Bump in the night

So it was about 12:30, and we were...not asleep, but headed there. We were all curled up in bed, talking, nonsense (he was tickling me, if you must know, and I was trying to get him to stop - no small feat, as I've discovered to my dismay, because he's much bigger than me.)

Suddenly there was a crash, that sounded like it came from downstairs. We sat up - instant Red Alert. There was no other noise, but he had to go check it out just the same. Me, I'd have stayed motionless for a good twenty minutes, then crept over and closed the bedroom door and hid under the covers the rest of the night. I'd have gone downstairs in the morning to see what was gone or destroyed.

But that's me. He, being the man, was heading downstairs to see what was what. He told me to get in the other room, out of sight and nearer to the phone, should it be needed. What he was gonna do, I don't think either of us knew. When my sister hears a strange noise, she sits at the top of the stairs with a handgun, which she is perfectly capable of firing, and firing well. We, on the other hand, don't have so much as a baseball bat in the apartment.

So he's downstairs, checking it out, and I'm upstairs, praying and shaking and trying not to cry. After what seemed like forever, he calls up to me, "it's o.k." and I go downstairs...and there's nothing. Nobody was there, and we couldn't find anything that had fallen or was out of place in any way. We checked the doors and windows, made sure everything was in fact locked up tight, and headed back up to bed, baffled. I was just wondering if such a loud crash could possibly have come from next door, when he discovered my curling iron, which had slipped off its hook on the wall and fallen onto the bathroom counter, causing the "crash" that sent us into an intruder-alert panic!

• Practice Drill: check



• To Do: buy a baseball bat