One of my professors believed that a journalist should wait ten long seconds past his or her greatest fear before succumbing to it and fleeing the scene. I started to count. On the count of eight, I caught a new sound that I was not prepared for—whispers, tearful panting and then the sound of choking.

  “Enough!” I raised my voice. The syrup and the gel caps were doing their job. I knew I should be afraid but my drugstore friends wouldn’t let me. The whispers changed into a series of whimpers that soon grew into screams. It was a female voice or could have even been a child’s but one thing for sure, it was a human voice and it was no act.

  “Stop it!” I said, trying to control my breath. My throat felt hot and dry. It wasn’t fear. It was the drying effect of meds. I felt that whoever was behind the theater of sound would also be able to hear me. The screams faded rather than stopped as if someone closed the door. The dripping resumed at the same time a small red bead started to form in the middle of the dark screen until it grew beyond cohesion and broke into a rivulet of blood.

  “Do I have your attention now?” The white script ran underneath the ribbon of blood.

  “I’m shutting it down,” I said, jiggling my hand on the mouse.

  “This is what it takes to hold your audience—an unwilling captive. It’s the only way you’re going to get subscribers. You need to capture their interest with action—not empty words.”

  “You hacked my computer,” I spoke calmly. It was not possible to speak any other way with half a bottle of cough syrup inside me. “It’s corporate property. Hacking is a federal crime…”

  “So is feeding your audience junk murders!” The script exploded across the bottom of the screen.

  “I’m shutting down my computer now,” I said.

  “How did it make you feel?” The script ran on to the screen with such a rush the lettering jiggled. “Did you hold your breath? Did you get the chills? Did you listen for the next sound even as your heart hammered in your throat? That’s the kind of story you need to feed to your readers. I can give you great material if only you let me. I can….”

  I dove under the desk and yanked the power bar out of the floor receptacle. The floor was cold, its chill reminded me that I was prone to colds and should not be so cavalier about my health. Besides, my stash of cold meds had to last me two years. Kinematic had a drug store but I brought with me enough over-the-counter remedies to last me until the end of my contract. I didn’t need to let anyone know that I had a stubborn cold that needed medication…often. It’s what my mother thought and kept sending me links to naturopathic remedies.

  When I felt reasonably restored, I got up, stuck my laptop into the shopping bag and headed out the door. I sat in my car for five minutes before I remembered that I had to set the alarm and lock up.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The next morning, when the office percolator finished its rural ballad, and Melina for some strange reason decided to approach each and every one of us with a tray of steaming mugs of coffee, I set to work on my fictional murder number two. I had re-plugged my power bar to a running commentary for the benefit of my colleagues about stretching my legs and needing exercise. I braved to check my email and saw there was no trace of anything that would account for what happened last night. Ganz did not send me an email and neither did anyone else; not from New York and not from anywhere else. I didn’t really expect to find a trace of my hacker-subscriber who also became a boogeyman. If he was able to just take over my computer, he was not going to leave a trace of his crime. He didn’t want to get caught. He wanted to put me in my place. He wanted to grandstand.

  No, no, a voice in the back of my head said. He wants a lot more than that. He wants to be appreciated. He wants to evolve; he wants to rise to become the star of the blog…a star contributor?

  “Did you read my blog post, Jake?” I asked loudly, knowing my other colleagues would know it included them as well.

  “We all did,” Emilie said and that was all. It was perhaps more telling than the last night’s sounds-of-terror show.

  “Do some research first, Bree,” Jake offered me free advice. All five of us interns on a glorious two-year contract in Kinematic Town, Idaho have drawn short straws. His was the shortest. Each morning he’d have to wade through a couple of hundred emails, before attacking his daily workload of articles, all of them with a deadline. He was Ganz’ bronze-medal winner. He was a fact-checker for the Times New York staff. Noah drew the honor of having to edit everything Ganz funneled his way and Melina coordinated regional contributors input.

  I took a mug of coffee, thanked her and sipped, so I’d not have to make promises I did not intend to keep. I pictured a steaming brown waterfall, cascading into a large ceramic pool that looked exactly like a Starbuck’s mug. My pleasant day-dream was shattered by a ping. It signaled either a message from my solitary subscriber or another subscriber, probably still un-caffeinated since it was just past eight o’clock in my time zone. In New York, ten a.m. saw me still struggling to make it to class—via Starbucks.

  I clicked on the blog and logged-in. This time, I wasn’t so eager to scroll down to see the comments. This time I scrolled with greater care. It wasn’t enough.

  “You ran too soon last night. I was not finished. A generic killer, that’s very original. The Times actually pays you for this? If I were your boss, I’d jog all the way to HR and ask them to cancel your pay-check deposit.” The comment from be.paradigm drilled into my eyes.

  My subscriber was steeped in the basic business procedures. Was that something to worry about?

  “It’s a fictional murder with a correspondingly fictional killer,” I typed back, acutely aware that this kind of discussion should not feature in the blog’s comments section—where everyone who’d read it would see it, including my boss.

  “That’s precisely the problem.” The reply came back.

  “Times’ readers don’t like to be spoon-fed,” I typed back.

  “The only Times’ reader who’d read your posts is your boss.” It felt as if someone rapped me on the head—with a nut-cracker.

  “And you,” I typed back before I could check my anger.

  “I read your post because it showed promise. But like all the others, the solution did not deliver on that promise.”

  “I’ll spell out the killer’s name in my next post,” I typed. I knew I should stop the conversation through the comments section. Ganz was going to see it for sure.

  “I doubt it. You’ve missed the point once again. Spelling out the killer’s name is irrelevant. It’s what happens after a victim is chosen that will bring you subscribers,” came back and without having any proof, I knew my harsh critic was gone.

  I picked up the coffee mug and used the motion to look around the barn-floor. My colleagues toiled silently at their stations. I’ve known them just over two weeks. It certainly wasn’t long enough to draw them into discussing something so personal as my journalistic shortcomings. I spent the day researching historical unsolved murders that I’d be able to cull and use to write my second blog post.

  The next day, having blindly followed Melina’s example of the previous morning, I made coffee and served it to my colleagues. I would spend the day productively, researching murders all over the nation. However, the episode with my boss got me thinking. Was Ganz your average blog reader which would mean many people in Idaho would not get it or was he atypical—a creep I hated with all my heart and therefore shouldn’t worry about his perceptions?

  I decided to look for answers in chatroom groups.

  I visited a dozen or so, as a drop-in and a full member, but only four were my mainstay, my reliable yardsticks of everything I needed to bounce off…someone, somebody.

  ChattrLobby offered a free online chat with strangers. The site also had live video chat rooms. I could watch multiple webcams, group and private chat, or go for instant messaging and get into offline email messaging. On Chattr-L I could see who was watching me along with user profiles with pictures. Chattr-L was transparent. It’s where I’d met all five of my flat-mates back in New York. Merry-GRound was another free site that did not require registration. You had to disclose your gender but all you needed was a username. I used Merry-GRound’s webcam feature to make friends around the world without leaving my study room or library. I’d hop on the Merry-GRound whenever I needed a quick check of facts and figures for my assignments. SiriusChat required registration and username. I went to this chatroom from my cell phone, usually when I was in transit or could not open up my laptop. There was a webcam option but I rarely used it. MoonChat was a private chatroom. The membership had to be approved by a council of five. It was full registration, full disclosure—not just usernames. I was on the council. The last time I went to chat, we had forty five members and I knew them all. Some of them were reluctant participants, others were chatter-happy. I considered myself to fall somewhere in between. MoonChat was little more than my study group and little less than my five Columbia flatmates that I considered my campus family. Any one of us could ask for webcam chatter or settle for messaging. In three years I’ve been a member, I’ve done the webcam chat with most of our forty five members. I’d be able to recognize half a dozen if I passed them on the street but not the rest.

  I told my group I was relocating but not where. And without too much fibbing, I explained my career path. While I was toiling over my very first “C-Murder of the Week” post, my MoonChat group had five applicants, membership pending approval. Since I was the last member whose approval was needed to finalize admission, the aspirants were chomping at the bit.

  My screening exam was never through webcam and consisted of five questions. Depending on the answers—and whether I liked them—the prospective members would get a nod or be rejected.

  “What would be your ideal setting for a murder?” I typed my first question. I decided to explore outsiders’ opinion on an issue that was going to occupy me for the next two years. I got back four different answers. Two applicants thought that home was the ideal setting for murder. Third thought it was the car or truck or any vehicle, the fourth one said it was a hospital—which made me flinch because that was a good lead for at least one or two blog posts, and I should have already thought of it, and the fifth candidate wrote back a single word: Nowhere.

  “I recognize that’s an answer but it does not answer the question. Please pick a place,“ I typed back.

  “My answer stands. Small town—nowhere,” came back.

  It was so close to my sentiment that saw me place my first phantom murder in my blog post in small-town-nowhere, that something started to pinch in the back of my neck. It could have been a nerve but the answer just felt…oddly familiar.

  “Who would be your ideal victim?” I thought I’d stay with the topic.

  Four messages were filled with generic victims—obnoxious family members, nasty boss, cheating spouse, annoying neighbor and so on. The fifth one said, “No one in particular.”

  “What would be the cause of death?” I messaged, biting my lip because suddenly the silly game started to have a sinister feel to it.

  “Natural causes,” the fifth candidate messaged. I didn’t even bother reading what the other four answered.

  I broke my own rules. “How then would the police know it was murder?”

  “They wouldn’t,” came back.

  “Then how would the murder come to light?”

  “It wouldn’t…not for a long time.”

  “How long?” I pressed.

  “Days…weeks, months…years even.”

  “That’s not part of the script,” I wrote back.

  “Throughout history, most murders that went down as accidents or death due to natural causes do not come to light. Those that do, do so by pure chance. I’m trying to remedy that.”

  “Luck or chance has no part in this scenario,” I typed back.

  “Pure chance—when someone asks the wrong question.”

  “You mean asks the right question.”

  “No. Asking right questions have never solved anything, much less a murder that has been carried out in such a clever way that the police and anyone else peripheral to the case closed it as accidental death—or death due to natural causes.”

  “That’s insightful but you have still not answered the question. How would the police or anyone else find out that what was originally thought to be an accidental or natural causes death was actually murder—and don’t say they wouldn’t?”

  “They wouldn’t…unless the killer gives himself away or comes out and confesses outright. That’s the problem.”

  I knew that the rest of our group members would be wondering just what I was up to with my prolonged interrogation but no one grew impatient enough to interrupt us. My instinct was telling me to refuse admission to the applicant who answered my questions with cold intellect but my practical voice whispered that it was perhaps better to have this member in the group—to watch over. The group was full registration, full disclosure. He or she would have to abide by the rules if he wanted to become our member. I gave my nod to admit all five and then we had a round of username-introduction. The cold intellectual chose FrostyAir as his username. I didn’t like it but I had no power of censorship over the choice of username. Mine was Lucinda which was benign enough but it was a bit suggestive. The new members had two weeks to enter complete registration, with full particulars, including contact phone number.

  That night, I tossed in my bunk, going over what the new group member said and finding his answers evasive and revealing at the same time. However, in spite of registration and full disclosure, we were all just usernames to each other so it was really just a game of strangers, too bored, depressed or insecure to go and do something productive. A voice that sounded conspicuously like my father’s kept admonishing me for being foolish and not listening to my intuition. My blog critic and the aspiring member number five sounded very much alike. They had the same terse diction, and the same cold authority that came through their words. Even as I read the replies in the chat-room, I felt it was the same set of fingers, flying over the keys. That meant it was the same cold, logical and slightly sinister mind giving those answers. Why did I not listen to my intuition? Why was I so reckless?

  I got up without bumping my head into something, found a half-full bottle of cough syrup and chugged it. It was the way a lot of my classmates wrote the exams and went to sleep after the exams; especially if they felt they didn’t do well. It worked in college. It had to work in a trailer—in Idaho.

  My parents made me apply to six universities, all of them on the east coast. I wanted to go to University of Southern California for my undergraduate degree in journalism. It had 18% acceptance rate, tough to get in. I got in on scholarship. I liked to think it was my progressive high school with its ‘teaching hospital model’ for journalism that paved the way for me. I spent three months researching affordable housing shortages in three major US cities, and three months interviewing people who suffered because of it, and people who had the power to do something about it—and didn’t. Then I wrote my series of articles. It got me noticed.

  “Syracuse University has an excellent undergraduate program in journalism,” my father said, sifting through six acceptance letters. I knew right away my fate was sealed, and I’d not see sunny California. One of the three major US cities that featured in my articles was Syracuse. I went to SU because it was cheaper to call from Syracuse to Bangor than it would be from California.

  “What’s wrong, honey?” my mother asked when I finally picked up her call after a week of living on campus. I lied, because to do anything else would see both my parents in Syracuse in record time.

  A week later, I had my first C-minus. My confidence plummeted. I was paralyzed with the fear of not pulling marks my parents expected to see; marks that I needed to keep my scholarship in good standing.

  “What’s the matter?” my roommate wanted to know.

  Mutely, I stuck out my cell phone with enlarged portion of the page that showed my grade. “I froze. It was like I couldn’t think. My hands were sweaty and I was itchy all over. I thought I would pass out…I can’t do this,” I sobbed.

  “Sure you can,” she said and handed me a bottle of cough syrup. “Chug this.”

  “I can’t. I have a lecture tonight. I’d be asleep before I opened my laptop,” I got hiccups too and could barely speak.

  “On the contrary. Coffee’s allowed in lecture halls. Chug this and then go caffeinate yourself. See how you feel come lecture time.”

  I figured that if I fell asleep and missed the lecture, I’d have a reason to quit school. I chugged more than half a bottle of cough syrup and washed it down with a large black coffee—all in a span of two hours. I expected to be wired but not fall into an incredibly peaceful state of grace where nothing hurt, nothing mattered, and nothing bothered me. I was unbelievably lucid and took excellent notes. My hand shot up every chance the prof gave us and my questions were sharp—like the rest of me. The word ‘fear’ had been erased from my vocabulary.