#I’m doing freshers fair with him and I’m gonna see him pretty regularly this is fine

[exopelagic]

God help me I may have another crush on a straight boy

[prorevenge]

You don’t want me to sleep for 9 months? Ok, guess you don’t need your degree.

So, I wasn’t sure if this story qualified for pro or petty. Everything I do, over the course of this, is extremely petty, but I think it probably is what I would consider a ‘scale up’ from low tier revenge, mostly on account of the last part.

So some backstory. This was about 6 years ago, during my first year at university. In the UK, you basically have two options for accommodations in your first year. The first option is called Halls, you stay in a huge apartment complex with a bunch of different students, you share a floor with about 10-15 people. Or, you go to a student house, which is basically a normal house, that some greedy landlord converts all the available space into bedrooms for 5-6 people (but, this is not always the case, in my second year I lived in a house with 15 people, many Petty Revenge stories there if I find the time to type them out). Anyway, I chose the latter.

I moved into what would be a 3 bed house, turned into a 5 bed. What would have been a living room, was converted into a bedroom below my room. 3 of my housemates were fine, we were civil to one another, but not really friends, we just lived different lives. We would go out for the occasional bevvy, have dinner together, but mostly just coexist peacefully. Notice how I said it was a 5 bed though?

Enter housemate in question. Let’s call her Cathy. Cathy was of African descent, very rich parents, sent to live in the UK to study Engineering, as the educational system in her native country was very poor. She was short, fat and quite obnoxious. When I moved in, I made a point of introducing myself to everyone. My first impression of Cathy wasn’t great. An issue I noticed immediately (of which persists throughout the entirety of our living together) is that Cathy f***ing stinks. You know when you work out for 4 hours but you crash out and forget the shower before? It was like that x1000. It was extensively unbearable. On top of that, Cathy is really rude. She basically starts out by saying she’s been here for 2 years already, and she wasn’t gonna change again this year. This had me a little concerned, but at the time it wasn’t a huge issue, I told her I kept to myself a lot, so she wouldn’t see any problems from me.

The first week or so I didn’t notice many problems. I was out partying hard during most nights (at English University, the first week is called ‘Freshers’ where everyone goes out and gets wasted for a week the week before studies start) other than some of my food going missing, and dirty plates staying on the side. F**k it, it’s week one, it’s fine.

Then Cathy rears her ugly head. So, I’m going to bed at 9pm the first night before studies (I had an hour commute to my campus and 1st day I wanted to be very awake) and I hear her shouting downstairs, she sounds very excited. I would find out tonight that Cathy is an avid gamer. Now myself I love games, I have late night sessions all the time, but I’m respectful of my housemates. I lie in bed, awake until 2:30am, hearing Cathy scream at her monitor and the sounds of a shooter in the background, very loudly. I didn’t want to be a bad housemate, so I let it happen. I barely slept and I went into my first lecture completely exhausted from sleep deprivation. I figured it was a one off, or it might happen every now and again. I was very wrong.

This carried on for 4 days before I said anything. On the Friday, I approach her in the kitchen and politely say “hey, don’t want to be rude, but can you try and keep it down a little late at night, I can hear you loud and clear through the floor and it’s really messing with my sleep. I don’t wanna be rude but I’ve noticed it’s been happening a lot”. She basically tells me I’m overreacting, she’s doing nothing wrong, nobody else has complained so it’s not a real issue. Cathy shares a wall with another housemate on the ground floor, so when she gets home I ask her about the issue. Turns out Cathy gave her the same spiel as to me. We knock on her door and ask what’s the problem, together. She gives us this whole sob story about how hard it is to make friends, that her online friends are her family, they live all across the world and she doesn’t want to break that relationship. I feel bad (stupidly) and tell her I totally get it, but just try and be a little quieter on weeknights. She says “I’ll try, maybe” and we leave it at that.

That night I slept fine. I thought it was over. The next night she’s screaming again, but it’s the weekend, so I get high as a kite and fall asleep in the bathtub. Sunday night rolls around, she’s screaming again, I can hear the sound of her rifle firing in game and she shouting obscenities with every shot. It gets to 11pm and I go downstairs and knock. Nothing. I wait a little while and try again. No change. I try again, same, so I go into the back garden and knock on her window. I hear her shout F OFF a few times and give up. I go to bed, but not to sleep.

This happens for the next few weeks. She screams, I go to confront, she screams at me through the wall till I leave. I approach her in the day, and she tells me she could hear me, doesn’t know what I’m talking about, I must have been DREAMING, think of a bs excuse and it’s probably on the list of things she would say.

So begins the revenge. I start by just going downstairs, flicking the power off and on for the router, and going back upstairs. The house is kind of old and creaky, so it’s pretty obvious that as the WiFi goes down, it’s me. This happens a few nights until she confronts me as I’m leaving in the morning. I tell her bluntly, yeah, it’s me, stop with the screaming or things are just going to get worse. She threatens to call our landlord on me. Great idea. I leave the house, go to my lectures, and after Uni I visit the landlord. I tell him the entire story about everything that’s happening, and how hard it’s making our lives. He says he’ll look into it, please be patient.

More weeks go by, no more pranks from me but no interference from the landlord. The night I contacted him was silent, but after that everything went back to scream-a-palooza. I contact him again, he says trust him, no changes. I try again, guess what no changes.

So I start getting pettier. So, I failed to mention before (at least in great detail) that Cathy is messy AF. She would eat, then leave all her plates, pots and pans on the side and return to her lair. For the first month, we just washed them up for her, nobody wants a messy kitchen. But, I was pissed off. So I started a new system. If I see a dirty plate of hers, I’d leave it in front her door. This was funny for a few days until I started finding my dirty plates she used at my door. From this point on, all kitchen equipment that was mine would from there on out live in my room until the end of my tenancy. This went on for another sleepless week until I am awoken by my landlord with a police officer. I’m told I’ve been stealing from my housemates and I need to go to the station. I promptly explain the situation, and my other housemates back me up. The officer clearly is annoyed to have his time wasted by us and leaves. Me, the housemates, Cathy and landlord have a group discussion on how to end the hostilities. We demand quiet weeknights and a clean kitchen, in exchange we (though, really it was just me) will not perform passive aggressive petty revenge. Seems like a fair deal right? No. Landlord said he can’t give any ‘preferential treatment’ so we need to stop regardless. I’m glad to say though, even though this guy was an awful landlord, he never interfered again, allowing for further pettiness to ensue.

So, back to revenge. Cathy would run an Ethernet cable from the modem to her computer, along the floor and into her room. I would start by unplugging this cable any time she was screaming. Cathy then started taping the cable so it was harder to pull out the socket. It got to a point were our hallway had a huge mess of tape and wire going across from the router all the way to her room. But f**k Cathy. I bought a roll of the same tape she had used, waited for her to leave the house. I had to wait 3 weeks for this opportunity. When I finally had the chance, I pulled up the tape, took a pair of scissors, cut the cable and taped it all back down. How she got into university was beyond me, as she didn’t figure it out for a few days. I slept wonderfully those nights. She confronted me days later and accused me of my crime. I simply denied it, and slammed the door in her face.

After this it was fairly passive aggressive both sides. Any time I heard noise I’d unplug the cable. She started eating my food (so I ended up buying a mini fridge and storing all my food in my room) and she would regularly throw out my belongings if I left them around the house. It was all getting a bit much. Mid year, I bought a cheap, turtle beach headset. I knocked on her door, and offered it as a peace treaty. I said the noise had to stop, and the revenge was starting to get out of hand. Please, take the headset, continue to enjoy your games, but I desperately need sleep. She took the headset, said thank you and promptly retreated to her room.

(As a side note, I’d never seen her room up until this point. It, was, disgusting. Old food everywhere, wrappers and cans. Her bed was half a space to sleep, half pizza boxes and rubbish. The smell was so bad, that after the conversation I went upstairs and threw up. I would only see the inside of that room once again until I moved)

So, overly generous peace offering? Yes. But I was desperate. The lack of sleep was really starting to affect my work, social life and relationship. I hoped it would turn a new leaf. Well, no. All night that night, screaming. I woke up the next day, and had a smoke in the garden. As I was pacing, I looked over at her window. Hanging out the window, I see a very damaged turtle beach headset. I decided in that moment, to destroy her.

Before I get into the big stuff, here’s a few c***ty things I did on top. I would pour salt into her milk and juice. Any time she left the house, I would cut the Ethernet. I put toothpaste onto her door handle. Any soft drinks she bought? Took them to class and donated them to my friends.

Anyway, so you notice that I said I had to wait 3 weeks for my cable prank? I became very aware that Cathy barely left the house. She was 100% not going to lectures or assignments. I started posting letters to her faculty posing as her parents asking for updates on her studies. After a few weeks she would start to get into shouting arguments with her parents over the phone. I then started ringing the faculty to let them know when she wasn’t in attendance. Our university had a relaxed approach to this, but all courses were expected to have an 85% attendance rating, or you’d face potential problems. After speaking to her staff supervisor, she had a whopping 23% rating. After a few more calls, it was established that she would have a ‘meeting’ as essentially a case for her to plead herself as to why she should stay. I took the time to somewhat befriend her supervisor, and asked if I could be present at the meeting to profess my story to aid in her expulsion. He agreed. As the days to her meeting rolled up, it was clear (due to the arguments with her parents on the phone) that she would not be staying here if she did not keep her position on her course. She began cleaning up after herself, and actually spoke to me semi-civilly begging me not to speak to the university any more. I told her, if she didn’t shout any more all the way to the hearing, then I’d retract all of my previous statements and give my verbal support to her staying. Zero noise. I slept like a baby for 3 days. Thursday night (meeting was the Friday) rolls around.

A final note, whenever Cathy did get up in the mornings, she had an extremely loud and obnoxious alarm clock, which would be on ages.

Thursday night, I give each of my other housemates the run down, and ask them to either skip town for the night and let it run its course. 2 stayed 2 left. Come 9pm, I proceed to invite my entire society around for drinks. 30 people in our tiny house drinking, shouting and playing loud music until 3am. Cathy comes out angry, begging, at one point in tears telling me to stop. But F this B, she had this coming. I go to bed at 4:30am. I wake up at 6am. No noise in the house. Good, she’s asleep. I go downstairs to the switchboard, and cut the power. I go out, eat breakfast, and go to the meeting at 8:30am. Much to my delight, Cathy does not turn up. At 9am I give the committee a full rendition of the past 9 months of hell, and proceed to strongly advise expulsion.

Afterwards, I call my university and fake having the flu, asking for a recovery period of 4-5 days. They accept, and I go back home to see my family for a week.

I return to a house one less occupied, with a few stand out pieces. In front of my room door, the now almost dust turtle beach headset. LOL. But, I ventured to her room. The smell had not left permanently, but it was bearable now. Many of her possessions were gone, but many left behind, most notably her printer and several pieces of balled up paper around it. Firstly, balled up print out copies of flight tickets to her native country, and a flight map. A letter from the university, denoting her immediate expulsion. A letter from our landlord, noting that as per the tenant agreement, if she cannot find study again within 28 days, she will be forced to leave the house. And finally; the creme de la creme. A letter, clearly intended for me and the housemates that she gave up on, telling us how this was all our fault and one day she would come back to haunt us.

(source) story by (/u/Tucker_Design)