When the first reports of dragons came in, they didn’t even quite come in. Nobody believed it, and no serious news outlet would touch it. Most of the not-so-serious ones wouldn’t either. And so the first mentions appeared alongside reports of Nessie sightings, stories of alien abductions and haunted houses. In that company, a small village falling prey to a dragon or two seemed both tamer and somehow less believable at the same time.

At this point, Hannah, our protagonist, didn’t know anything about this. She was a rational, down-to-earth, no-nonsense kind of gal. Except for her morning horoscope, of course. She didn’t even know where she would have to look for the alien-stole-my-husband’s-skin stories. Not that she wanted to.

It didn’t take long though, before the news started gaining more and more attention. How could they not, when town after town were being deserted, people fleeing their homes as the dragon plague was coming closer? Although, it was unclear if anyone had really seen these dragons. In those early days, most people felt too silly mentioning mythical beasts as a real possibility. The reports talked of people leaving their homes in sudden mass panic, of ghost towns popping up around, but offered little explanation. “Unexplained” and “suspected psychosis” were used much more often than “dragons”. Truly, no reputable journalist would allow the word escape their moth – even if they stood face-to-face with the “alleged winged reptile”. Social media, on the other hand, were full of them. Dragons were trending on most platforms, along with #IBelieve and everything from #Smaug to #Falcor.

Hannah watched the news, as the orderly, well-informed citizen she was, and as such, agreed with them wholeheartedly. She would scoff whenever someone mentioned dragons at the office lunch, and congratulate herself on her common sense.

Most people, just like Hannah, didn’t believe in the dragon theory. Not even after the videos appeared. They weren’t good videos, mind you. It seemed nobody could get close enough to the beasts. The footage usually consisted of hopelessly zoomed in images of tiny distant shapes in the skies. Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Is it a dragon? Is this a camera from the 90s? It was impossible to tell. Of course, mixed in, or rather, taking over, were perfectly vibrant and colourful close-ups, that only had one small problem – they were obviously fake. Although, maybe not obviously enough, judging by how widely, wildly, and seriously they were spread. As a result, there were almost as many theories as people. Was it a hoax, a terrorist attack, a giant advertising campaign? Was it some leaking toxic fumes or contaminated water? Was it aliens? Was it the CIA? Was it – by any chance – dragons?

Hannah changed her mind daily, sometimes twice a day, depending on who she was talking to. She was mostly cycling between it being the Chinese, some kind of social media-induced psychosis, or a tasteless “art” performance. Most of the time though, she didn’t think about it at all. She was too busy preparing the office Christmas party and dealing with her latest date. The not-dragons were too far for her to worry about.

Dragons or not, whatever it was, it was spreading. It had started in a few small isolated places, but it was spreading in all directions like a blood stain seeping through a shirt from a wound. The world was quickly turning red.

Soon the issue started occupying people’s minds and the content on their devices more and more. The distant news have become local. What was happening to strangers before, was now happening to neighbors. Despite the growing proximity of this – whatever it was – there wasn’t any more clear information than before. Only more footage of distant flying specks high up in the sky and panicked people who fled the neighboring towns and cities, themselves unsure what they were running from.

That there was a threat was clear by now. The countries around the world were using considerable resources to figure out what was happening, but they weren’t finding anything. All the while, whole cities were emptying out. Some people fleeing as their neighbor towns became quiet. What happened to the ones that stayed, nobody knew. The ones who fled were spurred on by fear alone. The ones who stayed were never seen again. Whoever ventured back would only find empty, charred streets and buildings, and blown fuses. No electronic devices worked there anymore. And many who went back weren’t lucky enough to return.

Panic – strange, diffuse, targetless panic – was preceding the spreading dragon zone. Panic that was often seen as unfounded in places that were further from the boundary.

The mood in Hannah’s city was anxious. Life went on, people went to school and to work, complained about the weather and the icy roads. At the same time the city’s renting market had trouble absorbing all the newcomers from the towns to the west, many had trouble contacting relatives who live there, and some people have already left the city, Hannah’s best friend included. The panic was bubbling just under the surface.

Hannah was planning to leave too. She felt a bit sheepish about it. It’s been almost a year since it all started, and nobody knew more than they did back then. The only difference was that it was happening right here now. She felt silly running away from something when she didn’t even know what it was. At the same time, she was terrified.

She was packing, arranging with her cousin who she was hoping to stay with, and thinking of putting in her resignation. As she was walking the last few blocks to work one morning, there was a crackle in the air. The lights went out suddenly and everywhere. Even the cars driving past her went dark and soon rolled to a stop. The early morning dusk was suddenly filled with a split second of deafening silence, before it exploded in shrieks, shouts and strange popping sounds.

Hannah felt sudden warmth in her stomach, like acid reflux on steroids. She felt her body contorting, twisting, stretching like play-doh and while her mind was flooded with a longing for open skies and for the taste of charred meat, the realisation dawned on her all at once with the heaviness of a cartoon anvil.

“Shit,” she said, but her last human thought came out as a fiery roar.

(The image is Georges Seurat, The Lighthouse at Honfleur, 1886 , with small modifications)