Being audibly abused is never thrilling.
It just might make a nice guy resort to killing…
By now you may be starting to suspect that I’m dead-set on airing every single one of my grievances I have with a recent vacation property we stayed in, the slowly-becoming-infamous Eden Cove 9 (aka EC9), and the crack team of property managers we rented it from, Better Beach Rentals.
And you would be absolutely right. Though, in fairness, it’s more about celebrating the absolute mind-screw that staying at EC9 was, rather than just ragging on a poor defenseless property and property management company.
So far though, it hasn’t been such a terrible mind-screw…yet. Bear with me, though, as I slowly and methodically build my case. For sake of time, I’ll give you a tl;dr1That would be short for “too long; didn’t read”. refresh on the first two Levels of Purgatory that I’ve covered so far: too many stairs, and a non-working elevator coupled with crappy customer service. There, consider yourself caught up.
Now let’s get on with this Never-ending VRBO Review of Eden Cove 9…
Level Three: The Tale-Tell Heart, EC9 Style
“Chirp-chirp-chirp!” *Random amount of time passes* “Chirp-chirp-chirp!”
No, we didn’t have a bird trapped in the house. That would have been too easy. Nope, you guessed it: we had a rogue smoke detector going crazy on us. Just wonderful.
The worst part was that it was on the first level of EC9, where my mom’s and the Elder’s rooms were located. And it didn’t waste any time assaulting them either: it started going off-script just as those two had settled into bed on our very first night there.
At first Mom’s theory was that it would chirp every 5 minutes, but wouldn’t you know it, the second she called me down to desperately ask for help, it wouldn’t follow that pattern. In reality, it was merely lulling us all into a false sense of security. After no activity after 15 minutes of mind-numbingly boring waiting, we concluded that it had gone back to behaving, and Mom and the Elder settled back in for the night.
They were finally drifting off to sleep, and then BAM–it attacked again without warning with another vicious “Chirp-chirp-chirp!”
My poor mother was starting to be honest-to-goodness traumatized at this point in time. But at least she had the good sense to flee her abuser, as she wisely grabbed some pillows, and with the Elder in tow, hiked up to the second level of the house where she sought refuge on the couches in the living room. Not that it completely solved the problem; she later told me she could still faintly hear it chirping from all the way up there, keeping her awake.
Nonetheless, I would say that an uncomfortable night on the couch would be waaaaay better than never being able to fully fall asleep, living in constant fear that the smoke detector could beat the living shit out of your eardrums, unprovoked, at any given moment…
I swear to the Higher Powers That Be that this smoke detector was a legit psychopath. Like, evil genius, there’s-a-special-place-in-hell-for-you level psychopathery. All throughout the next day, it behaved itself and didn’t make a peep. But once again, it was all just a ruse in order to take advantage of over-trusting upright citizens.
Around 6:30 pm that evening, that asshole declared his presence once again with a belligerent “Chirp-chirp-chirp!”
“Ah, hellz, no!” I declared to one in particular as I marched downstairs, and with phone in hand. I wasn’t going to tolerate this tormenting of my family; it was time to bring in the professional, so I dialed up BBR’s after-hour maintenance guy and told him to haul tail over there lickety-split!
An affable fellow, perhaps college age, he and I hit it off as we tried to scientifically deduce what the heck was going on, and how to remedy it. However, what made it so difficult was that we couldn’t repeat the error. This is what was so maddening–there was no way to really know we had fixed anything besides just…waiting. Uggh.
After an hour or so of chasing our tales, all he could do for me was change all the batteries and wish me the best. Of course, most of the time dead batteries are the cause of random-ass chirpings, so we were somewhat optimistic that the problem was solved.
“What if…what if it starts beeping again?” I asked, knowing that it was wise to hedge my bets.
He informed me that if it persisted, the only remedy would be for him to replace it with an entirely new one, and that in the meantime, I had his–wink-wink–“blessing” to go nuclear on it and completely rip out not only the battery but the entire unit if it came to that.
Welp.
You can bet your bottom dollar that it came to that. It only took until about 9:30 that night before that little ----- chirped its last “Chirp-chirp-chirp!” before I ripped its throat and heart out and buried it deep in a pile of towels on the second level.
NOW the problem was solved!
“CHIRP!”
It was barely an hour after my rage-fueled dismembering of Sir Psycho Smoke Detector, and it must have been so traumatic I could swear I was hearing impossible things. I wrote it off as attributable to the PTSD that comes when you snuff the life out of something in cold-blood, and went back to researching kitchen tile backsplash options.
“CHIRP!”
Nope, that was real, and was definitely coming from that pile of beach towels. I must have forgotten to take the battery out…
As I got up to finish off the tenacious beast, something caught my eye. Sitting there on the kitchen counter was a 9-volt battery…the very one and the same that I knew I had taken out earlier that evening.2I truly believed that if I had done what I was about to do next–walk down to the beach and heave into the Atlantic Ocean–that it still would have somehow found a way to make it back to the house and chirp at me, its ruthless killer.
You have got to be ----- kidding me.
Good god, have I moved my family into the Haunted ----- Mansion?
(Tune in next time to hear more…)
Content created on: 24 June 2021 (Thursday)
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