Writer's Workshop: The Windows Have Eyes

Writer's Workshop Day! YAY!!!

Today I chose the prompt The Police said it best when they said, “Every breath you take/And every move you make/Every bond you break, every step you take/I’ll be watching you”. Write about a time you believed someone was watching you.

Before we ever moved to Wisconsin, we made yearly visits to see David's family. We made one of those visits in the fall of 2004 for an event that David's sister was hosting. I came out a week earlier than David with my MIL. It was just after Ethan's birthday and the family wanted to spoil him a little. This I had no problem with. Ethan and I spent the week with my SIL, visiting my FIL and generally having a good time.

The day David got in, we packed up our things at my SIL's house and came to stay with my FIL. It had been a very long day, so we got Ethan into bed, and David proceeded to try on the outfit he was wearing to the event. He went to the bathroom to make sure he was tying his tie right while I changed into my pajamas. As I bent down to fix my sock, I stumbled to the left and hit the light switch with my shoulder and accidentally turned the light off. And that's when I saw it. The shadow of a head right outside our window. I turned the light on, looked around and turned it off. It was still there. I turned the light on just as David came back into the room. I told him, quietly so in case there was someone outside the window they wouldn't hear me and run, that there was someone outside the window. David laughed at me and told me, "Ha..This is Wisconsin, not Arizona. Things like that don't happen here" Then he turned the light off and told me it was probably my big head. Then he saw it move when I didn't. He quietly slipped out of the room, to the back door, and opened it to see a guy standing next to an outdoor chair looking in the window at me. He yelled, "Hey fucker!" and disappeared into the night because the man ran. He eventually caught him by tackling him and brought him back to the house.

I went to my FIL's door and told him that David had just chased a man that had been looking through our window. He came out and called the cops. Now, David's dad used to be a Phoenix police officer. After he got off the phone with the police, he grabbed a pen, a small notebook and a maglight and went into the yard. He shone the light in the mans face and asked for ID. This is when the man started telling us that he was drunk and had been walking in the street and the streetlight had cast his shadow on our window. However, David caught him looking in the window. It took over an hour for police to arrive and arrest him, so we had to hear this over and over again.

Once police arrived, we had to give statements. They told us that he had said the same thing, but they knew what he was doing. Then they told us that all they could do was charge him with disturbing the peace because Wisconsin has no law against Peeping Toms. This I was not thrilled with, at all. A few months later we learned he received probation and we got a letter in the mail that told us he was sorry for disturbing the peace at our home.

It hasn't happened since, and I hope it never happens again.