Au secours!

I nearly died the other day. No, it's true – I could so easily have perished in the adventure that I'm about to recount. But I didn't die, thankfully, and I'm still here to tell the tale.

I had gone to bed early on Sunday evening (as usual), but was then rudely woken at about 12:30 a.m. by some seemingly angry shouting in the corridor. I thought it was just the usual drunken revelry (we do get some riff-raff in this apartment building, unfortunately), but then I became concerned when the shouts starting getting more and more urgent and then, to my utter surprise, someone started up what I thought was a motorbike in the corridor right outside my apartment door. I wasn't thinking clearly (because I'd gone to bed drunk) and thought that there must be some kind of gang warfare going on. I imagined that someone had brought a motorbike up in the lift and was now trying to intimidate someone else by aggressively revving it outside their apartment (my apartment, it seemed). What in hell was going on? Then I heard wood splintering violently and realized that someone was taking an axe to one of the doors. I was terrified, assuming that whatever was happening, I would be the next victim. I was frightened even to look through the peep-hole in my door, lest I should see something I didn't want to see. Then, to my horror, someone started hammering on my door. Even though I knew I should call the police, I couldn't think straight and was just running round my flat, naked, wondering what next I should do.

The hammering on my door stopped, and it was at that point when I heard the familiar crackle of two-way radios. It gradually dawned on me that something official was going on outside and so gingerly, I opened my door. I was confronted by a very handsome young fireman who informed me that there was a fire in the flat next door, number 5. He explained that the 'motorbike' was a generator brought in to try to clear the air (I then realized that there was black smoke everywhere, including in my apartment). Checking that I was okay, he advised me to leave my windows open, and carried on along the corridor. I went back to bed, and to sleep, but could barely descend into slumber because of the noise of continued shouting and crashing and of course, the prolonged thumping of the generator. When I arose just a couple of hours later, I was surprised (although not entirely un-amused) to find that my hands and face were blackened with the pernicious smoke!

I don't know how the fire started next door. I don't even know who lives there – I never see them, or hear them. The nice girls who lived there before moved out some time ago (without telling me) and I thought for a time that the flat was empty. But I met the girls one day and they said that someone had moved in the day after they had left, so there must be someone there. I saw a pair of jeans on the balcony one day, which were gone the next day, so I presumed there must be someone in residence.

When I was thinking about this incident the next day, I realized how lucky I'd been really. If nobody had called the fire brigade (and I presume it was my silent and mysterious neighbours who did), the fire could have spread to my apartment and the thick smoke could have simply killed me in my sleep. How strange is that? I might have died without even knowing what was coming! Just another example of how lucky I continue to be, eh? Great news!