What would you do if you moved into a non-smoking apartment but you could smell the neighbor’s smoke?

In this story, some college roommates are in this exact situation. Their landlord doesn’t help, so when one roommate is home alone, she decides to get revenge on the neighbor.

What she does is pretty crazy, but it actually works!

Keep reading for all the details.

I froze my psycho neighbor out of her apartment

In college, my two friends and I decided to find a place together off-campus. We found a beautiful three-bedroom house with surprisingly affordable rent.

The basement of the house was listed as a separate apartment, but as it had a separate entrance and the indoor stairwell had been blocked off, we weren’t worried. And the thermostat was upstairs.

Then the demon neighbor moved in.

The neighbor sounds awful!

From upstairs, we could hear everything.

This adult woman would call her mother and scream at her to pay for her cellphone bills and give her “grocery” money (aka Taco Bell and cheap tequila), she would scream at whatever guy she was sleeping with to bring her meth, and one day, she brought home three puppies to scream at, too.

We were terrified of this woman, and the noise was hell.

Also, we’d been idiotic enough to sign a lease stating we were responsible for all utilities, period, meaning we were now financing her gas, water, and electric.

But with only two months left on the lease, we thought we could just ride it out.

It got worse.

But then she started smoking. Constantly.

According to the landlord, she’d “quit for good” when she’d signed the lease, but “for good” only lasted two days.

Since it was winter, the heat was running nearly 24/7, and the smoke was wafting up from the vents. Our apartment and all our belongings began to reek with smoke.

The landlord wasn’t any help.

We contacted the landlord, because we’d signed for a bloody non-smoking apartment.

He told us we lived in a state where you could technically call an apartment non-smoking even if it shared ventilation with a smoking apartment. (Forget you, leasing laws).

At this point, my two roommates were heading out for a two-week vacation (they were online students, while I was residential), leaving me alone in the apartment with the demon smoker in the basement.

I couldn’t sleep or eat, because my idiotic stomach decided to react to all the secondhand smoke by aching and cramping constantly.

She did something kind of crazy.

After three days, I was a little insane. I made a plan.

I checked the forecast: lows in the 20s all week.

I borrowed a friend’s ultra-insulated sleeping bag. I bought one of those ski masks with the holes for your eyes and mouth. I got out my stocking cap, my silk long underwear, my woolen socks, and my down parka. I bought tea, hot cocoa, and ramen, and prepared to live off a diet of hot liquids.

And I turned off the freaking heat.

This is a lot of screaming.

Day 1: She’s screaming at her mother for forcing her to move into this frozen hole of an apartment.

Day 2: She’s screaming at her boyfriend (meth-dealer?) because he won’t let her move in with him.

Day 3: She’s screaming at the landlord about how she’s freaking freezing.

The landlord paid her a visit.

Day 4: The landlord is at my door. I greet him in full ski mask/parka/stocking cap array, looking like I’m heading out to rob Santa Claus at the North Pole.

He asks me if I don’t find it a little chilly in the house.

I reply I’d found all the cigarette smoke a little warm.

Finally, success!

Day 5: She’s screaming about “THE WITCHES UPSTAIRS” to anyone who will listen, and I’m sitting upstairs clutching my car keys and my pepper spray with 911 typed into my phone.

She finally decides she’s freaking leaving and moving in with Greg, “even though he just got out for stabbing Travis, and he lives in that freaking creepy house in the woods with all those awful biting dogs.”

Never Miss a Story

Sign up to get our BEST stories of the week straight to your inbox.

Day 6: She’s GONE. I silently bless Greg.

Moral of the story: There’s a bloody reason the rent seems too good to be true.

I love how she responded to the landlord. She basically told him why she was doing what she was doing without calling it revenge.

Let’s see how Reddit responded.

Being in control of the thermostat makes paying for the utilities worth it.

It seriously was a great comeback!

This person loved the revenge.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about an artist who made sure to leave the walls of her home blank and boring before moving out, even though they were covered with gorgeous murals before then.

Another person shares a story about a roommate.

That was a bold thing to do! I wonder if she later told her roommates what she did.  I hope she did, and I hope that were grateful. I also hope the next person who rented the apartment wasn’t quite so crazy.

Sometimes doing something crazy can be worth it!