I think my evil ex is haunting me.

Preparing for Court

Every part of me wanted to rip that thing off and smash it into pieces, but I forced myself to think like a prosecutor instead of a victim. Cecilia spent our next session coaching me on how to testify if this went to court, warning me that defense attorneys would question my credibility and suggest I was unstable.

We practiced staying calm and factual, focusing on the documented evidence instead of my emotional reactions. She made me repeat my answers until I could say them without my voice shaking or my hands clenching.

Christopher Phillips left me a voicemail that same week demanding I come to his office about the water damage from the bathtub incident. I sat across from him trying not to break down while he threatened eviction and talked about his property values.

The Landlord’s Blame

I explained that police were investigating criminal trespass and I was the victim of ongoing harassment, not some problem tenant who’d flooded the bathroom on purpose. He backed off slightly when I mentioned the police report number, but I could tell he still blamed me for the whole situation.

Raymond called me two days later and told me to sit down before he shared what he found. My ex’s Spotify account was still active and someone was streaming from a device that got added after he died.

I stared at my phone trying to process what that meant while Raymond explained that whoever was doing this had his login info and was using his actual account to play that music through my walls. The sick part was how planned it all seemed, like someone studied exactly how he used to control me and decided to keep doing it for him.

Human Cruelty

I felt my hands start shaking because this confirmed someone real was behind everything, but it also meant they were twisted enough to access a dead man’s accounts just to mess with my head. Raymond said he was documenting the device info and login times to build a timeline of when the harassment happened.

I thanked him and sat in my car for 20 minutes just breathing, because knowing it was human somehow made it worse than thinking I was losing my mind. I found out through some online searching that Annie Maloney was hosting a memorial gathering for my ex that weekend at a community center.

I bought a baseball cap and cheap sunglasses and showed up looking nothing like myself, standing in the back corner where nobody would notice me. Annie stood at the front of the room talking about what an amazing person he was, how he always helped his friends, and how the world lost someone special.

The Memorial Observer

I watched her touch his jacket that someone had draped over a chair, running her fingers over the fabric like it was sacred. She kept picking up items that belonged to him—a coffee mug, his favorite book—holding them carefully and setting them down in specific spots.

The way she arranged everything reminded me of how my apartment kept getting organized in his patterns. She looked at his photos with this intense focus that made my skin crawl, like she was memorizing every detail.

I left before anyone could recognize me but I’d seen enough to know Annie wasn’t just grieving; she was obsessed. Sebastian spent the next few days canvassing my apartment building with photos of Annie that I’d pulled from her social media.

The Fragrance of Fear

Most neighbors said they hadn’t seen anything, but then he knocked on the door of someone on the third floor. The neighbor remembered seeing a woman with short dark hair hanging around the stairwell late at night several times over the past month.

Sebastian showed her a photo and she nodded, said that looked like the same person. The detail that made me feel sick was when the neighbor mentioned the woman was wearing really strong cologne, the expensive kind that smelled masculine.

It was my ex’s cologne. Annie had been in my building multiple times wearing his scent like some kind of twisted tribute, and I hadn’t even known she was there.

Moving Closer to Justice

Sebastian documented everything in his report and told me this was solid evidence that someone specific was targeting me with access to the building. I had to go back to HR the following week to make my reduced hours official and explain why I needed workplace accommodations.

Sitting across from the HR rep, I laid out the situation as calmly as I could, talking about ongoing safety concerns and active police investigation. They listened without judging and said they’d document everything formally and adjust my schedule to give me flexibility for court dates and meetings with police.

Having it all official in my employee file made me feel less like I was failing at my job and more like I was handling a crisis the right way. The HR rep told me to let them know immediately if anyone showed up at work looking for me or if I felt unsafe.

Seeking a Protection Order

I left that meeting feeling like at least one part of my life was stable and people believed me. The court hearing for my temporary protection order happened on a Tuesday morning and I sat in the waiting area with my folder of evidence.

When my case got called, I presented everything to the judge: the camera footage, the tracker, Raymond’s technical reports, and Sebastian’s witness statements. The judge reviewed it all carefully and granted the temporary order, saying the pattern of harassment was clear and concerning.

Sebastian got approval to serve it once we identified the harasser for certain, which meant we were close to making this official. Walking out of the courthouse with that legal paper in my hands didn’t make me feel safer yet, but it was something concrete—proof that the system was taking this seriously.

The Live Feed

I called Cecilia on my way home and she reminded me this was progress, that legal protection matters even when it doesn’t feel like enough. Sebastian and I planned the first bait night for that Friday with me staying at Hope Butler’s apartment while my covert cameras ran live and he parked in an unmarked car nearby.

Hope made up her couch for me and told me to try to sleep, but I couldn’t stop watching the camera feeds on my phone. I sat there in the dark scrolling between different camera angles, waiting for any movement in my apartment.

The hours dragged and I started wondering if whoever was doing this somehow knew it was a trap. My eyes hurt from staring at the screen and my neck was stiff from hunching over my phone, but I couldn’t look away because I needed to see who was violating my space.

Caught in Real Time

Just after 2:00 a.m., a figure appeared on my camera feed and I grabbed my phone so hard my hands cramped. I watched in real time as someone in a dark hoodie and baseball cap moved through my apartment, and the way they walked was familiar, confident, like they’d done this a hundred times.

They went straight to the thermostat first and adjusted it, then moved to my shoes and lined them up by the door. When they reached for my coffee mug, they pulled back their sleeves slightly and the camera caught their wrist.

There was a tattoo there, some kind of small design, and I zoomed in on my phone screen trying to see it clearly. I’d seen that exact tattoo in one of Annie’s memorial photos when she was holding my ex’s jacket, her sleeve pushed up and that same mark visible on her wrist.

Digital Fingerprints

I took screenshots of everything and immediately texted Sebastian and Raymond. Raymond got back to me by morning with something that made the whole picture snap into focus.

He’d been tracking Annie Maloney’s social media posts and found gaps in her location tags that lined up perfectly with every incident I’d documented. She posted a selfie from a bar across town at midnight, but my cameras caught her in my apartment at 2:00 a.m., and there was no way she could explain being in two places.

He’d built a spreadsheet comparing her online activity with my incident log and the pattern was undeniable. Every time something happened to me, Annie’s social media went quiet or showed inconsistent location data.