THE MYSTERY (+ Polyphonic Prose)

The smoke detector, in the hallway downstairs, just kept beeping without any smoke in the air.

Let me mention some other ways it gets our attention. It makes a chirping sound, but only when my wife’s not around. It mostly makes a kind of mechanical noise, like the sound you hear from wind-up toys.

With some special technique, it always seems to know, whenever we’ve just drifted off to sleep.

It blasts, in the middle of the night, with added annoying and bright flashing lights.

Even after that great whack, it still didn’t quit. Once off the wall, I didn’t know how to deactivate it.

You can imagine how this all can frustrate. The batteries had expired in 1998.