The Paper Street Story
Robert Van Dusen
The slender brunette lifted the brim of her lucky red baseball cap and tried to concentrate on the lecture. Chemistry 101 was just so...damn...boring... The stick figure with the Einstein haircut at the front of the class certainly had enough enthusiasm for any ten of his students. He gesticulated wildly while rambling on and on about membranes and mitochondrias and what have you. Samantha tried to keep up, but the Professor Hanford was buzzing around the front of the classroom like a hummingbird on crack. She sighed when she looked down and happened to spot a few tiny dribbles of mustard on the front of her gray tee shirt.
A muffled chiming noise cut through the stream of words coming from the front of the classroom. Samantha blinked her bottle green eyes and looked around, suddenly mortified when she realized that everyone was looking at her. "Oh...um...sorry..." she said with an abashed smile as she dug her phone out of her backpack. She noticed that she had just gotten an email while she put the phone on silent. Professor Hanford gave her a look that could have curdled fresh milk before launching back into his lecture.
Once the professor released the class Samantha held back from the throng making for the exit. She pulled out her phone and opened her email, frowning at the subject line while keeping an eye on the crowd. The subject of the email was HELP NOW from some email she did not know. Sam drifted to the side of the hall. /=This has got to be spam or something.=/ Sam thought, pursing her lips as she opened the message.
134 Paper Street. 8pm. Tonite.
Samantha blinked and read the message again. It did not make any sense... She leaned against the wall, the knuckle of her index finger finding its way slowly toward her lips. A look at the information at the bottom of the email revealed something that helped the message make a little more sense: Forwarded from DeltaCityUniTribune.com. /=Oh, somebody's either playing a prank or they're trying to tip me off to something... =/Sam thought with a slight inclination of her head.
The Delta City University Tribune was the college's digital newspaper, where Sam was a reporter. What could this be about? She glanced at her watch, then looked thoughtfully up and down the hall. Biology was her last class for the day and there was plenty of time before the time given in the email...