A man got into my apartment

It happened only a few days ago. My doorbell had rung about 30 minutes earlier and when I looked through the peephole it was a man standing there, staring at the camera, with a little bag hanging off his shoulder. I assumed he had come to visit the neighbor across from me , but by the time I went back to the peephole to check he was gone. I didn’t really think of it, just reached into my fridge to get something. Then I heard a noise coming from the cabinet above. There’s a vent up there that connects to the neighbor. I heard a man talking to my neighbor, cooking up a scheme to break in through the vent.<br><br>I tried to make noise, talking loudly to make sure he knew someone else was listening and to try and get my neighbors attention , by talking loudly about how I was gonna tell them when they came home. I haven’t seen the tenant across for days so I assumed he wasn’t coming home. This served to make the man louder and more erratic. He was talking about how he would fuck me up if I told.<br><br>Then I heard a rustling. The man’s hand came into view by the old hole that had been in the vent for as long as I’d lived there. It chilled me down to my core. I had assumed the cabinet was too high for him to reach without a ladder. I looked around and saw that the only thing that could be used to reach that high was the chair folded up in the corner , the kind with the canvas bottom. I had assumed the cabinet was too high for him to reach without a ladder. I looked around and saw that the only thing that could be used to reach that high was the chair folded up in the corner , the kind with the canvas bottom. Right then and there I folded , thinking oh no it’s too high for him to reach. Like I was the one breaking in . This thought might have saved my life.<br><br>The next thing I know I hear the rustling of fabric. I looked up to see the vent being ripped at. The vent is very thin metal and the man started to rip it open, his hands coming into view. I knew I had to make a move quick. I grabbed the can of soup next to me, the nearest hard thing and hit the part of the vent above where I knew his head was. It made a sickening clunk. It was the sound of bone cracking. It took a second for me to comprehend what I had done. I was scared shitless, my hands were shaking so much I couldn’t even dial the phone. The pain on my neighbors side of the vent turned into anger. He started cursing. I took a moment to thank the universe for my chubby cooking fingers. I would have killed myself if I’d actually hurt him. <br><br>I called the cops , and they were slow to come. I could hear him cooking up another scheme with my neighbor. I yelled through the vent to give them a description. I told them what happened , the cops laughed at me when they showed up. They were like “oh you hit him on the head? That’s why he’s acting like that?” It turns out the man had been a member of some gang . He definitely got what was coming to him . I saw the aftermath when , the day after, I asked the landlord to make sure the hole was fixed. The landlord said to my neighbor “did he come in?” And my neighbor said “yeah, I fuckin stomped on him” I didn’t say anything but I think the landlord knew that I had placed the first stomp. I think the landlord was mad that the whole thing had happened. I knew his reputation and I knew I was a replacement tenant. I moved as soon as I could.