Saving Tira & Mitsu

The party is over. People are slowly making their way home. The streets are covered with confetti and flat balloons.
My guinea pigs seem to love playing with them. They put it in their mouth as if they'd blow it, but actually, the balloons are blowing them. Mitsu, the most adventurous, does it first. She starts to inflate, inflate, and inflate. So much that she looks like a football. I'm afraid she might explode so I take it off her; the air comes out, she's back to her "normal size"(1). Annoyingly, animals are stubborn and often do as they like. As soon as I've taken it off her, she starts running toward another one, followed by Tira who has realised this is fun.
This goes on for a while: They blow; get huge; I take the balloons off them; they run to other ones; I run after them and so on...

Other guinea pigs join the party and at some point I am holding nine of them, looking for a box in which I can safely keep them. I go to my dad's butcher van where I find plenty of -previously filled with sausages, now empty- crate. I ask him to pass one over, which he does. I carefully put the guinea pigs in the box and immediately notice that the bottom panel's not strong and might not hold all the way home. Still, I don't swap, I just go home.
The flat is pretty empty. Few furniture, no pictures on the white wall (2). The only ornament is a brown fire place in the center of the living room. As soon as I put the box down on the wooden floor, the guinea pigs manage to get out and start running around, looking for places to hide. I start to run after them (again) but the doorbell rings.
The landlord has arrived with his wife and their teenager son. I let them in and offer them to sit near the fire place. As soon as they do, the man notices a strange smell. With the iron claw he pulls three burned guinea pigs out of the fire. They were so scared that they hid too close to it and were killed. I’m happy it’s neither Tira nor Mitsu (3) but still I am saddened by the little animal's death. I start to cry. The wife stands up and puts her hand on my shoulder. I turn around, see her eyes filling up, and wake up.

(1) My guinea pigs are not, what you can call, of normal size. This picture might make you think otherwise, but it's an old one.
(2) Nothing to do with my colorful and very crowded flat.
(3) Last thing I ate before buying them, luckily it wasn't a fish and chips ;)