I’m at an outdoor gathering. The night is heavy with humidity. The owner of the house won’t let anyone inside. There are maybe twenty of us broken into groups of two or three. I’m standing around with two guys whose names I’ve forgotten.

“So what kind of stuff do you watch?” the guy on the right says.

“I like fail videos.” I take a sip of my beer.

“You know who else likes fail videos?” the guy says. “This guy.”

He points to the guy on my left before drifting over to another group.

“So … fail videos,” I say.

“I could watch them all day,” he says.

“Some of them get repetitive.”

“Like the people falling down their porch steps. Like, it’s snowy and icy, you’ve just come out of your door, you’re probably going to fall.”

“I was surprised this one time. I thought that was going to happen. And it probably would have, but a bear charged the porch and mauled them. It didn’t say no one was harmed but the camera didn’t like … linger.”

“I’d watch that,” the other guy says.

“I’ll send you a link if I can find it. Do you … remember why we’re here?”

“I’m here for the free beer. I just saw a group of people in a yard and wandered in.”

“I don’t even know whose house this is. I think I got a text from … someone. I don’t know anyone here.”

The modest house attached to the yard bursts into flame.

The other guy motions to the house with his beer bottle.

“I guess we’re here for an immolation or arson or … something.”

“You gonna stick around?”

“Probably until the fire trucks show up.”

A man on fire charges out the back door of the house flapping his arms. He hits the first step on the porch, rolls his ankle, and goes sprawling into the yard.

The other guy and I can’t help but laugh, even though it’s a pretty tired fail.

Two other guys rush over to the burning man and dump a cooler on him. They didn’t have time to empty it so a lot of cans and bottles bludgeon the man on the ground.

The guy I’m talking to, illuminated by flames, says, “I wonder if he’ll live.”

The flames are making the already warm night unbearably hot. I drift into the shadows of the yard and farther away as the shadows are consumed. I keep receding until I’m out of the yard and wandering the glowing orange neighborhood, sirens erupting around me.