18. Locked Him Out
I preface this story by saying I’m a small, 23-year-old female, which is what made this situation a million times scarier for me.
I had recently broken up with my ex and was thus left to live alone with our animals in a 3 bed, 1.5 bath house we had previously been in together. It was my first time living alone so I was already a little on edge. At like 2 in the morning, my dog darted off my bed and started barking her head off. I woke up and heard the crackling of leaves underneath my window and then someone tapping on the glass. I froze for like two whole minutes as the tapping continued, getting much louder, and she kept barking like a maniac.
I opened my bedroom door and ran into the living room with my phone, not really knowing what to do in this situation. There were two entrances to my home and all of a sudden I could hear someone frantically turning the knob on the door of the kitchen, slamming on the door trying to get inside. Thankfully it was locked. I called my girlfriend (new girlfriend, not the one I previously lived with) and woke her up, explained what was happening, and screamed “WHAT DO I DO??” She was like “Call the police”.
As I was dialling 911, the slamming on the door stopped and I saw a man’s face through my kitchen window, looking inside. We made eye contact and I nearly pissed myself. He rounded the corner of my house to get to the front door and started doing the same with the knob, yelling unintelligibly at the top of his lungs. I finally got through to the dispatcher and she said a patrol car was near and just to stay in my house. I went and hid in my room with my dog, locking the door behind me. Less than five minutes later all of the noise stopped and it took me a few minutes to get out and check to see what was going on. The patrol car was already gone.
I got a call from the officer about thirty minutes later that the man had been very drunk and got my house confused for his. He was angry because he thought his wife had locked him out. I am so, so glad I lock my doors religiously because I have no idea what would have happened if the man had made the entrance into my home and found me alone. Ill-intentioned or not, drunk people don’t act rationally and I can’t help but think about what might have happened if he had mistaken me for his wife.