"Let me go, right now!" I shout while thrashing wildly. "Didn't your mothers teach you that manhandling people is rude?" I ask rhetorically, wanting them to snap because their calmness was really getting on my nerves.

After the boy and the girl - in the black hoodies and scary masks - somehow managed to find me hiding in the tree, they dragged me out and are continuing to drag me through the woods.

Now if we were under normal circumstances, I'm pretty sure that I would've managed to escape their hold. However, right now, I'm still seeing doubles, and I think that I wouldn't even be able to take one step forward let alone outrun two people.

Arriving at what looks like a cabin, they both slow down and open the door before harshly throwing me on the hard floor inside the cabin.

Why is there even such a small cabin in the university's woods?

For the first time since this whole night began, I was feeling relieved that they would finally leave me alone long enough to regain my energy and formulate an escape plan, however deplorably, my relief was short lived when they both entered the cabin and locked the door behind them.

I don't think that we're getting out of here alive. My subconsciousness reminds me shakily.

"What now? Are you going to kill me and bury my body as you did to Alexis?" I snap at them, wishing that I could get any type of reaction.

"That's actually the plan, but there's a lot to do before that. We are on a tight schedule so why don't we start?" the girl says, letting me intentionally hear her voice for the first time.

Her voice is familiar. So familiar. I'm sure that I've heard it before. I just can't place where I heard it. It's probably because of how woozy I feel right now. They must have done some damage when they hit me over my head. 

Let's just hope that the hit didn't affect my IQ.

Your IQ? If you were smart as you claim, would you be here right now? Plus, you don't have to worry about that now, it's not like you're getting out of here alive.

Ignoring my stupid internal voice, I look at the girl intently, trying to see if I can somehow magically recognize her. I see her turning to look at the boy, and she talks again, this time addressing him.

"You must have hit her pretty hard if she still can't recognize me," she says, her voice full of humor. "Maybe I need to show you my face. God, we're in for a treat, we should've brought popcorn."

I honestly expected her to take off that stupid mask right at that moment, but she didn't. It was like she was trying to push me to climb a ladder higher and higher so that when she pulls it from underneath me, she'll be sure that I'll fall down and not be able to get up again.

"Lee," she calls out to grab the attention of her helper, her voice full with something that - in my current state - I wasn't able to recognize. "Give her the injection."

Lee...where did I hear that name before? It rings a bell, but...I know! Isn't he the one who bumped into me and probably slipped that watch into my pocket? Riley and I found his name along with his picture in one of the yearbooks merely hours ago.

"Are you sure? It will kill her," Lee asks meekly, but when she turns to look at him, he immediately jumps into action.

"Lee," I say, testing the name, trying to sound tough, but with my words slurring, it was proving to be kind of difficult. "First you slip that watch into my pocket and now you're going to kill me?" I ask rhetorically, hoping that I can touch something in his heart and make him help me.

"So you did your research, yet you still didn't uncover who I am. I'm impressed by myself. Lee, give her the injection right now, so we can get this party started," she orders with finality in her voice, making shakily Josh walk towards me with a huge syringe in his hands.

The moment he comes near me, I start wiggling around and attempt to get up and run, noting that I'm not even tied up, but with one little shove from him, I fall right onto the ground. Within seconds, he jabs the syringe into my upper arm and injects me with whatever poison they have in there.

We're going to die, aren't we?

"Sweet. Let the countdown start," she says rubbing her hands together in excitement before slowly raising her hands to her mask and taking it off in slow motion. The moment she did that, I felt the world came crashing down.

"No, that's not possible. No, no," I mumble under my breath, shaking my head weakly at her smug face.

How could she be a stalker and a murderer?

When she took off the mask, she might've plunged a knife straight into my back as well. I thought that we were friends. I did, but of course, the psychopathic backstabbers are always those who you least expect.

"You?" I ask her, the surprise and sadness evident in my voice despite how slurred it is. "I thought we were friends?"

"I was never your friend, you were just stupid enough to think so," she replies, happiness dripping from her tone.

Of course, I was stupid. How did I not notice that we started becoming friends right after I received the first note? How did I not notice that she was the one who told me how to sneak out of the dorms after curfew that night I got strangled by S, by her.

Anna...Joanna, how could I have gotten fooled so easily?

But no, the girl standing in front of me isn't Joanna, she's not the girl with whom I used to gossip and discuss movies. No this is a shell of the person who was supposedly my friend. But again, she was never my friend.

If only I had read all the entries the day I found the journal, we wouldn't be in this mess.

"Anyways, we don't have time for this. Don't you want to know why I did everything I did before the poison kicks in and kills you?" she looks down at her watch before looking me straight in the eye. "According to my calculations, we have about half an hour. Just enough for me to tell you the whole story."

I try to open my mouth and say something, anything, but apparently whatever they gave me has already started working because I am neither able to move nor speak. I'm paralyzed. I'm practically already dead. It's not like anyone will find this cabin, so I guess there's nothing to do but to listen to her 'story'.

"It started when I first came to this university almost a year and a half ago, and yes I was a student here last year, but we'll get to that later," she answers the question that I haven't even asked. It's not like I'm physically able to ask her anything anyways.

"I came here thinking that things will finally change, that I'll come out of the shadows and easily make friends, and I did. For some time life was perfect, I had the life that everyone would envy you for until it wasn't. 

"I got too caught up, and my supposed friends forgot me. It first started when I saw Alex from afar, she became my role model, the one I would admire yet never approach, so I started watching her. I watched her every step, memorized her every move until I knew everything there was to know about her," she says, looking afar as if she was rewinding last year's tape.

"I kept watching her for more than five months, but by then, I had already figured out that she was not the perfect girl I pictured her to be. She might've been beautiful on the outside, but she was rotten on the inside," she snarls, a dark look crossing her face. "So I thought I'd send her a note telling her how much I admire her, maybe that will make her a little nicer, I thought. But you know what, I was okay with being her friend even with how unbearable she was to be around."

I still don't get it. If she thought that Alexis was so unbearable, why did she go to those measures to become her friend?

"I know what you're thinking, why was I so desperate to be her friend, right? You're so easy to read," she mocks me, "I thought that maybe if I became her friend, we could rule the whole university together.

"So I started gathering all the secrets her friends kept while boosting her ego, and I thought that I'd try and introduce myself to her, and if she accepts me, I'd stop sending her notes. God, I had everything drawn out perfectly...until that day happened. I'm not going to go into details, but that day the urge to end her perfect life grew, I promised myself that I'll make her suffer, and I did," she states proudly, but dare I say that there was a hint of sadness in her tone.

Right now, all I could see while looking at her was a small girl begging for the most popular girl's approval. She just wanted to be accepted, and that makes my heart go out for her. However, she didn't have to go to that extent just to get revenge. No, nothing will ever justify what she did, what she's still doing.

"I made her suffer right until I ended her in the woods that night. If only you saw the look of fear in her eyes when I broke into her room ready to end it all, but that..." she looked as if she was fuming with anger at whatever she was remembering; however, she took a deep breath to calm herself down and continued.

"but she managed to have a small win and she escaped from her room. Oh, how stupid she was, she only made me want to make her suffer even more, so I did just that. I made sure all the cameras in the corridor weren't working and once I caught up to her and had her in my clutches, I kept hitting her over the head with a rock - I'll save you the gruesome details - until I was sure that she was gone for once and for all, and you know the rest, I buried her."

"But then the police concluded that she was kidnapped, and at that time I knew that she will never be gone. The police kept digging deeper and deeper. I knew that there was absolutely no evidence leading to me, but I decided to leave and come back as a different person - as Joanna - just in case."

Well, her plan wasn't perfect because if she would've just left me one more day, I would've probably been able to find out who she was. Guess she isn't as smart as she thinks she is.

"I dyed my hair, put on contact lenses, caked my face in makeup, and changed my major from drama to literature and before anyone knew it, I was no longer Scarlett, I was Joanna. Life was as perfect as it could be, I was finally able to be my true self," yeah, does she realize her true self is a murderer and stalker? I don't think so.

"One beautiful day, I was birdwatching in the woods when I see a girl, you, sitting there alone through my binoculars, and imagine my surprise when I realize that she's reading Alex's diary. Stupid move if you ask me, no one reads a dead girl's diary in public."

Wow! She should teach a course called stalking 101. I bet that she'll be a really good professor.

She sighs, disappointed at me for not realizing that there could be a stalker in the woods before continuing. "Anyways, you know what happened, I sent you notes, but then I got bored, so I decided to send you texts just for the thrill of knowing that I could get caught. Then, I got bored once again, so I started digging deeper into your past searching for any dirt, yet I couldn't find any. I guess you're just so...boring."

Yeah, I bet I am, compared to the life that she's been leading. The most 'thrilling' thing that I've ever done before coming to this university was probably that one time when Lena dared me to jump off the first-floor balcony when we were fourteen. Let's just say that I had to get stitches and a cast after that.

"However," she pauses, trying to build up the suspense and be dramatic, "the same can't be said for your dear best friend - oh excuse me, your ex best friend. She's hiding way too much behind that innocent face of hers. I wonder what she would do if I let it slip that she got her whole family killed in a car accident just because she insisted on driving when she clearly couldn't. No one would ever look at her the same.

"But since I like to keep my promises, I won't say anything, or maybe I will. I guess you'll never know," she says with a sinister smile on her face. "After I got ahold of that information, I knew that I had you right where I wanted. That's when I started planning every little detail, and you never disappointed. I knew that you would see that picture of the club sooner or later, so I joined, knowing that it would give me the perfect opportunity to plant myself in your life.

"I sent you the note right as Alex's body was found, and I watched your every move, even inside your room, from the camera I had inserted in the teddy bear that you thought was from your mom. God, everything was perfect." She looks far away, her eyes filled with pride for her 'amazing' plan.

By now, my vision was starting to blur even more and I was slowly losing feeling in my limbs. These all rose the red alarms in my head, but it's not there's anything I can do. The only thing I can do right now is to accept the fact that the last face I see before I die would be that of my killer's.

"Now, where do Riley and Blake fit into all of this? I'll just admit this since you're dying today. When I discovered that you had that diary, I got so paranoid thinking that Riley must have something like that as well, so I had to keep her on her toes just in case. It wasn't that hard since I already had dirt on her since last year. Rushed move on my side," she admits, looking a bit ashamed of herself.

"As for Blake's accident, it was a distraction. I knew that you and Riley would probably try something, so I got him into an accident to get Riley out of here. However, don't you worry she's next," she assures me, looking serious. But I could no longer keep up with what she was saying. Her words started to sound too slurred, and my vision started to get too blurry. Something was definitely wrong with me, and I feared that it was too late for me.

That's when it finally dawned on me. This is the end. 

That's it, I'm dying. I'm already dead.

At that realization, a single tear escaped my eyes involuntarily, but I willed myself not to break into a full-on crying session. No, I wouldn't give her that satisfaction.

"Oh dear, don't cry," she whispers into my ear while wiping the tear that slid down my face. When did she even get this close to me? "I truly didn't want to do this, but you left me no choice. But don't worry I'll make sure that your body will be found. I won't leave you here to rot."

Such nice words for a goodbye.

"I guess I owe it to you to make your last minutes on earth peaceful. I specifically chose a poison that wouldn't make you feel any pain, and I'll also sing you a goodbye song," she says as she lays me down on the ground. My eyes catch Lee's while she does that, and the amount of pain and guilt I see in his eyes almost makes me pity him. But it's him who chose to do this, so he'll have to suffer for it.

Joanna or Scarlett or whoever she is starts to sing softly, a complete contrast to the girl who was snarling at me a couple of minutes ago.

And it seems to me you lived your life,

Another tear slips.

Like a candle in the wind,

How ironic is it that the one who killed me is the same one who's singing me a farewell song as I die.

Never knowing who to cling to,

The urge to just close my eyes becomes too strong, so I do just that. I close my eyes and try to block out her voice. I don't want her to be the last person on my mind as I die.

Right before I closed my eyes, I swear I saw faint or blue lights through the window coming from a distance. Were they real? I don't know, maybe I was so desperate to be saved that I started hallucinating. However, I couldn't force myself to keep my eyes open any longer, so I gave in.

When the rain set in,

Right as she says that last word, her voice fades away until I hear nothing, until I see nothing. No, Is see flashes of me laughing with Lena, of my mom teaching me how to make a pizza, and of my dad reading the newspaper in our kitchen at home. I see rapid flashes of everyone who made a difference in my life, and then, I send them a silent good bye, a silent I love you, hoping that they would feel it.

 And at that moment I knew that this was the end. This was the way that I would leave this planet, and with that last painful thought on my mind, I felt myself slip away.

I slipped away into the darkness, stripped of all the hate, fear, and greed of the world. Then I felt nothing. Nothing at all.

Nothing but darkness...

Dun, dun, dah!

I honestly have no idea what to say other than the fact that I truly did enjoy writing this story. But don't worry, the story isn't done just yet, there's a small epilogue that will be posted soon to give us closure.

I would honestly love to hear what you think of everything that happened this chapter, it would mean a lot to me.

Don't forget to vote and comment, it puts a smile on my face!

Till the next chapter,