The Dragon on the Beach

by Joseph Fredrickson

The dead dragon appeared on the shore of Zuma Beach in Southern California on the thirteenth day of March exactly at midday.

No one could say how the Dragon had come to be there. Some say it fell from the sky. Some say it washed up from the sea. Others say it was spat up by the Earth. But all agreed that it was, in fact, a dragon, and that it was very, very dead. It lay stone cold beneath the hot sun, the waves lapping at its feet and wings. From where it lay on its side, its unseeing left eye could stare directly into the sun whenever it became noon.

I was chosen to examine the colossal corpse, a young biologist working at the Los Angeles Museum of Natural History, along with other scientists, all eager to take the great beast apart, and discern its secrets.

And certainly it was exciting. A Dragon! A creature of myth and legend. Was it a marvel of nature, previously hidden to us? An abomination and an affront to all that is? Some unforeseen aberration of reality itself? My heart palpated at the thought of it. Even today my heart aches at the memory of that drive, the feeling of destiny that had settled over us, that we alone had been granted the privilege of studying the dragon.

When we arrived on the scene, there was a great commotion. A crowd three spans thick had gathered around the mountainous remains. Reporters, influencers, and streamers, yelling into their cameras and phones, feeding the sight of the creature into a thousand screens. Millions watched the dragon be it in person or through screens, clamoring for answers, or stories to make sense of the beast.

We pushed through the crowd, escorted by men with uniforms and guns, and finally, we saw the downed titan.

To say the Dragon was large would be to say a lion is a cat. It was fifty feet from nose to tail, and though its wings lay dead in the sand, we estimated that, when fully unfurled, their span should be eighty feet. It was surprisingly slender, more serpent than lizard, and the hawk-like talons were wickedly sharp. Its scales were each as wide as a human head, and polished clearer than any mirror.

And the teeth, lord in heaven the teeth. Each was an opalescent white and seemed to shine bright enough to blind the eye and sharp enough to cut a hair dropped upon them. There must have been dozens in that colossal mouth.

It was one thing to see reports and pictures of the dragon, hearing people marvel at its size. But to stand there before it, gaping in its shadow like a traveler before the broken statue of Ozymandias, to bask in the realness of its existence, the simplicity of its presence, is the closest I shall ever come to seeing the face of God.

We began our work while interns and assistants set up camp behind us. But quickly, we ran into the problem.

The dragon's scales would not be cut. Harder than steel they were. Our tools shattered into tiny showers of silver and metal, leaving not even a scratch upon those mirror-polished scales.

Try as we might, we could not pierce that magnificent hide, nor could we get under the scales though we tried with everything from a pen to a crowbar.

We turned our attention to the wings thinking that the thin membranes would prove easier to retrieve samples from, but even that silk-like skin proved a match for our tools.

We encountered the same results, day after day. The dragon's body refused to yield to our fumbling attempts to understand it. Its teeth could not be pulled. Its wings could not be clipped. Its hide could not be pierced.

Even the eye, the weakness of any other creature, withstood our tools, our chisels bending and breaking under our hammers.

With every failed attempt our frustration grew. Finally, we threw up our hands and decided to simply take the dragon's measurements as best we could.

There were no sexual organs that we could see, nor was there an anus. The dragon's only opening was its mouth, nose and ears. This confused us greatly, for how could it eat without a means to excrete waste? How could it reproduce without the plumbing necessary to do so? Was food simply absorbed into it in its entirety?

But at last, we had an idea. A way to circumvent the Dragon's apparent invulnerability. The mouth of the beast was left slightly ajar. Into it we would send a small drone, and examine the insides of the dead monster. Surely seeing the Dragon from the inside would provide wonderous insights.

And so, in we sent the drone. We examined its tongue, its uvula, and then we turned to go further.

There was nothing.

No organs, no stuffing, not even machinery to operate a hoax. Simply a black, empty void. The drone could find no sides to the dragon's inside. No floor and no visuals of what lay beyond those pearly white fangs. And endless abyss of nothingness, like the void between the stars above.

The drone could not be retrieved. It simply slipped into the abyss within the Dragon, never to be seen again.

After the loss of the droid, we employed stronger and tougher weapons, but the diamond blades and drill bits snapped like glass and the lasers bounced off of the mirror-polished scales. Nothing we did could leave nary a blemish on the beast.

All our instruments could not measure it. X-Rays and sonar revealed nothing within.

The Dragon did not rot. No barnacles clung to its side. No carrion beasts dared test themselves upon its scales. The dragon simply remained there, undisturbed by the world. Not even the sand piled around it. The dragon seemed to exist outside of a world that did not know what to do with a myth made manifest.

As time went by, and I could see no mark of entropy upon the corpse, I began to build an image in my mind. I saw the oceans rising and receding. I saw mankind rising up to the heavens and collapsing back to dust. I saw all evidence of humanity fading away. I saw the earth dying as the sun slowly expanded and consumed it, and yet, I saw the dragon there still, unmovable, floating through the void. A colossal lifeless hulk devoid of meaning, yet content to continue past all things.

Slowly, I began to hate the Dragon. Its permanence, its stubbornness. Whatever secrets it kept from us. The scales that refused to break, the wings that refused to split, and the empty void that seemed to live inside. What sin had we committed that entropy lay its hand upon us, but not this animal's corpse? Why should it be preserved, a hallowed monument that should persist to the end of all things? Why not us? Why were we so cursed?

The last night that I was allowed to work on the dragon I got quite drunk. I screamed at the lifeless hulk. I howled and wept against its scales. I demanded it tell us all that it was hiding. That it should say why it should endure beyond me, beyond everything. Why was it silent? Why was it dead? How could such a thing die? I screamed for answers. I begged for them. I pleaded and cried until I had no more tears to shed.

The Dragon did not notice my wailing. It simply lay there, as it had since it first arrived.

Once we were gone, they tried to move the Dragon's corpse. The steel towing cables snapped like string. The helicopters were pulled out of the sky. A soldier tried to shoot it but the bullet ricocheted off the scales and struck him in the skull. It would not burn. It would not be cut apart. The dragon simply remained there.

In time, we became accustomed to its presence. It ceased to be a novelty. The news crews and influencers moved on. The dragon remained all the same. They built a pier around it, with rides, cotton candy, and other amenities. You could take a picture with it for three dollars.

I still visit it from time to time, staring into that one unblinking eye, longing for some secret that might justify its existence and grant me a clue to the center of all things. And as I stare I feel as though I'm falling, falling, falling into the dragon's pupil, falling into the empty void. Sometimes I want to climb inside its mouth and fall into that void for real, and ride it to the end of everything. Or perhaps I might fall forever. Perhaps I might fall and fall until I come across stars and planets that might live in that void.

I read somewhere that some cultures believe the world rests on the back of a turtle, and that turtle rides on the back of another turtle, that it's turtle all the way down. I think that they're wrong. I think the universe rests inside a dragon's maw, and its dragons all the way down.

I linger until the teenager manning the booth demands that I leave. I am holding up the line.