It was the chocolate chip on the floor that I noticed first. Milk chocolate, it seemed. I stood in the doorway of my apartment with a duffel bag in one hand, keys in the other, and a backpack laden with two laptops, rough sand from Mediterranean beaches, and dirt from Alpine mountains weighing me down. It was the chocolate chip, however, that felt heavier than anything I had carried during these past months.

I just stood there.

A lot of time away from home had passed leading to that moment. I had turned a lot of keys in a lot of locks recently. Such were the perks of working from laptops that needed only an internet connection free of geographic underpinnings. My work required no GPS coordinates, no desk, not even gravity. Just the floating, weightless waves of wireless internet that seemed to reach even the most remote corners of the world, in hotel rooms and homestays that acted as temporary offices—not that any office was permanent, in reality.

That afternoon, as I slid the key into the mechanism, it had all felt familiar, at last.

The clicking, clacking, and abrupt unlocking of the door ushered me back into the arms of the one thing I couldn’t find anywhere I traveled. 

Home. 

A notion as permanent as any human experience could be.

But after I pushed the hulking door of the top-floor apartment open, that chocolate chip was all I could see.

It wasn’t supposed to be there. All those sappy songs and Hallmark cards about home made one thing clear: home was a safe place. A place unchanged. A place to feel at peace. Grounded. Consistent. Dependable. No embroidered pillow ever read, “Welcome home to a scattering of chocolate chips all over your kitchen floor.”

I, however, could now open that particular Etsy shop. A mix of dark and milk chocolate chips did, indeed, cover the floor, pouring from the opened cabinet in my kitchen, awash in the late afternoon light. It was like coming home to find another woman—not my mother—stirring goulash at the stove of my childhood home. Possibilities and scenarios collided for top billing in my head.

I looked around, and suddenly the chocolate chips joined a litany of new notions for home.

Home was where the storage boxes in the bedroom were tipped over.

Where cough drops littered the carpet like confetti.

Where the succulents were toppled over.

Where the bathroom drawers were opened and medicine bottles lay like fallen soldiers.

Where the toilet was covered with black dirt and gunk that made the Turkish toilets in the train station in Genoa look like the Ritz. 

Someone had rifled through all of my belongings and soiled my bathroom—the one place I valued in my home more than all others—stealing my home from me. Physically it was all there, but it wasn’t mine anymore. It had been violated. Someone violated it. I felt violated. I battled to piece together the reality in front of me, to verbalize it to myself. What would I tell the police when I called them?

I placed my bags down carefully and shuffled around the apartment slowly, in case someone had moved in, squatting in my home while I had been gone. My heart beat quickly as I tiptoed, searching for signs of entry or exit, and finding it quickly. The window, opened just so slightly, the neighbor’s attempt to air the place out perhaps, when she came to water the plants. The screen, shred to bits, revealed the point of entry. It gave onto the fire escape, easily accessible to the massive overgrown tree in the garden out back of the apartment building. Its branches served as a ladder to my home’s corruption. Someone had broken in, rifled through my drawers, destroyed the bathroom, and—finding nothing of value—exited.

It was the logical response.

Or a logical response.

Closer inspection, however, revealed truths that the drunkest Sherlock Holmes would have spotted.

The dirt in the bathroom was just that—black dirt. Little muddy marks on the toilet seat and counter revealed the culprit’s identity. The idiot, an absolute moron, left a calling card clear as day.

And the toilet, the only source of water in the whole apartment, served as a washing bin before the thief went through the bathroom drawers, moving to the kitchen, and finding the chocolate chips under the counter. I had a habit of turning the water off when I left for long periods, knowing the potential for old buildings and their aging pipes to leak. The thief had splashed around in it. Disgusting, really. I kept a clean bathroom, but still. 

This was next-level.

The bottle of antibacterial spray emptied itself onto the floor, sink, and toilet as I scrubbed all evening, trying to wash away the impropriety that the invasion had left on me like an oil slick on the ocean, with each wave bringing a new layer of shudder-inducing filth into view. Cleanliness was now a foreign concept. I’d get it back, I vowed. I’d find a way to fix this.

Somehow.

I searched in the back of the closet for the one thing I knew could bring me peace. It was the one thing that could make me feel safe again. 

There it was.

I didn’t like resorting to—let’s call it—proactive self-defense, but what choice did I have?

That night, lying in bed on fresh sheets untouched by the marauder, I stared at the ceiling, feeling the violation ebb slowly away as jet lag took its toll. Remnants of summer’s warmth flowed through the purposely opened window, bits of duct tape holding the screen in place. 

Hours later—maybe minutes—a subtle scratching woke me from the depths of the deepest sleep I had experienced in weeks. I felt myself climbing out of the reverie hastily, as if from the bottom of the well, trying to escape toward the light where something called me from the waking side of things. My head throbbed as my eyes fluttered awake. The scratching, louder now, came from the window.

Like fingernails on a screen.

Well not like nails on a screen—it was nails on a screen. The thief was back. I sat up and turned to the window on my right, suddenly locking eyes with the thing, the black bandit’s mask across that face making it hard to see the glossy black orbs that now stared at me, startled.

The scratching stopped for a moment. 

This thief, this stupid thief had stolen my security, my comfort, my home. The violation would not go unpunished.

Slowly, without breaking eye contact, I reached under the pillow next to me, felt my hand on the trigger, and knew my retribution would be swift and effective. This was no time for hesitation. 

I didn’t want to do it.

But I knew I had to, to avenge myself, to feel safe again, to reclaim the very notion of home that substantiated my humanity like nothing else could. 

The trigger felt cold.

So did the bead of sweat on my neck. 

My heart beat fast. 

I held my breath.

I only had one chance.

In a swift and deliberate motion I pulled it from the pillow and squeezed immediately over and over again as I pointed it to the screen, toward the scratching. I heard each pulse blasting through at the unwitting thief, who never could have imagined me lying there, not after days or even weeks of slipping unfettered into my home, to invade my things, to feast on my chocolate chips, and to usurp my ownership both emotional and physical of this space that I had created for myself.

Suddenly anger and an unslakable thirst for revenge filled me.

It was the work of just a few seconds but I felt myself reclaiming the years it took to build this home, the countless hours logged to pay for it, the friends and family who have come and gone, the nights it welcomed me back equally after heartbreak and celebration.

I pulled the trigger faster and faster, unleashing my frustration and angst into the world, to make it clear that I would not stand for losing my one anchor in this world, to be cut free from that which provided me a soul. I would defend my home, and steal back the emotional stability and mental comfort that this place and its imperfect linens, wonky floorboards, and time-crusted appliances afforded me.

This was my ultimate lesson.

I squeezed the trigger anew.

I made a few direct hits and kept squeezing the trigger as the thief fell back disoriented onto the fire escape with a thud against the metal, the scratching of nails indicating its attempt at escape. Everything became blurry in the messy haze that followed. The air was thick and my heartbeat only began to settle as I realized I was fully awake and had done what I had just done.

I coughed, the clouds around me thick with spicy peppermint.

The blue plastic spray bottle in my hand dribbled cool water infused with essential oil onto my right index finger that still held the trigger. The wet mist that I sprayed all over settled, and fine pearls of water coated the screen and window frame, glistening in the harvest moon.

I shut the window and returned my head to the pillow, feeling accomplished and restored, as if I severed Medusa’s head or slayed the Minotaur myself. I knew it was finished.

That horrid, beady-eyed thief will think twice before entering again and washing its hands in my toilet.

They may like to keep their paws clean, but raccoons really, really hate the smell of peppermint.