Scream

A scream of pure terror rips from your throat. The monster, worse than anything in your childhood nightmares, lunges at you, one cold, scaly hand covering your mouth, muffling the sound.

"Quiet," the lizardman hisses, as just when you think this couldn't get any worse, it points a sleek, black handgun at your head. You **** off your scream, a wad of fear closing your throat until you can't breathe. Darkness closes in on your vision and you black 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.