A Trial By Fire

I awoke. It was beyond a hangover. My head felt like gelatin, each nerve and ganglion compressed, screaming. There was something else through the fog and the shrieking smoke alarm. It wasn't fog. It WAS smoke; acrid, pungent, suffocating. Something felt hot against my face. I focused a little. It was fire! The mattress around me was aglow like an inhaled cigarette.
I gathered and leaped to the floor. My hand burned. Naked. Where was I... St. Louis? New York? Memphis? A hotel. The hotel. O.K.

I ran to the bathroom to find, in the mirror, my face and body blackened by smoke and ash, turned on the exhaust fan, grabbed an ice bucket and began to fill it from the tub. No good. There must be an extinguisher in the hall as I donned the bedspread on the floor like a cape and scrambled out the door amidst a dark cloud of smoke - a blackened and terrifying apparition to the startled guests and employees in the hallway. The word was out: Fire.

I sprayed a CO2 extinguisher on the smoldering mattress and saw the outline of my body, like a crime scene chalk outline. Miraculously, I'd pissed the bed while passed out and it had produced a fire barrier around me, keeping me mostly from being burned.

Being an upscale hotel, I was whisked away to another suite as if nothing had happened.I knew better. It had happened twice before. The Burning Bed is an advanced alcoholic's signature and calling card. Surviving the disease is another matter.