Home

My parents had a lot of trouble out their place back when I was living there. Shit with a neighbour. Not something I want to go into here. We had several break ins, a fire, our animals were shot and killed one night. It took a while to get to the point where you felt safe at home again. The subconscious thing that helped was that they never made it inside the house. You always felt safer knowing that the house was mostly impenetrable. At least it felt that way.

I've been living out of home in one form or another for the past 5-6 years now. And I've never had any sort of problems like that since then. Guess I got a little comfortable with the idea - rather the delusion - that it couldn't happen to me.

Until this morning.

I woke up this morning and noticed that the interconnecting door between the outer area's and the main room was open. This struck me as odd straight away, because I never leave it open. I hate having the door open when I sleep. It's a thing. I crawled out of bed and stumbled into the kitchen. At which point I noticed that my front door was hanging wide open.

Yeah, that's how I felt.

My neighbour John, who is just an old guy who can't walk to well was putting things on the clothes line. I asked him if he had seen anyone around my place during the morning, like you would. I checked the door, which had been unlocked and opened. AS you would think, the first thought was that maybe I left it open. That disappeared real quick. There was a massive storm last night, with a wind blowing up a gale outside. My door doesn't close unless it's locked. if it wasn't, the wind would be blowing that door all over the place. Which leaves only one option. Someone with a key had unlocked my door and come into my home.

Just so that sinks in, I'll repeat it. Someone, without my knowledge or invitation, unlocked my door and came into my home. While I was there. Asleep.

If you're suddenly getting a feeling of dread in the lower pit of your stomach, you can imagine where I was about that time.

So, I went through my house to see if anything was missing. This kind of thing, the first thing you check are all the big, expensive items. Computer, TV, camera's, that sort of thing. All there. So I believed that someone had come in, realised I was there, then made a quick retreat. I decided to go out and buy a new lock for the front door and install it. I had a shower, still feeling a little creeped out, got dressed and was about to go when I realised I couldn't find my wallet. Or my keys. I did a pretty intensive search in all the places I would have stuck them, getting more and more uneasy. I ran outside to check if my car was still there. It was. Came back inside, searched some more. I finally went out to my car to search it. Getting to my car, I tried the handle. It was open.

I NEVER leave my car open. I lock the damn thing twice when I'm walking away.

Upon opening the door, I saw my keys sitting in the ignition. I was really starting to freak out by this time. I took my keys out and checked the car. No wallet. Closing up and locking the car, I realised why my car was still sitting in the driveway. There's a trick to starting my car. Even when you know it, it can still trick you. I'm guessing that whoever grabbed the keys tried to start and take the car, and when they couldn't get it started, they left the keys where they were. Yes, thanks to a little bit of a design glitch in my car, I still own it.

I've reported all this to the cops. They're arranging to get a fingerprint person out here tomorrow, but it's been raining heavily and I've possibly been smudging anything inside the house, so I'm not really expecting them to turn up to much. The scariest part about this is that this wasn't something completely random. Someone who has lived here before or has access to this place before - they have a key - came into my house while I was asleep and stole stuff from me. The only reason they didn't get away with more was because they couldn't figure out how to work my car. My hands are trembling as I type this and I am restless and uncomfortable in my home.

The worst part is that I have reason to suspect that it may have been one of my neighbours that did this. I'm going to report that information to the cops first thing tomorrow.

Your home is the one place you're supposed to feel safe. It's the place where you can lock the world and all it's problems outside and just relax and be yourself. In one selfish and inconsiderate act, that's been taken away from me. God help the person I suspect if they turn out to be responsible.

My lease runs out in August. I'm gone the next day.