The Pale Dragon

By Jared Kimpton

When he was a kid, Samuel cracked open an egg over a sizzling pan. Its insides had seeped out as black-tar yolk, followed by a pale chicken foetus flopping down on the stovetop, its milky eyes bubbling from the heat. He stopped liking eggs after that.

This stench reminded him of that moment.

The egg lay sideways in curls of seaweed, ocean water still lapping at its bottom. It was the colour of burnt cigarettes and as big as a six-wheel truck. 

Overnight the waves had brought the egg to shore, but Samuel had smelt it before he saw it — rot, death, sea salt and the slow cooking of the sun. It ruined his daily morning walk, a ritual he started back in Perth, by his home at Cottesloe Beach.

It was certainly a more interesting sight than a smell. It was as if the thing had been ripped straight from the carton, but was twice his height. The Indonesian locals had come too, workers from The Plant which bordered this stretch of beach, and the villagers from the local area. Samuel was too stunned to shoo them away from the private property, as his hand slowly reached down to the walkie talkie at his side, eyes glued to the egg.

“Roy? Over,” Samuel spoke.

A few tense moments of silence followed.

“Mm yeah? What’s it?” answered The Plant’s chief security officer. 

“Bring a ute around to the south side beach.” Samuel knew somehow that the locals used to call it Pegunungan Pantai. “There's something odd here, and uh, locals. Over.” 

“Again? When are they going to give up on this place? Right, I'm coming.” 

Fifteen minutes later a Toyota rocketed down the sand dunes, barely swerving to avoid the onlookers. Samuel frantically waved it over, and it screeched to a halt beside him.

Roy, a severely sun-burnt, sun-spotted and sun-wrinkled man, emerged from the driverside, wiping sweat from his forehead. He pinched his nose.

“What the bloody hell is that?” he grimaced.

“It’s a giant egg,” Samuel replied. 

Roy lazily placed a hard hat on his balding head. Both men wore high-vis vests, but where Samuel had on his business casual underneath, Roy was only armed with a sweaty wife-beater and cargo shorts. 

“Well, why’s it there?” Roy scratched his head. 

“I don’t know!” 

“You don’t think it might be a whale egg or somethin’?” Roy looked around at the gathering crowd. “We’re going to need a perimeter, and call up the local polisi too.”

“Whales don’t lay eggs, Roy,” Samuel said as he took a step towards the egg, and the smell became even more pungent. His mind was cast back again to when he was young in Pasi Beurandah, when he’d split that rotten egg open. His mother had tried to console him and tell him it was a dragon, and everyone knew that eating a dragon egg turned you into a dragon. She said he was lucky he didn’t become like Dang Gedunai in that old folktale. 

Another few steps, he heard whispers from the crowd he could barely understand. Who knew studying engineering back home would take him here?

But home was here, Pegunungan Pantai. Where he used to swim all the time with his friends. That was before it was built, with its bulbous tanks and wires and black smoke which covered him in soot. Then Mama got sick. 

The stench made it hard to think, but he was closer to the egg now, closer than he realised. Running in small streams through the sand was a thick black ooze. Samuel bent down and dipped his fingers in it. When he first left Australia to manage The Plant, he thought the oddness would’ve been from the culture shock.

He’d always liked eggs, liked to sneak them from the chickens of other families too. The Kampung leaders chastised him for it. When The Plant came, all the eggs started to be bad. 

Maybe there’s just more dragons. 

“God. This smell hurts my head.” Roy grunted. “It’s like… you ever cracked open a rotten egg? It reminds me of this time when I was younger.” The man rubbed his forehead. “Came out with the chick still inside.” 

 Samuel saw he’d stepped closer too. “The same thing happened to me,” he said,” rubbing the ooze between his fingers.

“Really? Aren’t you allergic to eggs?” 

Samuel stopped. He looked between his fingers where his skin began to redden and sting. Since birth he’d been allergic, they never had eggs in his family home. He’d never even cooked one.

But he has. Before The Plant. Before Mama died. 

No, he shook his head. His mum was still alive, she was in retirement at Peppermint Grove. The same as his father.

Papa used to tell him the stories of their ancestors, where the Debata na Tolu, the Gods, were born from cosmic eggs. Gods who cracked open from chicken eggs.

He was in front of the egg now, it was fleshy, it stank. He wanted to vomit.

Mama vomited a lot.

He reached out, the world had already fallen away. He touched its side and it cracked, sinuous pieces of its shell falling to the sand. 

Within, a pale chicken foetus, curled and cramped, stared at him with milky eyes. 

About the Author

Jared Kimpton is a freelance writer on Garigal land, currently studying at UTS.

He's been published in the State Library, Loiter, UTS Vertigo and Honi Soit.

He enjoys reading and writing fiction that blends profound meaning with the absurd, fantastical or downright strange.