I always sleep with one eye open BUT I haven't used a sleeping aid to this day because of what happened that night.
For some context, I used to live alone with my mom when I was a teenager, and she was on some pretty powerful sleeping meds at the time.
I guess it runs in the family because I was also a deep insomniac, sometimes missing sleep for days at a time. So I turned towards a slightly more natural option than my mom, a blend of supplements including valerian, along with some other stuff that seemed to help.
By bedtime, I went back to my room. I had divided the room in a way that I had to go around a shelving unit to get to my bed. It left the layout of my room looking like a U shape, where one end of the U was the door, and the other was my bed.
I took my supplements, and as they kicked in, I slowly faded into sleep.
I don't exactly know how much time passed, but I woke up in a daze, still well sedated. I was nudged from my slumber because I heard a muddled voice in my room, but I was still half awake, and I couldn't process the words being said.
I managed to open my eyes, and though my vision was still blurry, I could see there was a tall man facing me, standing on the other side of the shelving unit where the door was!
" A tall man? " I thought to myself, still in a daze. Then my brain kicked into overdrive. I lived alone with my mom, the only other "man" here was me. Adrenaline finally rushed through me, waking me up for good, and I sprang up.
I feel I must preface what happens next with the fact that I was a bit of a wild kid at the time and was really into weapons and knives. And next to my bed was my trusty machete.
For people in the U.S.: Guns are kind of hard to come by in Canada unless you're a hunter/security with the proper license. But people here feel generally safe enough to omit having any kinds of weapons in their house at all. So let's just say that being a bit of a maniac ( for French Canadian standards lmao ) paid off that day.
I jumped off the bed and grabbed my machete, and as soon as he saw me reach for it he did a quick 180 and bolted towards the exit. I ran around the shelving unit looking like a half-naked teenage Jason Voorhees.
By the time I had reached the outside of my bedroom, he had already run out of the apartment. The first thing I noticed was that he had kicked the front door completely off its hinges to get in. I didn't hear anything like that ...so I guess the meds were working.
I was about to pursue him but my mom finally entered my mind. Her room was right next to the entrance! Her door was closed, so I ran into her room only to find her fast asleep. Relief washed over me, and I woke her up as I dialed 911.
The police came and were as useful as you'd imagine. If they don't catch you mid-murder or, at the very least, with the intruder in the house, there isn't much they could do. I asked them what I'm supposed to do for the rest of the night without a front door in the middle of the city, and they assured me I probably scared the guy enough for him not to come back.
After they left I told my mom to go back to sleep, and I would stand guard for the night. I sat on the couch with the machete next to me and stayed awake until the sun came up.
But as I sat there at night and thought about the whole ordeal some creepy details stood out to me. The intruder had left every door in the house closed except for the one to my bedroom. He essentially kicked the front door in and went straight to my bedroom.
I also wondered... what was he saying to me before I finally got my senses back?
Was this just someone drugged out of their mind? Or maybe someone who used to live here, looking for someone else only to find me? Or was all this meant for me? Worst yet, if that was the case, what would've happened if I weren't armed at that moment?
So let's just say that putting a weapon next to my bed has become a new tradition whenever I move somewhere new. And though my sleep has gotten much better, It's not very hard to wake me up...
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I have a lot of crazy stories from my travels, including making friends with a cannibal in India, fighting off a pack of wolves in a screaming match, almost getting murdered by angry monkeys and apes on 3 different occasions, close encounters with a horde of hand-sized spiders, and coming face to face with a wasp nest 3 times my size, etc.
But I gotta say, man is still the scariest of all creatures...