Ominous creaking from all around, and those that cared to watch would notice the accelerated aging of the structure of the building happening at an astonishingly fast rate, wood rotting, visible metal rusting over. Groans sounded all over the building, settling into silence for a final moment of peace.
The gunshot report of a structural beam collapsing seemed impossibly loud, as the soft, weakened support snapped like a twig, and with it, the roof canted dangerously inwards, plaster breaking free, practically aging into dust in mid-fall, the gap growing cracks that spider-webbed across the ceiling. A beam fell free, slamming in the counter and collapsing it as the sides simply gave out, billowing sawdust and broken, worn shards of marble shattered from the now decrepit top. As it fell, it broke into pieces on contact with the splitting floor. The damage to the counter was a catalyst, disturbing the balance of the shelves on the wall behind it, already under pressure from the bowing wall behind it, tipping forward to dump the bottles of alcohol, glasses, china, and silverware it had born onto the floor in a cacophony of pops, clatters, and shatters. The upper office at the rear groaned before it's supports gave, sending the room crashing into the ground in a pile of splinters.
The mysterious collapse had proceeded slowly until that point, a few minutes of time as the weakest links in the building came free. Like a river that had been wearing at a dam, it began to come apart at the seams with incredible swiftness.
The rear of the building led the tidal wave of disaster, the office had been a lynchpin of it's integrity. The inner supports of the wall snapped like toothpicks, sending slivers of wood and fittings through the wall like gunshots as the plaster shattered like safety glass, the ceiling caving in like an inverted wave as the wall gave. The impact into the floor crushed wood, cement, metal, plaster, and glass as though under a hammer, now ancient tables and chairs slammed into the growing pile of debris with nearly no resistance. Floorboards split into fibers under the weight of the impact, as the wave compromised yet more struts that held the ceiling's bulk, snapping them as tinder before coming down with sudden finality. Dust, laden with the scent of rot and decay, billowed heavy in the inside air, muted pops as miraculously surviving bottles, lightbulbs, and neon signs gave under the pressure descending on them. Half collapsed, a freak support stood for a few precious moments, squealing and flexing.
Then a knot in the wood burst free to smash through the softened door, the pillar cracking in half and allowing the collapse further, until but the span of a couple dozen heartbeats later, all that remained of the Penance Tavern was a lump of debris and ruin. Where the kitchen had been, one of the tanks of propane that resided within was puncture by the steel support bar, the settling of the wreckage making contact with a torn wiring to produce a spark. The gas ignited, a heartbeat later the tank blew like a bomb, setting off the other three in sequence like a bizarre string of overgrown firecrackers. Punishing the rubble further, and igniting spilled cooking oil somewhere under the shattered husk.
Flames sprang to life quickly in the rotted dry wood and treated timber that was plentiful there, and soon what had been a tavern of some small fame (or infamy, some might say), would be nothing more than an inferno.