Photos of Torture Under My Door

A few months ago I lived in a small duplex in the suburbs of New York City while I worked a freelance job. I was only there for a few months, and the rent was a no-lease month-to-month kind of deal. The rent was cheap, and the people in the building next to me said nobody stays in that building for very long. The place was kind of a shithole, so I figured it was just a temporary place for people.

A few days after I moved in, I was getting ready for work, and just as I was leaving I found a series of photos under my door. They were of me, inside an apartment that looked just like mine. I was tied to a chair, naked, being tortured. There was no doubt the photos were me. I have a lot of tattoos, including plenty under my clothes, and they were all in the photos. I freaked out and I called the police. I was convinced somebody photoshopped the images. Was it one of my ex’s going after me? How did they have naked photos of me? The strangest part was it looked just like my apartment, but backwards. After hours of thinking, I was convinced it must have been the person who lived across the hall from me in the other room. I asked the police to talk to them, but when they knocked on the door nobody answered.

I took the photos to a developing center and they said the photos must have been developed in a private studio, and they were authentic. They couldn’t find any signs of photoshop. But I knew it was that person who did it. How did they get my photo? Who lived there? Why were they doing this?

Over the next couple days, I would wake up, naked, my clothes nowhere to be found, and in an excruciating amount of pain. So one night, I set up a camera to record myself as I slept. I woke up once again, naked, in pain, and my camera had died shortly after I started recording. I tried again the next night, with a freshly charged battery. But when I woke up, once again the battery had died shortly after I fell asleep. The next day was a Friday, so I drank a few 5 hour energys and planned to stay up all night. I remember being up from dusk to dawn, but in a sudden moment out of absolute exhaustion, I fell asleep. I woke up only an hour later, naked again, and more photos under my door. I called the police and this time they thought I was faking it. I didn’t know what to do. I finally had enough and called the landlord, asking about the person living across the hall. She claimed that nobody lived in the apartment. So I armed myself with pepper spray, broke the handle off with a hammer, and opened the door.

It looked like nobody had been there in ages. But as I explored the apartment, I opened the bedroom door, I saw a chair with straps, bolted to the floor, next to a pile of my clothes. I called 911 and waited outside the building. When the cops arrived, I brought them in the apartment, but the chair was gone.

I moved out that day.