September 3, 2009; Fire!!!!!

...oh-oh...

The other night, while Mook B was at a meeting and Mook A was deeply immersed in that idiot computer game of his, a strange—and oddly familiar—smell started to fill the house; just a little at first, then stronger and stronger. I knew the smell: Frank had almost killed us both, last year, when he fell asleep in his La-Z-Boy with a cigarette in his hand. I started pacing about in a panic but A, ultra-maroon that he is, shrieked, "Fucking simmer down for once in your fucking life!"

But I wouldn't and couldn't.

Finally the blithering imbecile noticed the smell too (what is it with humans and their useless noses?) and there was a slow, steady, rising hysteria in him too. He started to talk to himself. "I don't smoke in the house, so it can't be a burning cigarette!" He got up with one jump. "Electrical!" he huffed and like some rabid bloodhound he began running about the house sniffing electrical outlets and appliances and touching things to see if they were hot. Finally he was around the computer—I knew by then that was the area of the smell though I was busy hiding in the kitchen—and he touched the screen and plug strip and got crazier and crazier. I could see him from the kitchen but, let me tell you!, I wasn't going near him. I had heard of people whose skull-tops had blown off from being electrocuted and I wasn't prepared to see that or to deal with the mess.

"Aha!" he yelled at last.

Now here's the thing: A has this amazing hydraulic cushion that he was lent by the government because of all the surgery he's had on his arse and to assuage all the pain he was still going through. The cushion is a series of sub-cushions which inflate and deflate and massage and protect...so neat, I've wanted one since I saw it. The cushion is controlled by a remote (for various levels of softness) and a huge battery pack. It appears that the battery pack was burning. He ripped out the plugs and attachments. The cushion let out this long, whistling fart and began deflating immediately. He took it away—somewhere far from curtains, rugs and the mountains of useless paper he keeps on the desk to make himself look employed.

As the nurse said, yesterday, when he told her the story, "Can you imagine how long we'd be tending those wounds if it had burst into flames under you!"

A laff-riot. Please note, though, no one talked about the little white dog who might have turned into a little black cadaver because you can be absolutely sure that I would not be the first thing the Mook saved in the event of a conflagration.

But here's the thing...and don't quote me...the thing is...and you didn't hear it from me so...the thing is...and I'm not saying this is the thing but it might be and I mean might...

The thing is I may have—just may have—peed on the battery pack at one time—not recently, but in the days when I was peeing on damn near anything to get even with the Mooks over all the things they were putting me through trying to get me to fit into their anally tidy little lives. Now I'm not saying I did pee on the battery pack which was always on the floor, but that initial burning smell sure seemed awfully familiar.

Do the Mooks suspect me? Maybe, but besides looking at me a little sideways from time to time, nothing has been said.

Okay, it wasn't my brightest move, especially since I put my own life in peril, but I was a younger, angrier dog then. Now, I'm a little more clear-eyed...

...and cold-blooded. Let's just say if something were to happen to one or both of the Mooks, no one would ever know. (Sure they smoke outside on the balcony...but autumn is coming and the leaves are soooooooo dry...)