I was there when it happened. The horror of the scene is still imprinted in my mind’s eye. Sigh… wait. I’m getting ahead of myself. Allow me to explain what happened.

  It was in the out-of-doors, or rather, in one of those makeshift tents. It was surrounded by dry grass, yellow, aging, like parchment paper from 1933. There was a matchstick store on one side and a tailor’s cave on the other. I was there looking for plastic furniture to furnish my newly bought apartment. I had been to the store a week earlier,  and customer support was amazing. Assistants were friendly and courteous, and items were reasonably priced. 

  I was there for an hour, trying to decide between an elegantly carved mahogany table — yes, I know it’s wood — and a huge black plastic one. Suddenly I noticed an acrid stench in the air. Puzzled, I looked around for the offending smoker. Not one of the numerous people inside the tent was puffing away. Shrugging, I turned back to the table, only to see it shrivelling up! Flames were lapping at its legs. Thinking quickly, I deduced ( yup, I’ve taken detective classes — mentored by Mr. Holmes himself) that the matchstick store next door had had some sort of accident, and the flames had sped across the dry grass and reached the tent. Now desperate, I looked around for a fire extinguisher. Plip, plip dropped the sweat from human brow to floor. My brow. What did the so-claimed detective do then? I ran.

  Only when I was outside did I think to call the firefighters. Amidst the crowd, I watched as the great yet ill-equipped furniture king kissed the ground. More like fell face-first into it, but you get the picture. By then, the flames had devoured the remaining survivors, humans and furniture alike. The firefighters, who had arrived late due to the city’s oppressive traffic, could do nothing. The entire street fell to the fire, forcing the crowd to retreat. All those lives, those carefully made wares… I can go no further. Like a hungry wolf, the fire ate away. It would have been enough to give anyone pyrophobia. 

  Well, this is the end of my sorry tale. Let us observe a million minutes of silence for all the things which were consumed that day. 

 Oh yeah. One more thing. I’m schizophrenic.