So I placed a 911 call tonight...

Funny story. But first, two key facts about the bathroom in my apartment:

Key Fact 1) We have a decorative novelty shower-curtain. It's white with a streaked, bloody hand-print, ala Psycho.

Key Fact 2) If you're standing in the right spot at the right time of night, you can hear the neighbors fighting through the vent in the bathroom floor.

Well, tonight the neighbors were fighting rather loudly, and it sounded like it was getting physical, so I called the cops. We live on the second story, so I told the dispatcher to send them to the laundromat on the corner, and I'd meet them down there.

So I throw on my jacket and head down to the corner. About fifteen minutes later, two cops pull up and greet me. I explain the situation: I can hear the neighbors fighting, and it sounds like it might have gotten violent, but I don't know where these people are relative to us. Would the officers like to come up and give it a listen, from within our bathroom?

You can guess where this is going.

They agreed. So we walked down the street, and up our front stoop, and I unlock the front door, and we tromp up the stairs toward the apartment. I warn them, "Watch your step, we've got two cats," because that's the only thing that springs to mind as being worthy of a warning.

I open the door, and both cops come in. One hangs out near the entrance, while the other follows me into the bathroom.

I flick the lights on. "Okay," I start, "so I can hear them through the vent here--"

And then the cop spots a bloody handprint in the mirror, and his eyes go huge, and he's like, "Woah, woah, woah," and steps back for a second and gives the other guy this look like DUDE GAME FACE, SHIT'S ABOUT TO GO DOWN.

We had a good laugh about it later, but it was a very tense five seconds -- during which two heavily-armed men standing in my living-room briefly believed that I was some kind of psychotic Batman villain leading them into a second-story bathroom-of-horror funhouse murder surprise.

The moral of the story is: if your significant other has a dark sense of humor, don't let them pick the decorations for your home. It might give some poor cop on the night-shift a heart attack.