In the movies, once they get the net over me I'm toast. But I don't remember any man-size geckos getting caught in a net, which is always good on humans, tigers, and apes.

I spray acid from the back of my throat, which eats away the netting covering my head and snout. This rope is good old hemp, a fancy word for marijuana, which is what people used to make rope before there were synthetic materials and when people were smart enough not to smoke dope. That's why all the old driver education drug movies told parents that marijuana smelled like “burnt rope,” as though anybody knows what burnt rope smells like. I can now say I know what burnt rope smells like, and it's something like a Volkswagen van full of guys in tie-dye t-shirts lighting up joints, or at least that's what I'm smelling as the acid eats away the hemp netting on my head and face. Of course, you probably don't have a sense of smell as acute as a gecko, so your results may vary, and perhaps you'll just smell something like a stoner throwing out his bong water.

There remains the issue of the spears piercing me at the base of my tail, and the freak show of soldiers dressed in furry costumes latched onto my tail. One bald woman wearing a mask that gives her a long nose like an elephant tries to pin my snout, but I bite her through the opening in the net and she wails hideously when my teeth cut her arm.

The eyes on the side of my head give me a clear view of two lines of soldiers with spears converging on me, and if they reach me, they'll stick me like a pin cushion and it's game over. I've got to get out of here. I push off with all four limbs, but I'm in a tug of war against greater numbers, even if they are a bunch of fruit loops wearing animal masks and fur costumes complete with bushy tails like a children's book Mr. Fox and Friends Become Soldiers. I strain to get free, noting the spear soldiers getting closer. I'm still clamped onto Elephant Nose Lady because I'm using her as a shield.

To get her weight off of me, I release the arm of the Elephant Nose Lady and dig into the street, pushing off with all fours, until I break free of the spears pinning me to the ground and the weight of the soldiers, several of which have no business serving in an army because they are morbidly obese. I bolt out through the hole in the netting, and when my hip snags, I shake and undulate a bit, so that I wriggle through.

Rising up on two legs, I run at full tilt, but something is off. I lose my balance, tumble, and roll over the street until I skid to a stop. I regain my feet and start to run off again when I notice I'm missing my tail. That explains why I couldn't run on two legs, because I use my tail for balance. Now I remember, courtesy of Mr. Frazier's freshman biology class, that geckos are able to detach their tails to escape predators, and regrow them.

I drop down to my belly and scamper through the streets, past alarmed citizens of all different freakish persuasions, including the emasculated men in lilac dresses, who serve as priests in the city's Molech cult. As I scamper past, I see that every bakery features vagina bread, but no penis bread, and harlots display themselves in glass booths to passerby, who can enter and partake of the dram if they wish.

I leave the city behind and pass through an alfalfa field until I dash into a stand of trees and scale the highest tree. It seems that I have no pursuers. The black stone idol of Molech rises above the city, which surrounds it, but all the other buildings are nondescript at this distance. I always knew I had speed, but I'm impressed with my endurance.

I say a brief prayer: Thank you, God the Protector, that my friends and I made it out of the city. I miss my tail, and find that I have to adjust constantly to maintain my balance, but sometimes you have to make sacrifices to gain your freedom. I wait until nightfall, then leap from the tallest tree where I've sheltered and glide on skin flap sails across the rich green alfalfa field, dotted with deep shadows in the moonlight. I find it hard to adjust myself in flight without my tail, so I land hard, and stumble to regain my balance.

As I wind through the fields, headed further away from the city toward the mountains in the distance I reflect how it's a real bummer losing my tail, which had cool-looking rings (A little proud there, Vic?), helped me keep and regain my balance as I ran or glided through the air, served as a great weapon, and helped me gesture when my stubby arms and fat fingers let me down. They should adapt the old saying, “I felt bad that I had no shoes until I saw a man who had no feet gecko who had no tail.”

I am passing through at field at the edge of the jungle when I hear a child crying. Edging closer to the farm house, which is just a small cottage with a thatch roof at the edge of the jungle, I quietly climb the wall, and peer through the edge of the window. I see an elderly woman cradling a red-faced infant who is wailing in her arms. A lock of white hair falls over her soft lined face, and she coos to try to calm the infant, while her husband, with a bald head and gray beard, looks on in concern. These two are clearly too old to be the infant's parents. I scamper around the walls of the cottage, looking for another couple, or even a young mother, but it appears as though there is just the old couple and an infant, who is wailing in pain.

I want to go on into the forest to rejoin Taur and Liana, but something makes me pause—a concern for the infant. I climb over the walls to the front door, which is crudely fashioned from rough timbers, and knock with the shackle on my wrist against the wood.

I hear whispered conversation in the room, because the cottage is basically one big room with a bed and a fireplace. They're trying to decide what to do, but they don't have many options. I knock again.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

“Just a moment,” the old man cries out.

The door opens and the man leans into the gap in the door, shadowed by the lamplight behind him. “There is a simple explanation for...”

He is speaking above my head, expecting to come face-to-face with another human. He looks around, scanning the dark surroundings of the cottage, but he's unable to find whoever knocked on the door, until he looks down. When he sees a six-foot gecko lying on his doorstep, he jumps and exclaims, “For the love of Aegea!”

“Don't worry,” I assure him in my calmest gecko tone of voice, “I'm not here to harm anyone. I'm here to help the child.”

“We don't want any trouble,” the woman proclaims loudly from inside the house.

“May I enter?” I ask the old man. I look like an alligator lying on his doorstep, but with much nicer skin, looking up at him imploringly. I'm going on a sidetrack here, but if geckos were as large as alligators, people would want gecko skin wallets, purses, and shoes, and you couldn't give away alligator skin leather.

“Who are they? What do they want?” The old woman must raise her voice in order to be heard above the child's wailing.

“Look, sir, what are the odds that a six-foot gecko shows up at your doorstep in the middle of the night, just when you need help?” I blink the clear lids over my eyes, because I think it makes me look more like a human blinking.

“Come in,” the man says reluctantly and scans the jungle, looking to see if I have any companions.

“Oh, Queen Ashera!” the woman exclaims, jumping in her seat and setting off intensified wailing on the infant's part.

“Can we stop with all the goddess crap, please? There is no goddess.” I shake my head. I start to pull in my tail so the old guy doesn't close the door on it, but remember I don't have a tail. “Get me a cup half filled with water.”

“What do you mean, there is no goddess? That's just your opinion.” The woman gives me a stern look while she bounces the baby in her arms, causing her dangling white lock of hair to sway.

“Those who believe in Lord Riyel built the great cities, the temples, the works of art, music, literature, and created science.” I take the cup from the old man and squeeze out a drop of venom from the spur at my ankle, so that a single drop lands in the water. “While those who believe in weak shit like the goddess still live in mud huts, practicing mutilation, prostitution, cannibalism, torture, slavery...”

“Child sacrifice,” the old man adds while looking at his wife.

“Have the kid drink this.” I hand the old man the cup, but as always, my arms are short, so he has to approach me to get the cup.

The woman takes the cup from him and sniffs it, then gives it to the baby. At first the child sputters and spits, but soon after drinking from the mixed water and venom the child grows sleepy, and falls into a deep sleep. The woman lays the child down into the crib and stretches. “I was holding her for hours, but she wouldn't quiet down, so Steyr and I were worried.”

“His venom is poison to the faithless and medicine to the believer,” I quote from the psalm. “Where are the child's parents?”

The two look at each other, and it's clear that they're hiding something. “You're a follower of Riyel?

“That would be Lord Riyel. Yes.”

The man lays a hand on his wife's wrinkled arm, then nods. The woman speaks. “Rose's mother is a tavern woman from the city of Sugbu who didn't want to offer her child to Molech.”

“We agreed to take care of the baby, even if there are penalties.” The old man rubs his beard and looks at the child, who is sleeping in the cradle.

So that's what the old man meant by his reference to child sacrifice. It's good that I'm lying on my stomach, because I'm reeling from the depravity of this planet.

“So you two refuse to drink the kool-aid, huh?” So I've learned there's not only child sacrifice, but penalties for anyone who's not completely on board.

“Kool-aid?” the man asks, and his wife looks just as confused.

“Sorry, it's an old expression that means you're not going along with a death cult.”

“No, we're not,” the man says firmly, and his wife shakes her head, causing her stray white lock to swing.

I rise up on my feet to look into the crib at the child, who is sleeping soundly. “You may think that all religions are the same, or that people can just make up their own personal beliefs. All that's just great until they start cutting up kids.”

“But Riyelans are violent, filled with hate.” The woman ignores her husband squeezing her arm as a warning.

“I had to tell people mutilating themselves that they weren't snakes, fought a demon-possessed man, and had to warn a woman back in the city not to have her son castrated. In their view, I'm pretty hateful, but somebody needs to say it.” I drop from the crib and approach the two where they sit on the bed. “I've been killing people all over this planet, but every time they started it, working themselves into a frenzy because I serve Lord Riyel. When you reject the God who created all life, you ultimately embrace death. That's where this is all headed.”

If they ever do a movie about my life as a gecko, it has to be a musical, because I find myself singing the psalms at the drop of a hat, and right now is no exception.

Before all else there was dust,

blown by the wind in the darkness

until God formed the whirlwind...

I am singing the Song of Creation, from the very first words of the Psalms of Wholeness, which explains how God the Healer created the world and all life, beginning with the first family.

“It's all about the family—a mother, a father, and their child. As long as you have that, you have civilization,” I explain, “but when that breaks down you have nothing but chaos and death.”

All of us are startled by a knock at the door, and if I'm not mistaken, someone is rapping with the butt of a weapon. We all look at each other, and realize there's nowhere to hide, and no way to avoid the inevitable, so the old man rises and goes to open the door.

When he opens the door I see tough, hardened men with tattoos covering their bodies. They carry short swords and wavy blade kris daggers. Unlike the Keystone Cops I've seen in the cities, or Police Academy for my younger audience, these guys are killers. I steel myself, because I'm going to die before I let them take that child.