Chapter 7

I'm a girl, and I live in a pretty big old house with 5 Navy guys. My room is by itself out in the detached garage. So one night I'm sleeping out there, and in my dream (I assume) I'm hearing this loud rattling noise. I slowly start waking up, but I feel pretty out of it. I open my eyes and look around, and the noise continues. The door is about 3 feet from the end of my bed, and the door knob is rattling like crazy, it almost sounds like someone is pounding on it, but I can't tell if it's someone knocking or someone just trying to open it.

At this point, I realize I'm really awake and this is not a dream. Even my lab who never wakes up during the night is up and staring at the door. I often used to forget to lock my door because we live in what seems like a pretty quiet neighborhood, but thankfully I'd begun dead-bolting it more regularly maybe like a week before. Probably due to something I read on reddit, I don't remember. I am terrified. I always hoped I'd be one of those people who responded better in a situation like this, but I was not. The door is still rattling, and I can see the motion light is on and shining through the window in my closet. All my blinds are closed. I am near tears, and I throw the blanket over my head and wait to die. I have literally nothing in my room that I could defend myself with except a flashlight, which I am holding on to tightly. I am paralyzed with fear and just sit there as silently as I can, curled up in the fetal position with my metal flashlight.

A minute later, the noise stops, and I finally am able to move. I have a weird closet with a window at the top and a big bench, so I crawl in there, climb up on the bench, and poke my head up. A few seconds after that, the motion light goes out. I'd missed whatever was going on.

I run back to my bed, and begin thinking logically. I live with 5 guys. They often have people over late at night after going out downtown. I look at my watch and it's 2:30. About the time they'd get home from bars closing. Maybe someone was very intoxicated and just being stupid... Right? So I text all my roommates, trying not to make a big deal of it and sound silly. "Hey guys, are you up? Do you have people over? Someone was just outside my door trying to get in. I assume someone must be drunk or something...ha. Kinda creepy!"

Less than 2 minutes after that, I hear the back door to the main house swing open, I hear whistling and banging, and my roommates are running around the back yard with baseball bats. Thankfully one of them is a light sleeper, and he woke up and got another guy up. I open the door, run inside with my dog, and don't go to sleep again that night. My roommates spent the next couple hours patrolling the house & watching out the windows. We never saw anyone, but they did find a pack of cigarettes lying in our backyard along with a bag of Hardees or something like that. More than likely it was just someone trying to rob us, and because there were 6 cars in the driveway, they decided to go for the garage where they probably assumed no one was and not the house where they'd probably get themselves killed. However, at the time, for all I knew, all my roommates had already been murdered and I was the last one to go. That's what I figured at the time anyway.