I have to admit that I should probably be dealing with this in a better form. I can’t just pretend that it never happened. That is the easiest form of cooping, but that is the cowardly way to escape. Because, after all, if you don’t even admit that it occurred, how can it possible worry you? That form of thinking only gets me through part of the day, anyway. It doesn’t help in the least when I wake up in the middle of the night, in the same room, at the same time. Flashbacks of that night just creep back into my head and I can’t go back to bed. Or, if by some miracle I do end up falling back to sleep, I have dreams where everyone is after me and I wake up every 5 minutes.
It’s just not right. It’s just not right when you don’t feel safe in your own home. It’s a sort of violation, feeling hostage in your own fucking home turf. The audacity of it all is appalling. An intruder telling you what to do, or in this case, what not to do in your own bedroom—what nerve. You are totally helpless because things like that don’t happen here. Events like this aren’t even urban legends. They haven’t happened to your friend’s friend’s friend’s friend. You are totally alone here.
The sequence of events blurs in my head and now I am beginning to question the order of things. The mind is such a powerful tool that you don’t know if something actually happened or if you dreamt it; You don’t know if you actually said something or if you just thought it in your head. Uncertainty plagues you until you start doubting your every memory.
There is nothing worse than being woken up in that fashion. At 5 am, right when you are in the middle of REM, right when your guard is down. I never expected anything to happen to me. I live on The Rock--in the middle of nowhere. And besides, my house is like the Bastille--light sensors around the perimeter, 3 locks on each door and bars on every window. So when I am shaken awake at dawn, the last person I imagine to be looming over me is an intruder. I figured I left the light on in the hall and my dad is coming down to reprimand me.
But it isn’t my dad. It’s not anyone I know.
The man standing over my bed has a flashlight. In the darkness, I can only make out a silhouette.
"Shut up. Shut up. Don’t say anything. Turn over."
"Wh--? What’s going on?"
I jab the sleeping body next to me. I have no idea what is occurring—the only thing I know is that I have to wake up the person next to me, my sister. At that moment I don't even question anything. I just sense danger and I want to do whatever I can to avoid it getting worse.
I can’t see what kind of weapon the intruder has. He could have a gun. I don’t want to provoke him. I figure he wants to take the stereo, my money, the laptop on top of the desk. I cover my face with that stuffed Penguin my boyfriend gave me. How did this guy get in here?
"How did you get in here?" My sister asks, almost as if reading my mind.
"I--Shut up. Shut up. Turn over."
My sister is sitting up in the bed, cross-legged. The man tells her to turn over, she figures he doesn’t want us to see him take the stereo, so she covers her face with a pillow.
"No, turn over."
"What?" She asks him, lowering the pillow to face him.
"Don’t look at me!"
"Oh, sorry."
"Turn over."
"But I’m not even looking at you!"
"Shut up!"
My sister quiets down and he grabs her breast.
"Oh hell no!" She screams at him, realizing that this man has no intention of taking any electronic equipment.
"Shut up! Shut up! Do you want to live?" He asks her, poking her gently with a knife.
"What? No! I’m not going anywhere!"
I elbow her in the ribs. I tell her to just quiet down.
"Not do you want to leave, do you want to live."
"Oh. Yes."
"So shut up."
[Silence from both of us]
"Show me your pussy."
"What?! Are you crazy?! Why are you doing this? Don’t hurt us!"
"Shut up! Shh!" He turns and walks over to my side of the bed. "So then, you. You turn over."
"Ohmygod, don't hurt me!"
"Don't you touch her!" My sister screams, getting up and putting her arms out as if to protect me.
"Shut up! Shut up!" The intruder hisses at us.
My sister had been slowly rising her voice throughout the whole ordeal. By this time she was practically yelling. I start thinking, the guy cannot possibly be taller than me, he is not that built, if worst comes to worst, I can take him. It'll only take one well-placed kick to send this guy tumbling to the floor. Those kickboxing classes might come in handy.
The man walks over to the door to see if anyone is coming down the stairs and then enters the room again. My sister gets up on her knees.
"YOU DON’T HAVE TO DO THIS!" She bellows out at the top of her lungs. The intruder's eyes get huge—saucer-like—and he bolts out the door.
"Get into the bathroom, lock yourself in, and scream for Dad," she tells me as we both run out of the room.
"Daddy!" I can hear my sister yell out. "There’s a man in the house!"
I echo her in the bathroom and when I open the door again, .05 seconds later, my dad is already down the stairs.
I get out into the living room and it was then that I realized how he got into the house. He had taken the bars off of one of the windows. What the fuck. Who the hell takes the time to take bars off a window? The door was also open, and it was through there that he had bolted.
Okay, there was a TV on the floor in the living. A big-screen on the shelf. A DVD player. A PlayStation 2. The big stereo. He didn’t take a single thing. No, he went straight to my room. His intentions were pretty clear. He went in there to rape someone, except he was thrown off when he found two people on the bed instead of one.
But why go through the trouble of waking me?
There are so many things that don’t make sense. I mean, he could have jumped on top of either one of us, and we wouldn’t have noticed what was going on until it was too late. He knew exactly how to break in, how to make sure he had an escape path, but when he actually got into the room, he was clumsy, totally out of control.
But he seemed to know so much about my house. He had been lurking around that last week. We thought that he just wanted to pawn some stuff, we didn't know that he was some freaky psycho rapist. He went through all of the trouble of taking out the bars, of finding the keys to open all of the locks on the back door. But why?
His plan was foiled. The only thing that gives me the creeps is that if he had broken in two days prior, he would have found my sister alone on that bed. I would have still been in Peru. If he had done this two days later, he would have found me alone. My sister would've been in Japan.
Timing was perfect.
The circumstances were right, but thankfully in our favor.
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