The irony of the newly-redesigned (in February) Cruel Music homepage is ridiculous... The news stories are never accurate... The rumors are hilarious...
This whole thing still feels like some kind of nightmare, and that this has been one really long, horrible day. It's just too unreal. It was 1:45am. I was going to take a bath before we went to bed. I was reading the Bible while I was waiting for my water to get full. The last thing I read was Deuteronomy, Chapter 4. It was saying don't be afraid of the fire, and talking about moving on to a new land. It was a little freaky, in hindsight. Heh heh. I turned my bath water off, but I kept reading till the end of the page, so I could mark where I left off. I laid the Bible down on the washing machine, and then, almost immediately, BOOOOOOOM!!!! That huge, awful explosion... It was a really bad feeling. I knew something was very wrong, because the explosion kinda knocked the wind right out of me. The lights went out... It was pitch black, but I could see, somehow. The walls and ceiling were caving in all around me. I looked over toward the bath tub, and that wall fell. It kinda brushed me on my right shoulder. It would've fell right on top of me, if I'd got in the tub, and if I would've quit reading the Bible sooner. I didn't know what was going on. A million things crossed my mind, but a fire was the furthest thing from my mind. I thought, "Maybe it was a drunk driver hitting the house." "Maybe the termites around the bath tub wall were finally taking over." "Maybe an asteroid landed in our yard." Then, I yelled for Denise to see if she was alright, and if she knew what the crap had just happened. Then, she started screaming. I ran out of the bathroom to be with her. The hallway was twisted and mangled. I could see the stars through our ceiling. That's when I first smelled the smoke. Denise was in our bedroom. Every door in the house was blown off the hinges, and laying around in `the house. Every window was busted. There was glass everywhere. I grabbed Denise, and just held her, making sure she was okay. Then, I saw a flickering light coming from our garage... The fire was coming. It still didn't dawn on me, though, how bad the fire was. I knew that our house was ruined, and would never be liveable again, but I still didn't know what was going on. Denise threw my shoes to me, and I went out in the yard for a better look. The house next door was *GONE.* There was nothing there, but a field of lumber. It looked like a bulldozer just flattened the house. I saw that half of our garage was blown off in the blast, and that my car was buried in the rubble. I still didn't really see any fire. I went back in the bedroom, and tried to call 911, but the phone was dead. I got my MP3 player off the table next to our bed, and got my 4-track portable studio recorder, and held on to them. I didn't even think about anything else in the bedroom... Not my red Fender guitar, not the external backup hard drive on the computer, not the camcorder, or the digital camera, not even my super-secret stash of money (which was pictured in this very blog a couple posts ago, and which had grown to $2,100). I knew we were going to have to leave, but I guess I thought I would have more time to come back for that other stuff. I gave Denise a garbage bag, so she could get some things. Then, I just kinda went into shock, and stood there for a minute, not knowing what to do. One of the birds that lived on our porch was in the bedroom, flapping its wings in the corner, and freaking out. I chased it back toward the door... Denise got the fire extinguisher in the kitchen, and I started to go out to the garage with it, but then I saw huge blazes of fire in the garage. I laid the fire extinguisher down on top of our microwave, and said, "No fire extinguisher is going to take care of that." Then, we went outside. Neighbors were standing all around. Some of them were motioning for us to come toward them, but we just stayed in the yard. I went back in the house again, and tried to get to Denise's closet... It was in the other bathroom, which was right beside the garage, which was where the fire was coming from in the first place. As soon as I went in the bathroom door the wall to my right fell down, and fire was blazing right at my face. Then, I ran back outside to be with Denise. I took her to the safety of our side yard, by my studio, and told her to stay there, and I went back inside again, trying to make it to my closet at the other end of the house. As soon as I walked in the door the black smoke started gagging me. For some reason I walked through the house one last time, through all the smoke, and went out the back door, instead of just turning around, and going back out the front door. That's when we finally gave up, and went to a neighbor's house. We definitely had a few angels in there with us. We "just happened" to be in all the right places at the right times. If we would've been asleep, we probably would've died. If I would've been in the bath tub, I probably would've been crushed under that wall. If Denise would've been in the other bathroom, she would've been trapped. That was the first part of the house to go, really. The fire hit our garage first, but that bathroom was right beside of the garage. She had just left that bathroom, and went into our bedroom, like, 2 minutes earlier. We lost everything we owned, but we got out without a scratch on us.
