I got into a car accident right after college, and I knew some insurance money was coming my way. The insurance agent had hinted it would be in the tens of thousands, and I told myself that I was going to make a movie with the money. That was something I’d always wanted to, but it’d never seemed possible. Until then.
So, as I waited for the insurance money to come, I began writing the screenplay. I’ve always had problems focusing so I decided to write it at night while everyone else was asleep so that way I wouldn’t get distracted by texts or phone calls. My dad let me stay all night at his office so I would go there every night and sit at one of the empty desks and type away. And then I would go home and sleep during the day.
But I got scared being in that office alone at night. No one else was supposed to be at the office that late so every little noise would freak me out. I was really anxious since I was drinking a lot of coffee to stay up. And I guess I was in a kind of panicked state at the time, after the car accident. I came out of the wreck basically okay. I had some skin lacerations, but for the most part, I was fine. A lot of other people in the car weren’t. Nobody died, but some of them got injured pretty bad. The car wreck itself was brutal. We were just driving down the road and then out of nowhere, the car start swerving, then it flipped six times. I still remember the way it felt as we were spinning and slamming into the ground. I felt certain I was going to die. In the weeks and months after it, that feeling lingered. I started to really think that at any moment, I might die. I guess it was some minor PTSD or something, but I was terrified of everything. Of driving. Of lone men walking on the sidewalk behind me. Of certain dogs.
But what scared me the most was the possibility of a home invasion. It doesn’t really make sense on the surface. I get into a car accident, but then I, for some reason, become totally afraid of home invasions. When I was alone typing at my computer, engrossed in the world of my screenplay, I should have felt safe. I wasn’t on a dangerous highway. I was at a desk, at a computer, in my own little fake imaginary movie world.
Now, I think I understand it. The car accident destroyed my sense of safety. It made me feel that at any moment something might barge into my life and kill me. And then one night, as I was working on my script, I heard footsteps.
I walked out of the office and moved into the dark lobby and listened. Yeah, someone was walking up the stairs. And the only thing between me and the stairwell was a plate glass door. Which was locked. Or at least, I thought it was locked. But it was too late to check.
I ran toward the back of the office. That place had a back deck, but it was four stories up, so I couldn’t really escape that way, but I was hoping I could hide. So I ran out the back deck and stared back into the office. I could see through the windows, through the lobby, and through the plate glass door, and on the other side of it, a man was standing there with what looked like a crowbar in his hand.
I felt the same way I felt when that car began to flip.
Like I was gonna die.
But I had nowhere to go.
The man cupped his hands against the plate glass door and peered inside the dark office.
I stood completely still.
He grabbed the door handle.
But it was locked. I still wasn’t sure that that was a crowbar in his hand, but I was certain whatever it was would have no problem smashing open the plate glass door.
But then the guy just left. He went back in the stairwell. And disappeared. I stayed on that back deck for another hour probably, in the cool air, freezing.
The next day, I found out that guy broke into the office on the floor above me, stole a bunch of business checks, and tried to cash one, but was arrested shortly after. Apparently, that was his MO, and he’d just gotten out of prison for doing the same thing years before. When I found out that he wasn’t a murderer, or even violent, but just some guy breaking into places and passing forged checks, I felt less scared about what happened, but I was even more terrified of home invasions. He might not have smashed the door open, but he smashed my sense of safety.
And this wasn’t even really a home invasion. I wasn’t at home, and that guy didn’t actually invade. But it felt like one. The one place I could go to be alone and write without distractions felt scary to even enter anymore.
What happened to me wasn’t even that big of a deal. A momentary scare. But the whole experience helped me see why home invasions are so scary, because the intrusion itself, even without violence, made me question everything, how I fit into my environment, where I even belonged, what I was even doing with my life. I mean, why was I staying at my dad’s office all night long trying to write a screenplay with the hopes of making a movie even though I had never made one and with cash I had no certainty I would ever actually get?
A home invasion, even without violence, leads you to have something like an existential crisis, because when that bedrock to your life—your home, your personal space, and your peace of mind—is gone, it can be hard to find your place in the world or remember where you found meaning.
That image of a man with a crowbar always stuck with me, and it even inspired a part of my debut novel, Shadow Drive, a book I wrote in my home. In the daytime. And with the doors locked.
Here are some books that feature home invasions, but not necessarily just the kind where people break in and threaten your life, but also the kind where they sneakily intrude into your home and then slowly make you question everything.
Don’t Let Her Stay by Nicola Sanders
In a standard home invasion, you might hope your neighbors notice something suspicious and will call the police. You have some hope you might be saved by a SWAT team knocking down the door at any minute. But when the person intruding into your home is your own stepdaughter, who can you really expect to save you even though it’s clear she wants to harm you and your newborn?
The Family Upstairs by Lisa Jewell
Or what if your parents invite some strange woman to stay for the weekend? But after the weekend, the woman doesn’t leave? But instead invites more people to stay in the house? And what if they don’t leave either? And what if these people slowly take over your house? Your life?
Deep Water by Patricia Highsmith
What I find so unnerving about home invasions is the way the intruder upsets your normal of way life. The way they can take away the comforts you get from being in your home. Deep Water features a dysfunctional marriage where a wife frequently cheats on her husband, and the husband, Vic, knows she cheats, but to save his dignity, and I guess, to frustrate his wife, Vic pretends that his wife’s lovers who keep coming to the house are just guests visiting the both of them. Even though I found it hard at first to understand Vic’s behavior, Highsmith somehow got me into his head, and near the end of a book, I became infuriated by one of his wife’s lovers. Vic takes care of pet snails, and one night, his wife’s newest lover insists they cook some of his snails for dinner. It was this that was really the tipping point for me. It’s not that this lover barged in and treated the house like it was his that was bothersome. It was when he began to threaten Vic’s private life and try to take away one of the few things that mattered to him. And I think that’s what makes these home invasions give a person something like an existential crisis, because in our homes, we often have things that we cherish, that we even rest some of our personal identity on, and when someone hostile is in your house without your express permission, it’s possible that any minute they can ruin something that matters to you.
The Personal Assistant by Kimberly Belle
Even though Kimberly Belle’s previous novel, My Darling Husband, is actually about a home invasion, I find The Personal Assistant to be a more terrifying look into what could happen when someone you don’t really know comes into your home. In My Darling Husband, a masked intruder is threatening to ruin the main character’s life, but in The Personal Assistant, it’s someone the main character Alex has personally invited into the home. Even though Alex’s personal assistant isn’t wearing a mask, she feels somehow more elusive, more mysterious. And because Alex gave her personal assistant full access to her home and life, she was also given the potential to completely ruin Alex’s life. And it’s those two things that really make home invasions scary: the mystery surrounding the intruder’s desires and their almost unlimited potential to ruin your life.
Heat 2 by Michael Mann, Meg Gardiner
That includes the unlimited potential of violence. When someone barges into your home, and they take you captive, there’s nothing keeping them from doing whatever they want to you. It’s not like a mugging, or even a bar fight, where the violence is quick, maybe even public. In a home invasion, the violence is behind closers doors and possibly indefinite. In Heat 2, the lead home invader seems to have no moral line he won’t cross, and as he’s standing there over his victims, his potential for cruelty and violence seems limitless.
Red Dragon by Thomas Harris
Because the only real limit is the home invader’s imagination. What’s truly scary is the home invader who wants to act out their weirdest fantasies. I tried reading Red Dragon in middle school, but I stopped reading it after a few chapters because I was horrified by the home invasions. You don’t even actually see them in real time. Instead, the main character walks through the crime scene later on, after the bodies have been removed, and puts together what must have happened based on the evidence he sees at the crime scene. The blood stains, the broken glass. As you fellow the main character through the crime scene, your mind has to fill in the gap of what it must have felt like to be a character at the home invader’s mercy. The only real limit terror then becomes your own imagination.
Everybody Knows by Jordan Harper
The most disturbing home invasion I’ve read in a recent book also doesn’t show the home invasion itself. Everybody Knows just shows the before and after. And because you see the before, the after is even more unsettling in contrast. The after ended up being one of the most memorable scenes in any crime novel I’ve read in year because it gets to the heart of what’s so terrifying about home invasions. A home invader can enter a house that is full of life and, within moments, destroy everything inside it.
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