Monte

Last night I had an awful dream. It was most likely prompted by a conversation I had with a friend that night over dinner. He was teasing me about how unsafe downtown was, and he hoped he wouldn’t get mugged or killed on his way back to the car.

So of course, that night I have a nightmare that there’s a shootout on the streets of downtown. It all began when I was on my way out the front door of the building, and I heard an urgent whisper off to my right. I stop short of the door and look over to see a female police officer crouched behind a desk and motioning for me to come over. I hurry to her side and she quickly explains the situation: A group of armed men have taken control of the streets and are gunning people down. She points to the large window in front of us that overlooks Main Street. From the window I could see the flicker of gunfire on the first floor of the Neiman Marcus. I stepped back so terrified that I began to cry.

Then the dream switched scenes, and this time the gunmen were in the building, and I was frantically running up flights of stairs and dodging in and out of vacant apartments trying to escape.

It was at this point in the nightmare that I was awakened by an alarm and a woman’s voice on the loudspeaker in my apartment telling me to “Please exit the building.”

Was I still dreaming? Had the dream become reality? I jumped out of bed, and the fire alarm stopped. I walked over to the window and checked the streets.

No, I didn’t see any gunmen, and there were no flashing lights or sirens. Just a few drunk hobos.

I slipped on a pair of jogging shorts (which is funny seeing as though I don’t jog), and I stepped out my front door into the hall. A neighbor also poked his head out (he was fully dressed, unfortunately), and asked if it had been a false alarm. I walked barefoot into the main hallway and peered over the railing of the staircase to see only one couple and their dog walking down the stairs to the lobby. I called out and asked if it was a false alarm. They said they didn’t know.

So I went back to my place, got into bed, and called the front desk. “We’re not sure, sir. We have security over there right now checking it out.”

Today I found out what happened. A group of people had mistakenly gone down to the basement level and forgot to bring their key fob with them. Because they didn’t have the fob, they couldn’t get back on the elevator and were trapped in the basement (which is actually a parking garage). After an hour of sitting there waiting for a resident to open the garage door, they decided to pull the fire alarm.