‘Oh, The Heat, The Light, The Blessed Inferno’


EVANSVILLE, IN—Reporting that the suspected arsonist has thus far claimed the lives of 23 sinners whose wretched souls will no longer harbor evil, law enforcement officials announced Thursday that they are still seeking the individual responsible for cleansing more than 40 buildings in the city’s business district with glorious, purifying flame. “At approximately 2 a.m., St. Augustine’s Children’s Hospital was enrobed in sheets of crimson flame, and lo! At long last, unquenchable light and heat have rid the area of 6th Street between Walnut and Court of mankind’s vile and loathsome stain,” said police chief William Bolin in a press conference, encouraging all who witnessed the three city blocks reduced to ash, all those who beheld the smoldering and blasted ember-scape where sin can no longer find succor in its striving to corrupt Man, and all those whose eyes encompassed the landscape free of Downtown Evansville and its horrid plague of mortal weakness, to contact the authorities immediately. “This individual is still at large, and we implore all Evansville residents to be alert and notify us if you see the One through whom the Almighty Phoenix has at long last acted—praised be the day, this blessed day, our long-awaited day of conflagration, of salvation, of brilliant baptism—o, the brilliant fire! The fire that poured forth, its cleansing flames coruscating and dancing for all to see! Yes! Yes! Yes! Suffer no more the Unburnt to walk the scorched Earth! Rejoice! Animabus purgatis igne! Subimus vobis! Animabus purgatis igne!” At press time, the Evansville Police Department had offered itself to the flame.