The Break In

When I was a sophomore in college, I lived in an on-campus apartment.

They were standard two-bedroom apartments- with four people living in there. (That means that I shared a room with someone.)

Anyway, as all standard two-bedroom apartments, my room was too small to even consider fitting two beds, two desks, and two dressers in there. So, we had bunk beds and my desk became a TV stand in the living room.

I slept on the bottom bunk to prevent me from waking up my roommate when I stumbled in around 2am.

Turns out I'm not the one we needed to worry about stumbling into our beds.

Finals week is a stressful time; students are constantly abusing their bodies by not eating or sleeping proper amounts of time. Not to mention the all-encompassing feeling that if you don't get an A in your class your entire life is probably over because you'll end up working at McDonald's. (Because why would a grad school take anyone who got *gasp* a B+ in their intro level biology class!)

The stress of finals week can be subdued many ways. Personally, I marathon an entire TV series that I've never seen before; most notably Kyo Kara Maoh and Supernatural.

Some bake, others play intensely destructive video games.

And then there are those that drink.

Not usually in excess, they still have a lot of shit to get done after all, but enough to take the edge off and beat down the panic attack that's threatening to appear every second of that week.

One such person found their way into our apartment.

I was actually asleep when the person entered the dorm. One of my roommates had a tendency to stay out until around 4 so we left it up to her to lock the door.

This habit? Definitely ended that night. We figured she could unlock the damn door or sleep in the hall.

Because someone entered our room while we were all asleep.

Actually, she tried crawling into bed with me. Which is what woke me up. I turned over and snapped "What?" thinking it was just one of my roommates.

No, it was not one of my roommates. It was a girl who looked like she probably went to my college and was wearing pajamas.

Despite this, shouldn't my survival instincts kick in? Shouldn't I like...scream and kick or something?

I guess not.

After my less-than-brilliant question, she replied that she was looking for something. I just kind of looked at her, trying to process what she had just said to me.

Now, I'm going to blame being half-asleep for this response: "The bathroom's that way."

Apparently, survival is not my greatest concern. No, my greatest concern is that she needs to go to the bathroom and is going to pee on my floor instead of the toilet.

She shook her head and told me that wasn't what she was looking for and I watched her head toward the door.

Thinking she was going to leave my room and sleep on my couch, I just turned over and figured I'd fall back asleep and deal with it in the morning.

Instead of the door opening, the bunk bed started moving.

I looked to the end of the bed and saw legs on the rungs. The psycho was trying to climb into the top bunk!

I told her someone was sleeping up there and received a snappy "No there isn't." in response.

I knew my roommate was going to flip shit if she woke up with this girl in her bed with her. Seriously? She kind of looked like Samara from The Ring, except about ten years older.

My roommate woke up while the girl was still climbing up and I immediately tried to calm her down by telling her that everything was OK and please don't freak out.

Turns out that not everyone thinks their carpets cleanliness is more important than survival.

I had barely finished my little placating speech when she shrieked and kicked out. (We thought she had kicked the girl in the face, but actually only hit the bedpost.)

The girl immediately climbed down and was really grouchy. Basically I wanted to make sure both of them were OK and then go back to bed.

Then we discovered that the intruder worked with my roommate. Saying her name woke her up. She looked around confusedly and kind of squeaked out a "Am I...not in my room?"

She had been sleep-walking.

I told her our room number and she just kind of left the room. (I did glimpse her staring at our wall- where we had hung up My Little Pony coloring book pages.)

When I heard the main door open and close, I laid there for a few moments before going and locking the door.

The next morning, my roommate and I just kind of danced around the issue. And by "danced around the issue" I mean both of us were too afraid that it was a dream to bring it up.

Finally, we determined it was not a dream. Someone really had been sleep-walking in our dorm.

Despite the painful bruise on my roommate's foot, the embarrassed crying we later found out "the intruder" went through, and the shameful survival instincts I displayed; it's become one of our favorite stories to tell.