Fight for your life

Another panicked scream rips from your throat as you thrash your legs, beating against it with your fists and clawing at it with your hands. It doesn't even flinch, protected by scaly armor and hard muscles.

"Stop it," the lizard hisses, its black forked tongue flicking out just inches from your face, but you have no intention of giving up, of making it easier for this monster to eat you, or whatever it intends to do with you. It is, however, very difficult to scream and fight when you can't breathe. You suck air greedily through your nose, but the room starts to spin around you and a dark fog creeps across your sight. Your eyes roll back and you pass out.

You jerk awake, drawing a sharp breath, your heart pounding. For a moment, you can't remember where you are or what is going on, but then you recognize Aunt Margie's guest room. You're lying on the bed, staring up at the ceiling, one arm up over your head and the other wedged beneath your body. You must have been having a nightmare. Images of a lizard or dinosaur with a gun flash through your mind. Yes, definitely a nightmare.

You start to get up, but something stops you. Your arm, the one over your head, won't move. You crane your neck to look up, and gasp at the sight of a black plastic zip-tie binding your wrist to the brass bed frame.

Scrambling off the bed, you jerk against the zip-tie, the plastic band digging into your flesh as the bed moves, the legs scraping across the floor. You jerk again, feeling a familiar panic rising up in your chest. This can't be happening.

You hear a noise and whip around as the bedroom door opens. Into the room steps the monster from your nightmare -- a giant lizard, nearly six feet tall, lean and well-muscled, wearing camouflage pants, a tight black T-shirt, and a belt with a holstered gun and a sheathed hunting knife. It turns on the bedroom light and you blink in the sudden brightness. Its scales are green-gold, with cream blotches on the face, and dark blue mottling down the throat and on the insides of its arms. A long, scaly tail sticks out through a hole in the seat of its pants.

The lizard crosses its arms over its chest and cocks its head to one side, its metallic gold eyes watching you impassively. "Well?" it asks finally.