Dragon

“Did you see?” one of the burly bikers spoke, sitting down at a table with a few other Saints, cracking open his beer and taking a long gulp. “Another old factory burnt down.”
           “Another?” one scoffed, shaking his head. “Those damn things burn like wildfire.”
           “Yeah but it’s been a long time since we had a nasty fire like that,” another said. “It hasn’t been since that incident.”
           “Incident?” one of the newer Saint’s questioned, looking at the rest of the men with brows furrowed. “What incident?”
           The men shifted slightly in their seats, looking at each other and then at the young recruit. “How long you been in this town, boy?”
           “My whole life.”
           “And ya ain’t ever heard of the story of the man they called Dragon?”
           “Dragon? What are you talking about?”
           The man took a slow drink of his beer, sighing heavily afterward at the warmth he felt from the liquid as it coursed through his body. He looked at the other men at the table and then at the young recruit. "About—what? Seven, eight years ago—there was an incident. What we thought was some nasty building fire was actually a whole lot more," the man began, the rest listening intently. Even the other Saints in the bar had silenced their conversations just to listen to the one mysterious tale this city had. "It was just like one of those old factories being burnt down, but the building was being used by one of the most lethal gangs this city had ever seen," he scoffed lightly. "Not even the Saints' Brotherhood could shake 'em off—our forefathers could never get rid of them, that's how big a deal these assholes were."
           He stopped to take another drink of his beer, staring down at the bottle as he continued. “The police told the public it was just a fire caused from flammable materials suddenly combusting,” he continued. “But that ain’t the real story.”
           “Well, what’s the real story then?” the young man asked, his brow raised.
           The man sighed, looking at the young and naïve recruit who stared at them with obvious ignorance. “One of the fella’s this particular gang had kidnapped, along with a shit load of other children, had reached a good standing in the gang. So good, he was able to work with some of their welding machines and their high-tech gear. He was so good at all of that shit that they gave him a name—and these kids, they used them like slaves, and they were only identified with numbers—but his name gave him a permanent standing in the gang and it was ‘Dragon’.”
           The bar had gone quiet. They knew this story. Everyone and anyone who’d been in this town long enough knew the story like it was on the back of their hand and it still chilled them to the bone.
           “How old was this kid?” the young recruit asked, blinking rapidly at them.
           “Let me finish the story, boy,” he grumbled. “By the time the boy was fifteen—” he looked at the young recruit through the corner of his eye. “He turned on the gang and took his revenge.”
           “That’s it?” the recruit asked, scoffing into his beer.
           “You shut your trap boy,” he snapped. “That fifteen-year-old boy single-handedly destroyed the most lethal fucking gang in the world with just a fucking blow torch.”
           The new recruit froze, his eyes wide, as he stared at him in shock. He cleared his throat quickly. “You expect me to believe that?”
           “You ask any other fuckin’ person in this town boy,” he snapped. “They’ll tell you the same story. The police watched that boy emerge from the flames, clothes burnt to hell but his body untouched. A welder’s mask covered his face, and he had nothin’ but a fuckin’ blow torch in his hand.”
           “How’d they even know it was that boy Dragon? It coulda just been some other kid.”
           “Because once you got a name in that gang, you had to get it tattooed. That boy came out from the flames with a massive dragon tattoo on his torso. That’s how they knew.”
           “Well, what happened to the Dragon?”
           “They don’t know,” another man at the table said, jumping in. “After the incident the police took the boy in, but he disappeared before the night had even ended and no one was able to ever find him.”
           “But they say he grew up to be an arsonist and has been responsible for the recent fires,” another man at the table said.
           “You old fucks are just messin’ with me,” the young recruit said, shaking his head at them and taking a drink of his beer.
           “What are you jerks talkin’ about?” Drake appeared behind the young recruit, slapping his hands on his shoulders, and watching as he spit his beer out in complete fear. The rest of the men at the table busted out in hysterics, laughing at the young recruit’s distraught face. “What’s the matter? Dragon got ya scared?”
           “Fuck you, Drake.”
           “Ooh, touchy,” Drake laughed, taking his beer from his hand and drinking from it. “Don’t worry, the Dragon hasn’t been responsible for those fires.”
           “Quit with your jokes—how do you even know that for sure, Drake?” one of the members said, the rest of the men agreeing in unison.
           He drank from the young recruits beer, setting the empty bottle down and staring at the men with a glint in his eyes, something flashing there for just a moment and then disappearing as he cracked a grin. “The kid’s dead from the story, died in jail. He didn’t disappear. He was poisoned by darts from the gang while he was on a killing spree.”
           “Get outta here, don’t make shit up.”
           “Go ahead and check the old police records in the back,” Drake said, shrugging his shoulders. “It’s written right in them.”
           “But what if he is among us? What if he did survive and he’s sitting right here in this bar, right under our noses?”
           “And what if he is?” Drake asked.
           The men said nothing. They only turned back to their drinks and, slowly but surely, the bar went back to its normal buzz. Drake sat at the bar, drinking mindlessly, feeding the burning flame within him.