I am never going back to sleep ever again.

[spatch]

Well, now I can say I know what it's like to wake up to the police bursting into your room at 1:30 in the morning with flashlights in your face and hollering and shit. And I know it wasn't a dream because I just cleaned wooden splinters and paint chips up off the kitchen floor. My blood pressure probably won't go down until October or so.

So there I am, peacefully slumbering away, been asleep since 8:30 or so, already deep in the REM sleep and having a good time of it presumably. All I remember first are loud voices. Very very loud voices, coming from right outside my bedroom door.

"POLICE! HANDS UP!" Just like that, too. Just like in COPS. Two flashlights, now three, in my room, standing by the computer. Holy fucking shit. Holy fucking shit! I bolt upright in bed and have both arms in the air. I'm also not wearing anything. Somehow it doesn't matter.

"WHAT'S YOUR NAME?" I stated my name, age, rank, serial number, place of birth, Mom's maiden name, previous job history, ATM code, no-- just name. With flashlights in face, they asked me about the other people living here. And where "that door" off my bedroom leads. I think I said "the cat's food and litter are there" and I may have also used the word "antechamber" in describing it, but hey, you tend to run your mouth when you've got adrenalin just streaking through you. (Still hasn't worn off yet.) At some point I grabbed the blanket and put it over my, uh, self. Apparently they didn't mind that my hands were down anymore.

After naming my other housemates I said that I honestly didn't know if anyone else was home, since I'd been asleep since 8:30.

"Do you know a Liam Somebodyorother?" one of them asks. "Some-other-guy's-name? Thirdguywossname?"

"No sir, I do not," I reply. I was next questioned about my "home phone" and I replied I just have a cellphone, and that nobody in this house has a landline. I was very polite to the nice policemen, I answered all of their questions with a "Yes sir" or "No sir" and eventually they decided I was not, in fact, the gentleman with a gun that they were looking for. Just some scared-looking dude who just woke up to cops in his face.

They wandered out into the hallway and I took the opportunity to put some clothes on. Once I came out behind them they asked if "a female" lived here. I said yes, one does, and that's when Jude came out of her bedroom. She woke up to hear the smashing and tromping, so she thought we'd been Broken Into, and hid in her closet and called 911. I got to hear the cops talk with the 911 dispatcher on that one to clear it up.

Turns out they received a call tonight from a suicidal/homicidal man who claimed he had a gun and was gonna kill ... people? In his house? I'm not sure on those details, but still, dangerous shit there, buddy. They did a trace on the phone number and Verizon records had it listed as a landline connected to our address. The last landline we had was discontinued last August, and even then it was RCN, not Verizon. That's seriously fucked up. THANKS, VERIZON.

Jude and I both asserted we had never heard of any of the names the cops just rattled off at us, and once they realized they'd gotten the wrong house and actually woken two fine upstanding citizens up, they calmed down and ... were downright friendly. As friendly as brusque police officers who've just kicked in your kitchen door and raided your bedroom can be.

The police took the time to explain what they did prior to the whole Brazil-like bursting in incident. They rang the doorbell (which often doesn't work and it's not clearly labelled) and they banged on the front door (I'm up on the 3rd floor with two flights and a closed bedroom door between me and the front door, and was out like a light anyway. Only thing that wakes me up in that case is the cat.) With no response and phone company-backed certainty that Crimes Were Being Committed As We Speak, they actually gained entry to the house through an open window on the first floor, came up through the basement, and proceeded to smash down our second-story kitchen door.

"We've got it all on record down at the station," the cop said, as Jude and I surveyed what once was our kitchen door, now shattered and in need of serious replacement. "Everything we did to gain entry was reported on a recorded line." I think some vague mention of reimbursement is made with regards to the door, but then again we've got a realty company in charge of the property so I'm pretty sure they will do the talking with the city to replace the door.

"Is there anything else I can do to help?" I asked, weakly and reflexively.

"Not unless you know a guy with a gun," one of the cops said. And just like that, they're gone. I don't think any of em ever actually used a word like "sorry" either. But then again, they're cops, they don't have to say that.

Still shaken up by the whole thing. Still racing pulse. Still in that hyper-alert Go Mode. Probably won't be able to go back to sleep tonight.

Jesus.

(Oh, and the cat is fine too. He hid under the bed initially but has been seen since, stretched out on the bedroom floor as if it ain't no thang.)

Comments

[bostonista.livejournal.com]

There was a story that ran in the Herald concerning a family in Dorchester whose apartment was (1) broken into (2) pepper sprayed and (3) ransacked by a SWAT team. It was a case of mistaken identity. Thr family's on the street, and they're still trying to get restitution from the city.

Effed up, I tell you.

[fancycwabs.livejournal.com]

I suggest finding a nice friendly ambulance-chaser type lawyer to sue Verizon and the 911 folks for slander, and also getting your doorbell fixed. Oh, and the door too.

Damn.

[arcuri.livejournal.com]

Christ. My blood pressure went up just reading that.
I can't even begin to imagine how much I'd freak out waking up like that.

[marphod.livejournal.com]

Holy freakout, Batman.

[kpht.livejournal.com]

i always sleep with some sort of clothes on. i knew there was a reason i did so.

[pancua.livejournal.com]

HOLYSHITHOLYSHITHOLYSHITHOLYSHIT!!!

*lots of hugs!*

[coffeebeanben.livejournal.com]

Umm.

If official channels are too slow, I can perhaps help you with the door...

Seriously THAT SHIT FUCKED UP WACK YO.

[mhaille.livejournal.com]

Dang. At least you got reasonable cops? (Most of them are, really, once they're out of OMG CRISIS mode, but the unreasonable ones can make things go south fast.)

[spatch]

Yeah, they were pretty reasonable. I mean, they were expecting Guy With Gun To His (Or Someone Else's) Head and instead they got Two Sleeping People, so once they figured out that mmmmmmaybe this was the wrong place after all, they left OMG CRISIS mode pretty quickly. Still acted professional and police-like all the way out the front door, of course, and I went downstairs to make sure that A. they'd closed the first story window after using it for ingress and B. I never use the word 'ingress' again.

[spatch]

Oh, and they'd closed the window. Conscientious to say the least.

[kizlj.livejournal.com]

good flaming christ. I am glad the door was the only casulty.

it will make a great story to tell at parties! assuming you are ever able to sleep again. yeesh. I am sorryyou had to go through that.

[vanguardcdk.livejournal.com]

It sounds like the cops acted pretty professionally given the circumstances. After all at first they were on Crisis mode and then later they had to deal with "So that guy threatening Multiple Homicide is still out there somewhere".

Glad you two are okay, other than a busted door.

[kalibex.livejournal.com]

*falls over just from reading that*

[violetisblue.livejournal.com]

Aaaaaagggghhh. I'm glad nobody actually got hurt before they realized they were at the wrong house, Mr. Tuttle/Buttle.

[loree-borealis.livejournal.com]

"So that guy threatening Multiple Homicide is still out there somewhere"

Yeah, that's pretty worrisome.

[loree-borealis.livejournal.com]

It takes awhile for that kind of adrenaline, and the after-effects, to wear off. My mom was attacked by a guy with a knife (he tried to steal her car by climbing into her lap on the drivers side...dur...he realized what a stupid idea it was and eventually ran away), and she said she couldn't think straight for a week. Like, it actually "short-circuited" something in her brain and she couldn't concentrate normally.

I am sending you all the soothing mojo I can send. And I am offering you tea and cookies, too, and a hot bubble bath, and some Yani CDs. No wait! I take back the Yani.

[laurenhat.livejournal.com]

Eep! So very scary. And not terribly reassuring about the phone records they use.

[spatch]

That's it, I'm blaming Information Dispersal.

(We're all in it together, kid!)

[spatch]

He's probably running around now with the naked guy who was ringing my doorbell at 3 AM a few years ago. I never got any closure out of that story, either.

[saint-buddha.livejournal.com]

You don't have air conditioning, do you?

[loree-borealis.livejournal.com]

If your life were a novel, this phrase: "There were no cop cars about, so I was reasonably sure it wasn't John Law paying a late-night visit to a good, law-abiding citizen" could be some kind of foreshadowing.

Or something.

[spatch]

I'm still stuck in Go-Mode. I haven't hit my wall yet. I haven't crashed or lost all energy, though the workday is just half-over and I'd had about 5 hours' sleep before the cops came bursting in.

Even so, I've got some very very strong mental images right now, flashbacks of the bust-in, the cops hollering, the flashlights, all abstract notions but all still being replayed on a near-constant loop in my head. I can block it out most of the time, but when I tried to sleep for a few hours this morning... god damn. I couldn't.

[minkrose]

That happened to me after my car accident - every time I closed my eyes, I was ramming into the back of a white mini-van. Nothing really helped, but it's a good excuse to take a bubble bath.

*hugs!*

[alphacygni]

I'm so glad all humans, felines, and even most property seem to be in one piece. I am _so_ glad that Abbie headed for under the bed instead of out the non-door. I hope that your door gets fixed right quick. (What _do_ you do when it's three in the morning and suddenly you have no more door?)

This does make me all agitated (but not nearly as agitated as it made you, I'm sure) and wish for Something To Be Done, but I'm not sure what sorts of things would be anything other than just more obnoxiousness for you.

It does seem like the sort of thing that the Chronicle/Somerville-equivalent-whatever would write about gleefully, though. But would that actually do any good for you, or just be a pain in the ass? Who knows.

[petra-quince.livejournal.com]

That, right there, is a lifetime's worth of nightmare fodder. I hope you'll be having only uninterruped nights from now on.