The slightly unnerving experience of having a complete stranger walk into my bedroom at 2.45am, while I was sound asleep, has emphasized the importance of one thing to me: Locks.
This actually happened to me last night. Not only did it put me off sleeping for the rest of the night, it also put me off the poor woman who walked into my room, thinking it was my flatmate’s bedroom. It was his girlfriend.
I don’t usually lock my bedroom door at night, because I live in a fairly safe area and I trust my flatmates. So it was quite an incomprehensible situation when I suddenly woke up after I heard what I think sounded like a knock on the door, turned over in bed and opened my eyes, and saw that light was flooding my bedroom from outside. No one ever opens my door, especially not in the middle of the night.
So I turned around and tried to get a look at the door, but I only caught a fleeting glimpse of a person leaving the room in a hurry, and a second later I heard the front door slam shut, leaving my door open and every light in the flat on.
Now’s probably also the time to mention that I was home alone. Gulp. I’ve often said that having an unexpected guest at the flat wouldn’t scare me, because both my flatmates are professional Thai kick boxing instructors. They’d whoop anyone’s arse. But there I was, all alone, asleep, and someone walked into my bedroom.
Finding myself suddenly wide awake and my brain working at 200 miles per hour to try to come up with a solution to the mystery that had just unfolded in real life right there in my room, I turned onto my stomach and lay there cradling my pillow for comfort, when all of a sudden, lo and behold, another surprise! A cat walked into my room.
Now this wasn’t just any cat. This was my favourite cat in all of New Zealand. He lives just down the road and is the friendliest cat I’ve ever met. He’s gorgeous, and loves people, and has followed me home once in the past. I had to shut the door on him then, which was heartbreaking. I love cats, and I love this cat particularly much.
So seeing this lovely, furry creature also make its way into my bedroom was almost more than I could handle in one night. What the hell was going on? At least seeing him made me act. I put on a pyjama top and made to pick up the cute kitty to put him back outside. He was purring before I’d even touched him.
It’s fair to say that what I did next was less than clever. But it was in the middle of the night, and my brain was utterly confused. What I did was walk to the locked front door, open it, crouch down, and put the cat down outside while looking to the right to look for people. Just as I turned my head left to look for people on the other side, I heard a voice.
At the far end of the walkway outside my front door stood a blond woman. She looked at me, and said apprehensively: ‘I’m sorry, I think I just walked into your room.’ All I could reply with was, ‘that was you?’ My fleeting vision of a person in my room had strongly suggested a male person to me, but once again it’s fair to say that I was barely awake when it happened.
She then proceeded to explain herself. She told me she’s one of my flatmates’ girlfriend, and asked me if he was at home. Funnily enough, he wasn’t, and I didn’t know where he was. A bit strange to show up at your boyfriend’s place uninvited at 2.45am, “break in” and walk into his flatmate’s room, and not even know that he’s not there, don’t you think?
She said she didn’t know that a female lived there as well, so she had thought that she’d walked into the wrong flat. Once she learned that her boyfriend does indeed share a flat with me, she was quick to pick up her bag and stroll into the flat again, without waiting for any kind of invitation. But I was gracious about it. After all, the mystery was solved. It hadn’t been a mad, raving rapist slash killer.
Once inside again, I told her to make herself at home, and then I went back to bed. I could hear the woman rummaging about in the other rooms, and when I thought she’d gone to bed, all the lights in the kitchen where still on. Stupid cow, I actually have to pay the bill, you know.
After lying there for a while thinking about what had just happened, I realised that I still hadn’t locked my bedroom door. Once I’d considered this woman’s weird entrance in the first place, at such an ungodly hour, I decided that she could possibly be a bit unstable after all, and might not appreciate the discovery that her boyfriend shares a flat with a woman. So I got up, tip-toed to my door, and locked it. If you try to stab me in my sleep, I’ll hear you coming, you crazy bitch.
However, I found it really difficult to go back to sleep. Firstly my mind was on red alert following the strange yet exciting events of the night, and secondly I was afraid of going back to sleep because I don’t fully trust people who sneak into other people’s homes late at night.
It took me more than two hours to calm down enough to drift off to Never Never Land, and when I did, it was a restless sleep. I’m pretty sure I heard my flatmate’s voice at some point as well, and if that’s right it means that he came home some time during the night. This morning he was gone again, however. And when I woke up, it was to find all the lights on (again), the woman sleeping in my flatmates’ room (with the door ajar), and a kitchen that looked like it had been nuked. Seriously, who cooked dinner in the middle of the night, and decided to leave traces of all the ingredients, and every pot and pan they used, dirty, on the bench and in the sink? I have a pretty good hunch…
So of course I proceeded to loudly make coffee (I have a very noisy espresso machine) and played music unneccesarily loudly in my room, to make sure that the woman would be awoken. It’s only fair, seeing how she not only robbed me of several hours of sleep last night, but also gave me a real fright.
From now on I’m sleeping with my door locked. You just can’t trust anyone these days.
