Rain is depressing. Most people dislike rain, including Jack. One September night, Jack was reading the newspaper by the dim, orange glow of his fireplace, sitting in his favorite chair.

The chair was not much different than any other seat one might have, but it had one key difference: it was quite comfortable. Years of sitting had broken Jack's chair in such that it was like an extension of his body when he sat in it. It was not very pretty; it had an obscure pattern drawn on it in neutral colors, garbled by dust and stains, but Jack didn't seem to mind. In his thinking, if he were to change it, it would lose its comfort and charm.

The night was quiet, just the way Jack liked it. The room was empty of sound except for the occasional crackle in the fire and the trivial tick of Jack's clock above the mantle. Jack himself had been a quiet person for all of his life, except for the occasional token response or command, just like his living room. When he learned to talk, as a youngster, he never really found use in putting his new skill of speech into practice, and he remained generally silent for all his life.

Gradually, the sounds in this bleak room were disrupted by an excited popping sound on the roof and outside the window. A positive thinker upon hearing the raid, would have realized his fortune simply to be indoors next to a warm fire instead of out in the pelting, cold drops, but Jack, after identifying the sounds, thought expletives to himself about his hatred for rain, even though the rain affected him in no direct way.

Just then, a brisk draft passed through the cracks in the walls that Jack had neglected to repair and pushed a page from the newspaper out of his hands and into the fireplace. The paper grew flames and started to curl and blacken and lose weight at the same time. One piece of the newly shrunken paper broke off from the rest and landed in the kitchen on a dish towel that Jack had just wiped some grease up with earlier. It ignited, burned, and then ignited other flammables in the kitchen, creating a sparkling light show and a burnt, musty smell. The fire quickly spread through the house.

Instinct forced Jack out of the house against his stubborn will, for without it, Jack would have challenged the fire in his anger and stood his ground inside the inferno. Now, as he stood outside, drenched in the very substance he hated, he watched as the downpour failed to douse the flames consuming his home. "Good-for-nothing rain," he muttered.