‘Stay inside!’ I shouted, ‘stay in there or I’ll close this door right on your face and that bead like nose of yours will stick to this wood’ and quickly banged the door to scare pebbles away.

Pebbles - with her striking white complexion that in no ways complimented her deep and hollow eyes, her wayward running ears and the rubbishy ticklish hair running right across her torso to her tender and ever so sloppy feet; was my mother’s beloved Mexican Chihuahua.

I waited at the door, my ear kissing the glass resting pretty within the expensive wood-work, as I heard her moaning at first and the voice quickly dying out to the slobbering of her tongue over the other side of the door. God I completely hate that sound of her licking! I mumbled.

I ran down the stairs, it was quarter past eleven and just about time that my next-building-front-door neighbour, a tiny-eyed brunette with amazingly carved lips and awkwardly huge nose would walk past her bed and stand right there in the compound of her house – watching the moon-light losing its white to the yellow of the street-lights and enjoying the cool breeze in the interim. There was proximate contact of our eyes building up these days and I, in no ways, could afford to miss the talking of those amazing eyes, the colour of which I was still alien to, with mine and could hope for a verbal communication; Today! Today!My heart raced.

‘Ek mild dena bhaiya’ I spoke, having finally kicked the stone one last time through our small football interaction. It had been close to seven minutes since I had been running all over the street, kicking the stone all that time and she was nowhere to be found, and so I finally walked to the end of the lane, to buy one final butt of my today’s quota. Seven minutes, one of the veins within my head kicked its counterpart for turning into a romantic jerk and keeping an idiotic count.

‘Bara rupiya’ the man, having a voice strikingly similar to that of a cold-drink vendor of a train, handed me the cigarette.

My hands started tracing the lower half of my body but, the wallet was nowhere to be found. I looked down to find myself in a weird set of white over black polka-dotted pyjamas. Possibly, the same vein kicked another one somewhere in far east, for being lazy enough so as not to iron a proper pair of track-pants and resorting to these bubbly pyjamas.

‘I buy it daily bhaiya’ I lit the opposite end of the filter, ‘tomorrow!’ to which I was obliged with exactly the same puppy eyes as that of the tongue-twister specie.

I scurried towards our lane, hoping to at least get a glimpse of her and hoping to get it without the butt within my fingers. And just as I settled onto the railing of my apartment, I was taken aback by an enormous sound that, to my surprise, came from my own house. I heard the shrill barking of pebbles for some seconds and what followed after that was complete silence.

‘Hell!’ I shouted, running into the building and climbing the stairs, thank God for the first floor, my brain clicked as my hands ran back to the pockets of the polka-dots. ‘Hell!’ I shouted again, ‘no, please no!’ the keys, just like my wallet, were placed comfortably in my denims that were inside the house.

I wiped off the sweat over my forehead with the sleeves of my t-shirt and banged the door in utmost panic. Phone! The vein up there shouted, asking me to call my mother and ask about the whereabouts of a duplicate key. I imagined her to be clapping her hands and dancing to the tunes of some idiotic wedding song of a distant relative. ‘Phone!’ I shouted and my hands assumed the ritual that now they were used to, in vain – everything in the denims.

I ran back down and straight to the stall of my mid-night saviour, the cold-drink voiced cigarette walah.

‘Emergency’ I whispered, picking up the phone, ‘I’ll pay you tomorrow.’

‘No!’ he stopped my hand mid-way and got hold of the red receiver, ‘money first.’

‘What the hell man?’ I snatched the receiver, ‘I need to call my mother NOW!’

He gave in as I held the receiver close to my ear – 9824- I blanked out. 98244- and again, the numbers didn’t just flow through my mind and I cursed the shitty vein for giving away just at the crunch moment - Smart phones, dumb users.

I walked back, my mind drifting to random visuals – my mom coming back and finding me outside the house; her opening the door and finding the Chihuahua on the floor, covered in a pool of her own blood; moist eyes looking down at me. I had been the worst possible care-taker, for how could one explain the killingo f a dog that was as small as my two biceps combined. I had been the worst possible son, for how could- my eyes put a much needed brake to the whining of my brain.

The drainage pipe – I could easily climb up the duct and break the window, getting right into my house and have a Shah-Rukh-Khan-Moment, lest for a dog. My arms and feet obliged the thought process, but the rusty pipe didn’t – it broke down. The green fluid came down sprinkling right on my clothes, giving a shade of green to the white polka-dots. The pipe climbing scenes are only possible in the movies directed by Farah Khan or Rohit Shetty – a lesson well deserved.

One thing that came good of this waggish incident was that the heavy part of the pipe fell right over the bonnet of the car of my next door neighbour. Good for one, this was my settling of scores for a cigarette complaint he had once lodged to my mother, and two, for my brain now had a new idea –  get on top of the car and apply various permutations and combinations to reach right up to the window.

My heavy ankles dented the top of his envious car – haha! I caught myself laughing. I then got hold of the unbroken shafts of the broken pipe and carried myself up to the window of the hall of my house. The house was dead quiet; my heart raced. I then tried punching the window, to no avail. Somehow then, I twisted my torso and prepared myself for the goal of my life – Go striker! I shouted and hurled a kick at the window.

The window broke and out came my leg off the cavity, a huge piece of broken glass embedded within my calf. The blood dripped off the injury and gave an another shade to the green and white of the polka-dots. The unbroken part finally gave in to my weight and I hung mid-way in the air, the haunting flashes of my mother’s moist eyes returning, before finally crashing down on the ground.

I opened my eyes and tried getting back up, but I could no longer move.

‘Stay there’ a stern looking middle aged woman tried bashing me, ‘your back is severely injured and there is slight damage to your skull; if you try moving, you’ll only add to your pain and our services.’

‘W-where am I?’ I stuttered.

‘What do I look like, to you?’ she eyed me, her fingers playing with the upside down hanging bottle, seemingly, of glucose.

‘W-where is the d-dog, my-‘ I was stopped mid-way by a familiar face entering through the door – it was my mother, carrying the chihuahua. God, why save me if you in anyways wish to kill me!

‘Oh boy!’ she kissed my forehead, ‘Look what have you done to yourself! I never knew you loved pebbles so much!’

‘It w-was’ I tried speaking but was intimated by her presence and the anti-climax of sorts.

‘Thank God for she witnessed the entire scene through her compound and in time being called the ambulance for help’ she looked to my left, ‘I can never be thankful enough to you beta, you saved both my children’ my mother then looked at me, ‘she lives right in the opposite apartment to ours beta.’

It was her – the brunette, along with her carved lips and tiny eyes and everything that I could possibly notice with my head swaying, obliging the unknowingness.

‘Good work dear neighbour!’ she leaned in to me and whispered, ‘I told her that a thief climbed into your house through the drainage pipe and then the car, and you, being the hero that you are, struggled with him before he finally managed to get you down and dusted’ she winked.

‘Oh don’t you worry son’ my mom made a face, ‘whosoever it was, he won’t be pardoned by the police.’

‘W-what about the b-blast?’ I asked, my mouth open-wide.

‘Oh it was the geyser’ my mom shied away, ‘I left the switch on; you know how I am!’

I eyed the Chihuahua – the poker faced, four legged piece of shit that got me here on this *shit-like-smelling* hospital bed; why the hell didn’t she just die! Look what she did to me! The vein echoed as my sight settled onto the *super-hot-next-door-neighbour* brunette; I love you Pebbles! The vein spoke – it surely was drunk!