Brandon Whitfield sat in his dorm room, sketchbook open, pencil still, eyes unfocused.
He wasn't drawing tonight.
Not yet, anyway.
He stared at the blank page for a while, letting the silence wrap around him like a familiar coat. It was too quiet for most people, but Brandon loved silence. Real silence — not the absence of noise, but the intentional lack of distraction. No TV. No music. No roommates snoring on the other side of a shared wall. Just him, the hum of the overhead light, and the subtle tick of the old radiator working too hard.
He could still hear her voice in his head.
"Dead parents?"
"Abuse?"
She had thrown the questions out like bait. Like knives with lace handles. Beth didn't just want answers — she wanted tells. She was testing him, poking the edges of his mask, trying to feel for a crack.
Which meant she suspected him.
Brandon smiled.
He leaned back in his chair, lacing his fingers behind his head, the smile never touching his eyes.
She had no idea what she was looking at.
Amateur.
He could've played dumb. Could've acted rattled, fumbled the lie, given her something to feel smug about. But no — instead he gave her nothing, because that's what Beth really feared: silence that couldn't be interpreted. Stillness that couldn't be read.
That's where he lived.
"Maybe I've been too cliché," he murmured to himself, eyes drifting toward the sketch he'd started earlier — a rough charcoal outline of a screaming face. No features. Just fear. It could've been anyone. It could've been her.
The quiet goth girl in the leather jacket and too much eyeliner. The horror movie know-it-all with a kill count and a hole in her chest where a heart should've been.
But Jamal's death had broken something in her.
She hadn't even realized it yet.
She was slipping.
And Brandon could feel it in his bones.
He stood, slipping on his gray hoodie and dark jeans. No logo. No light colors. No cologne.
Just shadow. Just silence. He moved through the hall like smoke, out the back stairwell and into the cool night air without anyone seeing him.
She lived two buildings down.
Beth didn't keep her blinds closed. Of course she didn't. That would imply she had something to hide. Instead, she relied on the illusion of openness — the kind that made you underestimate her.
Brandon didn't.
From across the courtyard, nestled in the shadows of a weeping willow tree, he watched her through the half-open window of her dorm. She was pacing, wearing a black hoodie and fishnets, her hair out of the usual braids. She looked like a shadow moving through candlelight — restless, wired, starving. Her lips moved but he couldn't hear what she was saying.
He didn't need to.
He recognized the rhythm.
She was psyching herself up.
Planning a kill.
Beth grabbed something from under her bed — Brandon caught the glint of a blade — and left through the side door of her building without hesitation.
He followed.
Like a second shadow, always twenty paces behind, always keeping her in his peripheral.
She didn't check her six. She never did. Not really. She was too cocky. Too convinced she was the smartest monster in the room.
She led him down past the student parking lot and toward the east side of campus, where the classrooms turned into dorms and the dorms turned into quiet side paths with barely functioning street lamps.
There was someone ahead.
A girl — short, nervous posture, hugging her backpack like a shield. Earbuds in. Maybe a freshman. Brandon could already see it playing out: Beth getting closer, her breath slowing, her pulse syncing to the rhythm of the hunt.
He watched with the clinical precision of a surgeon.
Beth was good.
She moved fast when she wanted to, always staying behind. Her body language didn't scream threat, but the grip she had on the knife told the truth. She wasn't fantasizing about the kill. She was ready.
Then…
She stopped.
Just like that.
Stopped mid-step. Mid-hunt. Mid-thought.
Brandon blinked from behind a parked van.
Beth stood still in the middle of the sidewalk like she'd hit an invisible wall. The other girl kept walking, oblivious, disappearing into the distance.
Beth didn't move.
She turned her head slightly, not toward Brandon, but toward the night sky, as if listening to something far away. Then she slowly turned around — a 180-degree pivot — and began walking back the way she came.
Brandon tensed.
Had she seen him?
No. No, she couldn't have. He was behind the van. Dressed in all gray. No noise. No shadow cast across her path. Not even a crunch of gravel. He'd done this long enough to know the difference between noticed and sensed.
Still…
He melted further into the shadows, crouched low, muscles taut.
Beth passed right by where he was hiding.
Didn't look his way. Didn't slow down.
Brandon narrowed his eyes.
She hadn't seen him.
So why abort the kill?
Why change direction?
He waited until she disappeared around the corner of the building before emerging from cover. There was no point in following her anymore — the hunt was over, the night was cooling. Whatever game she was playing, he wasn't invited to this round.
Not yet.
Still puzzled, he made his way back to his dorm, the thoughts crawling over each other like spiders in his mind.
Beth was a killer, he was certain.
But not a random one.
There was purpose in her movements. A method she wasn't ready to admit even to herself. Rage was a candle. Beth's was flickering. Losing fuel. Losing form.
She wasn't getting worse.
She was getting sloppy.
He took off his hoodie when he got inside, dropped it on the chair, and finally sat down in front of his sketchpad again.
Still blank.
He picked up his pencil and wrote a name at the top.
Beth
Underneath it, he drew a mask.
Not Ghostface.
Just a face.
Hers.
Split down the middle — one half beautiful and calm, the other cracked open to reveal jagged teeth and hollow eyes.
And then he wrote beneath it:
"Not yet. But soon."