Bobby, breathing heavily, looked up lazily in time to see the doorknob twist. In a motion that was too quick to see, the door flew open, inward and slammed against the flaming paneling of the rear wall. His mother Judith stood in the open doorway framed in dark orange flames, she looked down curiously at her open hand where the doorknob had been a fraction of a second earlier. She raised her eyes in search of her son just as the monster raced toward the fresh air in long yellow tongues. The flames caught instantly on her threadbare blue and white cotton robe.

The intense heat pushed Bobby off his seat and onto the floor. He crawled under the bed to get relief and looked out after the flash subsided, only to see his mother's thrashing figure aflame in the doorway.

That was the last memory I had from Bobby.

The angry yellow flames boiled down from the ceiling, knocking me to my knees. I ran a gloved hand over my hair to make sure it wasn't burning. It wasn't, but I kept the cool leather of the palm side of the glove on my scorched neck for a second to ease the pain.

I'd made a mistake. The burn on the floor was going exactly as planned, but I hadn't expected it to spread this far back on the ceiling so quickly. The blood-red flames had crept silently and unnoticed all the way across the ceiling above my safety strip and setting it free had almost trapped me. The flames edged ever downward like a giant oppressing hand.

I crawled on my hands and knees toward the top of the stairs and stood up only after I'd scrambled, head first, two-thirds of the way down. I stopped for a second to collect myself and to listen to the roaring above me. It sounded like a jet was landing on the second floor. I turned, ran down the stairs and opened the deadbolt. The door opened quickly and I was met by an onrush of garbage tinted air. I left the door open and walked quickly down the alley and across the street, stopping beside the building that faced the burning warehouse. Two more windows had been melted by the heat and yellow flames boiled into the night sky. I turned away and stepped into the darkness of Los Angeles, leaving my monster raging inside the empty warehouse, still looking for the boy.