Wandering Drunk Encounter
This is what we get for not posting a guard.
So it was four in the morning and Dynée and I were asleep in our dorm room, as we tend to be at four in the morning. My father was in town for a book sale at the library, but he was sleeping in the RV, parked at the fairgrounds. I had a busy day planned, starting around nine, but I'd stayed up until midnight anyway. I have wonderful time management skills.
The door opened, shut and the deadbolt was locked, and Dynée woke up. At least, that's what I was told later. I was asleep at the time. Someone stumbled in and tripped, partially falling across the foot of Dynée's bed. Her bed is right next to the door, while mine is on the other side of the room.
I started the long process of waking up when I heard this commotion. I normally am good at sleeping and stay asleep until either my alarm goes off or some part of my body catches on fire. I suppose I can add sudden and unexpected visitors to the list.
I sat up a little and saw, with eyes sleep-bedewed and devoid of spectacles, a tall figure with the beginning of a beer gut peeking out over his underwear. The moonlight gave an eerie glow to his pasty near nudity.
I sat up more. The man started to advance diagonally on unsteady feet towards the head of my bed. I swung my feet off and perched on the foot end in a manner I hoped was unobtrusive. As my emergency problem-solving circuits finally activated and a huge amount of adrenaline hit my bloodstream, I started to frantically cycle through different plans of action - did I know this guy? Probably not. Was I closer to my machete or to my hammer, or should I just lash out at him with my Swiss Army knife? Would it be better to try for a kill and all the legal and moral difficulties that would entail, or to just wound him and hope to either drive him off or buy enough time for Dynée to get help?
Then, the mysterious apparition spoke. I would attempt to transcribe it, but as I was only barely awake and he was quite intoxicated I was unable to understand what he said. It sounded like a question, though, so I figured that if he was asking something it probably wasn't "Can I steal your computer and smack you upside the head?" I mumbled, trying to approximate his coherency, something that sounded like "Sure." He slouched forward, leaning precariously, and collapsed on my bed like a discarded marionette. He smelled like either ketoacidosis or way too much alcohol, and he didn't have on a medical ID bracelet.
As he toppled, I leapt from my bed and stood in the center of the room, heart pounding. He immediately started to make little snoring noises, and I was relieved that nobody had to die. I slowly walked over to Dynée's bed where we communicated with whispered phrases and short jerky motions that we should go out in the hall.
I unlocked the deadbolt, keeping one eye on the sleeping intruder as it clicked. We went out in the windowless, perpetually lit hall. Dynée had more time to react and had her glasses and slippers on. I had no glasses, no shoes or slippers, no bra or keys. My glasses were buried in a drawer and my contacts were on my desk. We were both in pajamas.
"Okay," I said, "he's asleep, so it's not a 911 emergency. We need to call the Office of Public Safety and they'll deal with this so we can go back to sleep." Dynée agreed.
Then we both realized that we had no keys and that the only public telephone was on the ground floor, from which returning upstairs required a key. We walked all the way down the hall to our Resident Assistant's door and pounded on it for a while, reasoning that this was sort of her bailiwick as it involved at least two residents. No reply, but it wasn't too surprising. Our floor has been blessed with an RA with an apartment off campus, where she often stays despite the fact that her contract requires otherwise.
We formulated another plan. My keys were in my pants, on the floor next to my bed, which had the drunk guy in it. Dynée's keys were on her scanner, even farther from my bed and the intoxicated X-factor than was in it. I can't remember who was going to do what, but one of us was going to go in and get the keys while the other one held the door and prepared to scream bloody murder.
Actually, around this point I was no longer scared. I was mostly annoyed; I wanted more than anything to go back to sleep, or if I had to stay up I wanted some shoes, some eyewear and a bra. I felt terribly unprepared. I was also kind of worried that the drunk guy would vomit all over my bed. If there's one thing I've learned from my college experience, it's that drunk people are ticking puke bombs, and having to change my bedclothes would make it even longer before I could go back to sleep.
As we walked back down the hall to our room, I remembered that our friend Sarah G. had planned to pull an all-nighter for her Java class. I stopped Dynée with a gesture and put my ear to her door. I heard faint typing and Japanese pop music, so I knocked.
In an instant, we were with another living being in a brightly-lit room with music playing. It was very reassuring. Dynée, having more experience with these things, called OPS and briefed them on the situation while I wondered about the hygienic status of my pillows.
We sat on Sarah's bed and fidgeted for a while, keeping the door half-open so we could hear when security showed up. It was all I could do not to fall asleep on Sarah's bed and continue the cycle of displacement that the drunk guy began.
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