A DEADLY COMBINATION

Alistair was tired. He'd been up most of the night back in Coffs with a member of his former church who wanted no one but him to come to the hospital when his wife had been in a car accident. It hadn't been until 10 AM that he got back to the mill. Ahnna was visiting at the Meridius', so he took Merry for a short walk then attached her to the 50 foot long cable he'd rigged between two trees. It had a pulley kind of wheel that ran along the cable so that Merry could dash back and forth across the grass with a certain freedom she adored.

"See you in a bit, girl," he said, patting her fondly on her head. He was going to go stretch out in his recliner in the little room he used as a home office. It had been added on as an afterthought to the old structure and though not as old as the original mill, was far from new. It was small, a perfect square, and just big enough for his recliner, a desk, some bookcases, and a rather moth-eaten couch that had come with the mill.

He paused in the kitchen to down a glass of orange juice, yawned expansively, and made his way wearily to the office. Sighing, he settled into the big chair, raised its footrest, and nodded off into a deep sleep almost immediately.

The wiring in the mill had been done quite some time ago, and along with the insulation, the plumbing, and appliances, was in imminent need of replacement. In the wall behind the old couch, a frayed section of the wiring suddenly sparked, smoldering into the fibers of the insulation. When the little room had been added on, the dividing wall had been jury-rigged out of thin vinyl that was made to look like wood paneling. That quickly started to melt, pieces of it falling outward against the back of the old couch. There wasn't much in the way of actual fire, but the polyurethane foam in the couch heated and began giving off hydrogen cyanide gas. Combined with the vinyl in the walling, the different materials smoldered and melted, making a deadly cocktail of toxic gas and smoke that filled the room. 

Alistair never even woke.