inferno

There was a siren. I woke. Groggily I contemplated whether I could be arsed to get up and see if there was a real fire. A few seconds passed as the whine continued.

Then, the sound of running footsteps in the corridor filled me with urgency. I rose. I remembered where my clothes were. I pulled on my jeans and grabbed my t-shirt and left the room.

I looked around this strange place I had never seen before, thinking how annoying and typical it was that there maybe was a fire just when I had no idea where I even was, or how to get out of there.

I was in a corridor outside the doorway of the room I had been sleeping in. There was an open window on the other side of the corridor. It looked out upon a shaft that ran down the whole of the centre of the building, to provide light to the inner parts. Through opposing windows I could see into some corridors on the other side of this space. Nothing was happening. Noone was around. But I could hear some scuffling and footsteps out of sight.

I was overcome with the need to pee. Confused and unsure of what to do, I pragmatically decided to defer any decisions until I had had a pee. I wondered where the toilet was. I turned and found that I was quite close to the end of the corridor. There was a door - the ladies toilet. The gents had to be nearby. And it was.

Relieved, I stumbled back into the corridor. A guy was there. He said to me "What do you think is going on?". I mumbled some response designed to communicate that not only did I not know what was going on, but that I was wondering where the hell I was, or if I was dreaming. The guy went to pee.

I found the doorway to the bedroom again. Then the siren stopped. All was quiet. The weight of confusion and inaction was lifted from my shoulders. Happy, I went back to bed and fell asleep immediately.

This really happened in all its aspects. Although it still feels a lot like it was a dream I had a chat with the other guys in the dorm room this morning and confirmed I hadn't been dreaming. The strange thing was that I had been staying in the hostel for 3 days. But when I was awoken by the alarm, some things I knew without thinking - like where my clothes were. But I had no idea where I was. Nor who anyone else was (the guy I spoke to in the night was Adam who is in the same dorm room, but I didn't recognise him properly at the time).

I guess different parts of the brain wake up at different speeds. I wonder if the my memory woke up at all last night, or whether it was blissfully unaware.

In case you were wondering if there was a significance to the theme that people seemed to need a pee; no significance, sorry. This was just down to alcohol consumption earlier that night :)