Someone’s in my house!
That thought immediately hit her brain as she snapped awake in bed.
She’d been dreamlessly asleep. The good deep type of sleep that refreshes both body and mind.
Until The Sound made her eyes snap open.
She instantly knew something was wrong as she surveyed her bedroom.
The lights above her bed were on.
Huh?
She hadn’t dozed without flipping the lights off
My God! Someone’s in my room!
Her elevated heart rate started pounding faster, fueled by the adrenaline being released into her system.
She rolled over and reached for the nightstand on the right side of her bed.
She flung the top drawer open, realizing she should have moved slower. The sound of the drawer being pulled out may have been heard by her intruder.
Her fingers found the 357 Magnum where she left it loaded. Not in a gun safe where it technically should’ve been.
In an emergency, the 38 special would do her no damn good in a safe.
It made the best sense to keep it in the nightstand where she could easily reach it to defend herself in the middle of the night.
What time was it?
She looked to the clock atop the nightstand.
Midnight.
No, it wasn’t.
The green digital numbers on her alarm clock flashed 12:00…12:00…12:00.
That’s right.
There’d been a power failure.
Well, not a power failure. “A rolling blackout.”
Edison had warned by both text and email during the day that one might occur. And it did.
That’s what happened on extremely hot days in California now.
Too many people would run their air conditioning and there wasn’t enough electricity for that. Areas of the state then became deprived of power until temperatures and electrical need dropped.
Dumbass California. Can’t even keep the lights on during a pandemic.
She got out of bed with the gun in her hand and went to the wall by the door.
As she reached for the light switch she heard The Sound again.
Someone was definitely in her house!
She nearly yelled out “who’s there?” but that would’ve been stupid.
It would have alerted the intruder that he’d been heard. Even worse, it would have alerted him to exactly where she was in the house.
She needed to call 911 but noticed she hadn’t brought her phone into the bedroom for it’s nightly recharging.
With the power out that night, she hadn’t even thought about bringing it with her when she went to bed.
She must’ve left it out on the sofa where she’d been texting with her mom earlier.
Now she needed her phone to call 911 and it was all the way down the hall in the living room.
No. She didn’t have the luxury of calling 911.
An intruder had broken into her house.
An intruder was inside her house with her at this very moment.
Calling 911 would be pointless.
The call would not bring a cop here instantly. Especially if they were on another call.
Besides, she’d need to tell the dispatcher what was happening, which would let the intruder know where she was and that she was aware of his presence.
By the time an officer did arrive, the intruder would already have found her.
She’d be either dead, raped, kidnapped, or some combination of those dreadful outcomes.
But she had no intention to become a victim.
Never had been one and never would be.
That’s why she’d bought the eight-shot revolver in the first place.
She’d done so when Eric moved out.
He had plenty of guns and she knew he’d always protect her. Even at the risk of his own life and safety.
But when their relationship came to an end, Eric left and took his firearms with him.
Her brother Tommy, a deputy sheriff just like their dad had been, advised her to buy a gun. For her personal protection. She did.
Then she’d gone with Tommy to the range on several occasions. Not to learn how to handle and use the revolver safely.
They’d both grown up around guns so she already knew how to handle the weapon.
She went to the range to learn how to hit her target with deadly force if she ever needed to use her gun.
That didn’t prove to be much of an issue either.
From various distances she had no problem putting the bullets in the center circle — the ten-ring as it was known.
Aiming center mass will always stop them, Tommy had said.
Now she found herself in a situation where she was about to find out.
If the intruder in her home was some deranged rapist, he’d picked the wrong woman to assault. He’d made his worst and probably his last mistake by breaking into her house.
Before opening the bedroom door she turned off the light. Slowly she turned the knob, keeping the sound it made to a minimum.
With the same restrained pace, she pulled the bedroom door open with her left hand.
She held her gun ready to fire in her right hand should the intruder be outside the door, waiting for her.
She slipped her index finger against the trigger. This was a time for action.
No one was standing in the open doorway when it was opened.
That didn’t mean he wasn’t close.
She stepped into the hallway, her gun held ready.
She didn’t see any shapes or shadows to indicate a person was there at all.
Where was the intruder at?
She’d have to go through all of her rooms as she moved down the hall so he didn’t come up behind her and surprise her.
Was it a he? What if the intruder was a she?
There were a bunch of deranged women out there these days. Maybe it was a woman and not a man.
Could it be her meth-head house cleaner?
She’d found the woman by referral from a friend.
She’d been leery of using her when the woman showed up with a more complete set of cleaning supplies than teeth.
Yet she’d done a great job of cleaning the house. She never seemed high in any way. she’d come over. And she’d been uber polite.
She concluded the woman must’ve been a recovered meth head who desperately needed dental insurance.
Yes, it was a rationalization, but the woman did a great job and her rates really couldn’t be beat.
Despite lying to herself about her house cleaner in this matter, she’d been smart enough never to give her a key to the house.
But she’d given her the alarm code.
Why hadn’t the alarm gone off?
Because you didn’t set it, dumbass.
You couldn’t with all the power all out.
Oddly enough that realization eliminated the meth head house cleaner as the suspected intruder.
Breaking in at night while she was at home would’ve taken too much effort.
It would have been easier for her to clean the house and steal her valuables at that time.
Maybe it was a prisoner that had been given early release because of Covid.
While the governor had locked practically everything down in the state, he’d done the opposite with many who’d been locked up for their crimes.
He said it was to prevent an outbreak of Covid in the prisons. He also said that none who were let out were violent criminals.
But coming from a law enforcement family, she knew that just because a felon was in prison for a non-violent crime this time, it didn’t mean they didn’t have a non-violent history.
Maybe it was a recently released prisoner. Someone who stole a pizza this time but was also a rapist or murderer who’d gotten away with those crimes.
And if he’d been locked up for a long time, he could’ve singled her out because she lived alone.
Stalking her while she never noticed.
Watching her at the grocery store, when she picked up her order at Starbucks, or maybe even when she was at yoga.
She needed to start paying closer attention to the people she came across in the day.
Stop! What you do in the future doesn’t matter right now.
There was someone here in her house at that very moment.
And they were staying very quiet and very hidden.
The door was ajar to the bedroom across the hall that doubled as her office and an occasional guest room.
Was he in there?
With her foot, she pushed the door open. Again slowly, keeping the sound the door made as low as possible.
She held the gun ready as she stepped inside.
The room was dark except for another alarm clock blinking 12:00…12:00…12:00.
She considered flipping on the light. But if the intruder wasn’t in this room, she’d give away her location.
There were two great places to hide in this room. Inside the closet and beneath the bed.
She’d have to get down on all fours to check under the bed. That would put her in an extremely vulnerable position.
She’d check the closet first.
Again she kept the pistol in her right hand and reached for the doorknob of the closet with her left.
The moment she felt the cool metal of the knob under her fingers she heard The Sound.
The Sound was closer this time.
It had come from within the room.
It had come from behind her!
She whirled around in the dark, putting both hands on the grip of the 357.
The green light of a gun’s laser sight pointed directly at her.
She needed to act or she’d be shot!
BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! CLICK! CLICK!
She’d fired every one of the eight bullets out of the revolver.
The intruder never got a shot off.
The laser light on his gun was no longer pointed at her.
She held her breath and listened.
Nothing.
No gasping breathes. No moans of pain. No movements of any kind.
The only sound she heard was the thumping of her rapid pulse inside her ears.
She’d aimed at what she thought was center mass of her intruder.
She’d unloaded every bullet from the 38 special into that darkened target area.
It seemed to have completely taken the intruder out.
Was he dead? Did I kill him?
This new thought brought a new kind of fear into her.
She had no problem protecting herself, but the idea that she was a killer…even as she’d had the intruder pointed a gun at her… she wasn’t sure she could handle that.
You don’t know he’s dead.
Still pointing the now empty gun where she believed her fallen intruder lay, reached to the wall on the left and for the light switch.
She stopped her hand from flipping the switch up.
She wasn’t was ready for this.
When the lights came up she’d be seeing something she’d never be able to get out of her mind again.
There would be a dead man lying in a growing pool of blood on the floor.
A dead man she’d put probably all eight bullets into.
A dead man she’d killed.
No.
Not a man.
An intruder.
An intruder who’d broken into her house.
An attacker who’d pointed a gun at her.
If she hadn’t been armed…if she hadn’t fired first….she would be dead right now.
You have to know. You have to see for yourself.
She flipped on the lights.
What she saw she didn’t expect.
It wasn’t a him.
It wasn’t a her.
It wasn’t even a person.
It was her HP printer.
When the power had returned, the printer had restarted, and as it always did when there was a power outage, it had run its own diagnostics.
That’s what The Sounds she’d heard had been.
She felt like a complete dumbass.
She’d just blown her printer to bits.
And laser sights for guns aren’t green. They’re red.
She shook her head and laughed aloud at her own stupidity.
Then she allowed herself to finally enjoy relief.
It hadn’t been an intruder. No one had broken into her home.
It hadn’t been a rapist or a bloodthirsty serial killer. It had been a printer.
It hadn’t been a living human being. It had been a manufactured piece of electronics.
And even in near-complete darkness, she remained a damn good shot.
Had her shots not been focused, she’d probably be going to Costco to replace the computer on the desk near the location her printer once occupied before its demise.
That would’ve been a real shame.
Replacing an HP Printer wouldn’t be too expensive. Replacing a desktop Mac, that would’ve cost real money.