The sound that woke her was strange and foreign to her ears.  It sounded like popcorn popping in a microwave, distant and unclear, but loud enough to force her out of her dream.  She sat upright in the comfortable bed, the sheets hugging her body tightly, soaked with the sweat of a warm night and restless sleep.  The popping sound was still continuing, and she stepped out of the bed, slipping her bare feet into the pretty pink slippers borrowed from a dead woman, before shuffling over to the window adjacent to the door.  She pulled the thick curtains aside, peering out into the darkness of the back end of the hotel, trying to see what was causing all the noise.  The vague dim shapes of the few trees in the courtyard outside her room stared back at her emotionlessly, unmoving and silen...

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