Spider-webs

The fire alarm went off. I abandoned the bed barely awake, turned on the lights - it was dark outside - and began a search for trousers (the final selection was jogging bottoms, on backwards). Shoes, keycard, coat. I joined the crowds headed downstairs to the courtyard. We stood blinking and shivering, looking at no smoke pouring from the windows. It was four in the morning. Within ten minutes or so official-looking fire-brigade-type people were at the scene and went up to the room where the alarm had been tripped, the one next to mine. I was half worried and resentful, half asleep on my feet. It turned out that spider-webs had grown over the alarm's smoke detectors and set it off. I accepted this as an adequate and poetic explanation and returned to bed.

(Then it went off again forty minutes later. I'd rather this happened too often than not often enough, but I am very very sleepy today all the same.)