Josephine returned to her dorm and saw Alana sitting up on her bed, looking through her laptop and doing homework.

“Hey, Lana,” Josephine said as she sat her bag down and collapsed on the bed.

“Hello, Josephine. How’s your day goin’?” She asked with very little interest.

“Better than yours, clearly,” she responded pretentiously. “And can you just call me Josi? It’s so weird being called by my full name. Only my mom does that.”

“My bad, Josi. I keep forgetting you don’t like that.” Alana seemed a bit annoyed as she laid flat on her stomach with her face buried into her laptop and her feet crossed in the air.

“Thank you, Lana.” Josephine sighed softly and began to scroll through her phone, looking through news articles featuring current events.

While scrolling, Josephine noticed a particular article about the Price Estate. The headline read:

“A Business and Family Tragedy: Psychopathic Murder with Machete kills Price Family.”

Oh that sounds interesting… how sad though. Josephine thought to herself as she continued to read the article.

“Details about a recent massacre at the Price Family mansion have officially been released after undergoing a private investigation conducted by detective William Heisenburg. Before today, the details of this gruesome event were kept classified as members of the Price Company asked reporters not to release any of the information until the case was officially solved. One suspect by the name of Nick Sling is now in custody being charged with four accounts of first degree murder, aggravated assault with a deadily weapon, and kidnapping. Among these four victims was the owner of the company Dr. Julian Price, two of his children, Sharon Price and Christina Price, as well as their mother Elizabeth Price. Elizabeth was said to have been killed hours before the massacre after being drugged by Nick Sling, her ex husband. He then proceeded to unlock her phone using her fingerprint and locate the gate key to get into the estate. Afterwards, he equipped himself with a machete and proceeded inside, killing everyone present at this time, two of them, his own children–.”

“Sick son of a bitch,” Josephine said aloud in pure disgust.

“What’d you say, Josephine?” Alana asked, looking over to her for the first time since she came in.

“Nothing nothing. It was just this article I was reading…. Hey, I said call me Josi, okay?”

“Sorry… my bad again,” she apologized. “What’s the article about? I’m curious.”

“Don’t you have homework to do or something?”

“I’m all done. What’s it about? I wanna know who you’re calling a sick son of a bitch.” She smiled and they both laughed. “Come on! Fill me in.”

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

“Alright alright. It’s kind of horrible though. You know the Price Estate, right?”

“Of course I do. I had an internship there.”

“Well… The owner and his whole entire family got murdered a few weeks ago. Press just released the details an hour ago…”

“Oh no that’s terrible. I met Julian Price once… he was such a sweet man… I think I knew he had a couple kids from this woman he married, but I never knew their names or anything about them.

“Yeah it’s awful. I never met anyone from the Price family, but I’ve been to the Estate a couple times. It was such a creepy place, but the Price building has an office headquarters for the ‘Collector News Agency,’ CBA. I was thinking about working there someday.”

“Well I hope this doesn’t deter you from doing that. I’m sure they’d pay really well.” Lana sat up on her bed and dangled her feet from the edge, running her hands rapidly through her long thick and curly brown hair. She then brushed it back and bundled it with a red hair tie. Her light brown skin was smooth like silk lingerie and she wore a thin black tank top that stook tightly to her large chest.

Josephine sometimes felt jealous of Alana. She was one of the most attractive women she had ever seen and guys all around campus thirsted for her. That was the kind of attention she craved but seldom got.

“I’m sure it won’t,” she responded, getting up from her bed to retrieve an item. She walked over to her desk drawer, opened it and began searching. She rustled through for nearly a minute, completely confused. before looking up to Alana who was reading through her phone.

“Hey, Lana. Weird question, but have you seen my toothbrush anywhere?”

Alana looked back at her, shaking her head. “No. Maybe you left it in the bathroom this morning?”

“Yeah… maybe I did? I’ll go check, but someone could have moved them from there if I did.”

Alana shrugged her shoulders and looked back down at her phone as Josephine exited the room.

She walked down the cool carpeted hallway until she got to the showers. She walked inside and surveyed the room, looking for her toothbrush. She checked inside the empty shower that she used earlier that morning and found nothing. There was someone else inside taking a shower, so she checked every other shower but that one.

Once she was convinced that her toothbrush wasn’t in there, she left and returned to her room. When she came in, she saw the red toothbrush with the cap sitting on her desk next to the toothpaste.

“You apparently put it in my drawer, goofy. Were you hungover this morning or something?” Alana teased and plopped back onto her elevated bed.

“There’s no way I put it there. You’re real funny for that one, Lana. Maybe stop going through my stuff when I’m not here.” Josephine was annoyed but not entirely upset.

Alana rolled her eyes and raised her hand to pledge, “I swear on my pomeranian, Lucy, it wasn’t me, hon.”

“Okay. Sure. I guess I must have been tripping this morning then, huh? It’s alright. Maybe you’ll find one of your things missing too soon.”

“You know… I have been missing my favorite brush? Seen it?” She joked while blatantly waving that exact brush in the air.

“How cute.”

“It wasn’t me babycakes. I promise.”

“Fine. I was a little dizzy this morning, and I barely slept last night,” Josephine admitted while placing her toothbrush and toothpaste back into her drawer.

“Looks like you nailed it this time. Proud of you, hon.” Alana laid back into her bed and continued scrolling through her phone while Josephine wracked her brain about the toothbrush.

She eventually decided to put it to rest and opened up her laptop to get started on her homework that would be due over the next couple of days.