HOME & CRIME

Actually, two weeks ago after returning home to the US, I was cleaning my room which looked like it hadn’t been lived in since 1850. Spiders, slugs, and friends had squatters rights, and I had to evict them. So I’m doing my normal cleaning routine and I hear someone screaming at another person. It sounded like the neighbors telling a burglar to get out of there and the burglar must have been running. I naturally didn’t think anything of it (I’ve been told I act calmly in these situations) and I continued listening while in my room. Well, then Anna bolts out of her room (our doors face each other about 2 meters apart from each other). . . . . . .compLETEly naked. She he is headed straight for me from a three-point American football stance, and I’m scared that she and all her flying appendages will both hypnotize and assault me adding to the crime statistics. Now, naturally in my calm state, I didn’t think anything of it. I just assumed she was running in fright and in a fright, it didn’t matter if she was tackling me naked.

She screams “Someone’s got a gun and he’s trying to get in!”

Or “Someone’s got a gun and he’s trying to shoot us!”

At this point I figured I was mistaken and was trying to remember who I had not told I loved. “I told my mom and my dad. Oh! I hadn’t told my brother. . . .but he would know anyway. He’s cool. He wouldn’t be offended. But there is that one---“ You start wondering how much a bullet actually hurts (TV and movies downplay this by the way but hormones can suppress it temporarily), and then you wonder how long it takes to write a will. All the while, Anna’s flying appendages are looming closer and speaking in multiple voices with one of them in a really low bass.

I shake myself enough to stop the hypnotic trance, and I turned the lights off of my room and duck down, closing the door to keep from a second hypnotic state. Anna, for some reason, turns right before hitting me and heads naked to the living room appendages flailing and still speaking, waking Ryan up (he stays in his room through anything).

Anna calls the police frantically.

I wait and . . . . . . . . . .nothing. The gunman doesn’t try to shoot me in my room through the barred windows or the barred doors. Nothing. I hear Anna and Ryan talking. So I finally come out. And everyone’s talking about the gunman who tried to kill us. Anna says she saw a gunman in the window trying to get in. Ryan said he heard a commotion and heard the people out front (my room faces the back yard; Ryan’s room faces the front yard). So we look out the back yard window and see what looks like police. .. . . . .police?

POLICE!?? Wait a minute. What is the gunman was a .. . . . . . . . .POLICE OFFICER?!!

You’re right, Anna. It was. In fact, Anna figured out the scenario before the police officer arrived. At the back of our house, our back dividing wall separates our house from another house. And there was a policeman taking a fag (a smoke) waving to all the neighbors (it’s pitch black outside by the way) letting people know it was ok. So Anna realized it was a raid on that house.

In fact, come to think of it (Anna’s thinking) the gunman did look like he had a black police coat, and it did look like a policeman if she had thought about it. Knock, knock, knock. The police had arrived. And it made sense that they arrived so quickly since they were right on the other side of the back wall (on the parallel street). He explained or confirmed what Anna already figured out. They were just raiding the house connected to us at the back. This is when Anna revealed what that place was---a harem.

Anna believes it’s run by the Triad (an international crime syndicate). Don’t ask me how she knows that or where that comes from. I just know that the people there rent the house from the owner, and they are Chinese. When the police raided the place, someone tried to run (I don’t know if it was a customer or a worker). This person jumped over the diving wall into our yard and came straight by my window (I face the back yard) with the policeman chasing. Then he passed by the bathroom window and Anna’s window (there is a small alley in our back yard going from my room passed the bathroom passed Anna’s room to the closing gate which leads to the front). This is when Anna looked out and saw the gun and thought we were going to have to bequeath our belongings to our younger siblings. The policeman got the man, I believe in the front. And that’s the commotion we heard.

So I’m safe. Later Radesh (Anna’s boyfriend) was messing with the dogs in that yard because he thought no one lived there after the raid. Well, someone did though their lights almost never come on anymore (I have only seen it once—last night Monday). And a woman appeared as if to check what the commotion was. This is when Radesh heard angelic music and heard God’s voice. The woman appeared made up more than he would expect of an actor in a movie. He said she was perfectly dressed as a geisha wearing a kimono. She spoke no words as she could not understand his English. And as quickly as she had slipped to the door to see what was wrong, she slipped away unnoticed. Strange.