The Intruder
By: Peggy Willms
(4 min read)
There is nothing scarier than someone watching you, and you have absolutely no idea. Worse yet, when they are creeping around your house, and when you find them, the decision to kill is imminent. Someone is NOT coming out alive.
A home invasion during broad daylight isn’t as common as the intruder who tip-toes in the middle of the night. But somehow, it doesn’t make it any easier, especially when they are fast.
I sat working on my laptop early yesterday morning. My boyfriend, who woke up a few hours later, came out of the bedroom with his eyes bugging out.
“Did you hear me last night?” He asked.
I replied quickly with a no. It isn’t an uncommon question because just as I like to rise with the sun, he likes to stay up late, howling at the moon and watching horror flicks. Not this Chica! I figured he was attempting to tell me the movie was full of unexpected sound effects, and he was battling with the volume hoping not to wake me.
“I tried to be quiet, but we had an intruder last night.”
This girl is no stranger to intruders, being stalked, or having my car burned, BUT I don’t usually sleep through it.
He is a painter NOT a pointer. He tends to paint and paint when he is telling a story instead of being a pointer and getting straight “to the point.” He can go on and on, then ping, and then he might circle back around, or he might not. Who knows. The painting can take five minutes or twenty. This time my patience was along for the ride because the look on his face said it all. Whatever he had experienced scared the shit out of him.
My patience dried up. “WHAT happened?” I demanded.
He ignored me (shock) and went on to explain that at one point in time, he was lurking in the bedroom with his light specs tip-toeing like a graceful feline. (GRACEFUL, seriously?!) For those of you who don’t know what lighted specs are—they are cool reading glasses with mini flashlights on the side. I don’t use them, of course!
I need to share the layout. We are staying in a hotel. It is 500 feet by 500 feet, and we are on the fourth floor. We have been staying here for five months. Luckily, it is a suite, so we can get some privacy if needed. He explained that as he came into the bedroom to use the bathroom (wearing his sexy light specs, mind you), he saw a shadow.
He and the intruder froze in their tracks, staring each other down. He didn’t know whether to look for a weapon, scream or run. Remember, I am three feet away, sound asleep. Don’t let me in on it or anything!!!
He was able to get back into the main living room and grab his shoe. YES, a shoe. Oh my God. Really?!
By the time he came back into the bedroom, the intruder was gone. Nowhere in sight. So he got down on all fours and circled around the bed, seeing if he could find him. He had escaped. But where did he go?
By now, this painting crap had me about ready to lurch at his jugular. “What do you mean ESCAPED?”
He followed with, “But then I found him!”
Just as he was ready to give up, the shadow darted by him again. With the shoe still in hand, he smashed the hell out of a 3” cockroach.
A COCKROACH. All of this content for a flipping bug hunt? Grrr
I thought, you just painted this damn long picture about a BUG when you are acting like it was the most horrific experience you have ever had, and we are lucky to be alive!
He said, “Listen, it was serious, I had to be a step ahead of him after being ten steps behind him.”
I thought, WTH…first, you are NOT as stealth-like as you think. [He is not some 5’2” jockey here. He is a solid 6’2”.], and second, I need to push him out of this fourth-floor window. I cannot get back all of the minutes I have just wasted listening to this
To his defense, you have to understand what I am dealing with here. He hates anything that has more than four legs. I have seen him use an entire can of bug spray on a spider when that sucker had already been dead for 15 minutes. He has a Spidey sense for bugs; he can see and find them anywhere. He has attacked a black piece of fuzz in a single bound. Next to Entomophobia (extreme fear and anxiety of bugs) in the Websters is his headshot.
As the story comes to a close, and I have calmed down from my urge to beat him with his own shoe, he keeps right on going.
“Well, usually, they only come out in the still of the night, but I killed another one yesterday morning at 10:30 AM.” I can’t even at this point.
We live in Florida, and once in a while, a few guests come inside. We hadn’t seen one for months, but it is likely that with all the rain we have had, they crawled in through the drain pipes or air conditioning unit.
Because it is in the best interest of both of our lives, I leave the room, thanking him for mighty protection from such assailants.
In my recollection of these life-threatening events, I am most surprised I didn’t hear all the commotion of his efforts to protect my life. I sleep with an eye mask and white-noise earbuds, and if I had woken up and had seen him crawling around in the middle of the night with lights on his damn head, someone would have died, and it would NOT have been me OR the cockroach!
