The Roommate
In this gripping short story by Sunday Times bestselling author Andrea Mara, a quiet night in turns into a living nightmare. When Elena sits down to watch a new TV crime drama with her husband, she is paralyzed by a horrifying realization—the show's plot is an exact replica of a dark secret she’s spent years trying to hide. Knowing this is no coincidence, Elena must figure out who is broadcasting her past before the truth comes out and she loses absolutely everything.
- Elena - Richard’s wife
- Richard - Elena’s husband
- Kyle - Elena’s ex-boyfriend
- Kristina - Elena and Kyle’s lodger
- Thandiwe - Writer of The Roommate
- Ben - Character in The Roommate
- Marcia - Character in The Roommate
- Jane - Ben and Marcia's lodger in The Roommate
- Elena and Richard watch a crime drama on TV called The Roommate, where Ben and Marcia take in Jane as a lodger, but Jane is very messy and obnoxious.
- One night, Ben and Marcia give Jane sleeping pills and lock her in her room so she won’t interrupt an important dinner party.
- After the dinner party, they leave the house. Before leaving, Marcia asks Ben if he unlocked Jane’s door, and he says yes.
- When they come home, the house has burned, and Ben drags Jane's body to the shed and pretends she wasn’t home when the fire started.
- They go to stay in a hotel, and Ben drugs Marcia with sleeping pills.
- Ben takes Jane’s body, dumps it in her family’s cabin, and sets the cabin on fire.
- The next morning, when Marcia hears about the fire at the cabin, she confronts Ben, realizing that Jane actually died in the fire at their house because he never unlocked her door like he said he did.
- Marcia and Ben part ways, but in the TV show, Ben comes back and kills Marcia because he thinks she told someone what happened.
- Elena hears that Thandiwe got the idea for the show from a Reddit post.
- Elena goes to Kyle’s house, and when he admits he wrote the Reddit post, she stabs him and makes it look like a robbery.
- The TV show swapped the roles of the couple; the character of Ben mirrored Elena’s role in the crime, not Kyle’s.
Andrea Mara packs a ton of suspense into this 39-page read. Watching Elena silently panic as her darkest secret plays out on a new TV crime drama right in front of her husband creates an incredibly tense atmosphere. There is a massive twist that I did not see coming, making this the perfect bite-sized thriller with a huge payoff!
- Fire
- Death
- Murder
Publisher: Amazon Original Stories
ASIN: B0G4NFRZ6M
Publication Date: April 1, 2026
Note: Details are for the original edition. Other formats, editions, and audiobook versions may be available.
