Death by Dishwasher

Ever smell? Ever smell a smell that you can't really identify? Do you know what a burning dishwasher smells like? I do - the fucker was ten feet beneath my bed. The heating element of our new (bought in November of 2006) GE dishwasher apparently went "on the fritz" last night around this time. I had been reading my AP history assignment when I noticed my throat felt a little scratchy, so I swallowed, swallowed, and swallowed again, then realized it was the smell that was making me feel this way. I walked toward the sink to get some water as I took a break from my intense [that was overstated] reading and leaned my face down toward the vent on the front side of the dishwasher, took a quick sniff, and decided that it smelled vaguely like dishwasher fluid - of course, in retrospect, it was still strange as I didn't remember having heard it make its normal cycle that would have precluded this drying stage, and I should have noticed something was unorthodox then, but, then again, we're a people forced into not trusting our normal instincts and simply submitting to the belief that our mind has fabricated something to fuck with us, and of course it's not like anyone is checking on their dishwasher regularly to see if IT (of all possible objects) is about to spontaneously combust into a ball of hell fire underneath their sleeping quarters. I finished reading and went to bed. Next morning, mom says, "The dishwasher's heating mechanism must have come on during the night and ran for the whole time because the inside of it is scorched, some of our Pampered Chef utensils have melted, and the butter (which was sitting atop the counter, a good three inches of wood and centimeter of thick quality Pyrex-grade glass away from the big hot fucker) had melted in its container." That would be such an unfortunate way do die...not by a car crash where you're propelling your body unnaturally across the surface of the earth in excess of 65mph, not by the OVEN, which is made to heat your Hot Pockets and lasagna to temperatures in excess of 500 degrees Fahrenheit...no, I could have died at the hands of a seemingly-innocent kitchen appliance, one that had been on a purported mission to incinerate its owner. What a bastard.