Secrets, Sips, and Sabotage: The Night Everything Changed

Can't sleep? Welcome back to another bone-chilling episode of the Nighttime Scary Tales Podcast. This is where your deepest nightmares come to life. 

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Welcome to another episode of the Nighttime Scary Tales Podcast, where we explore the dark side of storytelling. Tonight, prepare for spine-chilling tales featuring original horror stories, eerie supernatural encounters, and real-life crime that reveals the darker aspects of human nature. Each story is designed to keep you on the edge of your seat long after it ends. We’d love to hear your thoughts! Share your most chilling moments by leaving a review on your favorite podcast platform. More haunting stories are coming, so keep your lights on and your doors locked. Sweet dreams… if you can find them!

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:18):
My name is Katerina and twenty one and I'm kind
of from all over, but I'm currently living in Langley Park,
Maryland with my boyfriend. I've been watching your videos since
forever and I love your voice so much and it
helps me get to sleep most nights. But I always
found myself hoping that I never have a reason to
write to you. It always struck me as a little

(00:40):
tasteless and voyeuristic that I was vicariously experiencing other people's traumas.
But like I read in one story, I suppose it
serves as a kind of therapy. If it wasn't for
their horrible experiences and taking the time to write it
all down, I wouldn't be able to have listened to
all the stories I had. And that's why it made
me feel a bit guilty for enjoying your channel so

(01:01):
much while so praying that I never suffered anything similar.
Well I did, and so now I'm setting this into
you and what I'm studying at the University of Maryland
is kind of unconventional, but that's totally irrelevant to the story.
The only thing that's important to know is that because
I chose it at the very last minute, I didn't

(01:23):
exactly get my first choice of accommodation. I knew that
i'd have to live with a roommate, and while the
university could guarantee that she'd at least be female, I
had no way of knowing if we'd be a good
fit or not. I actually prayed the roomy that I
ended up with would be a good match, and at
first I thought my prayers were answered. The first time

(01:44):
I met Aubrey, I breathed a huge sigh of relief.
She had strawberry blonde hair, bright brown eyes, and it
was blatantly obvious from her clothes and possessions that her
favorite color was pink. The first words out of my
mouth were, O, my god, pink is my favorite color too,
And when she squealed and hugged me, I just knew

(02:05):
that we were going to be best friends. She was
super nice to me, and she asked about my background,
and she said that she loved my accent, which is
like uber messed up, which made me feel super welcome too.
Living with Aubrey proved just as much fun as I
thought it was going to be, and while she certainly
liked a party, she helped ensure that our apartment was

(02:26):
a peaceful place of study and relaxation. She was fun
and unlike a lot of other college girls, she was
definitely education oriented as opposed to socially oriented, which was
the exact kind of lifestyle I wanted to avoid. But
we still needed to relax after a long week, so
every Friday or Saturday, depending on when we were each free,

(02:48):
we'd get our hands on the bottle of wine and
then practice being wine moms over some episodes of Gilmore
Girls or Gray's Anatomy. That became something of a routine
for us, but we always had to fit our mom
sessions around Aubrey's weekend meet ups with her boyfriend. Aubrey's boyfriend,
Nick seemed like a really great guy, and I didn't

(03:08):
really expect anything less from a girl like Aubrey. She
gave off such soft vibes, and he totally matched them
by being ultra sweet to Aubrey as well as super
nice and gentlemanly with me too. It got to the
point where I was very grateful that I've been placed
with someone so nice. I'd heard some real horror stories
about psychos making the lives of their roommates a living hell,

(03:32):
and I genuinely thought that I'd dodged that bullet. But
little did I know moving into that on campus apartment
meant that I was about to become the star of
my very own horror movie. And so, like I said,
Aubrey and I had our regular wine mom nights at
least once every two weeks or so, we decided to

(03:52):
start watching that show Only Murderers in the Buildings. So
I was super excited to sit down and get tipsy
and watch the first couple of episodes with her. We
talk about it all week, and Aubrey herself had seemed
super up for it. But then, literally just hours before
we were due to crack open another bottle of white
wine that somebody was able to get us, she hits

(04:14):
me with the bad news. Her boyfriend had his schedule
messed up at the last minute and he was away
the following weekend, so it was either rearrange or have
a date night that night, or not see each other
for like two weeks. I totally understood her situation, so
I told her to go see her boyfriend and we
could just arrange to watch our show another time. She

(04:37):
thanked me, gave me a big hug, and then ran
off to get ready for her date night. Aubrey said
her boyfriend was coming to pick her up at around seven,
So around six thirty, I ordered some sushi from this
good sushi place off campus, and then waited to line
my stomach with a little before I started that drinking. Now,
around seven, Aubrey said her boyfriend was running a little late,

(05:00):
so we each had a small glass before a boyfriend
called to announce that he was outside. She gave me
another hug, told me to have fun watching whatever. Then
she had a doubt for what I assumed it would
be the whole night. I finished my first glass of wine,
then headed back into our kitchen to grab another. I
had eaten maybe half my sushi platters, so I was

(05:21):
ready for a larger glass. Then, after fixing one, I
went back to watch some more Gilmore girls, tipsily singing
along with their theme tune in a way that I'm
glad no one was around to see or hear. I
finished off the first glass watching Rory fretting over her
Yale application, then poured myself another. But just a few
SIPs into that third glass and I started to feel

(05:43):
a bit sick. I thought i'd just eaten too much
sushi and that it wasn't mixing one with the wine.
But if that was the case, then all I had
to do was slow down a bit and let it
digest a little before going back to drinking. I expected
that feeling of nausea to subside with an maybe ten
to fifteen minutes, but by that point I felt way

(06:05):
way worse, and not just nauseous either. I felt really
woozy and even shaky too. I got to the point
where I thought that maybe I'd eaten some bad sushi,
or that I was maybe just reacting badly to the alcohol.
I'd had that happen before, not with sushi, but with
something else, And in the end I decided that the
solution was to just make myself puke. Not the most

(06:27):
glamorous or attractive solution, but at least that first time
it had worked like a charm. It still was kind
of gross afterwards, but I think doing so meant that
I dodged a bout of food poisoning, perhaps because afterwards
I slept it off and felt fine. When I woke
up in the morning, I went to the bathroom, stuck
my fingers down my throat, and puked up a ton

(06:47):
of half digested sushi and wine. It was vile, but
I figured it was just a matter of time before
I started feeling better now that I'd gotten out of
my system. Now, thankfully, I did feel a little bit better,
but the wine and not had really taken it out
of me, and I felt super sleepy. But having had
a very long and tiring week, I didn't think too
much of it and decided to take a nap for

(07:09):
a few hours and after that, if I felt better,
I could order some more food. Maybe that wasn't poisoning me,
than perhaps finish off that wine if I felt up
to it. I took a shower, brushed my teeth, and
went to bed at around eight thirty p m. With
my alarm set to go off two hours from then.
Just after ten pm, I thought I just woke up naturally,

(07:30):
and when I saw my phone said ten o three,
I rolled over and figured that I catnapped for the
remaining twenty minutes or so. But then I heard voices
coming from the hallway outside. It was Aubrey and her
boyfriend Nick, but instead of heading to the kitchen or
the TV room or to Aubrey's bedroom, they stopped outside
mine and started whispering to each other. At first, I

(07:54):
didn't find that very alarming. I didn't expect them to
come back to the apartment for any reason, but I
figured they had a perfectly good reason too. I mean,
they were being quiet. They must have known that I
was in my bedroom trying to sleep, so I actually
felt super appreciative that they were trying to keep the
noise down. But then I heard what they were saying,
and it made me feel sick in a whole other

(08:16):
kind of way. At first, I heard Nick asking Aubrey
in a very serious way if she was sure. He
kept asking over and over, are you sure? Are you sure?
Though Aubrey listened to me are you sure, and she
was saying something like, yes, I'm sure. She was drinking
when I left, and half the bottle is gone. Now.

(08:37):
I was still feeling kind of groggy, so at first
it didn't click why Aubrey was talking about me drinking.
But then as the conversation started to unfold, I started
to get why I had been feeling not only sick,
but sleepy too. Nick asked Aubrey if she put all
of something in the bottle and Aubrey said yes. Nick

(08:58):
then asked if she was sure that I drank it
least half the bottle, and again Aubrey said yes. She
said we'd only shared a small glass each before she'd
slipped it in the bottle. She promised I'd be passed
out and I wouldn't wake up, and that if they
did it properly, then no one would ever find out.

(09:18):
And that was when I realized what they were talking about.
I just still didn't quite believe it yet. Never before
had I experienced a moment where I thought this cannot
be happening. This has to be a nightmare. But I
had one rate then. I didn't pinch myself, but I
had this distinct memory of telling myself, this is reel.

(09:39):
How that terrified me beyond anything I'd ever been through before.
I heard Aubrey and Nick talking a little more, but
I couldn't make out what they were saying until I
heard them say I love you to each other. I
heard I'd love you, then Nick's much deeper voice softly
saying I love you too, and then my bedroom door
handle started to turn. I sat up in bed, too

(10:02):
tired and stunned to do anything but watch as my
door started to open. It was still dark so they
couldn't see me sat up in bed, and then after
Nick asked should I turn the light on? He flicked
the switch and they saw that I was awake. They
froze just like I was, But unlike them, I had
tears in my eyes. That level of betrayal, that level

(10:24):
of deception and predatory behavior, it wasn't just terrifying, it
was heart breaking. There was a time when I thought
Aubrey and I might be friends forever, you know, a
long long time, in a way that adults talk about
their old college friends with this boundless affection. But all
her warmness, the way she made me feel so welcome,

(10:46):
it was all a lie. And after what seemed like
much longer but was probably maybe only a second of
staring at one another, Nick says, hey, how's it going.
If that sounds like it might had been like a
regular greeting, it wasn't. It was awkward, drawn out, which
is why I typed out the words the way I did.

(11:08):
Just then he was clearly caught completely off guard, and
as he stepped back away from the light switch, Aubrey
stepped past him and into the room. She told me
they just wanted to check on me, that it wasn't
like me to go to bed early, and that they
just wanted to make sure I was okay. Aubrey also
tried to put on a very normal front, but she too,

(11:31):
had clearly not expected me to be awake. I told
her I was fine, that I was just tired after
a long day, and that I'd like to be left
alone so I could get some sleep. I wanted to
confront them, I wanted them more than anything, but right
at the front of my mind was the thought of
what they might do if they got scared, that I
might call the cops. It didn't feel like the right

(11:52):
thing to do in the moment, because every fiber of
my being was screaming out for me to run, to fight,
to hide, whatever it took to get the hell away
from them. But that feeling of being outnumbered, of knowing
that I was already vulnerable from how woozy and tired
I was, I knew that there was no other option
than to be as non confrontational as possible. I tried

(12:14):
my best to put on a happy face and pretend
everything was normal, because I knew my safety hinged on them.
Believing they'd gotten away with trying to roofy me. I
didn't feel even remotely safe until I saw the worried
look leave Aubrey's eyes, and she smiled. She said she
and Nick had stopped by to grab some of her
clothes because she was staying over a night at his place,

(12:36):
and then told me to call her if I needed anything.
I thanked her, asked her to turn the light back
off on her way out, and then she and Nick
left the apartment, with me huddled under my blankets, hand
over my mouth and trying not to let them hear
me cry. I was young, naive, and scared for my life,
and while the logical thing would have been to call

(12:57):
the cops, I was focused on finding someone that I
could stay with, who could come and get me out
of there immediately, which is how I ended up calling
the guy who ended up becoming my current boyfriend. We've
been hanging out, not quite dating, not quite being just friends.
I liked him, and I trusted him enough to call
him for help, but I also didn't want to tell

(13:18):
him what I suspected was happening either. I just told
him it was an emergency. I needed help, and I
needed it to arrive faster than the cops would. He
then drove over half carried me to his car, and
then stayed at his place that night without him having
any clue what was happening. He later said that he
figured that I was just drunk and upset about something

(13:40):
and only found out what was happening when I called
the cops in his apartment. When I mentioned that I
suspected my roommates and her boyfriend had drugged me, his
jaw dropped and I remember him just pacing back and
forth in disbelief. The dispatcher recommended that I go to
the hospital if I was still feeling nauseous, and I
later learned that the major danger involved passing out and

(14:02):
then choking on your own vomit. But I told her
that I didn't think that was necessary, and that I'd
managed to purge what was in my stomach before whatever
it was managed to take its full effect, I think.
And then the despatcher then asked if I was able
to meet a pair of police officers back at the apartment.
I told her yes. She gave me a little info
on what to expect, and then me and my current

(14:24):
boyfriend Joe back over to the place that I'd just
been drugged. Driving away had been terrified, but driving back
felt different. I hoped with all my heart that Aubrey
and Nick had been stupid enough to return to that apartment,
because that way I might get to see them in
cuffs for what they'd done to me. But that was
wishful thinking on my part, because when we walked inside,

(14:47):
they were nowhere to be found, but neither was the
bottle of wine that had been drinking from. The two
cops we met up with had been very interested in
getting their hands on it, but Aubrey and Nick had
been smart enough to leave with it. They had suspected
that I had known what they were doing, and like
any truly devious criminals, they tried their best to hide

(15:07):
the evidence. But the evidence they couldn't hide, at least
that it was way too late to hide, was the
evidence in my blood and urine. I thought I had
them because I knew whatever they'd slipped me was certain
to show up on a drug test if I got
one fast enough. I told the cops that's what I
was planning to do, but one took me aside and

(15:30):
broke some very horrifying truth to me. Without direct surveillance
of the kitchen, and without the tainted wine and bottle
as evidence, there was very little chance that my case
would even make it a trial. They could go search
Aubrey's room, they could go search Nick's stuff too, but
if they suspected that I might be on to them,
the chances of the cops finding anything was extremely slim.

(15:53):
They had already successfully disposed of one piece of that evidence,
so it was unlikely that they'd leave others just lying
around for police to find. The cop told me that
the single best piece of advice that he could give
me was to find somewhere else to stay, move my
stuff out, and never associate myself with Aubrey again. I
was horrified, and I couldn't believe a cop would take

(16:17):
such a cynical approach to enforcing the law, But looking
back on it, he was entirely correct. I insisted that
he and his partner search Aubrey's room for any trace
of RUFUS or maybe g HB or whatever it was.
They gave me, but they found nothing. Just like that,
one cop said they wouldn't. I later heard that the
cops had searched Nick's place too, and since he fully

(16:40):
cooperated during the search, he had more than likely scrubbed
his apartment of anything remotely incriminating. And that was one
of the worst parts of the whole ordeal, knowing that
we were going to get away with what they did,
and how it probably wasn't the first time they tried
to do something like that. Aubrey didn't come back to
campus this year. At least it's been weeks and I

(17:02):
haven't seen her around yet, so I'm assuming that she
dropped out for some reason, and that's fine by me.
I hope she's gone for good, and if she has,
I can say with absolute certainty that this year campus
is a much much safer place without Aubrey and Nick
being around. Back in the summer of two thousand and eight,

(17:31):
I was twenty years old living with my mom, and
I was getting really bloody sick of it. My mom
and I had always gotten along very well, but it
was around that time that our lifestyles became totally incompatible
and it started to put a bit of strain on
our relationship. I remember buying a copy of our local newspapers,
looking through the listings, and then coming to a bit

(17:54):
of a depressing realization. If I wanted to stay in
the area in a flat that was actually nice, it
was going to take a huge chunk out of my
monthly earnings. That was doable, but only just so. If
I wanted to have any kind of disposable income, I
was going to have to search for a potential flat mate.
And that is when I thought of Andrew. Andrew had

(18:18):
been hanging around with me in my close circle of
friends for about a year. A mutual friend had introduced us,
and since we shared a lot of common interests, he
became a regular feature on our nights out in pub sessions.
He always seemed like an all right lad to me.
Definitely a bit weird, but we were all a bit
weird in our own way. And by the time I
started looking for flats, Andrew was sleeping on a mutual

(18:41):
friend's bedroom floor after being kicked out of his mum
and stepdad's house. We asked him why he'd been kicked out,
and he told us it was because of a fight
that he'd had with a step dad. They'd gotten into
a heated discussion they'd squared up to one another. Then,
as Andrew put it, he battered him. This fit right
into the evil step parent stereotype for us, and since

(19:04):
most of our social circle were children of divorce, not
only did we never question it, but we also kind
of applauded it. We thought that he was hard as
nails for taking on a step dad like that. So
our mutual friend had zero problem giving Andrew a place
to stay, even if that meant sharing a bedroom, and
I had no problem vouching for him so he could

(19:24):
get a job working for the same company I was.
He had some income, and he needed a place to stay.
So to me, Andrew was the natural choice to be
my new flatmate. I asked him what he thought, and
as he could imagine, he was buzzing at the idea
of having his own place. He didn't have any money
to cover his half of the deposit, but I told
him that didn't matter. All he needed to do was

(19:47):
give me half the rent at the end of every month,
and I'd cover bills and council tax until he got
more hours at the bar than I'd found him a
job at, and then once he could afford it, he
could forek over more money for the bills, et cetera.
And we agreed on a handshake that this was the arrangement,
and then I placed some calls to prospective landlords and

(20:09):
eventually found us a decent place in the exact area
that I was hoping for. The first month of living
with Andrew was actually awesome. It was the first time
both of us had lived in our very own apartments,
so we were both buzzing for the first week or so.
But then after falling into the routine of living with Andrew,
I couldn't see any problems on the horizon. He paid

(20:30):
his share of the rent on time, he tidied up
after himself, and he kept the noise down in his
room whenever I needed to sleep. And then aside from that,
he was pretty good fun to chill with. We'd like
the same kind of movies, the same kind of music,
and the same kind of food, so there wasn't really
anything for us to disagree about. This obviously suited me

(20:51):
down to the ground, and I felt like a proper
big brain having picked the smartest choice for a flatmate.
But then I started to notice that things weren't quite
they seemed. So the only major difference between mine and
Andrew's job was that I used to work much later
than him. He'd finish at around two in the morning,
whereas my place stayed open until five am. Sometimes Andrew

(21:13):
would pop by for a drink and to spend his tips,
but most times he went straight home, which is what
happened the night that I came home and found one
of his weekly pay slips on the table. I know
it's not cricket for a man to look at another
man's pay stub, but it was right there on the
table as I sat down deep my post work meal,
and I thought that I had a good idea of

(21:34):
the hours that he was getting. So the figure on
the pay slip should have been somewhere in the region
of maybe one hundred and fifty to two hundred, but
instead of anything near to that amount, the figure said,
and I always remember this, thirty seven pounds and thirty
eight pence. I remember that figure because I stared at
that pay slip and uttered disbelief for a good few minutes,

(21:57):
wondering where he was getting his money from. He was
spending like an absolute sailor, and although he made a
pretty penny and tips, it wasn't enough to go throwing
it around like he was. But then, by far the
most confusing part for me was he'd be out four
times that previous week, the week the slip was dated for,
and each time he was dressed for work and didn't

(22:20):
say anything to me about not going to work before
he headed out, Like if he had been hanging around
the flat on the days that he should have been working,
it'd have cottoned on to the fact that he wasn't
working enough to cover the rent. But he'd gone out
four times Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and each time
he'd been wearing his black work shirt and dress shoes.

(22:43):
I didn't want to confront him about it. I mean,
I shouldn't have been looking at his pace slip to
begin with, but I also couldn't help but worry that
he might not have his share of rent come the
end of the month. But then when the end of
the month came and he had all the money, I
forgot all about it. Could have been a mistake on
the company payroll, or maybe he made the hours up

(23:05):
the following week. Either way, we had the rent, so
I wasn't fussed about it. But looking back on it,
that was the first big sign that something was wrong.
The next big sign that Andrew wasn't the good guy
we all thought he was was when he started going
out with a girl named Julia. Now Julia not her
actual name, but she was a nice girl, quite shy

(23:29):
and reserved, but very pretty. I'd seen her around, but
had never really spoke to her outside of serving her
a drink until she and Andrew started seeing each other.
But then I was waiting in the queue at the
twenty four hour McDonald's looking to get a bit of
food after work. When who should walk in after her
own shift had finished? But Julia. She knew me from

(23:51):
being Andrew's flat mate, so we got chatting about this
and that and the other. But during our first small
talk oriented conversation, she mentioned something that pricked my ears
up for some reason. Even though Andrew was just a
low level bar back at the place that he worked,
Julia seemed to think that he was an assistant manager.

(24:12):
It came up when she said something like, well, I know,
Andrew's just gotten that am job at the Drexel Lounge,
so we haven't had a chance to see each other
in a few weeks. I remember saying something like okay, yeah,
sorry to hear that, and then I moved the conversation
on what I should have done in retrospect is tell

(24:33):
Julia that no, Andrew isn't an assistant manager, and he's
not been busy. He's been lazing around the flat on
his three days off a week. But to be honest,
learning that Andrew had told Julia that he was an
assistant manager took me totally by surprise. I knew it
was a lie. There was no way Andrew had been
promoted to assistant manager on twenty something hours a week,

(24:56):
especially not after having worked there for all of three
to four months. I just didn't want her to find
out that it was a lie from me, and that
probably sounded incredibly selfish, keeping Julia in the dark like
that so I could avoid being the one to break
the news to her. But it was also still very
much Andrew's friend at this point, so I also wanted
to give him a chance to do the right thing,

(25:18):
which looking back on it was about as pointless as
a screen door on a submarine, as they say. I
won't go into the entire exchange because it'd take about
ten pages to get it all down on paper, but
the long in the short of it was this Andrew
had lied to Julia through his bloody teeth as well,
and all just to impress her into sleeping with him. Then,

(25:41):
when he couldn't be ourked to see her any more,
he fobbed her off with lies about being busy with
all his new training and responsibilities. He'd taken poor little Julia,
who'd never have said boo to a goose and then
pumped and dumped her. And what's worse, it was bloody
proud of it too, And I was horrified. Now, I

(26:02):
know that might sound a bit snow flaky, but I
really was. I had no idea Andrew was capable of
something so manipulative. But when I expressed even the slightest disapproval,
he acted like I was threatened to call the police
or something. He says, that's what everyone does. You tell
a few FIBs to impress him. She's not going to
be impressed if I tell her I'm a freakin' bar back,

(26:22):
is she. I understand that twisted logic, But what I
didn't understand is why he felt so comfortable lying about
something that Julia was bound to learn the truth about eventually.
And to my amazement, the idea that Julia might visit
him at work seemed genuinely novel to Andrew, and for
just the briefest of moments, I saw this flicker of

(26:43):
fear in his eyes. But then he sort of pulled
himself together, shrugged off what he was saying, and told
me that she'd never found out because of X, Y,
and Z reasons, the main being that his wasn't the
kind of bar that she liked to drink. I remember
dying to be like, unless I bloody well tell her.

(27:05):
But as much as this just sounds cowardly in retrospect,
I just didn't want the smoke with my new flatmate.
He'd been a prick. But I still don't think it
was entirely my responsibility to go righting wrongs when I
firmly believed the karmic wheel would eventually come spinning around
to smash him in the face, and so I kept
my mouth shut about it, at least for a while.

(27:26):
I did remember, I said Andrew was a decent flat mate,
and that he always cleaned up after himself and kept
the place looking decent. Well, that didn't last more than
about four months, because slowly but surely, his hygiene standard
started to slip. I won't go into all the boring
stuff about him leaving dishes out and what not, So

(27:46):
I'll just cut to the part when I realized why
Andrew had never ever brought a girl back to his flat.
I'd never been in his room. I'd never needed to,
and since his door was further down the corridor than mine,
I never got a look in while walking past either.
I'd seen the room when we first moved in, but
after that I just never needed to. There was a

(28:07):
bit of bro code going on, like young men who
lived together learned very quickly not to just barge into
each other's bedrooms, and that's why I hadn't even had
a peep in his bedroom in almost one hundred and
fifty days at this point. So when I finally did
take a look into Andrew's room, my jaw hit the floor.
I was quite naive, and that when I first became

(28:30):
aware of Andrew's casual relationship with the truth, I thought, Nah,
he wouldn't try and lie to me like that, But
shock and horror, he did, and sometimes he did so
in the twenttiest of ways, like one day when I
couldn't find my iPhone charger plug and I asked if
he'd borrowed it. He swore up and down that he

(28:51):
hadn't touched it, and so just on a whim, I
decided to check his bedroom, just in case he'd quote
unquote borrowed it and then forgotten to replace it. I
literally thought to myself as I was walking down the corridor,
I wonder what he's done with the place. But when
I opened that door, I swear I was almost knocked
off my feet. The first thing that hit me was

(29:13):
the smell. It was disgusting in there, and I suddenly
realized where some of our cups and plates had gone.
They'd been in his bedroom, scattered around the place, with
scraps of moldy food left on them, and they'd been
there for weeks. There were piles of stinking clothes all
over the place. His mirror literally had splatter marks on
it from where he'd been popping zits. And I saw

(29:36):
a not entirely empty bottle of beer that had been
there so long the dregs in the bottom had gone moldy.
And those boys and girls were just a few of
the stomach turning delights that I got to witness as
I cautiously tread through Andrew's room. Treating each suspiciously stiff
looking sock like it was an actual friggin land mine.

(29:56):
I found my iPhone chargers plug. He had taken it,
but instead of texting him saying something like you prick,
you took it. My mind was so blown seeing how
he lived that it knocked me for six I couldn't
believe that he lived like that, and I couldn't believe
that I've been sleeping in the next room over completely
none the wiser I thought Andrew not bringing girls back

(30:18):
was I don't know, like a sign of respect or something.
We talked about not being a party house, so I
thought that that was him holding up his end of
the bargain. But it wasn't that it was because his
room was an effing pig sty. In fact, I take
that back, it's an insult to pigs. It was more
like it was a rubbish dump. If he wanted to

(30:40):
have his room like that, fine, But as I said earlier,
the issue was that his lack of hygiene was encroaching
on the rest of the flat. But then when I
brought this up with him, it caused a bit of
an argument. He thought that I was being majorly uptight,
explained that he was exhausted and I shouldn't start having
a go at him over a few unwashed plays and
the sink. I didn't even bring up the state of

(31:02):
his room. I didn't want the argument to escalate any
further than it had. I'd started to think there might
actually be something wrong with Andrew, something he maybe needed
help with, and as his friend, that's all I really wanted.
But still, the incident marked the beginning of a strain
that never ended, but rather got worse and worse and

(31:23):
worse again. I won't bore you with each little chapter
in the breakdown of our friendship. You've already heard most
of the significant stuff anyways. But when things came to
a head, they came to a head in a big way.
We'd moved in together during early August of two thousand
and eight, and by February of two thousand and nine,

(31:43):
we were barely talking to each other. Andrew had only
contributed half of what he'd promised for February's rent, leaving
me no choice but to spot him the rest until
he got paid at his new job, which he'd only
been forced to seek out after most likely getting sacked
from his first job. But that's a story for another day.
I wasn't angry that I had to spot him. I

(32:05):
was angry because he knew that if I didn't, we'd
both get kicked out of that flat, not just him.
He knew I had no choice, and so he took
full advantage of it. I'm not saying that was scary.
I'm just saying you can understand why. By early February,
mine and Andrew's friendship was teetering on a knife's edge.

(32:25):
And then one Wednesday night, it was coming up to
about two a m. Went into my bar walks Andrew's
new colleagues. I noticed their slug and lettuce uniforms and
rightly assumed that they were his fellow bar staff coming
in for a drink after work. They walked up to
the bar and went over to serve them. Then, once
their order was assembled and I told them the price,

(32:47):
one of the masked, hey, y, you're Ralph, right, aren't you?
I nodded, at which point the same girl said, oh,
we work with Andrew. But despite me still wanting pain,
no one so much as budge to grab a card
a banknote from their purses or wallets. I was like, okay,

(33:08):
good for you, but I still need payment for these drinks.
And when I said that, the slug and letters staff
started acting all confused. They told me Andrew had said
that if they came into my bar and found me
in particular, I'd give them free drinks. All I did
was roll my eyes and tell them something like, oh,
sounds just like Andrew. I'll talk and it's all bollocks,

(33:30):
because I was just so over his stupid, petty lies
to people. But me talking badly of him seemed to
cause some deep offense in Andrew's new colleagues. They didn't
say anything. They just kind of looked at each other,
paid for the drinks, and then off they went. But
then a few rounds later, and maybe an hour had
gone by, I went over to serve them a second time.

(33:52):
I brought them their drinks and that time had no
trouble getting the payment. But as I was ringing them up,
one of the girls asked me if I liked living
with Andrew. I was just very honest with them, told
them I wasn't loving it, but said nothing more than that.
Then once again they acted like some grave offense had
been committed. The same girl told me you should be

(34:15):
more grateful for what he's done for you, which honestly
made me laugh out loud, because what the bloody hell
had he been telling them? Or the turns out, Andrew
had been telling them an awful lot about me, and
not a single word of it was true. Andrew had
told his new colleagues that it was him that had
rescued me from being homeless. It also claimed that it

(34:36):
was him and not me, that was taking care of
most of the bills, and that I couldn't work more
than thirty hours a week because I had chronic fatigue
syndrome and because of this chronic fatigue. Andrew had told
his colleagues about how I had trouble cleaning up after myself,
and that he spent a great deal of time making
sure that I had a nice, clean place to live.

(34:57):
And so, in their view, me expressing anything but a
time pernal gratitude to Andrew was grossly offensive and extremely unappreciative.
They told me all that in a very accusatory fashion,
as in they thought that they were going to give
me a proper telling off, and I was going to
be all ashamed of myself for being an ingrate. But
that's not how things went down, and instead of just

(35:19):
having a go at them, I told my manager I
was heading out for a quick smoke before closing, it
wasn't that busy by then, and then asked the girl
who had done most of the accusation to come outside
for a polite word. Looking back on it, I think
she had her own doubts about Andrew if that was me,
and I thought the disrespectful ingrate of a flatmate was

(35:40):
just going to defame my colleague. I'd never have given
them the time of day. But she came outside and
actually heard me out, and while I explained how almost
everything she had been told was a lie, I broke
down everything for her an intimate detail too. But at
the end of the day, it was all just words.
Me saying that no, Andrew didn't work part time for

(36:01):
a homelessness charity was very confusing for her. It was
a case of a he said, she said situation, and
without going away to actually fact check all of the
things he'd said, all I'd done was leave her in
a sort of haze of confusion. The thing that really
drove the point home and made her realize just what
a liar Andrew was was seeing a photograph of his bedroom.

(36:24):
I've been talking to my mum about Andrew's situation, not
necessarily just complaining about him either, like I genuinely wanted
her advice. Andrew had been really annoying to me, but
he was still a friend, and his behavior seemed way
beyond just laziness or arrogance. Like I thought, there was
genuinely something wrong with him that it was up to
his close friends to maybe do something about it. I

(36:45):
brought up his bedroom, and like everyone else I mentioned
it too, they simply did not believe it was as
bad as I said it was until I showed them
I had taken a picture of his room to show
my mum how I was not in fact exaggerating the situation.
That Andrew's room was in such a state that I
was legitimately worried about his health. But when his new

(37:06):
colleague accused me of being the resident slob, I felt
that I had very little choice but to show her
the picture, if only to salvage my own reputation among
a group of potentially regular customers. I guess, needless to say,
she was horrified, and before some of you go asking, well,
how did she know it? Was actually Andrew's room. Well,

(37:26):
let's you say, there are a few solid indicators that
was definitely his room. For example, Andrew was a big
Metallica fan, and there was a big black album poster
on his wall. Andrew also smoked drum rolling tobacco at
the time, and at least a dozen of the distinct
blue packets could be seen strewn around his room. And
if you knew Andrew and saw that photo, you just

(37:47):
knew that that was his bedroom. And for the girl
that had done the accusing, it was deeply shocking for her.
I mean, it'd be shocking for any one to find
out that loads of what they'd been told is a
complete lie. But this girl seemed way worse than just surprised.
She seemed well and truly devastated. I remember before she left,

(38:07):
she asked me one more time if I knew for
certain Andrew didn't volunteer with a homelessness charity, which was
where he supposedly met and rescued me. I told her
I was really really sorry to be the bearer of
bad news, but that Andrew wasn't at all like she
thought he was. I didn't think he was evil or
a terrible person, but he clearly had issues with lying,

(38:29):
and unfortunately she'd been his latest victim, and in more
ways than one. Now, if you're assuming that little revelation
session would be the final nail on the coffin of
mine and Andrew's friendship, well you'd be right. He was
only two weeks into his new job, and every one
he worked with now knew that he was a liar,
and not just any liar, a very prolific one too. Then,

(38:51):
since it was me that had spilled the beans, it
caused such a big fight that we almost came to blows.
It was probably one of the most interesting inner actions
I ever had with Andrew, because I realized that he
had told so many lies that he actually lost track
of what he'd said to who. Again, I won't bore
you by typing out the entire exchange, but there was

(39:12):
a point that I realized that he'd almost completely lost
track of his lies. But instead of having any kind
of come to Jesus moment, realizing he was exposed just
made Andrew angrier and angrier. As I said, we never
came to fighting, but it certainly bloody looked like we
would for a hot minute. About a week After that
big fight, I came home from work to discover that

(39:34):
Andrew had gone out, but I had left his keys
in the flat, and by then he owed me hundreds
of pounds in rent, and with my name the only
one on the lease, there was absolutely zero incentive for
me to just let him back in. I told him
to go stay with his mum and long story, but
that hole getting kicked out situation had been another lie,

(39:56):
and that when he had the money he owed me,
he would come and collect it stuff. Following an amicable exchange.
He actually got his mum to call me up at
some point, basically to beg for his stuff back on
his behalf. But after telling her the whole truth, she
took my side and agreed that Andrew needed to pay
me what I was owed. I actually told her on

(40:16):
the phone, I'll happily just pawn all of his stuff
to get some money back, but I'd rather just box
things off like gentlemen and not have to lug his
gear to cash converters. And you know what, she said,
that's fair enough, Ruff, I'll get Andrew to give you
a call. But he never did phone me back because
Andrew had some much more pressing issues at hand. I

(40:38):
had no idea that those issues even existed until much
later on. So instead of telling now, I think I'll
keep you in the dark until we reach the climax
of our little story here, which i'll share with you now.
So one night, I get ready to leave for work,
and as I walk out into the street outside my flat,
I see a car's headlights flash on. I didn't think

(41:00):
anything of it, not right away, but then as I
walked away from the car toward the main road where
my bus stop was, I saw the lights behind me
getting brighter and brighter, and I realized the car wasn't
trying to pass me in the street. I realized that
there was coming up directly behind me and was moving
fast too. Thankfully, the penny dropped before it was too

(41:21):
late for me to do anything, and I was able
to simply jump back onto someone's front path. As the
car went speeding past me on the pavement, it only
narrowly missed slamming into a lamp post, and at first
it was almost inconceivable that the car had actually tried
to run me over. I just thought it was some
overly aggressive driver in a terrible mood or something, But

(41:43):
then I recognized who was in the driver's seat. It
was Andrew. He got out of the driver's seat with
a car still mounted on the pavement with its engine running,
and then walked around to the boot to open it.
And by then I'm shouting, are you for real? You'd
try to run me over? Yeah? Are you mental? Andrew

(42:03):
doesn't say anything. He just opens up the car boot,
takes out a golf club of some description, and then
starts walking up our neighbor's path toward me. I have
this real oboliics moment when I realized he actually wanted
to do me some serious damage. The only method I
had of defending myself was to pull out the little

(42:23):
penknife attached to my bartender's friend, which was barely an
inch long, and wave it around like a mental person
in the hopes that it would deter him. It did
a little bit, but since he had about three foot
of swing to that golf club, he knew that he
had the advantage, and so as he got closer, he
started trying to bash my head in with it. All

(42:45):
the screaming immediately alerted the owner of the home, and
as we're sort of back and forth dueling on their pathway.
They came out to tell us to stop, but Andrew
did not immediately stop, and he got at least one
good strike at me, which hit me in the ribs,
before the homeowner's cry of the police are on their
way finally got him to relent. He ran to his car,

(43:07):
sped off, and left me trembling in the woman's pathway,
apologizing to her for the unexpected fight. When she found
out what had happened, her reaction was next to saintly.
She asked if I wanted to come in for a
cup of tea while we waited for the police. And
that's just what I did, after calling into work to
let them know that i'd be late clocking in. I

(43:28):
thought Andrew wanted to bash me because I'd exposed his
web of lies, and in a way, that's exactly what
had happened. But the thing that had made him angry
enough to try and kill me wasn't so much that
I'd exposed him. It was the reaction of others that
he'd lied to, and in particular the reaction of the
female colleague whod accused me of ingratitude. Again. I didn't

(43:52):
find this out until maybe two or three months after
he locked himself out of the flat. But by then
everyone knew what I'm about to tell you. It was
practically talk of the town. So I can't speak for
every country's legal system, but here in the UK we
have a crime under the statute titled violation by deception.
They don't use the word violation. I'm just using it

(44:14):
in place of another word. You probably wouldn't be able
to say, but I'm sure you can all work out
which one I'm talking about. Anyways. The law states that,
and I'm just going to copy and paste this here.
Violation by deception is a situation in which the perpetrator
deceives the victim into participating in carnal acts that they

(44:34):
would otherwise not have consented had they not been deceived.
Deception can occur in many forms, such as illusory perceptions,
false statements, and false actions. It all sounds very cut
and dry. You lie to get laid and you've committed
violation by deception. But at least under English law, the
criteria to achieve a conviction is, and I'm quoting legal

(44:58):
manual here very narrow, Essentially, the prosecution as to prove
that the victim would not have slept with the perpetrator
if they hadn't deceived them. So, for example, if a
man refuses to pay a prostitute after he slept with her,
that doesn't fall under violation by deception, but trick someone
into thinking you're a completely different person to the one

(45:19):
you are, and that could well earn a conviction. Oh
Andrew had been sleeping with a female colleague who had
initially accused me, hence why she was so eager to
defend her new lover. But once she realized that almost
everything he told her was a lie, she was quite
naturally devastated. At first, she didn't think that there was
any way of getting back at him because she was

(45:42):
totally unaware of the whole b b D law. But
little did Andrew know, but his new belle was a
student at Sheffield UNI and one of her housemates and
all around best friends was a third year law student.
After a heart to heart about what a scumbag Andrew was,
the girl's friend informed her of the whole V b
D thing, and she now had some actual legal recourse

(46:05):
to get back at him, and use it she did.
Andrew was angry that I'd pulled the wool away from
everyone's eyes. But the thing that made him want to
kill me was the fact that telling the truth was
going to potentially result in a prison sentence of up
to ten years. Andrew was arrested, released on bail, then
the whole thing went to trial about six months later.

(46:27):
By then, he was living with his biological dad outside
the city, so no one saw him around town for
the duration of the ordeal. Everyone hoped the girl and
her lawyers would be able to land a conviction, and
I remember reading about the trial on social media later
and thinking Andrew might actually go to prison for what
he'd done. But unfortunately, because Andrew pled guilty at his

(46:49):
plea hearing, and in light of him being a first
time offender, he ended up walking away with nothing more
than the suspended prison sentence of two years. Everyone who
knew about the situation was devastated, but Andrew didn't get
away scott free. With his reputation now ruined, he was
forced to move away, and although a mutual friend of
ours keeps up with him from time to time, we

(47:11):
know next to nothing about where he is or what
he's doing. This is mainly because I tell this mutual
friend that I don't want to know, but that doesn't
stop me from thinking about Andrew from time to time.
I came to learn that telling somebody lies in the
way that Andrew did is a sure sign of sociopathy,
or in other words, Andrew had a serious case of

(47:32):
what you might call main character syndrome. And that's why
he felt so comfortable lying because other people didn't matter
to him. Even if individuals found out he was lying,
there was no real loss to him because he didn't
care what they thought of him in the first place. However,
it's also common for people like that to highly prize
their overall reputation. After all, if no one trusts you

(47:54):
to begin with, there's no one to fool. So having
me expose him and in such a way that men
there were legal ramifications that makes people like Andrew murderous.
I sometimes wonder if wherever Andrew went, he repeated that
whole process of lying and manipulating people. I know it
sounds a bit callous, but I kind of hope he has.

(48:16):
I hope he's completely rebuilt his life, even if it's
a duplicitous house of cards, because that means he's actually
moved on. And I hope that because the alternative is
that he still hates me, he still gets angry thinking
about me exposing him, and he's going to just wait
until things have blown over well and truly before coming

(48:37):
back to get his final and bloody revenge. Hey, friends,
thanks for listening. Click that notification bell to be alerted
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(48:59):
you've got a story, be sure to submit them over
email at Let's read Submissions at gmail dot com and
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(49:21):
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and remember they put Buggers and the egg drop soup