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If only I'd thought of it months ago... a hidden webcam to record her dishonest pursuits in our kitchen. The website could have a form to fill out for witnesses to report the crimes. We'd all noticed it and gradually approached each other to find out if it was just paranoia, or if everyone was noticing the same things. Big chunks of butter scooped out with a serrated knife. Large amounts of milk going missing almost overnight. Dishes disappearing for days at a time, only to reemerge dirty, encrusted with dried food. It happened to us all, and we'd lived together for 2 and a half months before any of it started... before: Alison the big fat witch moved in.
She was the only one with a serrated knife.
She was often the only other person home when things would reappear (according to her, out of nowhere?) My expensive bowl from The Pier completely disappeared and despite numerous occasions of questioning everyone in the room when we were all home, no word was heard of it. A teaspoon also ran off, as well as a mug. Now, none of these things would be a particularly big deal if they weren't the only ones I had, having only enough money to buy one of each kitchen item. Unni had things disappear as well, dishes vanishing or being left dirty, and with Maggie it was the food. Maggie even went so far as to leave a note on her refrigerator shelf saying "Do not take my food without asking. This is stealing!" Lo and behold, right underneath the note a large amount of butter was taken, using the telltale serrated knife. We put up with it as long as we could. We were nice people, peaceful people. None of us wanted to cause a stir. But I could only keep my mouth shut for so long. I'm moving soon, and I have no reason to be polite any more.
I had a big fight with her on Monday night. I confronted her about all the things she's been doing (the last straw was when I brought half a pizza home unsliced from a restaurant, and found it sliced in sloppy slices, knife marks on the bottom of the box, and a big chunk missing). I gave her descriptive examples of all the things we'd noticed amiss, including reasons why I knew it wasn't anyone else but her, and she denied all knowledge of any of it. She lied left and right, saying she didn't remember doing any of those things. Including breaking Unni's glass--once when Unni was in her room, she heard glass breaking and Alison say, "Shit," also Alison was the only other person home at the time. When Alison had gone back into her room Unni went out there and saw a piece of broken glass on the floor but no other trace of it. Then she noticed one of her glasses was missing, and Alison never mentioned it once. When I brought that up she said she didn't remember breaking any glass. So I suggested maybe she has some sort of amnesia problem, that she deliberately forgets these kinds of things, and she said "Well, maybe I do. I can live with that."
She was very bitchy and snippy about the whole thing (saying, "I'm not the one getting all upset here"), whereas I was visibly upset, and any innocent person being accused of these things would have been very upset. She kept calling me neurotic and a hypochondriac. I can sort of see how being neurotic has a little bit to do with it... in that what she calls neurotic is just me noticing and remembering specific things, and it's so far removed from the careless, bumbling way she moves through life that it probably does appear neurotic. But I don't think my tendency toward hypochondria has anything to do with her using my white towel to wipe her lipstick off on...(incidentally, it's the towel I use to stand on when I come out of the shower). None of the rest of us wear lipstick so we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was her (not least because of the time Maggie actually saw her use it), as we do with all the other things that happened.
We didn't get anywhere, though, because even when I asked if she'd ever used the white towel in the bathroom (A: "No!), and why was there lipstick on it (A: "Oh, so it's automatically me?" L:"Yes, because you're the only one who wears lipstick here," A: (thinks for a second)"Well, I had two friends over the other night," L:"Then how come I found it two weeks ago?") she still claimed to not know what I was talking about. Logical deduction and evidence, as well as reasonable discussion of a problem, seem to be completely foreign to her. She comes from that sort of ignorant people who never grow up beyond the age of 7 (Who drew on the wall? Not me. But you're our only child. I didn't do it. Oh, so the little elves who live in the cupboard did it? Maybe) and will go through life grabbing what ever they come across and never accept responsibility for anything at all. I put some spit on her door handle and her toothbrush. Ha ha ha!! It's the only way I can get any satisfaction out of this since she's just going to keep lying and never admit she's a theiving pathological wench.
I suggested the little elves in the cupboard thing, and she wasn't even fazed.
