Chinese Water Torture

I was on the phone with Mom, catching up on things this evening when I
heard a ticking coming from my bedroom.   Ping ! At first I thought it
was the pull-string of the fan tapping against the light bulb, but
then realized, I'd never heard it do that before.

It was the sound of metal pinging.

Ping! Then a pause
Then a Ping!

 I wandered into my room, wondering if it was water dripping just
outside my window. Ping!

There it goes again, I told Mom, while she tried to tell me about her
day.  Ping!   "And again!"

Then, I realized that it was coming from my alarm system box. This is
the box I use to turn the system on, set it up, whatever. It's
connected into the wall and has a 9Volt battery in it, too. Ping!  I
jam the phone up top it, "Do you hear that?" As if Mom needs to hear
it so that I am officially NOT certifiably insane.

Ping!

She confirms that she does, in fact, hear it. I am not crazy.
But, I know I will be if I don't figure-out why the hell it's doing
this. When the 9V runs low, the system will beep...LOUDLY... until
your replace the battery and even then, it takes a while for the 9V to
power up and shut the beeping off.

Those make for interesting nights of attempted sleep.

I hang up with Mom because there's no casual chatting while "The
Telltale Heart" the Disney version retold with electronics continues
in my bedroom. Where I like it quiet.
Where I hate Disney.

I open the system, press buttons.  Ping!  No change. I remove the
PING! battery.
Nope.

I decide to take matters more seriously. Tools...I get the screwdriver
and unscrew the power source, which for some reason it screwed into
the outlet.

Ah. Lights on the system are off. I must have done something right!
Ping!

Fuck.

I decide to go one step further and I take the thing off the wall entirely.

I am turning it over and seeing lots of wires and one connection to a
phone line. I get a piece of paper to draw, in great detail, what I am
disconnecting from what so that I can reconnect it someday...when I am
no longer staying here, that is.

I'm drawing a detangle with two little screws in it, red wire, black wire
Ping!

plunk.

plunk.

There it is again. But it's different now. Coming from a different
place! What the hell!?

I look down and find the source of annoyance, which is now jumping
about a foot into the air and landing back down giving off the sound
of exoskeleton meeting wood.
This was followed by a better sound - an exoskeleton meeting the
bottom of my shoe.

Followed by silence.
Just like I like it.