The Cretin Returns

Saturday evening I'm all tucked up in bed snoozing my way along when I am awoken by outside noises. I must be a very light sleeper indeed to have woken up for this reason, but I could suddenly hear the traffic noise from Route 2 down the hill a lot clearer. Almost as if a window were open... I look down to my left (sleeping on my tummy so it is the right hand side of the window) and the curtain is open a little bit. Odd. Then torch light flashes into the room, through the curtain, but certainly directed at my room. I sit up a little bit and peer over to the left hand side of the window and there is someone standing, their foot on my tatami mat, holding the curtain aside and having a good gander at what's happening in my room. This pisses me off for two reasons; 1) I am certain I locked that window in the morning after I hung my washing out and, 2) That the creep had the balls to come back after I scared him away once. So I jump at towards the window and scream Fuck off! at him again, just in case he didn't hear it the first time. He runs off, not quite as quickly as last time, leaving me to a very sleepless morning. This all happened at 2:48 - I stayed up until 6am reading. What freaked me out the most was that I was so certain I had locked that window that I thought he had managed to unlock it somehow. At 6ish I managed to nod off for a couple of hours before I had to be up for the orphanage trip but ended up having this awful dream that he was in my house and lying on top of my back so I couldn't get up. When I did wake up eventually I discovered that I had been sleeping on my arms and they were numb, probably why I dreamt I couldn't get up.

The next morning I told my upstairs neighbours about it and M told me that he had been woken by a loud scream in the early hours of the morning, raced out on his balcony to see what was going on, but saw nothing. He was so freaked about about it that he couldn't sleep, put it down to a nightmare and stayed up for a while watching TV. So two people scared out of their wits within metres of each other, feeling all alone - almost funny except that the memory of it is still a bit fresh. In the late arvo I went to the local police box and told them about the visitor. They didn't appear very conerned at all. In fact, as I suspected they might, I simply got a lecture about locking my windows and that women living alone were "naturally going to expect this kind of thing" ??? Naturally? Oh yes I am the criminal for not protecting myself adequately against lunatics. Then, rather than try and reassure me by telling me they'll at least patrol the area more frequently or something, he proceeds to give me a list of all the things that have previously happened in this apartment, including a woman coming home to find a bloke waiting for her in the bathroom. Thanks guys, way to put my mind at ease. They really were very useless, despite me asking him a couple of times to speak a bit more slowly he kept spewing sentences out at me as though he had a time limit or something. I have never heard anyone who wasn't calling a horse race talk so fast. And then his buddy jumps in and starts asking me completely irrelevant questions about what country I come from and "oh, you must be very lonely" all in the gruff old man voice that is virtually a whole other dialect in these parts.

I certainly won't be expecting too much from the local constabulatory in an emegency. My upstairs neighbours have offered to lend a hand if it happens again. Everyone was thinking of ways to catch the bloke and stuff which was nice. At least someone was acting a little concerned that this kind of shit should happen. I wonder how often he comes past to check that the window is locked. That must be the first night since the first incident that I have left the window unlocked and he just happens to come back? Coincidence? Either way, I might ask my landlord if I can move into the apartment above me, at least that way, if he does still persist and climb up the window, when I push him off it he'll probably break his neck in the fall!