Lacy took her professor’s writing advice literally. Now, a real-life killer is inside her apartment.
The Devil’s Editing
The glossies felt heavy in Lacy’s hands, slick with the scent of cheap developer fluid and betrayal. In the harsh glare of her desk lamp, Professor Vance didn’t look like the campus deity who had casually crushed her literary dreams. He looked like an old man caught in a sordid clench with an undergraduate who was barely old enough to vote.
“Become the character,” he’d sneered during office hours, dismissing her manuscripts as bloodless. “Write from experience.”
So, she had. She bought the snub-nosed .38, learned the heavy kick of gunpowder at the indoor range, and wore a trench coat that smelled of rain and desperation. She had tracked him through the neon-soaked alleyways of the city, intending to prove she had the grit to be a real noir writer. Instead, she’d stumbled onto a career-killing scandal.
Blackmail was a classic trope. She could ruin him with a single envelope. It was the perfect ending to her real-world first chapter.
Then, the floorboards in the hallway groaned.
Lacy froze. The click of her apartment deadbolt was a sound she knew intimately, but she hadn’t turned the key. The door swung open, casting a long, jagged shadow across her linoleum floor.
A silhouette stood in the frame. The scent of familiar, expensive cologne drifted into the room, cutting through the smell of her stale coffee. A hand slipped into a dark coat pocket.
“A good writer always knows when to kill off a character, Lacy,” a smooth, cultured voice echoed from the dark.
Lacy’s fingers gripped the cold steel of the .38 hidden beneath the photos on her desk. She had the weapon, but did she have the nerve?
What happens next? Does Lacy pull the trigger, or does the Professor write her final chapter? Write the ending and finish the story.
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