I’m halfway through rinsing a mug when the floodlight blinks on across the fence. It’s bright noon, no wind, no raccoons. I crack the back door—red LED. I stay inside—nothing. I touch the handle—the light winks awake like it knows my hand.

Eli Turner put the camera up last week “for packages.” Everyone on Camden Court is suddenly a security expert. I didn’t think about it until the pattern started: step out, blink; stay in, silence. Not when my sister comes by, not when the gardener walks through the gate. Just me.

Yesterday I tested it: hat on, hoodie up, even sunglasses. Still blink. I told myself it’s random until I got an email I shouldn’t have—Nest share from our landlord’s old group thread, still forwarding to my Gmail. Subject line: “Familiar Face—You.” The screenshot showed my porch and a tag: Notify only when: MARA.

The sender wasn’t the landlord. It was Elizabeth Turner. Same last name as Eli. The settings page in the screenshot had a single toggle on, the rest off. Under “Activity Zones,” a rectangle sat square over my side door. I checked the timestamp. Every time the light blinked, I’d just stepped out to the trash, to water the basil, to breathe.

I walk to the fence with my phone open to the email. The floodlight blinks. Their side door chain rattles. The latch lifts and I raise the screen toward the peephole as the door opens.

Eli steps out, wiping his hands on a dish towel. He’s mid-30s, a little too polished, always wears loafers to get the mail. “Hey, Mara,” he says casually, like we’re just two neighbors in suburbia and not caught in the middle of a techno-creep horror show.

I hold my phone up. “Elizabeth sent this to my landlord’s old email thread. I think it was an accident.”

He glances at the screen. Doesn’t flinch. “That’s just a default setting.”

“Default?” I raise an eyebrow. “It literally says, ‘Notify only when: MARA.’ The zone is just my side. Not the driveway. Not the sidewalk. Just me.”

He scratches his neck, eyes darting for half a second to the side of the house. “Elizabeth’s paranoid. She thought someone was casing houses last month. You probably just triggered the same pattern as someone else. You have a similar walk.”

“A similar walk to who?”

He shrugs. “How would I know? She manages the system.”

That didn’t sit right. “You’re telling me your wife—or sister, or whoever—manages the Nest settings and happened to draw a box over my yard? And picked my name?”

“She works in tech,” he says, like that explains it.

I pause. “She’s not listed on the mailbox. You live alone, right?”

He stiffens. “She’s staying with me for a while.”

That would’ve been more convincing if I hadn’t lived here six months already and never seen another car in his drive. Or lights on past midnight. Or a second toothbrush in his bathroom that one time I borrowed sugar and used his loo. But I let it drop.

I walked back inside with that pit in my stomach I hadn’t felt since college—the one you get when you know someone’s lying, but you can’t quite prove it.

That night I couldn’t sleep. Every creak of the floorboard, every motion light flicker made my skin crawl. So around 2 a.m., I sat in the kitchen with the lights off, waiting. Watching.

Sure enough, the floodlight blinked.

But I hadn’t moved.

I froze. No shadow, no breeze. The gate didn’t shift. Then the blink again.

Someone was on my property.

I grabbed my phone and opened the Nest app—still worked from the email share. The Turner camera was live. I clicked play. It buffered, then showed my yard in grainy black-and-white.

Someone was standing in the corner, behind my rosemary bush.

They weren’t tall, maybe my height, wearing a hoodie pulled low. But the camera picked up the face just as they turned—

It was me.

Or someone who looked exactly like me.

I gasped so hard I nearly dropped the phone. But when I looked again—they were gone. The footage skipped. The feed blinked. Nothing but a blank yard.

I saved the clip, heart pounding. Maybe it was a glitch. Maybe some AI thing. But the resemblance was haunting.

Next morning, I called my friend Carla, who worked in digital forensics for a law firm. I sent her the clip.

“Looks tampered with,” she said after twenty minutes. “Like, someone’s inserting a pre-recorded loop. Low-level amateur splicing. Who’s got access?”

“That’s the thing,” I said. “Not me. Not officially. I only have this clip because of the email slip.”

“You need to talk to the police,” she said.

But I hesitated. What was I going to say? “Hi, officer, my neighbor’s camera only turns on when I step outside and now it’s showing people who look like me standing in my yard at 2 a.m.” It sounded unhinged.

Instead, I talked to my landlord.

Mr. Delling was a chill retiree who rarely got involved in tenant drama. But when I showed him the email and the footage, he leaned forward in his recliner and said, “That’s not okay.”

He came by the next morning and rang Eli’s bell while I stood by the gate. Eli opened the door in his pressed polo and khakis, smiling like this was a block party.

“I’ve got concerns about your setup,” Delling said. “You didn’t clear that camera with me. It points into Mara’s space.”

Eli shifted. “It’s for security. We’ve had theft.”

“Then aim it at your packages,” Delling said flatly. “Not my tenant’s private area.”

Eli opened his mouth, then closed it. “Fine,” he said. “I’ll adjust it.”

That night, the camera was gone. Light uninstalled. Just a blank spot on the wall where it had been.

For two days, I felt relief. I sat on my porch with tea. Read a book without red blinking in my periphery. I started breathing again.

Then on the third morning, I found a package on my doorstep.

It wasn’t from any company I recognized. Just a brown box with a white label. No return address. No postage. Just my name—MARA, handwritten in shaky all-caps.

Inside was a framed photo.

It was me.

On my porch.

Taken from the angle of where the camera used to be.

But the timestamp said yesterday.

After the camera was “removed.”

I felt bile rise. I wrapped the photo in a towel and shoved it in a drawer. Then I marched next door and pounded on Eli’s door until my knuckles hurt.

No answer.

Next morning, I walked to the end of the street where a newer neighbor, Lauren, lived. She had one of those Ring doorbells and was always chatty. I asked if her cam ever picked up anything weird at night—like someone coming down the sidewalk around my house.

She looked at me, frowning. “Actually… yeah. Last night around midnight. A guy in dark clothes with something under his arm. Didn’t stop. Just walked around back.”

“Can I see the footage?”

She hesitated, then nodded. “Sure. Come in.”

The video was short. A man in a baseball cap and hoodie, walking with quick steps and hugging something to his chest. Hard to make out a face. But something about the way he moved felt… familiar.

Then Lauren paused the clip. “Wait… you don’t think that’s Eli, do you?”

I hadn’t said his name.

I stared. “You know him?”

She shrugged. “He tried to ask me out three times. Something about him gave me the creeps. Too intense. Always knew too much. Like, he complimented the way I arrange my curtains—and I’d never opened them when he was around.”

That sealed it.

I went to the police.

This time, they took it seriously. I brought the video, the photo, the email thread, even Carla’s analysis. They filed a report and said they’d investigate. I wasn’t holding my breath, but it helped to say it out loud.

The next week was quiet. No lights. No boxes. Nothing.

Until Elizabeth Turner showed up at my door.

Except… she wasn’t who I expected.

She looked nothing like the photo in the email profile.

She looked like me.

Not exactly, but close. Same height. Same hair. Same posture. Like she’d studied me.

She smiled. “Hi. I think we should talk.”

I didn’t invite her in. Just stood there, stunned.

“You got my email, right?” she asked. “I meant for you to. You needed to know.”

“Why?”

She sighed. “Eli does this. He picks women who remind him of his ex. Sets up surveillance. Studies them. Then creates… digital copies. AI face filters, video splices. He thinks it’s art.”

My stomach turned.

“I found your name in one of his folders,” she said. “He was getting obsessed again. I tried to stop him quietly, but it was too late. I wanted you to know before he took it further.”

“He said you were his sister,” I whispered.

She laughed bitterly. “No. Just the last one who escaped.”

I reported everything again. This time, with her testimony.

Eli was arrested for illegal surveillance and harassment. Turned out he’d been fired from his last job for misusing internal camera feeds. He’d moved here to start over—and I was supposed to be his new muse.

The camera? It was never disconnected. Just moved to a tree branch across the alley. The photo? A still from that hidden feed.

In the end, I filed a restraining order, got extra locks, and planted a huge trellis wall along the fence line.

And Elizabeth? She moved to Oregon. Started over.

I stayed.

Because I wasn’t going to let him scare me out of my home.

Now when the light blinks, it’s my motion sensor, angled out. Watching my own gate.

Lesson learned: If something feels off, trust that gut. Privacy isn’t a luxury—it’s a right. And the people who cross those lines? They always think they’re smarter than they are.

So be smarter. Be louder. Be braver.

And if a red light ever blinks just for you—ask why.

If this gave you chills or made you think, give it a like and share. You never know who needs to read this.