Macabre

We tuned into Channel 9 at 6PM, just before we went out to do chores, to see if the standoff in Margaretville had ended yet. To our amazement the station was doing a live update, as the police had just sent smoke bombs into the house and a pall of smoke of staggering proportions was rising into the sky over the lovely old farm house that housed the alleged murderer. Within literally minutes the smoke turned black and the house burned down before our eyes. I cannot tell you how fast it went from a small flower of flame peeking out one door to a towering inferno that consumed the wooden structure like a red avalanche that moved up instead of down. It was so very, very fast and inexorable. We watched in horrified fascination until we simply had to get out to what one TV commentator called a "farmhouse". Up here in the northern part of the state we call such structures barns but everyone got the idea and the commentator at the station managed to set him straight after a while. This whole affair has been a macabre drama that makes no sense at all to a rational mind. Why did the alleged culprit do the bizarre and horrific things he did? We will probably never know, but I wish he had chosen a different path.