So there's this thing about dogs that I can't stand.
You see, it all started on October 31st, on a snow day. Yes, it snowed horribly on Halloween. I didn't think it could be so freezing that early in the year, but apparently the weather thought differently. I was planning to be Marilyn Monroe, mostly because all of my friends had joked with me that i looked like her, with my shoulder length blonde hair and big red lips. I was to take my younger sister trick-or-treating with my friends and me while my parents went to a "grown-up party," and of course I did. I'm used to being responsible for my seven year old Emmie-puss. After all, I was twice as old as she was. She was dressed up as a ballerina, as she had been for the past three years. It's been her childhood ambition to be a ballerina, but my parents could never afford dance classes for her. Poor thing.
We used to really get into decorating for holidays, before the big mishap, and this year we went all out. We had jack o' lanterns hanging from our trees, ghosts peeking out of our windows, fake cracks running along the walls of our house, even a crashed witch on a broom in the middle of the front yard amidst an old "graveyard." But the big mistake was the candles lining the sidewalk and porch. They created "atmosphere, more than just a porch light," my mother said.
Everyone in my group of friends was really excited that night because not only had we no school that day, but the snow was scheduled to last all night, so they had cancelled school for the next day as well. And of course my friends were planning some very late-night mischief. Of course they were disappointed when i told them i would be carting my little ballerina-of-a-sister Emily around with us, but they got over it fast. I would just drop her off once my parents returned from their party.
I left a big bowl of candy on the porch with a sign that said, "Take if you dare," and we were off. As i left my house, I had a strange sense of farewell and foreboding, but when I told my best friend, Jane, she just waved it off, saying it was just the Halloween spirit getting to my head.
A few hours later, Emily, Jane, and I stood in front of a huge, black, smoldering pile of what was once my house and everything inside of it, our mouths wide open and our full pillowcases suddenly slipping from our hands and thudding on the ground. A few firemen circled around the mess with a hose, making sure nothing would suddenly catch fire again. All i would let myself think about was how ironic it was that my house burned down on a snow day. Soon my parents pulled up and talked with the lead fireman after their own brief staring fit.
We learned later that a family of trick-or-treaters had come to our house with their dog, a big, clumsy golden retriever, and as the family grabbed their candy, the dog had inadvertently knocked over a few of the candles that surrounded it. The family left, and the flame from the candle had slowly spread from the bush it had landed in to the other bushes to the streamers around our house to the house itself. Nothing had survived but a few burnt scraps of my diary. Luckily my mom can't stand to live too close to other people, so the fire hadn't spread. Anyone around who had seen the smoke simply thought someone was having a bonfire, so no one had called 911 until our neighbors saw the actual flames above the treetops.
From then on, I have cringed at the mention of dogs or anything related to them.
Pippa-chan-face Community Member 
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