Hiram needs fire...

     Fortunately for Hiram Grange, the owner of Kinney’s Pub was somewhat of a cheap bastard, and instead of adding public restrooms the right way: with cinder, mortar, and cement, he’d used sheetrock and cheap plywood.  If that’d been the case, Hiram might’ve snapped his neck or at the very least broken several bones in his fall.  As it was, he’d only been knocked a bit senseless, and he cursed thickly while struggling amidst piles of broken bits of sheetrock and plywood to regain his wits.

            A heavy-throated scream filled his ears; at the same time he detected a scent smelling suspiciously like…

            “Shit,” he muttered as he found the source of the baritone yowling.  He’d apparently crashed through a cheap partition between the men’s and ladies bathrooms, and when he landed he’d torn down a bathroom stall’s wall. The screamer herself was possibly the fattest woman he’d ever seen; jowly face pinched in fear around beady, pin-prick eyes. Seated on the toilet, sweatpants and panties down around her ankles, her ass was right at Hiram’s head level.

            Another wave of fecal odor hit Hiram’s nostrils. “Bloody hell, woman,” Hiram growled, “whatever have you been eating?”

            The fat woman stared, speechless, and then clutched pudgy hands under an enormous chin and screamed again.

            Hiram rolled his eyes, scrambling to free himself. “God hates me,” he muttered, “he really, really does.”

            As if to prove the point, Hiram’s foot slipped and he fell, head slamming against the back wall, which had been built properly - out of concrete – and hurt like hell, also.  A curse on his tongue, he heard the metallic ringing of something rolling.  He glanced up just in time to see a thick, long white cylindrical object roll off a medicine shelf mounted on the wall above.  It fell and struck him in the forehead with a clang he would’ve found rather amusing, had it been someone else.

            “Piss off!” he yelled, more in anger than pain, and grabbed the smooth metal tube, about to throw it away when large black letters caught his gaze.

            INDUSTRIAL STRENGTH SANITIZER; CAUTION…

            “…aerosol contents highly flammable.”

            Fire. Just what he needed.

            Hiram glanced up at the heavens, lips curling pure mirth. “Bloody hell. Maybe God doesn’t hate me, after all.”

            A huge chunk of plaster - large enough to brain him – fell from the ceiling, missing his head by inches, and he thought perhaps he shouldn’t push the matter.

            A shrill scream of true terror came from the pub, snapping up Hiram’s attention. “Damn!” He scrambled to his feet and launched himself towards the hole he’d made in the cheap sheetrock wall. Pausing as he exited the woman’s bathroom, he tossed over his shoulder to the fat woman frozen on the toilet, “Hell’s bells, woman. Next time, lay off the fats and grease, will you?”

            With that, Hiram Grange exited rather less than gracefully – but then again, he was Hiram Grange, after all.  

-Kevin Lucia, Hiram Grange and the Chosen One