I saw the head outside and I didn’t like what I saw. It was stuff nightmares were made of. It roared, telling me to get ready, it was coming. I also exchanged a bark to let it know I was not afraid, which took a lot of confidence from me.

A ray of moonlight sometimes made it through the hole, and it was getting wider with every passing second.

Kalki was in a daze and ended up clutching the small house of the fire monster (the lighter) a bit too hard, and it broke. She groaned when its blood spilled all over the floor. It smelled like pee to me, very odd and irritating. The rising fumes caused me to sneeze. I tried to lick it, but Kalki held me off and pushed me back.

Don’t. She pointed a finger at my face.

I got a lick though, and she was right in stopping me. Its blood tasted bad.

I looked over my shoulder, licking my whispers to clean them for the irritating scent: the hole had definitely grown larger than before.

I barked and whined to urging her to do something, swaying my tail and hips to employ emergency, for she was sitting there quietly, holding another lighter in her hand.

I don’t know what took over her, but she cursed loudly, Fuck you, mother fucker, she screamed in response to the banging and threw the thing at the shutter. The pink thing flew and flew, straight into the shop —a fire monster peeking out from the top— where it fell somewhere in the cluttered floor, feet or so from the shutter.

Oops, Kalki let out, taking deep breaths to calm her heart. At least it didn’t start any large fires. Well, it did and we had to rush to kill it. Kalki was the one who did it with a bucket of water. I thought he water would tame it; it killed the fire monster instead. No more baths for me. I told Kalki with my eyes.

And then we both hid away from the monster. Well, I did. Kalki picked a can from the floor instead and took a position in front of the hole, despite my panicked whining.

Take a load of this, fucker! She bellowed and the can roared fire at the monster's hands. The monster pulled its hands out with a roar of its own. However, Kalki kept at it even after the can stopped breathing fire, screaming at the hole as if somehow stuck in that position. She didn’t stop screaming; it simply transitioned into crying instead. She wailed, loud, and hurtful.

Are you hurt? I barked running to her. Did the fire hurt you?

I licked her hands when she dropped them to her side, but they were not burned. There was hopelessness in the way she stood. She was physically fine, but looked so painfully defeated, and hurt.

Suddenly, I heard the monster move on the other side of the shutter. I pushed Kalki to the side just as it punched an arm through the hole. A shiver went down my back as Kalki fell atop empty boxes. She screamed it roared, and I barked. It would have connected with her head had I not acted in time, most likely killing her on the spot.

The arm was thick and blue, veiny, and armored. A thin layer of white solid bone covered its knuckles, fingers, and elbows, a part of its biceps and the shoulder.

Kalki and I watched in utter silence, and dread, as it pulled its arm out of the hole and peered inside. Its yellow slit eye reminded me of a lizard, and its large tusks were not something that I wanted to get struck by.

Go away, Kalki raised her head and mumbled, staring directly at the monster on the other side of the hole.

Go away, go away. GO AWAY! She screamed and kept at it until it started punching at the hole, opening it a tad wide with every punch. It was going to get in; it was only a matter of time now. Kalki hiccupped, stood up, and ran to the adjacent room.

By the time I got there, she was expunging the last of the fires lighting the room, drowning us in utter darkness. Then she felt her way to the red cylinder and stood over it holding the dowel in one hand and stone in the other. She placed the thin dowel over the bronze nozzle of the cylinder and sang a song that held no meaning to me. It was just a bunch of words strung together, but it sounded nice to my ears.

She paid no more attention to my barks and kept her undivided attention on the beam of light coming to the hole in the shutter. It was slowly flooding the shop with clean white light.

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Get up, boy. We’ll be running out soon. Don’t sleep on me now. She reminded me when I sat on the bedsheet near the door. A simple ‘no’ would have done the trick. I guess she was nervous…

For some time only the monster roared, the shutter shuddered, and their echoes echoed in the room, and then the hole was large enough for the monster to get through. Kalki gulped, sweat covered her forehead. Her legs trembled.

Her breathing quickened when the roarer pushed its bald head through the hole. It looked around, took a deep sniff with its large muscular nostrils. They were bare holes with nothing shielding them. We stood in the cover of night, yet it saw us. A huge grin grew on its face as our eyes met.

It had numerous needle-thin fangs, which stood out to me because it had no lips covering them in the first place. Long, sharp, and yellow. I didn’t want to get bitten by them. Just watching it made me squirm on my feet. Its skin looked as if it had been stretched over its face. It was tearing at places like at the edges of its eyes, which were showing the grey muscles beneath.

I knew him too, not from before everyone turned rotten, but from that morning. It was one of the scentless ones until it had decided to eat one of its own, and then it had eaten Breads lackeys.

It pulled this rest of its body through the hole. The white wooden counter blocked its path, but how could that stop it?

It was huge when it stood inside the shop. Its head almost touched the roof, and its body was packed with squirming muscles. Its veins were about ready to burst. It stared at us, enjoying our fear and helplessness, but soon it had enough. Even though it was not a screamer, the primal instinct that they had was still strong in it. It roared and kicked the counter with such strength, it skids on the floor and toppled over on its side. I couldn’t have even budged that, even after transforming! The smell of rotting vegetables spread into the room as it let out a house shaking roar and rushed toward us.

It was smug and knew we were trapped, but Kalki had a plan, and scared as she might be, she didn’t hesitate to strike that stone.

There was a loud clink from the cylinder mouth and it roared out an invisible gas into the room. It escaped the cylinder's confinement with the intensity of steam escaping a pressure cooker. However, the gas was suffocating and instantly my mind went on a round trip around the memory lane.

I used to bark at them too until Cob explained to me that the vessel screamed because of the fire burning under it, and I would be better off striving from not barking at it. He said he had seen chickens imprisoned inside its belly come out all soft and chewy. I didn’t want that fate.

It was a strong ripping tug of my ear that brought me back. Kalki was already running toward the door. The monster was stopped by the narrow doorway between the shop and the room, but not for long. The wall was already deforming under its pressure.

Run, boy, I heard behind me and followed the voice out of the room, into the small alley and toward the main gate. The monster broke into the room just as I was leaving through the door. It rolled on the floor and struck the wall on the other side of the room, letting out another roar that shook the house.

Kalki had the gate unlocked and was in the motion of throwing the small green thing, the lighter, with a flame burning on one side. Kalki was opening the gate without watching the result. But I watched and caught it like a good boy.

No, I missed it.

It flew past me. I stopped to run after it, but it had already gone inside the room.

I’ll never forget what happened next.

The ground shook. The room glowed orange in front of my eyes. The fire was acting out again, throwing a temper. Suddenly, the world screamed, and with it the monster. A great bout of searing hot wind picked me from the floor and flung me toward Kalki. An even greater amount of heat exploded behind me, and the sound of the explosion devoured the roaring of the beastly monster.

I was swept inside it, and as things stood, Kalki was also going to be burnt. The warmth inside my heart was already spreading to recover my burnt back. I used it to transform my body and protect Kalki from the raging flames.

A few seconds later, an even bigger explosion took place and we were thrown out of the open gate.

I was burnt and couldn’t breathe, but Kalki was fine. I had protected her. The fire hadn’t managed to touch her anywhere.

My back was burned badly and it was getting difficult for me to breathe. I think I had hurt my head during the fall because my sight was growing blurry and I couldn’t hear anything even though Kalki was saying something. She was screaming actually, holding my face and shaking me.

Ah, I understood what she was saying. She was calling my name. She was crying. Don’t cry, I tried to say but nothing came out. I wasn’t breathing.

Then my sight darkened completely. Just before I blacked out I felt her push a treat into my mouth. And that was it. I lost consciousness.