One Monday, Erik gets a new neighbor. Said neighbor, who is an asshole, goes by the name Sebastian Shaw, and he is an asshole because he has a flock of winged sheep.
Erik could deal with normal sheep. He could, come to that, deal with fanged sheep. He could deal with cannibalistic sheep, man-eating sheep, were-sheep or mutated sheep.
But the one thing he absolutely cannot handle is fucking winged sheep. His tall, strong fences do nothing to keep them from getting into his gardens and eating his prize-winning corn, carrots and potatoes.
He's fairly fucking certain that sheep are supposed to eat grass. They aren't rabbits, for fuck's sake.
Erik ends up sitting up night after night with his rifle in his lap, watching over his watermelon patch. Let the sheep have all the rest; but they can't have this. Not his watermelons. Never.
*
He lasts two weeks before falling asleep in his chair one night. When he wakes up, a third of his watermelon patch has been eaten, as well as shat on. There are no sheep on his property, but he can feel them frolicking just over the next hill.
This, he decides, means war.
*
He signs onto the internet to figure out his options.
First, he considers buying a wolf. Wolves eat sheep, don't they? It's a thing. But wolves are expensive, and also illegal. Surprisingly, werewolves are actually cheaper, but who the fuck wants a sheep-killer that would want to talk to him sometimes and could also turn him into a fucking werewolf? Not Erik, that's who.
From there he considers a panther, or a lion or a tiger. He decides to pass on all of those, because little cats never do what they're told, so why would big cats?
He does not consider a bear, though they're relatively inexpensive and readily available. There's just something about them that makes his skin crawl.
*
Finally, after hours of looking, he finds the dragon ads. Apparently, you don't buy a dragon, you have to rent.
Erik looks at all the badass pictures of dragons eating virgins and setting fire to villages, and he can see no flaw in this plan. If he gets very lucky, the dragon they send him will not only eat Shaw's flock and burn down Shaw's house, but devour Shaw himself.
He thinks it's likely that eating Shaw would poison a dragon, but well, that kind of thing is probably why the website lets you opt in for their insurance (which is through Progressive, apparently. huh. who knew). So he makes sure to do that, thinking that $16 per day for insurance on top of the weekly fee for rental seems more than fair.
Erik types in his Paypal password with something approaching maniacal glee.
*
The next morning, Erik wakes up to a loud rap on his door, accompanied by a heavy huffing snort. He jumps out of bed and opens his front door to find a very large dragon blinking at him - sheepishly, which seems incongruous (and also annoying, considering he needs it to eat sheep, not look like one).
"Hello there," the dragon says, blinking some more. "I'm Charles, your Rent-a-Dragon. I'm told you have a sheep problem?"
"Yes," Erik says, and proceeds to instruct the dragon in how he would like for the sheep to be disposed of.
Charles-the-dragon listens quietly, and then says, "Oh dear. That's not quite...I'm afraid you must have checked off the wrong box on our website. I'm a vegetarian and a pacifist." Erik is about to demand a refund when Charles-the-dragon continues. "But I assure you that I can handle your sheep problem, at least temporarily. You see, sheep, even winged ones, have a natural dragon-fearing instinct. All I need to do is sit in your watermelon patch, and that should be enough to deter them. And if you still want a more...bloody solution, then all you'll have to do is put in a request for a replacement over the internet."
"Fine," Erik says.
*
Turns out that there aren't actually any sheep-eating, house-imploding dragons available until next week. So Erik will have to put up with the fucking vegetarian pacifist dragon until then.
While it's not as good as seeing sheep body parts strewn about would be, it is very satisfying to hear the terrified bleating and see the panicked scramble of the flock into the air when they catch sight or whiff of Charles-the-dragon.
*
On the second day, Erik goes out to inspect his watermelon patch, only to find Charles-the-dragon nomming on one of Erik's most promising watermelons, with a pile of already-eaten watermelons sitting beside him.
"My watermelons," Erik says, the words like ashes in his mouth. "What have you done to my watermelons?"
"Well," Charles-the-dragon says after swallowing, "I kept waiting for you to offer me something to eat. You're supposed to feed me, it says so in the fine print, so I presume you neglected to read it. But you never offered me anything - quite rude of you, by the way, not at all a way to treat a guest, even a rented one - and I didn't wish to leave your gardens at risk in order to obtain my breakfast."
*
Erik goes back inside the house for his rifle.
Then he comes back outside with it, and much as he'd like to shoot Charles-the-dragon, the insurance doesn't cover deliberate injury of the rent-ee by the rent-er.
So instead, he shoots a watermelon. It explodes so beautifully that he proceeds to shoot all the rest of them too. And why shouldn't he, if they're just going to get eaten anyway? Fuck watermelons. He doesn't even like them; he just liked having the biggest one at the county fair every year.
"I think I need a new career," Erik says philosophically, kicking an errant watermelon rind. "Maybe as a dragonslayer."
"...Really now," Charles says.