IN THE COMPANY OF SIRIUS

It had been more than 6 months since they last met. After they left college they met at the cottage once every two months to spend a weekend together. It helped them keep up with each other’s lives and maintain the support group they’d individually depended on since their first years in college.

The cottage was located in a wooded area an hour away from the city, in a small community made up of no more than 30 houses sitting in the middle of a valley – a sharp contrast to their lives in the city, where a single apartment block consisted of 40 or more separate apartments.

Whenever they were gathered in the cottage, they spent most of their time taking long walks to make new discoveries and making attempts to reach the top of either of the two mountains that flanked the village. They’d never been able to make it to the top of either mountain because they were so steep, but they never stopped trying. 

This meeting was different. They weren’t gathered in the cottage to connect and have fun together, they were gathered there because a member of their group was in desperate need of their help. 

***

A few weeks prior to their arrival in the valley, the atmospheric temperature suddenly skyrocketed. It was usually scorching hot during this time of the year, but this year was different. There was a certain vengeance to the level of heat that had descended upon the city. Weather channels around the country dismissed it as nothing more than the usual heat-wave, but Damian experienced it differently. It was for this reason he called for a meeting.

He had information that he was eager to share but his friends were the only people he could share it with. Some experiences led him to believe the sudden rise in heat levels wasn’t just the usual due to the usual heat-wave, there was more to it. 

***

A week before he placed the call to his best friends, Damian started to see things. He’d been sent to the Big City to oversee some work being done there when he saw them for the first time. He was having lunch at one of the numerous food-trucks in the streets of the bustling city when he something drew his attention to the sky. The images that played before his eyes as he looked up at the sky caused him so much distress that he abandoned his lunch.

He felt a mix of awe and terror. 

The sun was raging as it usually did at this time of the year, but alongside it, he saw some forms descending to the earth from the sky. At first he thought they were angels, but as they got closer, he realized they were something totally different. They were dogs. 

Unlike the regular dogs made up of flesh and blood, these ones were made of light. Their bodies were made of a surging golden light, and although they were transparent, he could make them out clearly. They were very big dogs. The smallest of them had shoulders that reached the second floor levels of the skyscrapers in the Big City. As Damian turned his gaze from one dog to another, he felt a numbness spread through his body. He willed his heart to slow down its beats but it didn’t obey him, he willed his legs to move and take cover but they stayed rooted in the spot.

He watched as some of them perched on the rooftops of skyscrapers while others landed on the street. He looked around him to see if others had noticed them, but they all seemed oblivious to their presence. He watched as cars drove through their legs and as humans walked past them, ignorant of the gigantic beings around them.

The dogs began to bark. The sound was deafening. It felt as though someone had place two loudspeakers beside both of his ears and turned them up to the loudest volume. When the barks stopped, he looked around again, expecting the barks to have drawn the attention of others, but no one reacted, so he concluded that he must be the only one seeing them.

The barking began again, then it turned into howls, and after a while, just before Damian thought his ears would explode, the howling died out. The dogs turned to the largest dog. It was standing beside one of the tallest buildings in the city, its shoulders reached midway through the length of the building. It gave them the signal they were waiting for, and once that was done, the dogs began to shake. It was the same motion mammal dogs made when they wanted to rid their fur of wetness but Damian couldn’t see any liquids dripping off them.

A wave of heat began to spread as the dogs shook and it gradually intensified. The reaction from the people around was instantaneous. Handkerchiefs were pulled out of pockets, people standing on the sidewalk sought cover under the shade of tall buildings, and people inside cars turned up their air-conditioning to full blast. But they still didn’t see the dogs.

After five long minutes of the dogs shaking Damian and the people around him were drenched in sweat. Handkerchiefs were being squeezed and those who took cover in the shade started to rush into buildings to seek solace in their air-conditioning. And they were still oblivious to the dogs. 

As Damian dragged his feet towards the taxi cab that would ferry he and his colleague to the airport, he turned to his colleague and asked him if he noticed anything weird around them. His colleague shrugged and told him asides from the heat, the thinning crowds, and Damian’s weird walk, everything was perfectly normal. There was nothing normal about what Damian was seeing around him.

He thought it would all end in the Big City. He’d taken a nap, hoping it would clear his head, but as the plane descended from above the clouds, he noticed the dogs everywhere. 

A week after returning home and trying to avoid the numerous dogs roaming around the street, he decided he couldn’t take it anymore, so he called his best friends. 

***

“So you see them all around you?”

“I don’t just see them, I can feel their presence – I sense them. I know when they’re coming and I know when they will leave. It’s as if they are communicating all this information to me.”

“I haven’t noticed anything strange. Asides from the heat, everything seems perfectly normal to me.” Angel shrugged. The only dogs she had seen of late were the ones on the wallpaper on her laptop screen.

“Are they here with us now? Can you see them when you look outside?” Jake asked, he had a curious expression on his face. He was torn between accepting his friend’s special ability and concluding he had gone crazy, and crazy seemed to be the better option of the two.

“They’re not here, but I feel that they are on their way. They will soon be with us.”

“Who are they?” Gertrude asked. “What are they? Where are they from?”

“They are the Army of Sirius.”

“Sirius? Who’s he?” Calvin asked, amidst mouthfuls of cornflakes. He was the most unconcerned one in the group.

“Sirius is the brightest star in the 'Large Dog' constellation. The ancient Romans believed it contributed additional heat to the Sun, causing July and August temperatures to soar.”

“Wow,” Calvin sneered. “This Sirius must be serious about heating up the earth.” He chuckled at his joke. “He better be careful, he’s going to piss a lot of people off, especially me.” He raised a can of beer to his lips. 

“Sirius…” Angel said, thinking aloud as she approached the window. She didn’t know what to think, Damian could be on to something, or he could be going crazy. It was either of the two, or both.

She sighed and took in the sights before her. The valley was truly majestic. She was just starting to think about returning to join the others when she noticed something. It had been standing there in front of her for some time, but she’d thought it was just a ray of the sun in her eyes. When she focused on it, she noticed the malicious expression on its face as it bared its teeth. 

Angel stumbled backwards and gasped so loudly it drew the attention of all the others at once. 

“What is it, Angel?!” Calvin asked, rising to his feet immediately. He was ready to attack and protect. Angel pointed at the window and backed away as Calvin and the others rushed to it.

When their eyes settled on the beast, they collectively gasped. 

"My eyes had better be deceiving me.” Calvin said as they ran their eyes over the body of the transparent beast staring down at them through the window.