Three Inch Dragon

At once the small plastic dragon came alive on my desk and began sorting through a bag of pills. He worked mechanically, taking pieces of some and adding them to others. A small plume of smoke formed around him and at times he would look around as if being watched, but never looked my way.
I'm not sure who he was worried about.
Later, in the evening a part of a booster rocket erupted in the sky above my home and I left my body just as it sliced my head from my body. I watched my head on the ground looking around and up at the neck which rested exposed on the arm of a sofa.
A soft rumble and my eyes move toward the large hole in the carpet and just as the audience is shocked at the geyser of blood jetting from my neck, the entire apartment goes up in a large explosion.
And I look back down at the dragon and the pills. He's created maybe three and the rest are all tatters and chemical husks laying in the plastic bag.
The plastic dragon moves the three pills towards me and three hours before I take them and end up here looking at this plastic dragon sorting through my pills.
It's important to keep clear skin and a healthy figure when you're entering any of the nine patrolled areas of the city. Bad breathe can get you killed. So can something as stupid and dimwitted as wearing mix matched socks.
I can't tell you how many times I've done this. You just forget one thing and you're dead and waking up in yet another body, in another city, and with the same goddamn mix matched socks.
I shuffle up the street looking for a shop to buy a new pair.
I trade a cell phone for a pack of 10 socks and throw the mix matched pair into a garbage can and put on the new ones.
I stand and move up the street, now looking for a new body. Something's wrong with this one. Something in the chest. Something that won't rest.
I walk into a Thai restaurant and order the squid. A man comes to the table and asks me to follow him into the back.
Hanging on hooks are maybe 20 bodies in dry cleaning bags.
"This is our Spring line."
"Looks promising. I just want one that works."
"They all work. But this one works the best."
"I'll take it." I don't care about looks or physique, I just want something that's not gonna go and get lung cancer after three cigarettes.
"That will be – watchu got in there?"
I show him the socks and he nods to his feet. "I haven't been able to leave here in months."
"It's a deal." I hand him the socks and he shoots me in the face with a small pistol.
I wake up in the new body and make my way to the door. "It's got gas." I say as I cut one while leaving.
"There's something in the hallway."
I'm in bed. Maybe…some time in my early twenties. A girlfriend? "What is it?" I ask.
"I don't know." She bites the bottom of her lip and I look towards the hallway and here a muffled grunt.
"That's something alright." I get up and feel the weight of this new/old body and sigh in pain.
Making my way towards the hallway, I notice pills scattered on the floor and figure out that my old buddy the dragon is up to more chemistry.
The girl wouldn't understand and is probably going to lose her mind if she sees a three-inch dragon sorting pills in the hallway.
I tell her it's the wind and go back to sleep.