Let me set the scene for you.
It was the middle of the night.
I was asleep in bed. Dreaming. For some reason, there was a repetitive
BEEP.
beep about once a minute. Finally,
I opened my eyes and realized that the beeping was in real life, and what the
hell was making that noise because
BEEP.
nothing was on, not my
television, not my laptop, not my phone. Eventually, it occurred to me that the
only thing that made sense was the
BEEP.
smoke detector, although since
it wasn’t a steady OMG YOU’RE GOING TO DIE GET OUT OF THE HOUSE warble, it had
to be something else. The
BEEP.
batteries were running low. But
I was so tired and being the middle of the night, I was feeling extra lazy and
BEEP.
didn’t want to get up and change
them. Still, it was kind of hard to sleep with that thing beeping every minute,
so I got up to change get that stupid thing new batteries. Except
BEEP.
that was a dream. So I really
got up to change the batteries. Except that
was a dream. Then I went into a normal (i.e. crazy) dream, but still, every
five seconds it felt like
BEEP.
there was another beep. Cue
another dream where I got up to change them. By six a.m., I knew I wasn’t
getting anymore sleep, but I
BEEP.
wouldn’t give it the
satisfaction. I let it beep. I let it feel the pain of knowing it was slowly
dying, every beep a burst of energy it could not
BEEP.
afford, but there were worse
alternatives, there was death, there was non-existence. And perhaps I would
show mercy, there might be new batteries restore it to life
BEEP.
but for a few seconds while I changed
them, it would be dead, just a hunk of plastic, less useful than a doorstop.
BEEP.
Long story short, I’m really
tired today.
