Things that go “bump” in the night.

The house my lover bought was once the rectory belonging to the church that sits beside it. They share a large double lot, about 5 acres, and it’s on a busy two lane blacktop road. 

 

It’s dark there at night, and even though it’s close to a small town, I can’t see my hands in front of my face. There are 2 giant floodlights in the parking lot between the church and the house, the kind my dad always called a mercury light.

 

It was about 3 a.m. when I felt Jon unwrap himself from around me and silently get out of bed. 

 

I thought he was going pee in the master bath that’s in the bedroom, just six steps away. 

 

Instead, I glanced over to see him looking out the window, peeking between the slots of the window blind.

 

The hair on my arms stood straight at attention and then I heard it…someone was trying to engage the front door lock.

 

Absolute panic gripped me. 

 

He took my wrist and put his fingers to his lips as if he was going to whisper and very sternly said, “Get in the bathroom and lock the door and DO NOT come out until I tell you to. And then he handed me his phone and said ” Now! “

 

I knew he was going for the gun that he carries in a holder down the back of his jeans. He always has it, and I am used to it now and don’t flinch when I see him lay it down on the pants he takes off at night.

 

 Blindly, I followed his orders. 

 

I grabbed his t shirt and scrambled to the bathróom. I yanked the night light out of the outlet and hid in the shower and I could hear him going to the front door in the living room. I don’t know why the thought that he may still be naked popped into my mind, other than the fact I knew there was no time for him to put pants on.

 

I heard muffled yelling and my lover’s voice rising and falling, but I could not make out his words. I heard what I thought to be an angry, urgent sound to his voice.

 

I have no idea how loud he really was, because the sound of my own heart pounding was drowning out most everything else.

 

The air conditioner kicked off and I heard him say “Wrong fuckin house!!” very angrily.

 

I was absolutely petrified. I wondered for a brief second if I could fit out the bathroom window. Every instinct was telling me to go out the window before anyone breached the front door to hurt him and then me.

 

But I remembered what he told me, and I stayed crouched on the shower floor. I knew he would shoot someone that tried to get in and I was literally waiting for a gunshot when I heard him say “Open the door Baby” and I did.

 

Seeing the panicked look on my face, he gently explained that it was a drunk man from the manufactured housing park that butts up to the rectory property from behind the big, grassy lot. 

 

I was so shaken that I couldn’t fall back to sleep right away, but Jon pulled my backside into his belly and embraced me tightly and kissed the back of my neck and shoulders until he felt my body relax against his. 

 

It occured to me before I drifted off to sleep snuggled in his arms that when I was more afraid than I’d ever been, I took directions from him. When my flight or fight instinct kicked in, I trusted him enough to do what he told me to do and I silenced my own voice, the one telling me to GTFO. 

 

Something made him wake up and sense danger before the knob even turned, and when he was standing naked peering out the blinds, he had seen a man standing there fumbling at the door with his head cast down. 

 

Poor fucker.

 

 I’ve been that drunk.

 

Liquor makes you stupid.  That dumbass almost got shot trying to find his way home.

 

I fell asleep knowing that the Boogeyman can’t get me unless he gets through Jon first. 

 

The safest place is not a fortress, it’s in my daddy’s hug.