Halls of the Dark Muse

For the past week or so I have had the house to myself in the evening, so I was here home alone, sleeping when all of the sudden in the wee hours of the morning I am startled awake by the sound of the smoke detector, which is not the way you want to wake up.

So my first thought is, Oh My God what is happening. And in a panic of half-sleep and with my brain not yet awake I jump out of bed without thinking of putting on my glasses or turning on any lights and start running out of my room when I stop suddenly in the middle of the hall and begin to recollect myself and think it really will not help to go running about the house half-blind.

I go back into my room put on my glasses turn on my bedroom light and began to go through the house turning on lights looking in different rooms.

After failing to find any signs of fire anywhere, ( the smoke detector had stopped beeping by this time) and there being no conceivable reason for how a fire could be started, and while freak accidents can happen, generally speaking fires do not just materialize out of nothing but there are factors that lead up to it, and there was nothing in the house that could have been the cause of a fire. No candles burning anywhere, nothing flammable left lying around, the oven and other appliances had not been left on.

I deduced that the smoke detector just had a low battery. But even though I was fairly certain this was the cause, and I found no sign of anything else being wrong, it was a bit difficult just getting back into bed and going to sleep after that, because it is difficult not to remain somewhat paranoid that you had overlooked something, and I kept expecting the smoke detector to go off again.

In addition being that I watch too many horror movies (as if there is a such thing as too many horror movies) even though I did not seriously believe there was a maniac running around the house, once the mind starts thinking, I began forming this image in my head of some ominous figure standing under the smoke detector with a cigarette to set it off intentionally as part of some plot of terror.

After failing to force myself to go back to sleep I thought I would watch an episode of Breaking Bad On Demand. I get up and go into the living room, turn on the TV only to discover that there was some technical difficulty and I kept getting this message saying my request could not be processed at this moment.

I took that as a sign that I really needed to get back to sleep so I did one last walk around the house just to reassure myself and was finally able to get myself back to sleep.