Oooops! I did it now!

writers cramp entry. about the misuse of alcohol....

Word count= 854

It was a relatively dark evening in Missoula, Montana. The moon that was usually out, did not show its face in the sky. The town had bedded down for an evenings rest that is except for the local saloon, it was going full bore. Music could be heard through out the town.

Normally, there would be a bunch of people in the saloon almost every night, however this night the crowd was minimal with the cow handlers out of town no one seemed like having a good throw down. Out of the swinging doors of the saloon stumbled a rather intoxicated man. He proceeded to fall flat on his face as he walked off the boardwalk into the street, laid there a second before expending the energy to get up, covered in mud, and try to make his way homeward.

He had a strange looking hat on his head indicating to the town folk here that it was Silas Denton, the shop keeper at the general store. His wife and children were out of town, visiting a relative who was a bit sick, so he decided to take advantage of this rare opportunity that this presented and tie one on, something he hasn’t done in years. Silas had tied a bad one on this evening, and had decided it was enough. So he stumbled to and fro as he made his way across town passed his general store to a small shack like place on the outskirts of town.

Up until he had gotten in front of his store he seemed to do very well making his way home. But once he got in front of his store, he stumbled over to a post supporting the roof over the boardwalk. He used it as a support to keep him upright, while the alcohol worked its magic in his body.

He paused there a second, while his stomach had enough of the alcohol and food he had eaten earlier and decided to get rid of it in the most easiest way possible, by use of vomit. When he began to vomit, he leaned over the watering trough and let it fly. As if he really had any choice, his body had made that decision for him, whether he knew it or not. As it came pouring out of him in wave after wave of gut wrenching heaves, his body rested more and more on the very edge of the trough.

Silas wasn’t a really thin man, nor was he too fat either, but the trough could only hold up to so much, as it flipped up on is end spilling the contents of it all over Silas washing any of the vomit that didn’t quite make it past his lips and onto the ground, off of him. Being in the state he was in, he hadn’t noticed that the end of the trough, when it flipped up on end, knocked a lit lantern hanging above him, through the store window bouncing off the counter and it rolled into the back room.

Silas didn’t care that he was wet or covered with vomit and mud. He just picked himself up, dusted himself off and continued on his stumbling journey to get home. As before, he stumbled from one side of the road to the other, occasionally falling over into the mud of the road when he didn’t reach a suitable resting place. But finally after a while he reached his house. Bursting through the door and announcing that he was home. However with no one there to hear it, no one responded. He just went over to the bed and collapsed there, in his vomit and mud caked clothes. He instantly drifted off to an alcohol fueled sleep.

Meanwhile the lamp he knocked into the store, which as of yet hadn’t done anything, just sat in the back room and out of sight of anybody who happened to be passing by and casually look in the broken window wondering what happened. When the lamp came to rest where it was it had hit the support leg of a nearby shelf containing some cloth he had just received the week before, knocking it just in the right position where it barely held the shelf up.

It wasn’t but ten minuets before the weight of the shelf plus the fabric, caused the shelf to collapse on the lantern, crushing the fuel reservoir and smashing the glass. Once the fuel in the lantern hit the open flame of the lantern it burst into flame. Slowly the flame grew hotter and hotter, consuming enough fuel to make sure it could spread, and spread it did.

As the night progressed the fire grew and spread, by the time dawn broke the town was decimated. The buildings were burned to the ground, leaving only several small remnants that the town was even there.

By the time Silas had woke up, he had heard the newsboy selling his newspapers shouting the major headline of the day.

“Read all about it, Fire destroys 22 buildings, including the Missoula State Bank. Read all about it!”