BURNING DOWN THE HOUSE

Once upon a time, there was a house on fire.

It was a big house, with lots of different people in it. And although it was a small fire, it was a serious one. It was a long time since there had been a fire in the house, so everyone was very shocked.

The fire started in the laundry. Everybody used the laundry, because Li Ki the Chinaman did a very good job of washing everyone’s clothes, and at an excellent price, that even Europeans could afford.

Li Ki was very embarrassed that the fire started in his tumble dryers and washing machines, and so he said it wasn’t him, and blamed a Penguin. Everyone liked Li Ki and his laundry, so they blamed a Penguin too. 

Very quickly the fire spread everywhere. Some people closed their doors, and others left them open then closed them in a hurry, and one man even closed his door, then opened it when his girlfriend screamed at him to open the door, then shut it again when his girlfriend saw that the room was on fire, and screamed at him to close the door, to stop any more fire getting in.

The man with the revolving door liked his stupid girlfriend, and didn’t want her to die in a fire, so he called up the Fire Brigade.

‘Hello?’ said the Fire Brigade. ‘Fire Brigade here.’
‘Hello,’ said the man. ‘I have a fire here.’
‘I see,’ said the Fire Brigade. ‘What kind of a fire is it?’
‘Well,’ said the man, ‘Everyone says it is a Penguin Fire, started by a Penguin. But between you and me, I suspect it is electrical.
‘Hmmm.’ Said the Fire Brigade. ‘Well you need powder to put that out. But we haven’t got any powder. 
‘Please make some’, said the man
‘OK.’ Said the Fire Brigade. ‘But that might take us several years.’
‘No’ said the man. ‘I need it now.’
‘But.’
‘Now,’ said the man. ‘At Warp Speed.’
The Fire Brigade paused.
‘Can’t’ they said, finally.
The man paused.
‘I’ve got sixty billion billion pounds,’ he said.
‘Right away sir,’ said the Fire Brigade.
‘Warp Speed,’ they added, importantly.

The next second there were four billion fire engines outside the house. None of them had electrical powder, but they did have access to a massive lake, and access to unlimited fire hoses, and access to sixty billion billion pounds. With great fanfare, the Fire Brigade prepared to save the day by unleashing unlimited water upon the large wooden house.

‘Ladies and Gentlemen’ the chief fireman announced.
‘By popular demand, I give you - Operation Warp Speed!’
Joyfully the firemen opened up the hoses.
A deluge of water rained down upon the house, and all the people in the house in which some time ago a small fire had taken hold and spread some way but subsequently largely receded cheered wildly as faint wisps of hot air rose from the structure’s few remaining scorched timbers. On and on it rained until..

‘Oi!’ came a voice, ‘What are you doing hosing all this water over the kitchen? We’re getting scalded in the steam!’
‘Help!’ cried another, ‘Don’t hose water over here! You’re going to drown my baby!’
‘Is anyone there?’ came yet another thin voice. ‘I don’t like Operation Warp Speed. I got hit by a water jet and had a heart attack.’

But the voices were all lost: lost in a cascade of wild and noisy cheering, as the majority of the tenants ran crazily around, splashing in the water, and celebrating victory over the small fire which had previously taken hold, caused some upsetting damage to many older parts of the property with lower fire standards, but been almost completely unable to ignite 99.99 per-cent of the house. 

‘Hooray!’ they cheered. ‘Now we can never go on fire again!
‘Our house is fire proof now!’ another splashed: ‘We made the first fire-proof house!’
‘Everybody must get wet!’ chanted an especially retarded tenant.
‘Get Wet. Get Wet, Get Wet’. The demand rose. 
And so the firemen hosed on and on, and everybody got very wet indeed.

Finally the firemen got bored, and installed permanent sprinklers around the house, and went home, counting large, if somewhat wet wads of money, and leaving the cheering tenants cheering less and less wildly in the never ending rain. 

‘Brrr.’ Said one. ‘I’m cold. It was never this cold before. I feel sort of ill.’
‘Ow!’ said another. ‘I wish I could stop bumping in to things: what happened to the electrics?’
‘Er, listen..’ said another, apologetically: ‘I’m a structural engineer, and if we keep soaking the house timbers in water, well, in the long term, they’ll collap..

‘Silence,’ came a booming, yet at the same time whining voice.

It was Chair Personage in Chieftess of the Residents Association Faye Buch.

All the residents dropped everything and stared.

‘Fellow equals and friends of the Residents Association,’ Mizzzzzzzzzzzzz Buch lisped ominously: ‘A small but serious fire took hold in our wonderful house of love and respect in which we all share equally and must respect equally and in which I carry the great unwanted burden of sharing the most equal of all the real estate and holdings and whereof I am forced to command the most equal measure of love and respect.’

The residents stared on with fixed grins, protectively clutching the terms and conditions of their tenancy agreements. 

‘In response to this unprecedented threat to the house and its tenants and their terms and conditions I, the Residents Association, have by popular demand unilaterally decreed that a condition of tenancy of the house be that the tenant be at all times wet for the remainder of the term of their natural lives.’

‘Any reference to electrical powder extinguisher will breach our community standards and guidelines and any promotion of fake powder based conspiracy theories will be audited by fact factors for factual content of fact and only statements of fact that are factually correct will be accepted as statements of fact’

Faye paused for breath.

‘In point of fact,’ she resumed..

But nobody was listening: for from a far flung, less dampened, almost florid corner of the house a hearty Latin figure was making his way rapidly and loudly towards them.

‘Ola!’ he panted, on arrival, and patted a large blue marked cylinder carried upon his broad back.

‘I found the powder. So, hey, we should be ok in future.’

The residents stood open jawed as the man rolled the weighty extinguisher on to the ground and set about it.

‘By the way,’ he added, glancing up, cheerfully: ‘I found out where the fire started. It was one of Li Ki’s motors.’ 

He shook his head. ‘Good job that blaze went out: no way we could have got it under control really: not without closing down the whole house forever.’

‘You know,’ he rattled on in a generally helpful way: ‘we should really get down there, to Li Ki’s laundry:  maybe work on some insulation with him: I reckon he could do with a hand.’

‘Anyway,’ he said, rising to his feet. ‘My name’s Rene. Rene Messenger. Glad to make your acquaint….’

Suddenly he saw the house.

‘Wha??’.. he mouthed.

‘We are safe against fire!’ the man’s girlfriend, from earlier, told him proudly.

‘But….you didn’t have to…’

‘SHUT UP!’ stormed Faye Buch, and shot him.

Silence reigned.

‘He died for the community,’ announced Faye Buch.

Silence again.

‘He breached community standards’.

Desperately clinging to their tattered tenancies the paralysed residents nodded sagely as they took up the unthinking, but somehow gravely irritating, clarion call.

‘Breached community standards.’ They droned. 

‘And guidelines,’ they added. Slavishly.

‘Aitchoo!’ said the man’s girlfriend, from back at the beginning of the story. Quite involuntarily, mind.

But Faye Buch shot her.

The End