Here’s what that little twerp does to me. Every day when he gets home from school, that oafish ball of pudginess takes me out of my glass prison and he holds me in his greasy little fingers. He tells me “You’re so cool, Gregory the Gecko! You’re my best friend in the whole world! I love you so much!” then he sets me down on the carpet, expecting me to do something interesting, and when I only sit there, he begins to prod me with his sausage-y fingers still smelling of the pepperoni pizza he had for lunch. It is at this point that I defecate on his carpet, or, sometimes, if the boy is really pissing me off, in his hands. Disgusted, he tosses me angrily back in my glass prison, and I’m left to my own thoughts until he turns off my heat lamp and goes to sleep that night.

I’m done with all that. Tonight’s the night. I’m getting out of this hellhole—I’ve only got three years left, tops, and I do not intend to spend them being an ungrateful child’s slave. I check the baseball-themed clock on the boy’s wall, which I always found to be ironic, because the boy hates baseball. It’s 9:58 PM. That means bedtime in two minutes. The boy finally forgot to lock me in after he put me back in my cage that afternoon. This will be the boy’s tragic downfall. The clock strikes ten, and as if on cue, he trudges in, footfalls rattling the floor. I take a look at the boy’s face, hopefully for the last time. His eyes are red and watery. His nose is runny. I write it off—probably ran out of ice cream.

He turns off my lamp. The lights go out. I scale the pane of glass with my suction cup-y gecko feet and slip out of my prison, down the wall, and under his bedroom door. The floor here is cold, somewhat moist hardwood. I’ve never been on hardwood before—it’s strange. But this is my first taste of freedom, and I think it’s supposed to be strange for a little while. Then I hear something down the hall, a loud and slurred voice. I investigate; the boy’s mother and father are in the kitchen, and they’re both drunk.

“What is he doing, huh? He has no friends, his grades are s***. And all he does is eat,” the dad says. He gulps down the rest of his beer and throws the empty can on the floor.

“He’s ten,” the mother says.

“So?”

“So he’s a kid!”

“He’s so soft. He’s pathetic.”

The mother doesn’t reply after that. She shakes her head. Reaches for her purse on the counter and pulls out a pack of cigarettes. At least, I think they’re cigarettes. I’ve never actually seen cigarettes before. The father turns away in disgust, with a look on his face like he may actually throw up, and stumbles to their bedroom.

Past the kitchen, there’s an open window. The breeze wanders in. I could go. There’s a swamp quite close to here, the Foreverglades, I think. Seems like a good enough place.

But there’s clean water here. And food. And a nice heat lamp that my boy turns on for me every morning. And let’s be real here—I would be a nice lunch for the first snake that spots me. Snakes, ahhh. At least there aren’t any of those here. Snakes suck.

Screw it, I’m going back to my cage.