Things That Go Bump in the Night

It was a dark and stormy night.

OK fine, maybe not so much. But it was cold and rainy. Hi fall, hi. So not happy to see you again.

Nevertheless, I had my A/C on. Still. Yeah, yeah – waste of electricity galore. I know. But I can’t sleep without some sort of distracting white noise. And my little GE does its job to a T.

Well, until last night that is.

I’d gotten home from volunteering around 9:30. There was lots of heavy lifting, banned-books-scavenger-hunting, sweeping, and shelving. Needless to say I was fairly keyed up.

I took a warm shower. Painted my nails. Dipped into the latest 1,000-pager I was reading. Tried to avoid all unnecessary stimulation of the senses – i.e. Gossip Girl. All to no avail.

Of course I failed to notice it until I was tucked in, lights out. Then, like a celebrity on a New York City street, it jarringly appeared as if from thin air.

Bang.rattle.pow. 70 seconds later. Bang.rattle.pow. 83 seconds later. Bang.rattle.pow. 45 seconds. Bang.rattle.pow. And so on.

Alright so maybe it didn’t really sound exactly like bang.rattle.pow. But it was a definite thump. Smack. Boom. And I was definitely piss(sssssssssss)ed the pow off.

As if I don’t have enough trouble sleeping already, no. No, no. My scary mansion of an apartamento deemed it hilarious to add more fuel to the bump-in-the-night fire.

I slammed the wall. Rustled the cords under my bed. Rocked my mattress. Where was it coming from? I turned on the light, went into the living room. Hit that wall. Hard. The corner, it was coming from the corner. I jumped up and down on the floor.

I returned my cozy queen-sized nest, triumphantly assured that my jaunt had undoubtedly jostled and freed whatever was making that most disruptive noise.

Alas, wary as ever of things that go bump, I couldn’t help but listen. Wait for it. Expect it. My senses were piqued. The longer the unwanted knock-knock-knocking was kept at bay, the more confident I was it had desisted – like a battle against the hiccups

Wrong.

Three more hours I lay in wait. Sleep evaded me. I popped a melatonin. And another. I tried to ignore the thump. But the more I ignored it, the more my ears focused. The more they honed in and waited for the bang. I stomped out of bed and retraced my thump-obliterating steps, increasing my efforts tenfold.

Seriously though, what is up with that shit? Why do we always focus on the things me most want to not focus on? It’s so unfair.

My delirious, sleepy, zombified mind resolved my apartment was haunted. No, there was a living, breathing Sloth tied up in the basement. No, a bomb – I was going to be blown to smithereens in the matter of minutes. No, wait…wait…

The sounds intensified. Louder, heavier – did my bed just move? What the what??

2:30 am. Just when I stopped fretting over what the mysterious noise was, when I stopped being outrageously and disproportionately pissed about the banging that was keeping me awake, I miraculously drifted off.

Only to be awoken three hours later by a cacophony on both sides of the wall.

It sounded horrific. Like a demonic ghoul bashing (and I mean bashing) a one-ton pipe organ with wooden bats. There was hissing, spitting, clanking, clanging, clattering, clinking, shaking, POUNDING. What was happening? Had Armageddon arrived two years early?

Oh no.

My stupid, stupid hot-water radiators were coming alive, readying themselves for the winter ahead, and making it very well known.

Guess it’s time for the A/C to be put to bed. Along with my dreary, dead-tired self.