Amy Elkins Blog

Waking to smoke

Last night I fell asleep watching an old episode of Lost.. Season 2, an episode called Fire + Water. In the episode the character Charlie starts a fire near the camp as a diversion, and while the rest of the camp puts the fire out he steals the baby and runs to the ocean, determined that he needed to have it baptized.

It was pretty late when I dozed off, perhaps close to 1am. I was out cold. I was having strange dreams. I woke to the strong smell of smoke and burning plastic. Confused as to if I were dreaming or not, it took me a moment to figure out what was occurring. I jumped up and checked around the apartment.. nothing. I walked back towards my bedroom and that's when I saw the glow behind my bedroom curtain. I opened it to see the two large plastic trashcans blazing on fire, flames over 8' tall. After much adrenaline had died down and the firemen had come and contained what could have very well burned my entire apartment building to the ground.. I managed to fall back asleep.

Upon waking and exiting for a day of work I see a puddle of yellow plastic melted and embedded into the cement, only feet away from a wall between my head on a pillow and the trash cans ablazing. Such a strange coincidence to fall asleep to the themes of fire and water and wake to them as well. I feel pretty lucky that I woke up to the smell of smoke.... and even more lucky that it was contained before it spread to the building. I still feel like I'm dreaming..