I often hated being deaf. I couldn't hear the jokes, listen to music, enjoy everything that people with hearing could. One of my best friends wasn't deaf, but he perfectly understood my frustration, he went out of his way just to learn sign language and translate funny jokes to me.

Something he had that always intrigued me was his clap lights, he could simply clap twice and they would turn on. I figured they worked on sound, and I could never get them to work since I had no way of judging my own clap volume. I hated them for never working, and my friend often teased me about it.

But the clap lights saved me. As I said, I knew they worked with sound. So one day I was hanging out in my friends room when someone rang his doorbell, or knocked on his door, either way, he motioned me to stay here while he gets the door. I look outside to see a man with a jacket on, he looks to be asking for something and is invited in.

I couldn't understand what was going on. I decided to just wait here.

Then the lights turned off.

At first I was confused, then scared. I hid in the closet and waited. Nothing seemed to happen for a few minutes, then I saw the man in the jacket check the room to see if anyone else was there, my heart was pulsing against my temples, after he finished his crude search he promptly left. After what seemed like hours, I finally decided he had left the house, and went desperately to check on my friend. Carefully traversing his hallway I made my way down the main stairs that led to the front door, where I found him dead. With two gun shots in his chest. After a long time of grief and sorrow, I had realized. The two shots that took his life were the same ones that saved mine.