Asteroids, Intruders and CO2 Poisoning

I must precede any explanation of Monday’s events with the fact that my greatest fear has always been an intruder taking me out of my bed in the middle of the night. Well, that and being witness to a life-destroying asteroid hitting the earth. As a child I couldn’t go outside at night, and when my father, never one to placate, would force me outside at the ungodly hour of 7pm for a family barbecue or whatever, I would wear an eye mask until I realized I couldn’t see incoming intruders with it on. It was quite the conundrum. I even worked out a way to hide myself from intruders and shield myself from the glare of incoming space jettison simultaneously: since then I always push my bed in whatever room I occupy to the wall and nestle into the space between the wall and the bed, covering myself completely with blankets.

By the time I was in my early 20s, I’d mostly gotten over my asteroid fear out of necessity, as nothing good ever seems to happen until after dark, and I’d tried very hard to get my fear of intruders under control after several run-ins with the Prince William County police (I developed a penchant for calling them almost every windy evening between the ages of 11 and 18, so they will probably never take a call from someone named Khaleelah seriously again. Sorry.). Unfortunately, several years ago, HBL did something to irreversibly set off my fear of intruders again, and, combined with Monday’s event, it will now probably never go away.

He’d gone out for a gentleman’s night downtown and, unaccustomed to sleeping without someone to act as a buffer between myself and potential womannappers, I decided the best option would be to bring some mace to bed with me in case someone managed his/her way into our apartment building and selected to enter our apartment from the 60+ other options. At some ridiculous hour in the morning, my Southerner, perhaps not seeing that I was in the bed since I was in my little crevice, tried to climb in and sleep off his buzz. Unaware of who was clawing at the covers and pulling at the sheets, I arose from the crack between the bed and the wall screaming, fumbling for the mace, while he promptly fell off the bed, covering his face from my flailing hands. While I tried to uncap the mace unsuccessfully, he recovered himself and swiped it out of my hand.

“Khaleelah,” he slurred in his adorable Southern accent, “of all the things in this apartment an intruder would take, I doubt it would be a 200 pound woman. You’d be difficult to get out of here screaming like that, even if you were smaller.”

Needless to say, this event did not go a long way in curing my fear of intruders, nor in warming me to Southern accents.

In my current house, the only place to put the bed against the wall is right under the skylight. Every night for the past year I’ve cracked the skylight open, as I also have a fear of suffocation in small spaces by CO2 poisoning, and slept the uneasy sleep of someone who cannot have mace, guns, machetes or similar under her pillow because they’re apparently considered “dangerous weapons” in this country.

Monday night, I had just drifted off to sleep when there was a huge CRASH on my bed. In my sleepy stupor, I just knew an asteroid had fallen through my skylight…except that it started to approach my face, very, very quickly. Screaming my head off, I grabbed for my mobile, but my mind would only think “911! 911!” as my fingers were basically programmed to dial these three numbers at night for 7 long years. So, I punched the approaching spector with my phone. There was then a hideous hissing and a bloodcurdling mewl louder than my screams.

It was a freaking cat.

Still screaming my head off, I picked up the wailing cat and tried to throw it out the window, forgetting it was a half-open skylight. The cat bounced off the glass and back on the bed, but with the alacrity of a half-asleep woman attacked by harmless beings twice in the span of five years, I picked it up again, shoving it out of the crack in the skylight like you might stick mail through a slot. At this point, my neighbors downstairs started banging on my front door, asking if I was okay. When I finally composed myself enough to go answer the door and explain what happened, their looks of concern quickly melted away to mirth, which I still do not understand. After getting rid of my neighbors, who now think I am insane, I called HBL (even though he is 3000 miles and about 60 timezones away) and made him watch me sleep via FaceTime for six hours. I heard him laughing for about three of these.

I cannot wait until I move. I sure hope there are screens, shutters and curtains on the windows in my room.

Disclaimer: in the next few months I’ll be publishing “personal essays” such as this one about past experiences here on the blog as an excuse to give me something to write about. Obviously names and certain details may have been changed for your reading pleasure/individuals’ personal safety. Keep checking back, you never know, the next one may just involve you!