The Fireman

• Nicolas Taranto, Grade 5
• Short Story
• 2015

It was a normal spring night. Los Angeles was ordinary Joe. Busy as usual. You could smell the nice smells from every restaurant in L.A. NBA fans queuing up for tickets. You could hear the loud booming music flowing through the open windows. Every mall to ammo stall was open. The whole city was alight.
While L.A. was busy being L.A., there were too short slim men walking, like they were Klutz’s and nincompoops. The two men’s stumbling walk turned into a jog, then transformed into a normal run. The two men had run into a dark, cold smelly alleyway, lurking with disease carrying rodents scurrying through bins. Big bins, smelly bins, revolting bins with all sorts of food scraps. The two men stopped in shock. They scanned their surroundings. They realised how gross this alleyway was.
All of a sudden L.A. became a touch lighter. The two men had started a fire with lighters and wood. Ten minutes later the fire had spread across half the city, but luckily everyone had evacuated, even the two men!
Five minutes later the fire brigade had arrived. The whole city was lighter than before. When the fire brigade had put out one fire, it had been ten minutes. Suddenly a tall slim man wearing all black clothes ran into the city. This man ran at the speed of lightening. He would go up to every building and do some kind of interesting hand gesture, and the fire would go out.
It was one minute after and the man was sweating with burns and ripped clothes. There was only one building left. Suddenly strange man said, “Tell my families I love them and tell them don’t be sad.” The man then ran into the fire. The fire brigade tried to put the fire out but it was too late.
One month later, the city was back up and going. Everyone who suffered that fire in Los Angles remembers that horrible sad experience. They all remember that man too. He is in everyone’s hearts.