I thought when I left I could leave it. I called people I barely knew and who knew me far less than I knew them, and we carried loose garments in shaky arms and packed up the car. I hadn’t wanted to, but I told my parents, and they helped seal the property. I was weak-willed and weaker physically. I looked in the mirror and saw nothing.

Irene, my new roommate, gave me more space than I needed and told me to settle in. She said I no longer had to worry about the safety of my own home. My father called to inform me they failed to remove the monster that had taken up residence in my old property, but I’d be fine. I had more than I could ever need at Irene’s. I already had more than before, and it had only been six days.

Irene’s other roommates, Simon, Trevor, and Caitlyn, know all the same places and all the same people. They are familiar with the monster in my house, or, at least, its species.

“Fire-breather, right?” Simon asks.

I nod.

“Fuck those things,” Caitlyn says, “burnt all your shit, I’m guessing.”

I nod.

“Ruined the whole apartment,” Irene adds.

I nod, though this time it isn’t necessary, and Irene fills in the gaps. I have told this story enough times already that we both have the polite conversation down pat: the monster crawled in through my window. It didn’t respond to water and the usual internet advice. I tried to live with it. It burned most of my apartment down. Yes, technically, the apartment is still habitable. No, I haven’t gotten my lungs checked. Yes, I will. No, I don’t have an appointment yet.

Someone will say something like, “sounds awful” or “yikes,” and the conversation will move on to something I’m not a part of.

Irene explains that on Tuesdays they make margaritas and play board games. This weekly tradition stalls while they try to explain the rules to me. We’re saved when Trevor cuts in to say, “you’ll catch on.”

The game is ‘easy.’ Move the tiles, roll the dice, play a card, play another card, reroll, move.

Simon stares at me. “You forgot to play your card,” he says.

“Sorry,” I murmur, but no one hears me. I end up getting third.

Irene resets the game. “You remember Steven?” she asks me.

I shake my head.

“Steven who dated Sydney?” she tilts her head, awaiting a response. My eyes in my lap are answer enough. “Sydney – the hostess from that restaurant, you know her.”

“With the burritos,” Caitlyn adds.

“Those were fucking disgusting,” Trevor says.

“Those were delicious,” Simon says.

Irene looks at me.

“Okay,” I say.

“Okay, great, so Steven…” and Irene is off, and the other three fall in sync. They cover intricate details, puzzling over every word, every action of Steven, and it makes sense to them, and it is clear by the way they skip over explanations, that it should be clear to me too. I nod when they nod, and Irene gives me more margarita, and I land a joke or two. When they laugh, I feel lighter, but most of the time when I speak, I’m met with blanks. Luckily, they always move on quickly, not even out of politeness, just got better things to do.

I cough, and Irene swaps in a water. The ash is bitter in my throat and flaky on my tongue, but sometimes I find myself coughing more than I need to just to taste it. Sometimes when I’m alone, I let it fall out onto a napkin or into the bleached-white sink, so I can study it for longer. 

“Fuck, it’s hot in here,” Trevor complains.

“You’re drunk,” Irene says.

“What’s that got to do with the temperature?”

Irene, Simon, Trevor, and Caitlyn’s apartment is sickly cold. They leave all the windows open and blast the A/C and walk around in tank tops and shorts. They’re all from around the same area, a place they’ve told me the name of many times, but I can never remember, so I imagine they’re from the Arctic. Otherwise, I’m not sure how they survive.

Irene adjusts the temperature anyway. It’s below freezing.

“That should be better for you at least,” she says to me, and the others nod, so I do too.

When they go to bed, they all say goodnight and ask if I need anything. I never do, but they ask anyway. Goodnight. Goodnight. Goodnight. Goodnight.

When all the doors close, I go to the bathroom and cough with my mouth open. I watch the ash pop up, a party trick for one. Sometimes I get a bit overzealous and throw up, but I try not to. The fan can cover the cough; vomit noises are harder to disguise.

I pick the pieces off my tongue, and they break away on my fingertips. I try to paint my nails with them, but the color fades too quickly.

I taste blood, a warning sign of vomit. I hold the metallic taste against my teeth, filling each crack, and try to spread it back to my molars. I smile, so the girl in the mirror flashes red. Her teeth are too close together, the red highlights that, and the corners of her lips don’t point up like they should as if she’s trying to be awkward on purpose, as if it’s funny.

I swallow, and she closes her mouth. It tastes like medicine, the good kind that doesn’t really work. The cherry cough drops you always end up eating instead of sucking.

I don’t drink more water until the taste has dissolved completely from my mouth. I prefer when it lingers – when my mouth feels dirty and my tongue dries. While I wait, I rummage through various drawers, the contents of which I’ll never memorize, for a lighter. Most I find don’t work, but I would feel bad throwing away things that aren’t mine, so I keep retrying, never remembering the broken ones.

When I find the scratched red one that works every seventh try, I hold the flame under my fingertips. The light exaggerates the grooves before melting them into one pale blur.

“You good?” A voice asks from the dark. The flame disappears.

The overhead light flashes, and Simon runs his hands over his buzzcut. His sleepy eyes blink in sync, and with that and his perfectly matched pajamas, he looks like he could fall asleep before I open my mouth to respond.

I nod.

“What are you doing?” He asks, hovering.

“Just getting a light,” my voice delivers.

“You smoke?”

“Sometimes.”

He shrugs and rubs his eyes. Then he moves past me into the kitchen and pours himself some water, humming quietly as he does. When he turns, he seems to remember I’m still there, and he brushes past with a complimentary, “goodnight.”

“Goodnight Simon,” I whisper, and it doesn’t matter if he can hear me.

The next few days pass similarly. They are nice, good people who say goodnight every night and offer to pick items up at the store. I laugh more as I learn from them. I mostly learn names: Sarah, Sally, Sal, Salyer, Sam, Samantha, Sammy. All friends of one of them that got brought into the group (“like you!” Irene adds. I nod.). The apartment remains cold, but my water is the only one that turns to ice (“what are you doing to it?” Trevor asks).

It has been a few days since Simon caught me with the lighter, so my nighttime routine is interrupted for a bit and is further disturbed when I run out of medication.

“You want me to come with?” Irene asks when I tell her I’m stopping by my old apartment for it.

“We all can,” Caitlyn says. Simon and Trevor groan because they are allowed to. Caitlyn smacks them both with one hit.

“I’m okay.”

“Okayyy,” Irene says, holding onto the “y” to let me know she doesn’t buy it, but she respects me enough not to fight.

The others waste a half-second exchanging a look. I leave before I can see them forget me.

My apartment looks just fine on the outside. Inside, the foundation dissolves under the lightest touch, but outside, it seems nothing happened at all. Outside, I would live in this apartment again, and anyone else of sound mind would agree. The plants bloom, watered despite being hidden from any rain, and the mailbox stands clean of rust and pregnant spiders. The only thing that stains the place is the worn door knob that holds the lightened spots of my pre-burnt fingerprints. I place my hand around the knob, and it doesn’t fit the same.

I don’t need the key – the hinges have been ripped clean off from the fire department rushing in, and it’s my job to call the landlord to replace it, so it’ll never be fixed. A few fluorescents flicker, the only light source since the blinds haven’t been opened in months. I have the urge to open them now, but I’m worried they’d snap, and it’d be another call I’d never make.

From the depths of the apartment, the monster grumbles, hungry. I have been told fire-breathers don’t eat humans. Irene reminds me that doesn’t mean the toxins don’t kill, but inherently, by themselves, fire-breathers are harmless. You can live with one as long as you don’t mind the taste of ash and don’t require fresh food or personal items.

I walk towards it if only to prove it’s still there. I don’t call out, even though my throat burns in anticipation. I turn the corner, and there it sits. Folded up, smoke circling, docile like a cat. We stare at each other for a moment. I’ve found that when I stare long enough and my retinas start to burn, I can almost make out a face: spots of black among the glow of its skin, hollow and fuzzy. When I finally do look away, the face paints my eyelids.

It roars as if to say what are you doing here?

My medication, I think but don’t say. The hair on the back of my neck sizzles and breaks away.

It stretches, howls. You came back. It is hungry. It’s not saying that, but its stomach grumbles loud enough to shake the entire place. With a flame that could be a hand, it covers its stomach, perhaps blushing if fire-breathers could blush. It has no one to talk to, no one since I left.

I look around and find an opened granola bar smashed into the carpet. It falls a part in my hand, but I push it towards the fire-breather.

The fire-breather does not trust me, which is deserved. I let it take its time, puzzling over the gift before destroying it. I stare into its light long enough to see a smile, and I smile too.

I feel my phone buzzing. No one calls me, so the fire-breather and I both know it’s Irene. I let the buzz stab my leg.

Later, the fire-breather and I sit side-by-side just like we used to. When I cough, I have enough ash to paint both my hands and feet. I strip down to my bra and underwear before surrendering and lying naked on the floor. The fire-breather has nothing to remove, but it reaches out to my clothes as if it wants to help. I whisper forgiveness when my clothes erupt into flames because we both knew it would happen, and both the apology and forgiveness are nothing more than formalities. We’re formal with each other which bothers us both.

My phone, not yet completely gone, buzzes again. I apologize to the fire-breather and answer.

“Hey.” Irene’s voice sounds centuries away. “Been trying to reach you. Is everything okay?” The fire-breather does not like Irene. It hisses.

I start to respond, but my throat is clogged. I cough, slamming my fist into my stomach as I do, and blood splatters our cracking walls. I drop the phone with Irene’s voice still echoing on the other side. The fire-breather moves to help and places a hand on my back.

I smell my burning flesh, but I never feel it. I can only feel the blood. It erupts, thick and wet. Chunks of deep red and black that fall from my bottom lip and slide down my chin before bouncing onto the carpet. Beside me, the fire-breather wails and screams and hisses and cries. If I could speak, I’d tell it that everything will be okay, but if it keeps wailing and screaming and hissing and crying, it’ll alert the neighbors, and that is when things will stop being okay. Not to blame the fire-breather, people just get concerned and like to play the hero. They rarely stop to let the dust clear.

There’s a sharp pounding on the broken door. The fire-breather retreats, back to whatever hole it reserved before I got here. For a moment, I don’t move. I’m not wearing anything. I know that, but I forget, and the pounding grows louder. I try to say “be right there,” but it only comes out in blood.

I stagger to the beat of the knock. I should have clothes here. I know I have something unburned and usable. I throw my body to the floor and squeeze my arm under the couch. My arm returns, pinched and red, with an XXL shirt and pants with holes in every pocket. The knocking stabs my brain, excavating holes in my head with each bang. I pull on the clothes, choking on the fabric, and run to the door.

Irene nearly falls through. Somewhere, the fire-breather roars, but Irene only stares at me, transfixed. She reaches a hand to me. “Come out,” she coughs. The smoke blows her hair back.

“Is she in there?” another voice calls, but Irene doesn’t look back. She steps through and guides me forward, not saying a word. “Shit,” the voice says when I step through the black cloud. I can feel the blood on my chin. It feels like makeup, like I’m wearing my other face.

From the outside, the apartment looks beautiful. Nothing is disturbed.

“Hospital?” someone from the collection asks.

I stare at these strangers: Irene, Simon, Trevor, Caitlyn. Together they fit as if they were always destined to fulfill one another. The hot to one another’s cold.

“I’m okay,” I say through sludges of blood. They look away, afraid.

“Can you feel the burn?” Irene asks.

The burn. The kiss.

“Yes.”

Slower now, Irene leans close. “Do you want to go home?”

The wind howls, and it is snowing in late July. With my charred skin, I will die if I stay outside.

“I already am.”

Gretchen Troxell is an experimental and psychological fiction writer from Ohio. She graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in creative writing from Bowling Green State University in May 2025 and completed minors in scientific and technical communication and film. Previously, she has served as the Editor-in-Chief for the undergraduate literary journal, Prairie Margins, and as an Assistant Editor for the international literary journal, Mid-American Review. You can find her on Instagram: @gretchentroxellwrites