It’s 4AM, and like all non-vampires at this hour, you are sleeping soundly in your bed. Then your door alarm chimes, indicating that one of the eight doors into your house has been opened. And you sit upright in bed because of Bed Intruder. And as you’re getting out of bed to investigate, the chime sounds again. And again as you’re on the stairs. And again as you reach the first floor. As if all your doors are being opened simultaneously, or one door is being opened and closed repeatedly. And if this is one of your kids, you’re going to roast them.

And the alarm keeps sounding periodically as you pass through your house, confirming one by one that each of the first floor doors are still closed and locked. What the Hell? Could it be the doors to the second floor patios?

As you pause to consider, you hear running water. And as weird as this alarm thing is, the idea that there is water running somewhere is absolutely horrifying. And as you move toward the sound, there’s an overwhelming smell of beer. And then you find yourself standing in a river of the stuff. And you see the tap to your kegerator is fully open, and it is vomiting beer all over your pantry floor.

And there, watching the growing mess from his perch on the washing machine, is your daughter’s cat Cromwell.

And you race to shut off the tap. And you will learn later that he was crawling on the secondary refrigerator and knocked over a shoebox full of odds and ends, which landed on the tap and let loose the beer tsunami. And you will later secure the tap with a freaking bungee cord to ensure that this never happens again. But for the moment, you’re mystified.

And you throw some clean beach towels onto the floor to soak up a small fraction of the mess. And you haven’t yet figured out how this happened, but you know that this is one of the worst ways you can imagine to have to wake up short of a zombie apocalypse.

And then the alarm chime, which used to be periodic, now begins to ring constantly. And Jesus! Why is this happening? And then you remember that the alarm control board is located in the basement . . . right below your keg.

And you race down the stairs to the basement to the sound of a beer rainfall. And everything in your basement – your insulation, your boiler, your kids’ trunks from summer camp – EVERYTHING is absolutely drenched in Blood & Honey. And as it rain beer on you, you walk to the alarm control panel and see that it is also wet with beer, and it’s likely experiencing some kind of short. Or something. What are you, an electrician? You went to law school precisely so you could remain ignorant of these sorts of things.

And now the kids are awake, because the Goddamn alarm won’t quit. And they’re crying, because this sucks. And you don’t have any idea how to make it stop, so you go back upstairs and find the three shrieking panels and pull them off the wall. And they stop. And your wife tries to restore order and get the kids back in bed. And you return to the basement to try to make sure there’s not some kind of fire about to start. But really, how would you know anyway? And then you do a half-assed job of cleaning up the floor. Because mopping duties should really be reserved for daylight hours.

And as you turn the lights off and head back upstairs, you realize that it smells like your old fraternity house. And that this fact is somehow fitting. And as you climb back into bed, you can’t explain why you’re grinning.