In the wee hours...

In the wee hours of this morning, my eyes flew open. There was a sound: click click click. Someone was in my apartment. In the living room. I knew it. My cell phone was there too... and the pepper spray... Shy of pounding on the wall to the next apartment, I had no defense. What to do?

I lay still, listening for the tell-tale sounds of creaking floor boards. After a year of living in my apartment, I still can’t figure out exactly where the loud spots are (they move—honest!), so how could a burglar know? When I didn’t hear any footsteps, I wondered if the burglar were walking so slow that the creaks wouldn’t come.

Coconut sleeps on the corner of my bed closest to the door. Surely she would sense if something out of the ordinary were happening in the apartment. True, she generally likes other people, but she would certainly notice someone and react. Yet I thought I heard her licking her foot, so she was acting normal…

All sounds stopped--the calm before the storm. I moved my feet, feeling for Coconut. No cat. Slowly, I gathered the courage to raise my head: no cat. She wasn’t there. All the shadows in my room and the living room looked normal. There was no one there.

It was probably Coconut making the sounds. My head dropped back onto the pillow with relief that it was only my overactive imagination.

Promptly, a dream about tiny-bat vampires took over my consciousness. My brother and I were vampire fighter pilots, protecting my grandparents, and we trapped a couple in a cage (how? who knows) and numbed them with pepper spray. These villains were rescued by the large villains (who look suspiciously like cylons), and my brother went home, leaving me to defend my grandparents alone… and in my anger and disappointment I realized I was dreaming. (honestly--my brother and I joining forces against bats?!)

I woke up to find pouring rain outside my window.

Maybe it was a lighter rain that had woken me in the first place.

What is it about sleeping that is so vulnerable? The body and the conscious mind are asleep; the subconscious hears a worrisome noise, translates it, and suddenly conscious mind is on high alert, and then muscles are tense—yet you’re still prone, still, in many ways, helpless. It’s not like we’re all Louis L’Amour heroes who wake up when a mouse darts under a nearby cactus. Not only are we physically vulnerable, but our psyches also do crazy things with dreams while we sleep.

It’s just so bizarre. All that to say: today I wake up grateful that the burglar and the vampire bats were not real, and the rain is.