Tahlia Faith Meyers didn't even know what to feel anymore.

Professor Flint, a short, stout man of about 54, had been going on and on about Class A Drugs for the past forty five minutes, not once paying any attention to the girl that sat in the back, tears threatening to spill down her pale face at the slightest little manoeuvre.

Her eyes were blurry, her composure on the verge of shattering down like fragile shards of glass.

Blood stained shards of glass.

As Professor Flint went on about the adversities of LSD, Tahlia shut her eyes close firmly, biting down on her twitching lip in order to prevent herself from bawling at any given ineluctable moment.

Once she was positive that her eyes wouldn't be pouring down, she opened them slowly. Her glassy view only consisted of the balding Mr. Flint, and only the handful of students who had bothered to show up to the morning class.

Tahlia hadn't comprehended one word out of the entirety of the lecture.

All that revolved in her mind was one, singular thought.

She had been used.

The events of the previous night kept replaying in her head like a lucid nightmare, the clutches of dread weighing down on the last standing fragments of her sanity.

Returning from Michelle's house last night had felt nothing short of walking on a tight rope.

With her nerves pumped with pure trepidation, she could only hope that what she knew, would magically all turn out to be false.

"He wouldn't", She told herself, in tormented attempts of persuading her thumping heart.

She had almost torn down the door to her dorm room in vivid perturbation, darting straight to the closet.

As obsessive Tahlia was about neat organization, at that moment; all of her clothes were flung to the floor mindlessly, one after another.

When the pair of jeans she was looking for, finally landed in her sight, the pockets were pulled inside-out in a swift motion.

Her stomach twisted into knots as she discovered that the pockets were as empty as a deserted alley.

An inkling of hope that she previously had, took it's first, serious hit.

Looking over to the mess she had made, she practically dove in headfirst, the search for an atypical, lone piece of metal getting more frantic by the second.

The room was thoroughly trashed within a matter of minutes, but the key was nowhere to be found.

Whatever remainder of hope that was left in Tahlia's heart, took a final, agonizing blow.

As if her legs would give out at any unpredictable second, Tahlia had to involuntarily latch onto the wall for support.

With her back to the wall, her body slumped down on the floor, finally, breaking down. The girl wailed with intensities comparable to that of hurricanes.

Her voice was broken as she sobbed, her heart already in pieces.

Tahlia knew she had no one to blame for this, but herself.

She cursed herself for thinking she could play with raging fire; as if sizzling flames could be tamed.

Not once had she taken into consideration the foreboding embers, warning her that she was destined to burn.

'You have intrigued me Miss Meyers'

'Natalia was truly the most beautiful name I've ever heard'

'What are you doing to me Natalia Meyers?'

None of it ever meant anything. It was all part of his sick plan.

A plan you were stupid enough to walk into, remarked her conscience cruelly.

The closest article within her reach happened to be a small tube of lipstick that she had bought not too long ago.

Every undertone of her frustration was channeled through it, as the miniscule thing was hurled with bolting velocity across the room.

She had been used.

The bitter realization was hard to swallow.

Every bewitching sentence that had ever left Logan Hunt's mouth was a carefully planned move.

His seductive demeanor had all been a ploy leading up to his escape, she concluded.

An escape she was unconsciously a part of.

And now a girl was dead because of her.

And if there was even an ounce of truth to what she knew of Logan Hunt, he was only just getting started.

Westfield wouldn't even know what hit it.

All this while, Tahlia thought that she was playing a game with the devil.

Turns out, she, was only but a mere pawn in his degenerate game.

The first thing they'd ever been taught about psychopaths, was how they're all masters of manipulation.

Twisting emotions and playing people like fiddlesticks came like second nature to them.

Yet, with eyes wide open, she had let herself burn. Burn in the fire, that was Logan Hunt.

With the sound of the Professor dismissing the class, Tahlia was plummeted back to the present.

With unfeeling hands, she gathered her books and stood up to leave, completely numb.

She loathed herself for letting this happen, letting herself walk into the arms of madness.

And now, she reaped what she had oh so monstrously sown.

✴✴✴

"Shit." The girl heaved a sigh of annoyance, rolling her eyes.

"I can't find my keys."

Tahlia looked over to the figure standing right by the door.

Well that makes the two of us, she mentally taunted herself, with events of the previous night refusing to go away from her head.

"Did you hear me?" The other girl snapped, all while tugging at her scarlet tube top, adjusting the barely there piece of fabric to show just the right amount of skin.

"I'll be out late, you're gonna have to stay up to let me in."

Tahlia's jaw virtually dropped open, "What? No, I can't— I have an early class tomorrow." She glanced at her roommate's entire ensemble, noting how skimpy it was. "Won't you spend the night out anyway?"

Tahlia didn't mean to be rude, but a part of her had had enough.

People like Wynn O'Neil were somewhere on the opposite end of the spectrum from someone like Tahlia.

Wynn's rich widowed mother had more than enough to spend on her daughter's education.

What her mother called education, Wynn liked to call it the 'essential-college-experience'; that is, underage drinking and partying like the world was about to end.

Living life so leisurely and irresponsibly was not a luxury that Tahlia Meyers could afford.

Wynn scoffed, "Of course you can't, for a second there I almost forgot I was talking to a no-life Miss fucking Prim."

Before Tahlia could even process the entire insult, her roommate was out the door, slamming it not too gently.

At least she wasn't wrong.

Whatever life Tahlia formerly had, was now in complete shambles.

Don't think about it.

She glimpsed at the time, realizing her shift at work was going to begin soon.

Getting ready in a jiffy, she was out her dorm, inside the campus bookstore in a matter of few minutes.

Her job was pretty mundane, considering hardly a few souls ever showed up to the bookstore, but the pay was fairly decent.

Then there was the fact that Tahlia had come to appreciate mundane, in light of everything happening around her.

She'd choose mundane over chaotic in a heartbeat.

As soon as the head clerk spotted her, he was quick to hand her a box of new bestsellers and a bunch of vinyls to be arranged in their respective places.

For almost all of her time, Tahlia put her head into the task and only the task.

Almost.

But, after a while she couldn't resist her instincts, can't help being distracted by the report playing on the little vintage television in the corner.

"Lieutenant Kennedy presided over a press conference earlier this afternoon, where more details of the Tori Enfield murder were brought into light. Miss Enfield's larynx has been reported by the M.E. to have been cut out post mortem, and the actual cause of death being trauma to the head by an unknown blunt forced object.."

Tahlia furrowed her brows in perplexity.

That was strange. That's not his M.O.

"What's an M.O.?"

Tahlia turned to the direction of the voice, "Oh, did I say that out loud?"

Chuck the clerk nodded plainly, his attention seemed to having been focused on the screen, as he stood sprawled back behind the counter.

Thankfully he didn't seem to have caught the entirety of her sentence.

"It's short for modus operandi."

"Huh?"

Tahlia couldn't help but chuckle lightly at that, "It's uh.. Well, it's basically how a criminal works. Their patterns or rituals, to put it simply."

He mumbled a small 'oh' and changed the channel to football.

"You're studying that right, what's it called? Criminal justice or something?"

"Criminal psychology." She corrected, as she put in the last of the books on the shelf.

"Yeah, I didn't even know that was a thing. So what are you gonna do for a living kid? Spend your life psycho-babbling some lowlifes in prison?" He tore his eyes away from the screen, looking at her.

From the 15 months that Tahlia had worked at the store, she'd concluded that Chuck was a man of few words, not the inquisitive kind. This was the probably the most they'd spoken to one another in a single piece of conversation, ever.

And he of all people, was asking her the question she should have asked herself, the minute she applied for the Dr. Steve Craig Memorial Scholarship for Criminal Psychology at the University of Westfield.

"I..don't know yet. I haven't really thought about it." She answered candidly, caught off guard a bit.

When Chuck didn't respond to her answer, eyes still glued to the match, Tahlia walked up to counter.

"I'm done."

He tore his gaze away from the screen, to steal a glimpse at the shelf, acknowledging her with a curt nod.

Tahlia grabbed her bag, tugging a windswept piece of hair behind her ears, as she took her leave.

It was 7, just minutes before the night would inevitably fall. Darkness would creep over every little Westfield nook and cranny.

Perfect time for a prey to be hunted.

Tahlia's fingers involuntarily brushed her jacket, just where the heart in a human body is, perhaps in an odd attempt to comfort herself.

This is a full-of-people college campus, there is no way he'd come here, she told herself.

The wind rustled harder, forcing her to pull her jacket more stringently close around her body.

It was then that there was a distinct sharp sound from behind her, a soft snap, the kind that comes from twigs being crushed under the weight of someone's foot.

She stopped dead in her tracks.

Her lungs tightened, almost.

Her legs, although rooted to the spot, were unmistakably shaking.

Was this it? Her inexorable end?

With the shred of will that was left in her body, she turned around.

Her eyes widened in confusion,

but a sigh of multitudinous relief was quick to follow.

She virtually fell on her knees, thanking God that it wasn't her worst nightmare.

Two unfamiliar figures made their way towards her.

As they got into her vicinity, she could clearly see them now. One was a burly, but good looking woman, the other was a dark skinned man with a handsome face.

"Natalia Meyers?" The man called out to her.

She was baffled, the skepticism in her voice the proof as she answered, "Y-yes?"

They now stood directly in front of her, the man taking a step forward, as they both flashed her a familiar badge, "We're from Westfield P.D."

Shit, her conscience went into a frenzy.

"I'm Sergeant Randall," He then pointed towards the woman beside him, "That's my partner Detective Hernandez."

He then looked at her in the eye,

"We have some questions for you Miss Meyers, you'll have to come with us to the station."

✴✴✴