This morning: I wake to a rhythmic double beep.
BEEP BEEP.
BEEP BEEP.
BEEP BEEP.
2:00 AM. The sound is coming from downstairs. The alarm. Shit. Downstairs I shamble. Undead. The house is a cold dark cavern. The control panel warning light is on, indicating that the phone is not working. I shut the whole thing off. I think. I pressed a bunch of buttons and the beeping stopped, anyway. Back upstairs I shamble, to dream of brains. What I don't hear: the alarm company has received an alert that our phone is down. They've called our cellphones, because that's what they do when the phone goes down, to make sure that we're ok and that burglars or al-Qaeda operatives or North Korean Special Forces have not cut the lines. My phone is on mute. Beth's is somewhere in the house, buried in her purse, muffled. I drift back off to sleep and a few hours or minutes pass and I'm dreaming of doorbells. Which...no. I sit up. The dog is barking hysterically. 2:15 AM. I stagger back downstairs. The dog barks at the door. I open it. There is a package. It's addressed to me. There are a pair of boots. They are encasing a pair of feet. The feet belong to a Carlsbad firefighter. "Is anyone injured?," he asks. "Huh?,"I answer. "We got a call, medical alert. Your alarm go off?" I look past him and there are three more firefighters. "Oh. The phone. Our phone. It went out. I guess the alarm company called you. I'm sorry. Man. Sorry." The rest of his team is already walking back to their truck. "No problem," the firefighter says. "It happens. Might've been a power surge." I feel stupid. "Sorry," I say again. We call the alarm company and they tell us that when the phones go down they call our cells to make sure that we're ok and that burglars or al-Qaeda operatives or North Korean Special Forces have not cut the lines. Which is funny because the first time I wrote that I was being sarcastic. Then I went back to bed, but not to sleep, because my mind was ablaze with 3:00 AM Thoughts. The alarm is down! We're wide open! A Second Korean War! The holidays! The holidays! I may or may not have gone back to sleep. I'm leaning towards "not", and I have this morning's photographic evidence to support my claim:
