Night Gallery * March 6, 2008

Dear Night Stalkers and Other Insomniacs,

    Describe exactly what you were doing at 3:52am Wednesday night—last week.  You remember, it was a dark and stormy night.

    Okay, now my turn.

     I was crouching.  I was crouching in the corner of my bedroom.  I was crouching in the corner of my bedroom clutching my cell phone—with my fingers ready to punch the numbers 911.  Beat that!

    Why was I crouching in the corner of my bedroom clutching my cell phone?  Aliens, that’s why—possibly bandits.  Possibly alien bandits.  And let’s not forget the raccoons.

    It is not unusual for me to get up at two, three, or four in the morning to go to the bathroom, because I am fifty years old and my internal organs are quite likely beginning to liquefy.  Last night, de ja vu, all over again. However, last night was different, because after I had toddled back to my bed, and just as I was beginning to dissolve into that sweet unconsciousness that Lindsay Wagner (the sleep number bed, pitch woman) describes as “restful sleep,” I heard something.  It was something other than the wail of raccoons as they arm wrestled each other over the leftover gristle in my trashcans.  It sounded like a walkie-talkie and it was weird.

    Had I heard a walkie-talkie?  Or was it the effects of my fifty-year old brain starting to liquefy? I heard it again. I bolted upright in bed.  I listened, my head cocked.  The wind whipped about making it hard to discern raccoon noises from human noises.  I strained.  I heard a new sound, an eerie mechanical sound. Honestly it sounded like a transporter on the Star Ship Enterprise. I scrabbled through my bed sheets for my cell phone.

    Leaping to my feet, I flung myself from the bed and wedged myself into the corner closest to the open window.  The wind whipped through the hedge that needs trimming.  Branches scraped against the window panes with greasy raccoon finger prints on them.

    Holding the cell phone tight, I listened to the cacophony of night noises.

    A walkie-talkie crackled in the night, men spoke, but I couldn’t make out their evil plans.     

    Whispering, I said,  “Man, the thieves are getting sophisticated if they’re using walkie-talkies.”  No one answered.  Outside raccoons slapped each other around.

    Another noise came.  It was that weirdo space noise.  I wondered if that was the last noise I would hear before being probed by unspeakable alien bandit probes.  My finger hovered over the nine on my cell phone.  The walkie-talkie crackled again.  Men mumbled diabolical instructions to each other.  I wedged more tightly into the corner of my bedroom.  A long, suffocating moment, or ten, passed.  There was the weirdo space noise again.  I glanced at the clock—4:17am.  

    Suddenly another possibility (not involving bandits, aliens, or raccoons dawned on me) and I said out loud—to myself, “Hey, wait a minute. I know what those noises are.  Linda, you’re a real Gomer, you know that.”  Thankfully I didn’t answer myself.  I shut the window and locked it.

    I went back to bed.

    In the morning, I wandered over to my  two-year old grandson’s Mighty Midget Super Hero’s  Spider Man and Friends Ride and Push (riding toy) parked under my bedroom window and turned it off.

    The moral of this story is that if a person insists on a steady diet of Twilight Zone and CSI re-runs, a person might become somewhat paranoid after going to the bathroom in the middle of the night, if that person happens to mistake the electronic noises of a riding toy for the sounds of armed, hostile, greedy thieves from another planet.

Happy Night Stalker Dreams to You,

Linda (Did you hear that?) Zern
    

             

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