First of all, let me tell you something. This is an experience you do not want to have.

It happened this night. It was a normal Friday night; I hadn't gone out and was thus sleeping peacuflly in my bedroom. While I was sleeping, I kept hearing dragging sounds from outside, as if there was someone walking. In my sleep, I didn't pay those much attention. I couldn't understand what they were in this state of drowziness.
I awoke with the shots. Shots being fired. Then the sound of a weapon reloading, that metallic clicking you probably've heard in movies. And then more shots. I still was kinda drowzy, so I took I was either dreaming or those were shots fired in the distance, over at the slums, which are not too far away, but far enough. As I was considering that, my mother entered my room and just said, "keep ducked and stay away from any window". I suddenly woke up completely; I checked the clock, 3:40 AM. Then I realized everything.

Let me tell you about how my house is built. It has two floors (my bedroom is on the 2nd). I live with my two parents.
There's the house; right behind it there's a 7m-tall vertical mountainside, barbed wire, another 6m-tall steep stone wall, and then it gets horizontal; the place I call 'terrain', which we use mainly for planting; and then a huge wall (with <a href="http://www.mercadodastelas.com.br/imagens/concertina.jpg">concertina</a> on top) that separates our terrain from the mountain itself. The mountain, btw, is covered with a forest.
We've adopted all the security measures to protect us from anything coming from the mountain. The concertina and barbed wire are proof. We also have alarms with motion detectors all over the house itself.
I had often dreamed about or pictured the occasion when we'd get invaded from the terrain; we often observe it at night through the window when the motion-triggered light is litten there, but we never saw anything. But some of the huses in our street, in which all the houses on our side share the back to this mountain, have been victim of a couple of invasion attempts, some succesful and others not.

As I said before, I realized everything. The shots, they were too close to be ignored, they were right there! I saw and heard my parents at the window, and how my father had seen a man in our terrain, between the barbed wire and the wall to the mountain. It was, for the first time, real; the dragging sounds, the shots, the man there: so much like nightmares I had had, but now, for the first time, real. The bastards were finally trying to invade us!
The man my father had seen disappeared in the darkness behind the light, towards the mountain. In any case, we couldn't be sure. We picked up the phone. We froze. No line. The phone was NOT working!
We instantly turned our cellphones on and dialed the number of the street's security guards (there are always two patrolling at all times). No answer. Then we tried the cellphone of the man who we paid to do this security, a professional: No answer. I was unconceivable to call the 'real' police, they're not trustworthy and would take too long.
We went quickly to the alarm remote control. We pressed the 'panic button', the one to press in case of real emergency.
No answer.
Pressed again and again.
Nothing happened.

Fear. Real fear. Fear like I hadn't ever felt in my entire clukcing life: fear of death. Fear of having a stranger pointing a gun to your head, making you hostage, tying you up. Strange men in the house, stealing things, armed, you can't do anything, you're a compelte victim, you can be killed with one shot. Real fear. Fear of the situation, fear for me, fear for me parents. I, a fanatic atheist, caught myself clinging desperatedly for someone to pray to, to ask for help, to beg: save me. Still, there was no one and we were at home with invaders outside and no contact to the security.

We called a neighbour, a trustworthy one. He went outside his house to call the street guards. Something like 10 or 15 minutes passed, the most desperate, the most terrible of my life. The phone went back, it was suddenly working again. It rang, it was the company that did our house security. They had taken noticed of the panic button. We explained the situation.
Within a few minutes there were two guards of the street security, one man from our particular security company, and about 5 police cars worth of policemen outside, on my garden. All of them armed, especially the cops, who had HUGE riffles. They checked our entire terrain (just couldn't go up the 13m-tall mountainside, of course), no one was there. Needless to say we didn't open the doors of the house. To anybody. We just let them see the gardens and surroundings.
But there was still a problem: the security guard of my left-side neigbor hadn't shown up at all after the commotion. We instantly remembered the shots. We thought, he is either shot down or held hostage. The people left our house and went to the neighbour.
See, those neighbours of mine are old people. The man is just over 100 years old, the woman about 80, I believe. They have many people there at all times and a heavy security system, including the private guard who wasn't showing up.
The maid opened the door to the police. She didn't dare to come out of her room and didn't know what was happening. After checking the surroundings, the police came to the conclusion that the man, the woman and possibly a few servants were being held hostage in the bathroom.
Then we spent a long time without direct news, just listening through our window to the policemen talking to each other over at the neighbour's. When we got news, it was all okay. Everyone was alright there. They weren't being held hostages; in fact, there were no invaders around anymore.

Relief. Calm breathing after a tension that lasted for too long. The whole thing lasted two hours. It was almost 6 o'clock now. The policemen went away after doing a final check at the terrains. Sleep. Peace.






Now. Based on what the company guard told us, what we heard the policemen speaking and what the police experts that examined our terrain this morning said, I can tell you what happened last night, and it is pretty much correct.

The invaders came from the mountain. They jumped the wall over at my right-side neighbour's side, where it is lower. The earth there was even stepped over a lot, as if it was marked to say 'here you can jump'. Then, they opened a hole in our concertina (an expert found a glove there this morning), and jumped from the neighbour's terrain to ours. From there, they went down the steep 6m-tall wall and reached the barbed wire. They also opened a hole in our barbed wire and passed through. Then they gave up on my house and went to the left-side neighbour
Our theory is that the invaders looked down and saw the 7m-tall fall that led to my house. They could climb down alright, but it would be too bad for an escape route. That's why we think they went to the neighbour.
Over at the neighbour they descended her terrain, which is not vertical as our is, only a hillside filled with very tall grass. The dragging sounds I heard in my sleep were probably the sounds made by the invaders as they walked through the grass.
They managed to reach my neighbour's house without triggering the alarm, and enter it. The neighbour's guard had, coincidentally, went to the bathroom. The invaders saw the lights on behind the bathroom door. They approached it and said:
"You lost."
As soon as he heard that, the guard threw himself sideways to the floor, taking cover behind a tiny wall inside the bathroom. The door opened and he opened fire. He fired 4 times. The invaders answered with 6 shots. Needless to say, those were the shots that I heard. The invaders didn't expect to find armed resistance, and left. The guard was not hit, but maybe the invaders were. All we know is that they left at this moment, going back to our terrain, passing through the barbed wire, climbing the stone wall, and jumping back the other walls to the mountain. That was when my father caught a glimpse of one of them running away in our terrain.
The neighbour's guard didn't know the invaders had left, and stayed hidden inside the bathroom. That is why he didn't show up for a long time, and the closed door and lights is also why the policemen thought the house inhabitants were being held hostage inside the bathroom.

It's all over now. We're taking care of the pending security issues: we're gonna install a motion detector alarm in the terrain, and complete our perimeter with electric fence.
It's all over. For now. Because we know they will try again sooner ot later.


Again, I tell you, this is an experience you do not want to have. Fear of death, I mean. Such a popular topic for entertainment purposes... but in real life, it's not about confronting someone with 'all your power' and see who wins. It's about who is gonna be the first one to hit you with a shot. Anyone can fire a gun. It's quick and efficient. It causes real fear.
I tell you. Stay away from real fear. A honest advice.

Holy sh*t man.
many many waves for you
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

my mom's always telling me about how it's not safe to do this or do that or do the next thing... maybe if i show her this she'll finally believe how safe we are here.

Thanks for sharing. *hug*

Hippies HATES guns.

You may have been scared, but you held up well.

I'm glad your family is OK.

Have some Relief:

And some Peace

no offense but thats really nothing. So shots were fired, no one you know was killed. I've experienced that when i was little, then got use to it as it happens in the town i'm in. Shooters from the mountain is different from someone shooting someone else you may/maynot know for something.

Whoa...that's like a very scary situation, actually very scary. Good thing no one was killed in the tragedy or it woulda been messy.

Oh, BTW, why are they called "invaders"? Do they have other names or so? >___>

They're called invaders because they're invading ^^
The term we use here is robbers, actually.
Because they're invading to steal things.

Agentsix, for you it may be nothing, but for me, the prospect of having a group of armed robbers sneaking professionally* into your house, with the intent to tie you up, steal whatever they can, and use you as a hostage in case any police may show up, not giving a damn about your well-being, is at least something.

* You should see. The guys can humiliate James Bond any day of the week. They even use protective armpads for dog bite.

They way you typed that it sounds like you're in the middle of a warzone or something. Or is this really the case?

that's why i live in the light

No, it's actually a very peaceful neighbourhood.

The only problem are the armed robbers who are willing to shoot people that appear during the night from time to time when no one is expecting them, and cause a commotion like that.

I'm glad no one was hurt.

I hope your sleep comes just as easy as it did before this ever happened.

holy crap that would scare me so much i would move to mexico

wow, sorry.

your stacked arent you?

Did they have any motivation to come after those houses?