Ash Wednesday

As I arrived to work and set off for the food court for my daily fix of Red Bull, I couldn’t help but notice people milling around the mall with odd marks on their foreheads. As I’m not the least bit catholic, I had to ask a co-worker what this strange behavior signified.
“It’s Ash wednesday man, those marks on people’s foreheads are crosses. It’s the first day of Lent.” Brian informed me. I watched as people did their shopping and went about their business, many of them wearing the ashen cross on their foreheads.

We shot the shit for an hour or so, we weren’t selling any phones and probably wouldn’t all day, so we passed the time checking out the girls and pondering the meaning of life and other such nonsense. I had been there probably an hour and a half when I received the call.
“Brian, what time do you get off today?” Asked my mother on the other end of the line.
“Probably around 9-ish, why?” I enquired.
“Well...” She paused; I could tell something was wrong. “I don’t want you to be alarmed, but there is a fire inside the house. I don’t know how bad it is because we can’t see in-- all of the windows are blacked out. The fire department is on it’s way.”
“Holy shit.” I stammered. Having never been in this situation before, I was at a loss for words. “Is everyone safe? How bad is it??”
“Yes, there was no one in the house at the time. We won’t know how bad it is until the fire department has a chance to do their thing.” She said.
The rest of the conversation was a blur. Mom told me to stay at work and that everything would be taken care of. Now, selling phones in the mall is a difficult task. Selling phones in the mall while your every worldly possesion burns to a crisp is impossible. I hightailed it out of there and headed home, unsure of what kind of scene would greet my arrival.

I called a friend of mine and let him know what was up and that it would probably be a good idea for him to come by, I told him to bring a camera. As I made the 15 minute trip home, I navigated traffic in a daze, not wanting to see the house but unable to stay away. I was terrified of what I would find when I got there. As I made my way into my neighborhood, the gravity of the situation began to sink in. Fire trucks had completely blocked off my street, so I parked nearby and walked up the street to the house.

There are no words to describe the chaos and fear that permeated my street. You may see fire trucks every day, driving to and from different emergencies, but it’s a much different feeling when there are six of them parked on the street in front of your house. As I stood in front of my home in shock, firefighters running hoses and setting up equipment, my mom came up and gave me a hug.
“Don’t worry, it’s all going to be ok Brian”, she said, as she attempted to comfort me. “You’ll get a new computer when it’s all over”.
Terrific. Our house is burning up from the inside out and I’m going to get a computer. Needless to say I felt no better. I walked around surveying the house, noting that all of the windows were indeed opaque, smoke marks on the roof. The entire area smelled like a campfire.

The hours passed and the firefighters did their job, eventually stopping the blaze and clearing the smoke. They said that one good thing about modern houses like ours, is that they are so airtight that a fire will often burn itself out of oxygen before it spreads to the rest of the house. I hoped for the best, hoping that perhaps it was just a small, isolated fire and that we would be ok. Maybe we’d even be able to stay in the house in a few days after it was cleaned up. Maybe it wouldn’t be as bad as the blacked-out windows seemed to indicate. A trip inside would clear up any doubt, and the firefighters were nearly ready to allow us back in the house.

Around this time, my buddy DJ arrived, digital camera in hand and we ventured forth into the house, escorted by a firefighter to survey the damage. The first thing that I noticed when we got inside was the heat. The fire had been out for probably two hours or more and yet the house was sweltering. It felt hotter than if the heater had been running full blast all day. My eyes stung with the smoke that still hung in the air and my throat tightened as I attempted to breathe. The entire house was pitch black. The comfy white carpet that we had installed a month prior, the walls, the windows, the kitchen, everything looked as if it had been sprayed with a coat of Krylon flat black. I realised that the door to my room was closed and I remembered that I had left my window open. Perhaps the smoke hadn’t gotten into my room, being on the second floor it was the furthest away from the fire, which had started in the basement. I hoped against hope that my stuff was alright.

Never get your hopes up after a house fire. Everthing in my room looked exactly as it did in the rest of the house, blackened. It looked as if Mt. St. Helens had blasted off inside our house, dumping a decades worth of ash on every surface. I was amazed at exactly how thorough the fire had been. Insides of cabinets, drawers, closets, nothing had been spared from the devastation. I ripped the hard drive out of my computer and moved on to check out the rest of the house. The kitchen was probably the most surreal out of all of it, the fire in the basement had essentially turned the house into a gigantic oven, baking everything and coating it in ash. Cobwebs hung from the ceiling, darkened and visible, making for an eerie scene. We moved on to the rest of the house, finding much of the same damage in each room and decided to get out before the smoke killed us. Having lost everything I owned and watched as my home was destroyed from the inside, I decided it was time to for me to go. We got cleaned up at a neighbors house and left, knowing that there was nothing that could be done at the moment.

As more and more time sits between the day of the fire and the present(Has it been two weeks already?), I’ve had a chance to reflect a bit upon the situation. Knowing that the insurance company will take care of us is little comfort. Having a brand new wardrobe and a brand new apartment to stay at doesn’t help the fact that my home sits on the other side of town, charred wreckage. Given the choice between the money and having my home back the way it was I would much prefer the fire would have never happened. Though I’ve handled the situation fine, I know I’ll never be able to shake the image of my home charred, burnt, destroyed from my memory.

But hey, at least I get a new computer.

Pictures are in my gallery