THE WRITER MUST EAT -> patreon.com/trn1ty <-

| \    |   | blah!
|\ | `\|\  | the rantings and ravings
|/ |(_|| | * of a depraved lunatic

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2023-01-02

	Ted wandered off as he heard sirens approach the crumbling office. His
office was a part of a sparse lot of buildings in the sparse tundra of
Underhelm, a small town on the outskirts of Dance City. The nearest neighbor to
his office, a tall but sterile, empty building, simply concrete, glass,
insulation, drywall, and plenty of carpet and flammable internal bits to start
a blaze, had a sign advertising its potential as a center of operations or call
center or something business or another that Ted didn't have the capacity to
care about.
	He didn't know where he got the jerrycan, and didn't know how it still
had any petrol in it, not to mention how it was still full. Ted kicked down the
fashionable but laughably flimsy double doors to the office, then the next pair
of doors past the entryway. The interior looked like it would look really good
if it was set on fire. Ted angled the can to pour a thin stream of gasoline as
he walked from room to room on the ground floor. He admired the new-car smell,
the gasoline aroma, the new-wall scent, the benzene draw, the new tables and
chairs and light fixtures and Cisco-branded IP phones and the pattern on the
carpet and the sharp geometry of the modernist architecture and soon he was
back in the lobby, having completed a loop. Like a soldier, he turned
anticlockwise and continued out of the building, carving a petroleum circle
into the dead grass surrounding the lifeless vessel.
	Ted struggled with his lighter. It was a disposable Bic that was nearly
out of butane. After a minute of clicking he was able to get a flame for a
moment and lit the gas trail. He watched the little bead of entropy follow the
path and split out into three, two following the circle and one cautiously
approaching the edifice. The brush and the building caught fire over a period
of a couple minutes and the fire roared to life.
	"Must not have been up to code, that." Ted whispered to himself. "Quite
a lot of form, though. Now it finally serves a function."

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