Burning Down the House

My house is an ordinary house, except it is on the large side and it is made out of brick.  It looked really good from the outside, but the inside had deteriorated, due to lack of maintenance.  My insurance company just raised my monthly premium payment because they suffered a record-setting number of losses last year, which affected their bottom line and I decided that I should meet violence with violence, take an eye for an eye and get away from this company before they issue me another increase.  I never had any claim and all of a sudden, my rates shot up after staying the same for a number of years.  They are trying to send me to the hospital, but I am going to send them to the morgue.  I guess I am just mad, because I lost my job.

I ran out of unemployment benefits and I was facing foreclosure on my home with creditors pestering me night and day.  This made me feel desperate and I began to consider committing insurance fraud by burning down my home, but since I did not want to go to jail for arson, I would have to disguise this as an out of control kitchen fire.  I heard that in under a minute, a kitchen fire can grow to an inferno beyond your control.  My cousin was a cook and he told me that one time he had a huge plastic bucket of duck fat that he placed on a shelf a little bit too close to the stove.  The plastic melted and a tidal wave of duck fat splashed down onto the cooktop, exploding into flames, but he was able to put out the fire because his commercial kitchen had aggressive fire-suppression systems and flame-retardant materials.  Something like this would work for me and I could just say that when I saw the flames getting out of control that I started to panic, and I stood there frozen in uncertainty mesmerized by the fire.

Written for Fandango’s Flash Fiction Challenge #57.