Keys

About three years ago, I was sleeping in my apartment in Berkeley on a Wednesday night. I used to rent a little studio by myself on Frat Row that was annoyingly loud for me because I am a really light sleeper. I don't know why, but just about any noise above background wakes me up. I actually sleep with my computer on just for white noise.

So this night was pretty much just like any other night. I ate dinner around 7:30pm, did some homework and went to sleep by about midnight. My apartment was basically a square where you could imagine the door at the top right, my desk in the top left, and my bed in the bottom left. I slept so that my head was against the wall and my eyes toward the door. The door opened in, with the hinge on the left so that the open door sort of obscured the view into the left side of the apartment. When open, from the outside it basically blocked my bed from view.

At about 3:30am I woke up suddenly to see that my door was slowly swinging open. My first thought was that the wind must have blown it open. Then I remembered that I lived inside an apartment building with locked doors and no wind. I reached for the knife I keep by my bed, but sure enough, the one time I needed it in a hurry, I couldn't find it. It felt like an eternity but I reached for it again, still didn't get. I took a breath and reached for it a third time, and again I didn't find it. At this point the door was completely open, and had been for maybe a second or two. I decided I didn't have any more time to look for the knife and I got up as quickly but quietly as I could, ran up to my desk and then along the wall to my door.

As the guy was just starting to sort of sneak in, I threw all of my momentum into the back side of the door. The guy got crunched about his one leg and belly, then backed out into the hallway. I slammed the door shut, locked it (deadbolt + doorknob), and looked through the peephole.

I saw this tallish white guy wearing a raider's jersey and dark green jacket...looking right back at me. He seemed to be completely cool, not freaking out the way I was. He reached into his pocket, pulled out a fat key ring, picked out a key, put the key in my deadbolt and un-fucking-locked it. He then picked out another key, put it into my doorknob and started to unlock my doorknob. I grabbed the doorknob and held it as tight as I could so that it wouldn't turn. He tried for about 30 seconds, by which time I started yelling that I had called the cops (BS) and that they would be here any minute. That finally made him bolt. I then had a second to get a phone and call the cops.

Cops arrived, did their thing, found nothing. Never caught the guy. Told me that I got extremely lucky and that I did the right thing to stop him from entering.

They said that if I didn't wake up and act when I did, "things might have turned out really bad. After all, he didn't seem to care that you were awake inside the apartment. He tried to get back in. Obviously, he had a plan on how to deal with you, once inside."