Where Did the Party Go? by Solomon Blaze

You think you have so much; all of your little sticker books, cuddly toys, rare clothes, limited edition books, entire comic collection, the list of things I used to own seems endless...

My house burnt down, exactly a month before my eighteenth – it was very much my own fault.

I’d literally just held my first ever – and very successful I might add – BBQ at my place the day before; my parents had finally agreed to leave me alone in the house, after years of pleading I could handle it.

So this day, I woke up in a predictably stupendous mood.

I wanted to get stoned and just relax by myself for the day...but I had no lighter...

So I used a tea candle. I put it on the windowsill of my bedroom window and used the flickeringly evasive flame to lift my weary spirits, as my lack of worries went up in smoke.

I closed left the candle (lit) on the windowsill – opening my window to air the sickly sweet smell of grass out of the house – and closing the curtains (fuck knows why).

So, I’m downstairs on my computer listening to ‘Break Ya’ Neck’ by Busta’ Rhymes...when I smell burning...

What the hell, I thought in my stoned hip-hoppin’ head, the BBQ definitely ended yesterday...

I get up from the computer, taking my headphones off and don’t hear anything suspicious (believe it or not, I’d taken the batteries out of my smoke detectors).

At the bottom of the stairs, I look up to the top – as you do before you climb the stairs – and what do I see?

Thick black smoke, flooding the entire upper level of my house.

I run.

Up to the landing and through the smoke - which is already both blinding and suffocating me and grab the handle to open my bedroom door.

- Obviously the handle is scalding hot and I recoil the instant I touch it, my hand searing with pain and adrenaline now tearing through my veins; I’m subconsciously running through every single possible outcome of what I’m about to do...

I kick the bedroom door open, diving to the side to avoid the inferno that explodes out of the room, desperate for oxygen to keep it ablaze and alive.

The room is completely incinerated. Y TV has exploded and is melting all over the chest of draws that contain every novel I’ve ever collected, every photograph I’ve ever printed and every item of clothing I’ve ever bought.

The curtains are a wall of fearsome fire, roaring at me as I meet its gaze. Fucking hell, not again! – yes, I had set my old house on fire once, when I was ten years old...but not like this.

I immediately grab the first things that come to my mind: my phone, charger, Astrojax and of course, my cuddly rabbit that I have had since birth.

Then I move. I blast out of the bedroom, through the smoke and down the stairs.

‘MEEEOOOOW!!’ I hear suddenly pierce through the dense atmosphere; Oh shit! George! – my mum’s cat sleeps in her bedroom and the door was closed.

I sigh with frustration and drop the stuff I’ve saved, run back up through the now flaming landing, rip open the door and enter the very nearly smoke filled room. I throw my body onto the floor and peer under the bed, seeing two absolutely petrified eyes that call to the part of me that adores animals.

Despite his redundant clawing attempts, I managed to pull him out from under the bed, wrap him in my shirt and run back through the flames and into the back garden – where the cat promptly ditches my ass and I’m left alone again.

My cat, Toby, is sat on the garden bench, with no clue as to what’s going on; he yawns when he sees me, ignorance really is bliss eh?

I go back in, quickly grab the stuff I’d dropped on the bottom landing floor, go back outside, sit down with my cat and pull out my phone.

I ring the fire brigade first, of obviously, then my best friend Steve...

*ring*...

*ring*...

*ring*...

‘Hey bro, what’s up?’ says Steve nonchalantly.

‘Hey buddy...don’t be mad, ok...?’ I say sheepishly.

‘Why? What have you done this time?!’

‘...I did it again...’

‘What?!’

‘I’ve burnt my house down...’

In the distance, I can hear the sirens...