The wind was soft that morning, barely moving the leaves of the great neem tree where Carlos lay, half-curled in the dust.
Fleas nestled in his skin, and dry scabs flaked off around his ears. His ribs pushed against the skin like crooked fingers trying to escape.
He didn't lift his head when a car passed down the cracked road behind him. He didn't even twitch.
The village was waking up—the smell of coffee leaves burning on coal stoves, footsteps slapping on wet stone, someone calling for milk from across the alley. But Carlos lay still, eyes open, staring at the dull rise of sun through the branches above.
He wasn't sleepy. He was just tired.
This forest, once dense and sacred, was now nothing more than a dying border between concrete and nature. People whispered it was cursed. That no animals lasted long here. Carlos had lasted. But that didn't mean he lived.
He used to roam deeper in the woods, back when his legs worked better and his heart wasn't so heavy. But food was worse there. Nothing fresh grew. Even the small prey had stopped appearing. So now, most days, he forced himself out of the trees and wandered down into the nearby streets, tail low, nose twitching through trash piles and open drains, looking for something—anything—that didn't stink like death.
But the stink came from him.
The people couldn't stand it. Whenever he got too close—maybe hopeful at the sight of a biscuit in someone's hand—they recoiled. They didn't yell anymore; they had grown too used to him. They hit him quietly. A rock to the ribs. A stick swiped behind his legs.
A steel bucket once, thrown at his head. His right eye had never been the same since.
They never spoke his name. Only he remembered it. Carlos, It wasn't a name given by any of them. He didn't know where he had learned it—only that it belonged to him.
Sometimes, under the tree, he dreamed of meat. Not the slippery, gray chunks he found near the edge of dumpsters.
Real meat. Cooked, warm, wrapped in bread. He had once watched a boy eat something like that in three bites, grease sliding down his fingers. Carlos had licked the spot where the wrapper fell for fifteen minutes.
But lately, even dreams betrayed him. They brought only noise and cold. And thoughts. Thoughts he couldn't explain, thoughts a dog shouldn't have.
Why do they live so gently?
Why do I crawl and they walk proud?
Why do they look so clean, and I stink like I'm already dead?
Carlos didn't know how or when the thought first came to him, but once it did, it never left. He wanted to be one of them. A human. Not because they were kind—they weren't.
But because they were full. And clean. And walked upright like they had a right to.
That morning, after another failed attempt at snatching a bread from a distracted vendor
SMASH!
A swift kick had sent him tumbling back into the alley, Carlos dragged himself beneath the tree again. The ground was warm.
The earth still smelled like last night's rain, faint and bitter.
He lay on his side. His breath was shallow. His limbs ached with hunger. Flies danced near his mouth, but he didn't bother to snap at them.
"I don't want to be this anymore," he thought.
A single cloud passed over the sun. Shadows shifted. A leaf fell.
The silence wrapped around him like a heavy blanket. For the first time in ages, he wasn't trembling in fear or recoiling in pain. He was just still. Breathing, barely—but breathing without dread.
No villagers shouting, no dogs snarling. Just a deep, hushed quiet.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, he could hear something faint—like a hum, low and ancient, rising through the roots of the earth beneath him.
In that place between dreams and darkness, he saw flashes. A shadow with his shape walking upright. A hand—not a paw—reaching for a door handle. The scent of warm rice. A girl's laugh. And then silence again.
Something was changing. Not in the world around him, but inside his bones. Deep in the quietest part of him.
He did not wake. Not yet. But something stirred.
Carlos did not know it yet, but the life he had known was already over.
.
The next time his eyes opened, nothing would be the same.
Carlos woke to silence.
Not the usual quiet of the woods. Not the rustle of distant movement or the scrape of rodents in leaves.
This was a new kind of silence. One thick and padded.
His nose didn't work. He sniffed—nothing. No scent of mold, rot, or damp fur.
He opened his eyes. Everything was too sharp, too bright. The world had corners now, sharp and angular. The sky was blue in a way he had never seen it before, not through a dog's eyes.
He tried to stand but his body was... wrong.
Hands.
He had hands.
Smooth, pale, with clean fingernails and a small scar on the knuckle of his thumb. His chest was bare. His limbs were long and hairless. He sat up slowly, vision swimming, and looked down at himself.
He was in a boy's body. Sixteen, maybe seventeen years old. Thin, a little weak, but whole. Clean. Human.
But inside—inside he was still Carlos.
His stomach growled, and instinct kicked in. Food. He needed food. But when he tried to bark, it came out a gasp.
Nothing made sense. His heart pounded. His brain whirled with questions, but the biggest of them all echoed louder than the rest:
What am I now?
Carlos moved towards the town. every street, every house and even market was in pindrop silence. He felt like only he was the one to alive on this earth.
Carlos was happy with his human body but also he was confused, where everybody had gone? have all living beings died on earth? These questions were eating him up from the inside....