Chapter: Chapter Ten - The Rusty SpoonI stared at the screen for a long moment, the words blurring and refocusing as my tired eyes struggled to keep up. MEET ME AT THE RUSTY SPOON. 1AM. COME ALONE. Detective Cross. Calling a meeting in the middle of the night. I typed back: I DON'T HAVE A CAR. A pause. Three dots appeared, vanished, and appeared again. THERE'S A BUS. NORTH GATE. 12:17. BE ON IT. I looked at the time on my phone. 12:09. Eight minutes. No time to go back to the dorm. No time to explain anything to Ashley. No time to do anything except walk fast toward the north gate. The campus blurred past me, the old-fashioned lamps casting long shadows that stretched and twisted like reaching hands. My boots crunched on the gravel path, too loud in the silence, and every step echoed off the buildings like a warning. --- The bus was late. I stood at the north gate, alone, the wind cutting through my jacket like it wasn't even there. The streetlights here were older, spaced farther apart, casting pools of weak
Last Updated: 2026-05-05
Chapter: Chapter Nine - The Breaking-in Point I immediately picked it, tucking it into my jacket.The photograph burned against my chest where I'd tucked it inside my jacket, the paper warm from my skin, the warning still wet in places where the red substance hadn't fully dried. I'd palmed it before Ashley could see, the motion quick and automatic, the same reflex that had kept me alive in group homes where possessions disappeared if you looked away for too long.The room was still destroyed. Still chaos. Still a crime scene that hadn't been declared one yet.I stood in the center of it, my hands trembling at my sides, my breath coming too fast, too shallow. The second heartbeat in my side had become a drumbeat, a countdown, a warning of its own.STOP. THIS IS YOUR LAST WARNING.Whoever wrote that knew who I was. Knew why I was here. Knew everything. My heart skipped in a hint of fear.That was the thought that froze the blood in my veins. Not that they had found me. Not that they had threatened me. But that they had done it so c
Last Updated: 2026-05-04
Chapter: Chapter Eight - STOPThe photograph was lying at the top of Ashley’s hamper.——The hallway stretched in two directions. To the left, a set of metal doors marked STORAGE - AUTHORIZED ACCESS ONLY. To the right, a narrow corridor that led toward the loading dock, where a rectangle of moonlight spilled across the concrete floor.No footsteps. No shadow. Just the smell of bleach and raw chicken and something else underneath, something chemical, something that reminded me of the nursing home where I'd watched Mrs. Patterson die. God bless her soul.Perfume. Expensive perfume. The kind that came in a bottle shaped like a teardrop and cost more than my monthly rent.Someone had been here. Recently.I moved toward the loading dock, my sneakers silent on the concrete. The door was propped open with a cinder block, the night air rushing in like a held breath finally released. Outside, the parking lot was empty except for a single car,a black sedan with tinted windows, parked beneath the broken streetlight.The engi
Last Updated: 2026-05-03
Chapter: Chapter Seven - Shadowed Ashley grabbed a hoodie from the back of her chair. Westbrook University crest faded to almost nothing,and pulled it over her head. The motion revealed a flash of skin at her waist, and there, just above the band of her jeans, a scar. Small. Circular. The kind a cigarette might leave. I was tempted to ask what it was, but I knew she was already suspicious of me. "The tour," she said, tying her hair into a tighter bun, "starts with the dining hall. Not because it's good,it's not…but because you need to know which tables are safe and which tables will make your life hell." "Safe from what?" Ashley's laugh was sharp this time. "From the wolves." She didn't explain. She just walked out the door, and I followed. --- The dining hall was a cavernous space with fluorescent lights that hummed in a frequency designed to cause headaches. Long tables stretched from one end to the other, each one claimed by a different tribe: athletes near the windows, theater kids in the corner, a cluster
Last Updated: 2026-05-03
Chapter: Chapter Six - The first classThe walk back to Morrison Hall took me past the library, the student union, and a narrow footpath lined with oak trees so old their roots had cracked the sidewalk like veins beneath skin. I kept my head down, my hands in the pockets of the jacket I'd bought from a thrift store three towns away,navy blue, slightly too large, the kind of garment that said I don't want to be noticed.But I noticed everything.The couple arguing near the bike rack. The professor smoking a cigarette behind the science building, his eyes darting left and right like he was waiting for someone to catch him. The girl sitting alone on a bench, her phone pressed to her ear, tears sliding down her cheeks in silence.Westbrook wasn't just a campus. It was a stage. And everyone on it was performing.I reached my dorm at 6:47 PM. The hallway on the second floor smelled like microwave popcorn and something chemical;nail polish remover, maybe, or the cheap perfume they sold at the drugstore downtown. Room 217's door w
Last Updated: 2026-05-02
Chapter: Chapter Five - The ReplacementThe administrative building of Westbrook College was the kind of architecture designed to intimidate. Gray stone columns, brass plaques polished to a mirror shine, windows tall enough to make you feel small just by standing near them. I had arrived at 8:47 AM, seventeen minutes early, because being early meant watching, and watching meant surviving.Detective Cross had made good on her word.Three days of paperwork. Three days of phone calls that stretched into evenings. Three days of me sitting in that motel room, memorizing Alice's phone like it was scripture, until the bleach-and-regret smell had soaked into my clothes, my hair, my lungs.Now I stood on the steps of Prescott Hall, a backpack slung over one shoulder..new, canvas, nondescript;containing everything I owned and nothing I was willing to lose. The morning air had that sharp, clean quality of autumn in a town that wanted you to forget it had teeth.I didn't forget."Alexa Lean is dead," Detective Cross had told me over th
Last Updated: 2026-04-28
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