Floydien looked down at the battered stove and narrowed his eyes. He relaxed his grip on the plate, letting the brick-like pancake slide to the floor. The sound it made was entirely too heavy for breakfast.

He lifted the pan and hefted it. Solid cast iron. Perfectly seasoned.

He glanced down at the bowl of batter. A few more bubbles had formed on top of the thick, malty mixture. Years of breakfast-for-dinner had let him refine the mixture to perfection.

This stove. Floydien took a deep breath. This stove had ruined too many meals. In fact – he turned his head slowly, taking in the cluttered counters and grungy faux-linoleum floors – this kitchen had been fighting his every gourmet effort for years.

No more.

Floydien reached out his arm and slowly, gently, placed his finger against the side of an open bottle of vegetable oil. The same oil that, moments ago, he had used to fry the hash browns. Or, rather, the hash grays. Nothing but soggy, greasy mush.

He pressed harder, and watched the bottle begin to tip. The golden liquid leaned farther toward the shoulder, until the whole thing fell over onto the stove. The little glug-glug noise it made caused a tiny smile to crack across his face.

The smile grew until it covered his whole face. Floydien jumped forward, frantically pulling everything out of the cabinets until he found what he was looking for. A jar of coconut oil. Vanilla extract. An old container of bacon grease.

He was breathing heavily now, ripe with anticipation. The stove. This motherfucking stove. Yes. Yes. Yes.

One more bottle of oil remained. A glass bottle, tall and slender, with a decorative cluster of pewter grape vines on one side. He selected a tea towel, delicate and nearly transparent, and twisted it into a hefty rope and bit it between his teeth. The rubber stopper popped out with a cute "poink" sound before he stuffed the tea towel into the neck.

Floydien held the bottle upside down with one hand while he reached forward and clicked the burner to maximum with his other hand. He then repeatedly slapped the knob until the piezoelectric igniter had turned the gaseous hiss into a whoosh of flame.

He kept his eyes on the tea towel as the green, fruity-scented oil creeped toward the pointy tip of the gossamer cloth. When it had been soaked up to the tip, Floydien righted the bottle and held it over the burner.

The clean, blue flames from the stove seemed so different than the orange, smoky tongue licking its way down toward the mouth of the glass bottle. But fire is fire. Or should be, he thought, as he looked down at the brick-pancake on the floor.

Floydien took a step backward and looked at the oil covering the stove and dripping down to the green-and-orange flooring. This should work.

One more step backward and he was standing in the hallway. Smoke rose in greasy ropes and rolled along the ceiling, staining the white plaster in streaky splotches that looked almost like it had been put there by a paintbrush. An artist, truly.

He tossed the bottle up into the air, and watched it arc nearly to the kitchen’s ceiling before crashing down on the stove. The already-hot oil on the stove caught nearly instantly, and oil from the bottle sprayed across the counter, spreading droplets of liquid fire to the various other flammable liquids he had strewn around.

On his way out the front door, Floydien stopped long enough to pick up a Rainbow Dash plush toy from the couch. He looked back at the roaring inferno that was quickly consuming his kitchen.

“Yeah. That’ll cook a pancake.”