I was putting the final stitches on my embroidery piece for the night, when the doorbell rang. The last fifteen minutes had been putting the final stitch in, embroidery being nearly but not quite as bad as the “just one more page” syndrome of a book. Usually I can convince myself to put down the piece when I need to rethread the needle; stopping at the end of a chapter is much harder. But either way, eleven-thirty was late with my schedule for the next day and the doorbell should not be ringing on my little out-of-the-way suburban street.
I got up to answer the door.
Yes, I know, “monsters.” Not the fictional monsters from the books I love so much. Not werewolves (who wouldn’t be ringing doorbells) or vampires (who might), but ICE agents upset by one of my most recent stories or home invaders targeting women who live alone.
But at the other end of the spectrum, the last time I responded to a late-night ring, it had been a recently moved-in neighbor who had dementia thinking she had misplaced a small child. It had been a simple matter of returning her home to her adult daughter. She has since been moved into a care facility better able to control her wanderings.
So who would be behind door number one? I did glance out the back door before heading to the front. I did pick up my phone and unlocked it, with 9-1 dialed in. And I picked up my small branch cutters. I had been doing a lot of yard work, trimming back bushes and it was readily available. They had a good weight to them, though they had not leverage or balance.
I turned on the outside light and looked out the eyehole, nobody, but the dark could hide a multiple of things. A click here and a click there and the front door was unlocked. The porch and beyond into the street was empty.
A victim of ding-dong-ditch, I guessed, though rude for nearly midnight. I tossed and turned and dreamed weird dreams that night.
The morning alarm came much too soon, but yardwork in Texas summer needs to be done before it climbs above ninety degrees Fahrenheit, a temperature expected by eleven. At seven thirty, it was already over eighty. I got my branch cutters and started working on the jungle again.
My neighbor on one side, Billy, was out mowing his lawn. (Not related to the family who had put their matriarch into assisted living; that large extended family is across the street and three doors. Sometimes I wondered how many houses she visited that night before I opened the door.) I waved at him as he did a turn on his little plot and he waved back. The two of us homebodies, him being retired and me working from home as a writer and editor, continued on our morning routine of yard work.
When I was packing up my gear for the day, Billy meandered by watering the potted plants decorating the eaves of his roof. His wife loves her flowers but neither of them had the energy to keep them alive in the ground.
“I’m glad you moved back to Texas, Elaine, to help your mom. The house is looking really good.”
“Thanks, Billy.” I filled my bucket with a shovel, the cutters, a broom, and the loopers. “I’m just trying to keep up with you.”
“You don’t have to.” He smiled gently. “I’ve been working on this for over forty years now. It basically takes care of itself.”
Hardly. The man watered, cut, and trimmed every single day before retreating when the temperatures got too high. A question popped into my head, something I had considered last night during the tossing and turning. “Hey, did anyone ring your doorbell last night?”
“Yes.” Billy turned off his hose. “We were already in bed and didn’t answer. It happen to you too?”
“Yeah, about two minutes after eleven thirty.” I answered. “Maybe one of the teenagers doing pranks last night.” We had three families along our block with teenagers.
“Probably,” he agreed.
I left the bucket by the door, placed the loopers in the shed, and took in the cutters. With teenagers and children in the area, I try to keep the cutting tools hidden. Inside, I made the way back to my office to work on a short story due in four days. My final thoughts about the prank was how completely unlike any of the industrious kids in our neighborhood the action was. No one is on the streets after the street lights come on. Then I was deep in superheroes helping landing airplanes in an ice storm.
I only came out of the writing haze when my alarm went off, reminding me of my protest hours.
Grabbing my keys and purse, plus my prepacked bag of lunch and water, I ran out the door. Once in the car, I mashed on my Star Trek Space Academy ball cap. I made it outside Waco City Hall with fifteen minutes to spare for my shift. The noon to two crowd had their typical #NoKings and Due Process signs. I pulled out my “We the People – The Constitution is Law” sign out of the back of my minivan and made my way over to the small shade set up beside our protest area to sign in.
Waco runs deep red, as does the state of Texas, but the city also has three colleges, a thriving art community, several museums, and an aerospace research area. That isn’t counting the veteran hospital and support system. Not all of us have blue blood in our veins; heck, I am deeply conservative myself – only I am REALLY conservative in the bend that the Constitution is the basis for America. You break the Constitution, you break America.
My opinion. Other people have others. At the end of the day, Due Process and No Kings were what united us. Trans rights, abortion or choice, school vouchers, big government, we just don’t talk about those things among ourselves right now. Without Due Process and a president answering to the Constitution, you don’t have America. We will sort everything else out later.
“Hey Joey,” I nodded to the wheelchair-bound woman monitoring check-in and making sure the Waco Woolies (named after the Mammoth monument – claiming we are the fossils, not the tech bros claiming to be conservative presently gutting our government) obeyed all the rules for the licensed protest. She ran us like the military unit she used to be in charge of. I bent down to sign in for my two-hour block. “Anything new?”
“ICE tried to pick up our brown folk again. Still no warrant.” She smiled evilly. “At some point they are going to realize that we always have two people with concealed carry scheduled for every shift.” Joey had worked at the Veterans Administration before they fired her in the first of the DOGE clear-outs. Part-time and disabled, she didn’t have much value, ON PAPER. When she organized the Woolies, she tapped her extensive network of veterans. Retired or disabled, they were all still soldiers in ways the immigration bullies never could be.
“I will believe that when I see it.” I cracked one of my water bottles and passed it over to her.
She raised a hand to turn it down and I raised an eyebrow. Chuckling, she took it. “I do bring water, you know.”
“As do I. This way I make sure you drink at least one. Well, off to tag out Martinez so he can get a shower before picking up his kids from school.”
“Good luck and remember to get shade when you need it.”
“Yeah, yeah.” I said walking off, knowing I would stay with my sign held high for my two hours in the worst heat of the day without taking shelter. If Joey could fight in a desert in full military kit for two years, if Martinez’s father could cross a desert thirty years ago for a better opportunity, I could handle two hours of heat and collapse when I get home in my safe air conditioning and let my mother feed me dinner.
The faces holding the signs changed. The lunch crowd of professionals turned into the college crowd drawing from Baylor, Texas State Technical, and McLennan Community College. The energy doubled when Jessica showed up with her bullhorn and she started shouting slogans.
Did we expect our knocking-on-the-door of power to be answered? It is more likely for someone playing ding-dong-ditch at nearly midnight to get an answer. I don’t tell the kids that. But I cannot go quiet into the night, futile as this seems to be in the Heart of Texas. I love my country too much.
At three, Jessica forced us to take a water break. We buddied up to check sweating, cheek colors, reapply suntan lotion, that short of thing. Ashley, a Baylor intern helping with the restructure the library under the new rules being handed down nearly daily from the federal and state governments, was my partner. Because it was the question of the day for me, I asked, “Did you ever play Ding-Dong-Ditch as a kid?”
Ashley laughed before admitting, “Not often. We stopped after elementary school. With the new Ring doorbells, everyone has your face on camera and what fun is that?”
“Hmm. Maybe I should get one,” I mused.
“Someone playing in your neighborhood?”
“Some kids, I guess.”
She crushed her bottle and took my empty one. “Someone did that last night up at our house. It was weird. I guess it is a new viral thing on Tik Tok or something.”
Before she walked off to drop the bottles into recycling, I asked, “What time did they do it?”
“What?”
“Ring your doorbell.”
“Oh, we had just finished catching up on Murderbot for Friday’s release, so about eleven-thirty I guess.”
I nodded, but she was already gone.
When the four o’clock crowd came with their kids, I made sure to smile at Grey. They were exploring transiting. Were they a guy or just a butch lesbian? Not my job to decide for them, but, as an adult, I wanted to make sure they knew people cared and they didn’t need to add another set of scars to their wrists.
I wasn’t sure how good a smile it was because I was woozy under the shade. I paused there instead of heading directly to my overheated car in order to see who was calling me, once I figured out the ringing in my ears was actually the phone. The phone bar across the top reddened indicating a spammer call, which I flicked to not-answer. There I discovered one of my sisters had messaged me.
Jenny had just moved to the East Coast. But we had a long-standing habit from back in COVID days to have one text-proof-of-life per day. I had sent mine after gardening this morning. Something about the story I was writing for a charity anthology.
Set up new place & first night in MY OWN BED slept bad someone rung bell didnt help. Love you.
A chill ran through me, and not from heat stroke. I texted back. “What time, exactly, did they ring your doorbell?”
Yes, I use proper punctuation in my texts. Spelling can’t always be helped because of spell-correct, but at least I could use good punctuation. I do make a living writing and editing.
I guess she was stuck in five o’clock traffic, her time, because she responded immediately.
Damn if I no.
“Before or after midnight?”
After.
Wait looked at phone 1232
“That sounds awful. Hope you sleep better tonight.” I hit send shaking. Then sat heavily down on the camping chair Joey kept for people.
“Something wrong, Elaine?” she asked.
“Joey, did someone play ding-dong-ditch on you last night, about 11:30?”
“Yeah, but I looked at my front door camera before getting out of bed. My system sends it to my phone, and no one was there. I guess a gecko had crawled over it.”
Maybe, maybe not, I told the squeaky terrified thing in my head. “Could you find out the exact time? Is it still on your phone?”
“Sure,” Joey pulled out her cell phone and did some screen swipes. “11:32 the doorbell was rung. Girlfriend, you just went completely white. Let me get you some wet towels.” She maneuvered her flamingo encrusted scooter around her small table toward the watercooler we call contributed ice to for just this sort of purpose.
“No, no. Let me do something first.” I tried to sit a little straighter, but she keep right on digging out the watered-down towels. Ignoring her, I opened up Facebook on my phone and typed “Ding-dong-ditch enthusiasts shouldn’t ring the doorbell after eight. Who’s with me? Did anyone get DDD last night? Let me know when and where.”
I closed the app and hit the Tik Tok icon. “Thank you.” I said as I took one towel from Joey. “Use the other one for yourself, you might need it soon.”
“What’s happening?” Joey asked.
“I’ll tell you in a moment.” My phone started making sounds as Tik Tok came up. I brought it up to my face and hit record. “Hey peeps, I know I don’t show my face much here, but I got a question. Anyone had Ding-dong-ditch happen to them last night, Wednesday the 25th, at twelve thirty-two eastern or nine thirty-two pm West Coast time? Let me know. Thanks!” I sent it off to the world with the hashtag #ding-dong-ditch and #toodamnlate.
I hope I am wrong about the “too damn late” part.
“Okay, now you are scaring me Elaine. What is happening?”
“I got DDD last night, as did you and Ashley.” I inhaled hard. “And my sister on the East Coast, all at the same exact time. Ashley thought it might be a viral stunt but nothing is precise to the minute.”
I touched my phone vibrating with incoming notifications. I didn’t get incoming texts or social media notification often, so I kept the reports active. “I’m wanted to see how wide-spread it was.” The first two vibrations were about a minute apart. After that, it didn’t stop.
Ding-dong-ditch wasn’t a game.
(words 2,391; first published 6/29/2025)