 
 
 I became an expert at scavenging and stealing... It never ceased to amaze me what was considered trash by the wealthy. I became handy with a knife and the and the small percentage of homelessness that the local politicians always fought over dwindled out quickly. Nobody asked questions they did n't care about the answers to. 
 
 For each man and even the few women I killed I took something, regardless of whether I could use it. Over the next few years I assembled tiny stashes of jackets, lockets, even the odd watch or two. I almost never had a need for money, so the few places I stayed were a mess of quarters and crumpled dollar bills from the kids I so easily terrorized and stole lunches and lunch money from. I resented the looks they gave me, I had become the life of the fucking hobos that I had taken from them. Kids I grew up with began to get their spirit animals: Deer, sheep, cow. All of them followers, placid and common. 
 
 I was neither surprised not scared the day I came home and saw the scarlet scaled beast waiting for me. I would no longer be ignored.
