My Car Is Possessed

Seriously. It is exhibiting some demonic qualities lately. Even my mechanic is entertaining it as a viable theory. 

The Evidence

• The car waited until a holiday weekend to demonstrate any strangeness. (Guess who isn’t open Memorial Day weekend?  Most mechanics.)
• The defect only stressed my sanity not my driving skills. (My dog, Dexter’s sanity was sorely tested also.)
• No one can pinpoint what caused the issue

The Story

Saturday morning I’m awakened at 2:35am by my car alarm going off inside my closed and locked garage. By the time my sleep addled brain figured out what it was, it stopped. I went back to sleep.  Sure, it crossed my mind that I might not have a car there when I got up to go to work on Saturday, but, honestly, I wanted the sleep more than I wanted to investigate. 

4:00am the stinking thing goes off again!  I find my keys, shut it off and start to think. (This is where it gets dangerous) What if there’s someone in my garage, and they’ll keep setting off the alarm until I investigate. Then they’ll invade my home. Stab me, stab the dog and take all my stuff. (Since I was a kid, it was always people breaking in with a knife that I was afraid of. Not a gun or a flame thrower, but a knife. It is a big vicious knife, but still…)

Is said dog barking? No, and he likes to inform me if someone slams a car door two houses down. He’s a pretty good watch dog, but what if he’s gotten complacent…or he doesn’t hear as well when he’s asleep. (His “selective” hearing is a whole different post by itself.)  I debate for about 10 minutes about calling 911 to have officers inspect my almost certainly empty garage. 

Finally, realizing sleep was proving elusive in light of the possible intruder to my garage, I called. The officer was very nice when I told him that the “beeping thing” on my car kept going off, and that if I opened the door there would be a “nefarious criminal” waiting on the other side. That is how all the horror movies go. 

Big Kudos to the operator who figured out that “beeping thing” was really a car alarm, and thanked me for calling instead of investigating myself. It made me feel much less…paranoid. Thank you for also sending a female officer with the two male officers when I mentioned I live by myself. It made a big difference at 4:30am.  

Also thank you to the officers who came to my house for also thanking me for calling, diffusing my budding panic with logic, and complimenting me on my choice in art.   However, none of that made a difference when it went off again at 5:30 or 7:00. 

It was also forgotten when my old car accident injuries acted up that morning….just before heading to work. The pain medication helped me sleep Saturday night. If the alarm went off, my drugged mind didn’t even register it. 

Sunday night was a different story. When it went off every two hours…nearly exactly. All. Night. Long. Did it ever go off AFTER 9am?  Of course not. 

Monday night was the same. All. Night. Long. To say that I was not my most clear-headed on Tuesday, would be true. Both Dex and I were go grateful and relieved to have my mother’s car parked at my house on Tuesday night. I didn’t miss the Demon Car one little bit. I couldn’t even be upset with the thunderstorm that raged over my house in the middle of the night. I’d had four whole hours of uninterrupted sleep. It was blissful. 

The result

• My car seems to be fixed now. No one could get the damned alarm to go off at the mechanics without intentionally setting it off. (Of course. That’s how these things go.)
• They found a couple of possibilities, and I gladly paid them to fix them.
• I still don’t know why he wouldn’t let me have his cell phone number so I could call him if it went off again at 2am. You’d think he wasn’t confident in his work or something?

To my neighbors

• I am sorry. 
• So very very sorry

‘Til next time,

Jessica

P.S. I’m attempting some blogging from my phone. What do you think?