I’m 21 and live in rural lowa, growing up we never locked our doors because we knew our neighbors and pretty much somebody was always home. It’s a weekday night and I’m talking on the phone outside on the patio. I hear what sounds like a crappy car muffler faintly behind our row of evergreen trees on the road, where I can’t see. No idea if it was a car further away or if I was hearing things, but there were no headlights.
Flash forward to that weekend, and I’m home alone for the first time as my dad had gone on a bike trip with friends and I didn’t go with. I should also mention I’m taking care of my cousins dog while they’re out of town. So it’s about 10PMish and I go to hop in the car so I can go let the dog out for the night. I decide I should shower before I leave since I hadn’t yet. Once done with that I go hop in the car and head to my cousins, on the way out over the hill after my driveway I see headlights coming over a hill about a half mile away. I think to myself “I wonder if it’s the same car coming to case my house to try and rob it.” I then proceeded to let the dog out and head back home.
Coming down the hill into the valley I live in, I see this car on the left side in a cornfield entrance with what looked like a damaged bumper I hadn’t seen before. I think holy shit they might be actually trying to rob the place since they might think nobody is home. I pull in the driveway, park, go inside and throw on a long sleeve and pants that were dark. I then go downstairs to our gun cabinet and load up a 20 gauge with birdshot.
At this point I’m fully prepared to go out into the darkness to check the area and make sure that nobody was there, and accepted whatever came with that. I walk outside and keep in mind my eyes were not adjusted to the dark yet as I had been in the house with lights on. I walk out our door and to the left down the sidewalk, and my house has these evergreens on 3 sides of a sort of square plot. I go to the end of the sidewalk and turn right to go up the hill and try to get a look at the car which I assumed was still parked. As I turned from the sidewalk to go into the grass a thought popped in my head, “be ready to turn the safety off.”
I put my hand ready to flip it as I walk a few steps off the grass and I see this dark spot in the short grass where I mow and know it looks off, my eyes slightly adjusted to the dark to make out a body laying slightly tucked under the evergreen. That very second I put the gun to my shoulder and take the safety off, my finger is moving to the trigger to possibly shoot this person with a shotgun in fear that they have a gun or knife and were on our property to harm or steal. Not even a couple seconds before I was able to pull the trigger, I hear “no no wait it’s me”.
My friends had snuck to the property and were trying to scare me with a Michael Meyers mask, which I find to be terrifying and they knew. I came about 2 seconds from accidentally murdering my friend while the other was hiding behind a tree watching. This entire story had so many timing factors that saved his life, if they had been hiding not even 10 feet up the hill more, the yard light wouldn’t have shown my gun and he wouldn’t have been able to say it was him and not some stranger.