All my life, I’ve been ordinary. I’ve done all the ‘right’ things, made all the ‘right’ moves and failed spectacularly to actually achieve anything more than mid-line success. All my life. Nothing has worked.

  I finally resigned myself to a life of obscurity and lack-luster non-achievement, and settled into a steady cycle of work, home, garden, television, sleep, and back to work again.\

  There was no room for romance. I’d been stung once too often and sworn off it, at least for now. No, I was content to keep plugging away at doing my job well, and creating a paradise in my backyard that no one would ever see.

  Of course, I hadn’t included the dragon in my calculations.

  As a child I had encouraged myself with fantasies of having a dragon as a parent. I’d been adopted, I told myself, by kind human parents who’d taken me in after I’d been transformed into a human by an evil wizard, but my dragon brother kept a watch on me.

  I could see him if I turned my head quickly enough. He watched me from the shadows, keeping me safe from human predators, and encouraging me to succeed. But in spite of my best efforts to live up to that encouragement, I never had, and my dragon brother had faded like all the other dreams and fantasies in my life.

  I hadn’t known that a real dragon existed in my shadow. It was small enough to slip between the cracks of light, small enough to remain unnoticed. Cat-like in its size and cat-like in its silence, it had clung, quiescent, for as long as I had tried to excel, not at all fazed by the lack of results.

  The dragon had faith in me, even if I didn’t. My quiet acceptance of life as I found it pissed the dragon off immensely.

  As I settled into contented mediocrity, the dragon roused itself from watchful slumber. A month passed during which I remained oblivious to its growing ire, until slowly, a faint unease crept into my consciousness. I began to feel as if I was being observed. Scrutinized, if you please.

  While the dragon was small, its gaze weighed in like a titan’s. As I no longer believed in my dragon brother, I couldn’t think of a single good reason why anyone would be interested in me.

  I’m not pretty, and even by the most generous standards my life was dull, boring even. I was an account manager at Lacey’s, a staid, old firm that dealt in car parts and insurance. My accounts were solid, the department happy with my accurate number tracking and the way my financial reports fed into the overall picture. I was a small cog in a very big set of wheels, and I didn’t believe anyone could possibly find me interesting enough to observe.

  Still the feeling persisted. I started looking into shop windows to see if there was anyone following me. I sat far enough back in the bus that I could observe who got on as I did, and who got off before me.

  I found excuses to look back, and see if those who got off at my stop walked after me. I stopped opening my blinds when I returned home each night, and grew increasing cagey about where I cast my shadow. Sunset no longer pleased me. Sunset was when the monsters came out, and I’m not talking the imaginary kind.

  I neglected my garden.

  The dragon observed me for another month, during which I became so increasingly nervous, that I took two ‘mental health’ days off work, and I had never taken a day off in my life—ever, not even when I truly should have done.

  At home, I stopped turning on more than the hall light, and used a shielded torch to avoid alerting the watcher to which room I was in. The shadows in my apartment grew, and the dragon grew with them.

  And so did my apathy, until the day Shandra sneered.

  I know…Shandra… What were her parents thinking? I blame her name on too much classic science fiction, and her attitude of entitlement to over-indulgence. Her attack on me, however, was entirely my own fault.

  I was behaving like a victim, startling at my own shadow, cringing from even the lightest social touch. Feeling forever under scrutiny, I started to doubt myself, even in the areas I was most competent. My work quality suffered, and people started to talk.

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  I hadn’t noticed the office whispers, but promotion-seeking Shandra had, and figured I’d be her next target on the way to office stardom. Not that I had the slightest inkling, I was so wrapped up in my own problems.

  Shandra showed an interest in me, and needing a friend, I ignored all the warnings I’d ever heard about her back-stabbing ways. I even invited her to share my workspace. Talk about an easy target.

  Weeks passed, and finding we agreed on many things, and shared similar dreams for a career—although hers was to have an office of her own and be the one helping steer the company into the most profitable of financial waters; while mine was to become a financial analyst, uncovering problems and predicting how to overcome and avoid them.

  It was easy to agree we were better off working together. She would check my accounts and reports and I would check hers. Together we would provide the best financial reports management had seen, and together we would support each other’s dreams.

  Even though there had never been any complaints with the standard of my work, by the time Shandra approached me, I was feeling vulnerable, and had started doubting my own abilities. Together we shared documents. I gained recognition for the work I contributed to Shandra’s reports, and she gained recognition for her input into mine.

  My self-confidence slowly returned, and I enrolled in a post-graduate course focused on forensic accounting. Shandra expressed her concern that I was taking on too much, but I was adamant I would cope. The dragon subsided, relaxing its vigilance, at last. I was moving forward again.

  I pruned the overgrowth in my front yard, clipping hedges and pruning bushes I’d neglected for months. I stopped using torches, and started turning on the lights. I began to trust Shandra’s judgment on my reports, and let her submit them with her own—it saved on paper she said, and meant the managers didn’t have to chase two files. One file made their life easier. It also meant I could leave on time to attend my classes.

  I could see where she was right, and in spite of my misgivings, agreed. The dragon stirred with unease. It started sleeping with one eye open, but I didn’t notice.

  I mowed my lawns and whipper-snipped the edges. I did my dishes looking out the window at my tidy back garden. Shandra tweaked my report, and submitted it without allowing me the final check we’d agreed on. She said she was so eager to turn it in ahead of time, she’d forgotten I was supposed to look over it before she did—and I was dumb enough to believe her.

  The mistake Shandra added was small, an extra zero in the summary of income, giving the impression of a greater profit margin. We’d built up enough of a reputation for accuracy that, even though the full report was correct, no one read all the way through, basing their decisions on the summary alone. The company stumbled.

  I was called into the office and put on warning. Shandra, they said, had carried me through the last few months, correcting silly mistakes like the one that had almost created a fiscal disaster, mistakes she’d politely mentioned every time she delivered our files. Apparently, she hadn’t wanted to dent my slowly growing confidence by rubbing my nose in my own incompetence, but she hadn’t wanted them to be unaware.

  They said Shandra had been sure the mistakes would disappear once I was feeling better about myself, and had convinced them no action was needed. This mistake, they said, changed all that. I needed to lift my game if I was to stay in the department.

  I was horrified, but couldn’t deny that I had been distracted, or that Shandra checked my work. I left the office crestfallen, all the doubts and fear I’d shed returning in a flood.

  I might have sunk right then and there, except I glanced up as I left the office and caught the expression on Shandra’s face. Not concern, not worry, but satisfaction. When her eyes met mine, she looked away, ducking her head behind the cubicle, but not before I saw her lip curl, and her nose wrinkle in a denigrating sneer.

  I couldn’t ask to have her moved. As far as the company was concerned, she had saved them from fiscal ruin. The fact she’d missed one small zero out of all the other mistakes I’d made couldn’t be laid at her door. The mistake, after all, was mine. I just wanted to curl up and die. I thought about going home right then and there.

  The dragon poked me.

  I went over the report I’d sent to Shandra. The extra zero wasn’t there. Perplexed, I waited until she was at lunch. Her password was taped to the underside of her desk, but I’d seen her fiddling with that area every morning and found the hidden note with ease.

  It took me all of two minutes to open her files and begin a comparison of the reports I’d sent her for checking, against the one’s she’d submitted. The figures didn’t quite match, and then I noticed she’d been saving a second copy of my reports with ‘corrected’ added to the title.

  The ‘corrected’ reports contained errors and matched the reports labeled as mine in our shared work space. A quick check on the file history of these, showed two dates for each; my upload date, followed by a second upload date some hours later. The dragon roared, and my tears burned away in a flare of anger.

  Checking the clock, I made sure I was working on my own report when she returned from her lunch break. She pretended concern that I’d worked all through lunch. I pretended I’d been being extra careful with my reporting numbers and begged her to check it, even though it wasn’t complete. She patted my shoulder, assured me she would, just as soon as she’d finished the section she was aiming at for the day.