PERSONAL

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Fire In The Hall?!

2 years ago760 words

I had quite an alarming experience last night that got me thinking about psychic phenomena!

My parents are away for two weeks - they'll be back next Sunday - and, whenever this is the case, I've been tasked with looking after the adjacent community hall building thing.

(This is probably why they keep discouraging me from moving out, since it's convienent for them to have me around to do this...)

There's usually not much to it other than unlocking and locking the door at appropriate times for the classes that come in (things that I'd actually attend, like yoga and art, if all the other people who went to them weren't at least my parents' age).

It's caused me stress in the past from worrying whether something might happen while it was under my watch, but I've done it enough times now that I wasn't too concerned about it this time.

For some reason, though, my step-dad decided this time that, before he left, he had to show me how to turn off the fire alarm should it come on. It's not new - it's been there for as long as we've been looking after the hall - and he's never felt the need to show me before, so why this time? He said it was just a precaution, and he's never known it to go off, and there's no reason why it would so don't worry about it, but it was best to know just in case. Fair enough.

No prizes for guessing where this is going.

It went off at about 1am last night, which was surreal. The alarm is EXTREMELY LOUD and sounds more 'serious' than a home fire alarm; like the kind of bright red siren that'd drive you to immediately evacuate a large building (though the hall isn't all that large).

Despite all my many anxiety issues, as soon as I realised what was even going on, I went straight into the hall to look for any fires.

I found none. I fiddled around with the alarm a bit (completely forgetting what my step-dad had told me), and figured out how to turn it off (which including such obvious things as pressing a button marked '2' five times and turning a key).

I also spoke to my parents on the phone about what it could possibly have been, since I checked every nook and cranny multiple times and couldn't see, hear, or smell any signs of any fire.

I had little hope of sleeping afterwards, of course, due to paranoia that either I'd missed something or it'd go off again. It didn't, but I must have only got around 3 hours of sleep all night, so I have doubts about my productivity today. Ugh.



Isn't that odd, though, that my step-dad told me how to turn off the fire alarm even though it hasn't gone off in years, only for it to happen a week later?

Is it all some part of some planned plot or scheme or crime?!?!

Or did he have some kind of psychic, clairvoyant sense of this? Is it all part of some life narrative that has been planned in advance??

Perhaps you find more personal satisfaction in dismissing things like this as quirks of comprehension because that way you don't feel a fool for falling for mere coincidences.

But I see such things of glimpses at the magic behind the universe, the many, many things we don't - or can't - understand.

Which at least gives this whole episode a nicer aftertaste than might be the case otherwise.



Also, it's worth noting how sharply alarming circumstances cut through the usual pall of anxiety and depression. I jumped to action for one thing, and called my parents without hesitation (not something I'd normally do for fear of disturbing), then while lying in bed afterwards, failing to sleep, I messaged a couple of friends I'd been meaning to contact all weekend but had failed to previously do so due to various flavours of hesitation or reluctance. I wrote this out fluidly too despite struggling a lot recently to finish writing any blog posts (I've got like a dozen I wanted to post but haven't finished).

It's like being alerted woke me up out of a long trance.

I suppose I've always thought I'd be absolutely useless in an emergency, compeletly unable to cope or be relied upon, that I'd need other, more put-together people to rescue me... But maybe those long-held assumptions aren't quite on the mark?

Interesting, anyway.

Also, I'm tired.