It was a few moments later, during a pause between two songs, Justin noticed the faint smell of smoke and taking the ear buds out, heard the faint crackle of the wood floor igniting. He looked up from his drawing searching for the source of the smoke and in the split second that he stared at it, the fire grew exponentially and seemed to move intentionally, as it sped across the floor toward him. Without a thought about his sock clad feet, he rushed forward and began stamping out the fire. He almost had the fire out when his mind registered a growing pain in his legs. Focusing on his legs, instead of the flames, Justin discovered that his jeans were now involved in the fire. With a scream of agony he grabbed a rag and dropping to the floor, he slapped at the flames that had caught on his jeans.

Hearing his scream of pain, Susan rushed into the room, yelling “What?!” Taking in the scene around her, she asked, “What in God’s name happened?”

Justin rested the singed rag across his legs, stared up at her and said, “I decided we didn’t have nearly enough excitement in our lives, so I set the place on fire.”

She fisted her hands, placed them on her hips and taping her foot, asked, “Now that the comedy hour is over, are you going to tell me what happened in here?”

Standing slowly, he brushed off his pants and said, “Well, I either had another supernatural episode or we just had a case of spontaneous combustion.”

Snapping her head back around from her survey of the room, she exclaimed, “WHAT?!”

Moving towards the door with a slight limp, Justin said, “I’ve put the fire out down here. So I’m going to go up, take off these burned pants and see just how much damage I did to myself while putting it out.”

Susan followed him out of the room and upstairs. When they reached the landing she said, “Justin, you go on into the bedroom and remove your jeans; I’ll grab the first aid kit and meet you there.”

When she came back to their room a few minutes later, she found him lying on the bed, his legs stretched over the edge, with his pants hanging down to just below his knees. “What’s wrong? Did it hurt too much to take your jeans off?”

Moaning, he lifted his head off the pillow. “No. I couldn’t get’um off; they’re adhered to my shins from the heat of the fire.”

“Oh, baby.” Crossing to his side, she eased down next to him and tried to work the pants off. When they became caught up, she looked into his eyes and said, “Justin, I can probably get these off the rest of the way, but…”