I’d just gotten back from a weekend in Portland when I saw the kitchen light glowing through the crack under the door. Not strange, necessarily—Kira always forgot to switch it off. But when I stepped inside, what I saw froze me in place.
She was crouched under the sink, barefoot in those oversized plaid pajama pants she always wore on laundry day. Her back was to me, hair twisted up in a messy knot.
I leaned against the wall and said, half-laughing, “You hiding snacks under there or what?”
She jolted, bumped her head on the edge of the cabinet. “Shit, Tessa! You scared me.”
She sat back on her heels and gave me this lopsided smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Nah, just fixing the power strip. My mixer keeps shorting.”
I nodded, though something about that felt… off. Kira didn’t own a mixer. She always borrowed mine. Had, like, four times already this month.
I didn’t say anything. Just went to my room, dumped my backpack, and stared at the ceiling. That awkward smile, the way her hand had been covering something in her hoodie pocket—it all sat wrong in my gut.
Later that night, when I was sure she was asleep, I went back into the kitchen. The cabinet was closed, but a black extension cord was poking out from the side, trailing deeper inside than a power strip ever needed to.
I opened the door.
There, wedged behind the cold water pipe, was a small black device, almost invisible in the shadows. At first glance, it looked like a regular charger. Until I saw the lens.
A lens.
And a tiny blinking blue light.
My mouth went dry. My first thought was: Is she spying on me? Then the fear hit—Is someone else watching us? I backed away, heart slamming in my chest.
The next morning, I made pancakes and waited until she walked into the kitchen, bleary-eyed and wrapped in a hoodie.
“What’s that thing under the sink?” I asked casually, flipping a pancake.
She froze. Like full-body, deep-freeze kind of stillness. Then, slowly, she set her mug down and looked at me.
“I was going to tell you,” she said, her voice unusually calm.
I stared. “Then why didn’t you?”
Kira leaned back against the counter, hoodie sleeves pulled down over her hands. Her expression was blank, almost… resigned.
“Because it’s not really for you. It’s for someone else.”
Then she reached into her hoodie pocket.
My pulse skyrocketed. I stepped back, unsure if she was about to pull out a weapon or—God knows what.
But it was just her phone. She unlocked it and handed it to me.
There, on the screen, was a paused video.
“Watch,” she said.
I pressed play. The footage was from a wide angle, a bit grainy, but I could clearly see the layout of our kitchen. It was night. No lights. The door creaked open. And then—
A woman stepped inside.
Late fifties. Graying hair pulled into a ponytail. Wearing a housecoat and holding a key. She went straight to the fridge, pulled out a can of La Croix—my La Croix—and popped it open like she lived there. Then she rummaged in the cabinet, took a granola bar, and casually strolled around, looking into drawers, flipping through our mail.
I recognized her instantly. Our landlady. Mrs. Grant.
My jaw dropped. “She… she broke in.”
“She has a master key,” Kira said. “She didn’t technically break anything.”
“Are you kidding me?” I handed her the phone back. “She just wandered in, stole our stuff, and snooped through our private things. That’s breaking in.”
Kira nodded. “That’s what I thought, too. I started noticing things a few weeks ago. Little things—like the cereal box being half an inch to the left, or a ring I left on the dresser ending up on the bathroom counter.”
I sat down slowly, trying to absorb it. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I wasn’t sure at first. And I didn’t want to sound paranoid. But then I remembered you said your eyeliner went missing?”
I nodded. “Yeah. I thought I was losing it.”
“You weren’t. I think she’s been doing this for a while. That’s why I bought the camera.”
I stared at her. “Under the sink, though?”
“Best angle of the kitchen. She always comes in through the back door.”
I rubbed my temples, mind spinning. “What do we do?”
“I’ve got four nights of footage. All with her on it. Different times, different snacks. One time she sat on the couch and watched a whole Jeopardy! episode.”
I blinked. “That’s… psychotic.”
Kira smirked. “Tell me about it.”
We didn’t go to the police right away. First, we compiled everything—videos, timestamps, a list of missing or moved items. We even included a short clip from my webcam, which had caught the reflection of someone—her—in my mirror on a day I was out. It gave me chills watching it.
Then we contacted a lawyer. Because as much as we wanted to scream at Mrs. Grant and throw the evidence in her face, we knew this was serious. She was violating tenant privacy laws. And if she was doing it to us, chances were, she was doing it to others.
Within a week, she was served. Her face when she found out we had footage? Priceless.
She tried to claim she was “checking on the apartment,” but the timestamps—like 11:47 PM—didn’t exactly help her case. And when she tried to say she had our verbal permission, the lawyer almost laughed in her face.
The case didn’t go to court, thankfully. She settled fast. Paid us a decent sum and moved out of state within a month. We heard she put the building up for sale.
Kira and I stayed until our lease ran out, then found a better place—with a deadbolt we bought ourselves.
I never looked at her the same after that. Not in a bad way—more like, Damn, she’s got guts. She noticed something was wrong and actually did something about it. I used to think of her as a bit of a scatterbrain, but after that, I knew better. She’d saved us from who knows how long of being watched.
So yeah—sometimes paranoia is just paying attention. And sometimes, your roommate secretly installing a camera isn’t creepy… it’s exactly what you needed.
Ever had a gut feeling that turned out to be right? Trust it. You never know what might be hiding under your sink.
Like, share, and tell your story. You might help someone else catch what they almost missed.
