i think i'm paranoid

I had one of those nights where I go to sleep at 10ish, sleep hard and wake up thinking it's 6ish, but it's only 1ish. I usually have a hard time convincing my body that it should be sleeping; last night it was even harder.

I had woken up from this crazy, vivid dream. It had a bit of a "War of the Worlds" feel to it, except the invaders were kind of like rays of light. Anyway, the dream centered on this small group of children, who, of course, were somehow the only ones miraculously saved when the final extermination came. Then the rays of light came to inspect their new world. They bumped into the children, seemed surprised the kids had survived and were about to leave it at that when one of the kids — the oldest of the boys — started yelling at the rays of light.

Now, granted, he had every right to be mad. Those kids were the only humans left. But given the killing power these other beings had already shown, picking a fight really wasn't such a good idea.

The rays of light had, initially, thought of making friends with the kids — they could be entertainment, perhaps, like pets or something — but then one of them got angry — so distasteful. Well the kid was lucky, the rays of light simply decided to swear off the humans and ignore them. The boy swore to do the same. I seem to remember one of the girls trying to bring the two sides together, but neither would speak. The two groups moved to different areas. And then the dream morphed.

The children went to where another human was in hiding. It was a very old man, so old and withered he was nothing but bones with skin that looked like it was barely holding onto the man's frame. Visually, he would have been a terrific evil character, but he wasn't. He was more like the town's wise grandfather.

He sat and spoke with them, leaning to his right side, which looked as if it all blurred into an unrecognizable mass of tattered cloth and matted hair with no recognizable bone structure underneath. He made gestures as he spoke with his left hand. The arm was long and thin, the skin very pale. From a distance it looked like a skeleton's arm. And one had to wonder how he could possibly have the muscle strength to move his limbs at all.

Before this riddle was solved, the grandfather attempted to right himself. His long hair looked to be attached somewhere around where his arm should be as well as at his head. It looked somewhat like thick ribbons of dark, dripping molasses. Under the heavy blanket of cloth, if one looked hard enough, there was almost a structure that could be his right limb. If it was, he held it close to him and never used it.

He got up, began to walk around. He was trying to impart a few last directions to them before his death. The children told him that he'd survived when the rest of the world hadn't, and this was not the time to die. They needed him, they cried. But as they continued to watch as he talked, they saw the end. His shoulder bone came sliding out from his left side, elongating his arm when he made jerky movements.

Then there was a loud noise. They were coming. The children had to hide. The old man told them that they must leave him behind. They were sad, but also relieved not to have to see his gruesome skeleton.

At this point I woke up and realized that the loud noise was a beep coming from somewhere in the apartment. I couldn't figure out where. I tried to go back to sleep. I worried that someone had broken into the apartment. I went to the living room to check that the bar was down on the balcony door. It wasn't. I tried to go back to bed. But I worried about the safety of my documents and other belongings.

I heard the beep again. The smoke detector? What if there was carbon monoxide. We could die in our sleep. But nothing in the apartment runs on gas, and we don't have a carbon monoxide detector to beep at us. But what if there was carbon monoxide somehow? We don't have a detector. The air, at this point, began to smell a little odorous. (And, yes, I know that carbon monoxide doesn't carry a scent, but I'm in crazy land right now.)

Why was the smoke detector beeping? Were the batteries running low? When was the last time we'd checked to see if it was working properly? Had we ever checked? What if there was a fire somewhere in the apartment building? What if it was on the other side of the building? I then thought about how we didn't have renter's insurance. None of this stuff is covered. And then I thought about key records and papers. They need to be handy to grab them and run out in case of a fire. But they need to be locked away in a safe in case of a burglar.

But a safe doesn't do any good if it isn't bolted into the floor or some other sturdy structure. I then wondered about bolting one to the floor in my closet. Would the floor hold? Or would the intruder simply be able to rip it from the plywood? Perhaps I needed a thick board that ran the length of the closet. Would bolting it to that help?

But back to the fire concern, I needed to be able to quickly open the safe and pull those files out. Oh, and then there are my pictures from childhood in the box just above. Should I take it and drop it off the balcony in an attempt to save them? Would that hamper the firefighters? Well, maybe it wouldn't if the fire was on the other side of the building.

Then I pictured my roomie and I trying to escape from the balcony. We are not as limber as Rick, who so nimbly showed how vulnerable we were to an intruder. Was I being petty and selfish to try to save my stuff? It is just stuff after all — but what about my laptop and my journals filled with my thoughts and story ideas?

Realizing this line of thought was silly and not conducive to sleep, I tried once again to push away all of these thoughts and sleep. The beep again. I'm sure at this point it's the smoke detector. About ever 10 minutes. Probably low on batteries. Don't want to disturb my roomie by checking it now. Must remember to mention it to her. And I readjusted the covers and went to sleep.

This morning, I didn't notice the beeping.