My apartment burned down. Well let me be more specific. The third
floor of my apartment burned, my floor got the remnants of the 3rd
floor crashing down along with thousands of gallons of bellefonte
spring water. What was left was a cold mushy stinking heap of
wreckage; my life and everything I own mingled in among the debris.

I had just gone to bed. It was maybe 1am but I was still up. I was
watching something on the laptop near my bed, like I usually do to
fall asleep. I couldn’t quite fall completely asleep though. As I
tossed and turned the fire alarm in the hallway went off. I groaned
and covered my head with a pillow.

From so many years of living in dorms with constant false alarms, I
acquired the bad habit of often ignoring them. I guess they’ve cried
wolf a few times too many.

Then knocking on my door. “gahh I’m tired let me sleep!”

I crawl out of bed and go to the door and peer out. A few people
walking around, but the alarm suddenly shuts off. “thank god” and I
close the door and climb back in bed.

More knocking. “fuuuck” I walk over and this time a cop is there.
“there’s a fire upstairs. Everyone needs to get out.”.

Wow its not a drill. I put shoes on, grab a coat and hat, my wallet
and keys, and my camera off the table. I figure ill take some
pictures of the fire and then wait this out in the heat in my car.

For some reason I thought to go back and grab my fire safe. I don’t
know why. At this point I believed this would be some small kitchen
fire that would be out in 10 minutes. But I grabbed it. The one
fireproof thing in my apt and I took it with me.

But I knew it had important papers in it. A couple backup dvds. Some
notes and photos from girls I’ve loved. So I grabbed it. Nothing
else.

My most important things in my possesion were in a fireproof safe that
I moved into my car as I started snapping photos of a blown out window
which was spewing a bright stream of fire into the cold winter night.

I’m really tired so ill continue this later.