Blog Love Omega Glee: Please Don't Light A Campfire In The House (15 November 2012)

The house smells like bacon, long after Jake fired and fried it up, and then left for work. "That boy likes to eat a lot of meat," Masani thinks, lighting a candle on the coffeetable in the living room in order to smell something else other than a crispy dead pig.

Masani settles in her favorite chair to read a Gian Notte novel (The Grappler Grips A Gun) that Jake recommended to her. The Christmas Cookie candle soon starts to make the room smell less like a dead but delicious animal. Francine comes downstairs. She sniffs. "Are you baking?" she asks Masani.

"No, it's a Christmas Cookie candle. I found it in the basement with some old Christmas stuff Donald's grandmother had left. By the way, the cats seem to spend a lot of time down there."

"Lots of new stuff to sniff and explore with all those boxes down there. Jake says they like to eat centipedes too. He thinks they hunt them down there."

"Centipedes? They eat centipedes?"

"Sure, after they play and torture them to death."

"Yuck! I'm glad that I'm not a cat."

"Hey, your candle went out!"

Masani gets up, "It was near the end. I'll just drop a couple matches in the glass and see if I can get the rest of the wax to burn."

She takes a pack of matches from a cousin's wedding last decade, tears a matchstick out, and strikes it. It doesn't light. She tries again and it lights up. She drops it in the glass casing of the candle, where it quickly burns out. She lights another matchstick and drops it near the remains of the wick, but it too goes out. Masani tears out a few sticks, but doesn't light them. Instead, she drops them around the wick in the remains of the wax. Then she lights another match and drops it in the center where it catches a couple of the others and the candle is burning again.

"So that's the trick, huh? I always wondered how you used up all the wax," Francine says, "That candle's making me hungry. Maybe we should bake some cookies."

"Sugar, we need more sugar for that."

"Well, I'll settle for anything at the moment. Do you want anything from the fridge?" Francine asks as she heads to the kitchen.

Masani shakes her head, staring at the flames beginning to rise out of the glass casing. The whole jar seems to be aflame, a stunning mix of blue, red, yellow, and orange. Entranced, Masani watches the flames shoot up, then dance to the side, then drop, seemingly snuffed, only to rise again with a boiling hiss of wax.

"Whoa!" Francine says, coming back into the room and munching on a cinnamon graham cracker, "That's quite a campfire you have going there!"

Masani looks away from the flame and smiles at Francine, "Uh, I must have used one too many matches."

Then she turns back to the candle as a flame shoots straight up, almost touching the ceiling. "Ah!" Masani yells, "Get some water!"

Francine drops her cracker and runs into the kitchen. Masani stares at the inferno in the middle of the coffeetable and wonders if the whole thing will catch fire, and how she can smother it if Francine doesn't get the water in time. She remembers the candle's lid and shoves it over the top and the flame turns to smoke. She lets go of the lid before she gets burned and it falls off but the fire's out. Smoke erupts from what was once a candle, hitting the ceiling and spreading across it. The smoke alarm goes off. Francine runs back into the living room with a glass of water, trips on the dining room rug, and soaks Masani with a glass of water. "Oh my God, I'm sorry!" she says, then looks at the blackened glass that once was a candle, "Is it out?"

Masani wipes some water from her eyes and says, "It's out, but maybe we should open a window or turn on a fan to get rid of this smoke."

Francine coughs and walks over to the smoke detector near the stairs and waves her hand under it in hopes that it will stop blaring.

"And Francine?"

"Yes."

"Please don't ever tell Donald that I nearly burned down the house."

Blog Love Omega Glee is a novel by Wred Fright about two bloggers who fall in love while the world falls apart, which is being serialized on his blog. To start reading from the beginning or read another installment, please visit Blog Love Omega Glee Central on WredFright.Com. If you like what you've read, or you've read all of Blog Love Omega Glee and want more Fright, then please read his first novel.