I arrived home last night fresh from a horribly long and mentally exhausting day of work. I stopped off at the grocery store first, though, to get something with which to make a quick dinner and as much Soy Eggnog as one person could carry.
I walked through the door with food/drink in tow, ready to have a relaxing night to recover from the madness of the day. That is not what happened.
I closed the door behind me and locked it, turned on the living room light, and then…the doorbell rang. I was not expecting anyone to visit, and I knew that any of my friends would have told me that they were going to stop by instead of showing up unannounced. For those reasons, I ignored it. I assumed it was just someone actually wanting the people in the first floor or second floor apartment, but since none of the bells downstairs are labeled, people tend to press the wrong one from time to time.
I went about unpacking the groceries I had just purchased, but the doorbell kept ringing. After about five minutes I began to get annoyed. I obviously wasn’t answering, but they were refusing to leave.
And that’s when the overactive imagination kicked in.
I suddenly realized that this person probably WAS trying to get my attention and not someone else’s in the building. And the reason it started ringing the moment I walked in my door was probably because they had followed me home. I’ve been followed home before in my past. I’ve been mugged before in my past. These sort of things do happen and are completely within the realm of possibilities.
I started freaking out.
My first instinct was to turn the living room lights off to give the “not home” appearance. But if this person had followed me home, then that wasn’t going to work. And after they had been standing outside of my place with my living room light on all this time, if it suddenly went off, that would be even more confirmation that I was home.
I also didn’t want to stay in the kitchen/living room area of the apartment, because depending on if they were moving around out there eyeing the house, they might catch glimpse of me moving around through the window.
I made a B-line to the bedroom, closed the door, and sat there in the dark.
After a few more rings, it stopped for about five minutes, and assuming the ordeal was over and the mysterious stalker downstairs had given up and left, I decided to emerge from the dark sanctuary of the bedroom.
But as I opened the bedroom door, it rang again.
And that sort of pattern kept happening. Every time the ringing would stop long enough to make me think it was over, it would suddenly start up again.
By this time, about an hour had passed.
I started to wonder what the possibility of it actually being someone I knew could be. Even though I knew that if it was someone I knew, they would let me know in advance that they would be coming over, and even if they did make an impromptu appearance, they wouldn’t just stand there in the cold ringing the bell all night. They would eventually call me and let me know they were downstairs trying to get in.
So maybe it was the landlord? No, he has a key. It’s definitely not him.
It’s someone trying to kill me. It’s the only logical explanation.
After settling on that conclusion, I decided that I needed some self-defense in case this killer found a way into the building and into my apartment. So, I went over to the bedroom door and opened it. Then, I got down on the floor and military crawled through the living room and into the kitchen. I slooooowly reached up, opened the drawer, and retrieved the biggest knife I own. Then I military crawled (much more carefully, mind you) back through the living room and into the bedroom again, where I huddled in the corner ready to attack. Miss Jackson took my cue and proceeded to hide under the bed.
For a hot second, I thought that maybe I should just suck it up and go downstairs and answer the door. But what was going to say at this point? “I’m sorry, I was on the toilet for the past hour, so I wasn’t able to answer the door.” There was no logical explanation as to why I had ignored the bell for an hour and then decided it was worthy of my attention.
It was this point where I realized I had my computer in the bedroom with me. So, I turned that on, booted up AIM and started freaking out to everyone on my buddy list. I also grabbed my phone and started trying to get in touch with everyone I knew who lived in the neighborhood to see if maybe they had decided to spend their evening on my doorstep and ring my doorbell all night. Didn’t get ahold of anyone, so I suddenly had the epiphany that maybe it was a friend who had locked themselves out of their apartment and therefore didn’t have their phone on them to call me to tell me they were downstairs trying to get in. They probably needed me to call their roommate or let them in out of the cold for a few hours until their roommates got home.
Yeah, couldn’t risk it though.
I was finally able to get ahold of Garrett via AIM. He was at the gym, and was trying to keep me calm while the stranger outside was trying to get in to kill me.
Two hours after the ordeal started (yes, that’s right, two hours now), Kane called me back which only let me know that it wasn’t him. He was still in the city at a show. By this point everyone I was talking to online was telling me I needed to call the police and have them drive by and find out what was going on. But I was even more scared of calling the police than I was of getting killed for some odd reason.
Soon thereafter, the intensity kicked up a notch.
Instead of just casual ringing every few seconds with some pausing between, the psycho downstairs decided that he meant business. He must have pressed down on the doorbell and not let go, because it started ringing on a continuous loop. As soon as the ring would fade out, it immediately rang again.
Ding-DonnnnnnngDing-DonnnnnnngDing-DonnnnnnngDing-DonnnnnnngDing-Donnnnnnng
At this point, I started to freak. the. shit. out.
Garrett was very brave and offered to come over and walk by and give me a description of the person via AIM in hopes that I could identify them as someone I knew.
During the period of time where he was in transit to my place, I just sat there in the corner of my bedroom, rocking back and forth, clutching the knife.
And then…
Something in my bathroom made a loud crashing noise.
FUCK! Obviously the person outside isn’t alone and his partner murderer was now trying to break in through the window in the bathroom. This was it. This was the point where my life was about to end. I was about to be snuffed out by the soon-to-be-famous Doorbell Bandit.
It was now THREE AND A HALF hours after this nightmare began, and Garrett asked me if the doorbell was still ringing. I told him it was and he replied with “Honey, there’s nobody down here.”
*pause*
Excuse me?
I was tempted to make him take a picture of my front door with his Sidekick and email it to me as proof, but I figured that was going a bit too far. So, I cautiously emerged from my hiding place thoroughly confused as to what was happening. Either the Doorbell Bandit has mastered the art of invisibility which is even more terrifying or a ghost had taken up residence in my home and was haunting me.
Either that, or the doorbell was just sticky and/or malfunctioning.
Ohhhhhhhhhh. Yeah, that…actually….makes…..sense.
I meekly went downstairs, opened the front door, gave Garrett a hug to thank him for being my superhero and then proceeded to punch the doorbell a few times to whip it back into shape.
I came back upstairs and all was silent once again. No more doorbell. But by this time I had gotten so used to hearing it that the silence was so much more jarring than the bell was.
I have never felt more embarrassed and stupid in recent history. I spent three and a half hours cowering in fear and hiding from….nothing.
To celebrate my escape from the Doorbell Bandit I opened a bottle of wine, drank directly from the bottle like the classy guy I am, and passed out asleep in bed.
Now, that was a good story!!!
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