Spontaneous Combustion Pandemic

People just burst into flames,
Randomly, one at a time.
At first, no one believed it

Who hadn’t been next to it.
The whole thing reeked of a hoax.
From hoax to conspiracy

Was the next, easy step, but
The randomness and global
Spread of sudden flaming deaths

Kept conspiracies splintered.
The most populous countries,
Most concentrated cities

Produced the most flaming deaths,
So accusations also
Flared most from and about them.

But it grew hard not to see
It was a horrifying,
Terrifying lottery.

Any hour of day or night,
Someone, somewhere gave one howl
And then exploded in fire.

Sometimes burning surroundings
Or catching others on fire,
But unquenchable themselves

Until autocremated.
And unlike a lottery,
It only kept getting worse,

More people candling each week,
A tenth of humanity,
Then a fifth, carried away.

Then it reversed, becoming
Gradually less common,
Until it stopped completely,

Leaving a scarred and shaken
Species no longer certain
Of anything, anymore.