A SERIOUS MATTER

When I went home from school on Monday afternoon, I found that my house was filled with ashes. I went back at around 3.00 p.m. as I had an appointment with the plumber. Kamariah went to my house with me as she and a few of the teachers felt that it was safer to have someone else around when people whom I do not know come and do repairs in my house.

Initially the two of us thought that the burnt ashes were blown into mine from another house but when I started sweeping the floor, I found burnt marks on my tiles and also cigarette butts. The marks that you see above are already very faint as I had already swept away a lot of the ashes and also used a bit of water to wash the porch. Actually, the mark in the second picture originally was a dark patch of soot.

After asking around, I found that there is a mad man lurking around the housing estate. A subcontractor who was doing some work in the house next door told me that he had seen the mad man burning things in the unoccupied houses and he also damaged the doors and other things in the houses. Another one of my neighbours told me that the man guy also burnt somethings behind her house.

This is really scary and creepy as it meant that he had climbed the gate into my house to do the burning. For your information, the burnt marks were not isolated to one spot. The biggest patch was actually right in front of my sliding door. The burnt marks in the first picture were near the post box and those in the third and last pictures were in the middle of the porch.

The subcontractor who told me about the mad man said that I was being overly cautious when I said I wanted to go and make a police report. Doesn't he realise that if this mad guy were to throw a piece of burning paper into my house at night when the car is there, it might cause an explosion. Actually, I was also annoyed at the attitude of one young police officer at the police station who was said to go on the beat to catch suspicious characters. He took it so lightly and sort of made the matter into a joke. Perhaps, he has a lot of ladies who are too free and would go and report any trivial matters to the police. However, I am not one who has so much free time nor would want to set foot in a police station if the matter was not serious. Besides, to the Chinese it is not auspicious at all to enter a police station.

Thank goodness, an older police officer who came later had better sense. I told him that I was there to tell them about the mad man because I fear that his a tragedy could come out of his actions. After all he is playing with fire and it just needs a spark to make one house burn and a gust of wind to make it spread.

Yeah! It wouldn't be too good for the police if people die from a fire caused by the mad man after I have informed them about him and they did nothing but ridicule me.