The box that contains the heart stands between us. Its content is spreading the nauseating sweet scent of rotting meat. Megan looks at as if it's a bomb that will explode as soon as we make a noise.

"It's not human," I say to break the silence.

Megan glares at me from under her eyelashes

"I think it's bovine. You can tell because of its size and-"

"Thank you, Eli, but if I've never had any intent to become a doctor, let alone find out more about the anatomy of cows." Her eyes grow big, she covers her mouth with her hand, as if she scares herself with the harshness of her words. "Sorry, I didn't mean to..."

She never finishes her sentence. Her gaze is caught again by the box on the table. "What now?"

"I can bring it to school. They have a special waste bucket for organs and body parts. We can't throw this in our regular trash can." I say.

Megan's eyes grow big. "Seriously Eli, bring it to school? What about bringing it to the police?"

"Police?" The thought that this was something for the police never came up to me. "Why would we call them?"

"Isn't this a threat or something?" Megan looks horrified at the box. "It looks like a threat to me."

I shrug, pull the box closer, and take a look. I shake the box to look under the heart if there's any message. The heart wobbles like it's made of gelatin, and I hear Megan gag.

"I think it's just a prank of one of my co-students. There's no letter or something in this box. Maybe it's a weird way to congratulate me on getting my degree. You know, like that time someone sends a vase with an arm to the new secretary at school to welcome her." I chuckle when I think of that day. "It was a complete scream fest. You should have seen it."

Megan glares at me. "Do all you medical people have this weird sense of humor?"

I think of all the pranks we pulled on each other, jokes consisting mainly of severed body parts, bodily fluids, and other things that make other people retch. I guess it's a way to deal with the responsibility that comes with the job, a way to blow off some steam, but I don't know how to explain this to Megan, so I keep my mouth shut. There's no way I can improve this situation.

'Fine, I'll call the cops. And if it were your co-students, it'll teach them a lesson." Frantically she taps the buttons on her phone.

I leave the room. When Megan has something in her head there's nothing that can stop her, not even a bulldozer. I don't want to argue with her, but I think she overreacts at the moment.

With me being tied to the house, she starts to annoy me. Her bossiness works on my nerves. I guess we stayed too long in the same, cramped space the last days. There's no way to avoid each other and I don't want to lock myself in my room the whole time. It's summer, and the warm humid air feels make you sweat with every move you make.

My room is like a small oven at the moment. All the curtains are closed. I can't open my windows, because I'm too scared the paparazzi will pick up something I say, or worse, they hear me fart or burp accidentally. You know, those things happen when you just drank a glass of soda, but it would be embarrassing if the press picked it up. "Super star's new girlfriend creates noises from hell." That's the kind of headliner you want to avoid, right?

I sink in my chair and stare at my computer screen. When I log in to the game I'm surprised to see almost all my friends are online. The sun is shining, if I wasn't locked in the house because there's an army of camera-wielding snipers waiting for me to leave the house, I would be outside, enjoy the sun, stuff ice-cream in my face and drink in the last days of freedom before the hell of eighty to hundred-hour workweeks would start.

Actually I'm lying. If everything was normal, I would be working at Jerry's, maybe go out in the evening, or play games. But it's weird to see every single name on my friend list marked as 'online'.

I quickly type a greeting in our private channel, and some respond with a similar greeting. But soon I get private messages from every single one of my friends. I open the first one. It says "Are you tagging along?" And I send back "Sure". I'm always up for a battleground.

But I'm not so sure if the message was about a battleground at all when I open the next message. "Are you going to participate as well?"

Quickly I open the rest of the PM's. They all come down to more or less the same thing. There's going to be a tournament. Invites are open, everyone is welcome to participate. The price you can win:
$ 50,000 and it will be doubled if you can beat last year's champion. The tournament will be in two months. Everyone is going mental, the word just got out and my friends are already working on a training scheme to perfect their skills.

I switch on my headset. The avid bantering that fills my ears makes me smile. My friends are full of plans for how they're going to win the prize and how they're going to beat the mysterious person who won it last year.

"What's he or she called?" I ask.

They start to laugh.

"I'm pretty sure it's a guy Eli." A dude I know as XDominatorX says. "He's called Pownyurmom or something like that."

"Classy," I say, "but that name could be anyone, a dude or a chick."

"Anyway, are you joining us?" Al asks. "We can use your tactical insight and you've got some solid tournament experience."

It sounds tempting and a part of me is screaming to join them, to feel the excitement again, to engage other teams, but I'm sure he already knows my answer. "I'm sorry guys, but I'm not going to participate. My internship starts in a week and I will be working my ass off when that tournament takes place." I hear the disappointed sighs and protests. "I still have this week off and I can help you with setting up teams and that kind of stuff."

They appreciate my help and as always we start bantering about what class is the best at the moment and how you can exploit certain talents as much as possible. Of course, it ends in profanities and I'm laughing so hard I never notice someone enters my room.

"You're never going back to tournaments, right?" Al has sent me a private message.

"Nope, I don't think so." I push the 'send' button when I hear a soft cough behind me.

"Miss Morgan?" someone says as I turn the chair to my door.

I take off my headset. My eyes detect a shadow standing in the doorway, the voice is unfamiliar to me. "Who are you?"

I slit my eyes to make out who I'm talking to. My curtains are closed, I didn't put any lights on and I've been staring at my screen for at least half an hour. After a couple of seconds, I see someone in a police uniform and I rise from my chair. I was so busy talking about the tournament, I never heard our doorbell. They arrived here quicker than I thought.

The policeman holds his cap under his arm and introduces himself. He sends me a polite smile. "We have some questions for you. Do you have time to answer them?"

I nod curtly. "Sure."

I follow the agent to the kitchen, where another policeman sits at our dining table. The box with the heart is closed and it's wrapped in one of these plastic evidence bags. The smell of rotting meat still hangs in our kitchen, like an awful perfume of someone who just left the room.

"Do you have any idea who might have sent this to you?" The brown-haired man asks.

"I think one of my co-students. It's probably just a prank, nothing to worry about." I say, a smile around my mouth, and I try to look confident.

"There's no reason why someone wants to threaten you? Your housemate was quite upset." He's annoying me already. Don't they set up jokes for each other?

I was going to repeat it was all fun and games and Megan is worrying too much when I saw the pile of letters. "Well..." I say, "there might have been some letters."

Instantly he's alert. "What kind of letters?"

I point at the pile on the table. "I haven't opened those yet, but I think they contain the same messages like the ones I got yesterday."

The policeman puts on a glove and shoves the pile in one of these evidence bags as well. "Can you show me those?"

I nod and I get them from my room. I didn't want to keep them, but I forgot to throw them away. The agent takes my collection of unwanted fan mail and he goes through the ones that are already open. "These are pretty gruesome. Did something happen in your life recently that might explain these messages?"

This is getting awkward. Do I really have to fill in these complete strangers about my love life as well?

"This happened," I say and I grab the gossip page with the picture of Dan and me that Megan showed me earlier.

I can feel the ambiance change. I see the two men exchange glances. Their annoyed faces tell me they think I'm some airhead dating a famous dude. They think I'm another attention-seeking girl, who's making up some dramatic story. 'Boohoo, they're being mean to me.' It drips from their self-righteous faces.

"Listen, I think this was all a prank of one of my friends from college. I never wanted this kind of drama, okay?" I know I sound incoherent, but I want them out of my house as soon as possible.

They take my fingerprints. To compare them to the ones on the box, they tell me and eventually they leave the house. When I close the door, I realize they were wearing uniforms. Great. Something else to fill the newspapers with, something else to read about myself on the internet. I hate my life and there's only one remedy. I lock myself in my room and play computer games for the rest of the day.

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AN: I'm so sorry. This update took me longer than I expected. I'm writing a new story for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month, or write a story of 50000 words during the month of November). I was never expecting that story to take over my mind this quickly, but it did. It is something completely different than this story, the only similarities are that I don't know in what category I will put it in (probably fantasy/paranormal) and that I can't find a fitting title.

So back to this story. The seeds of paranoia are planted (although Elise is rather easy about the heart) and this is only the beginning. Next chapter will be party time, Elise got her degree after all. Updates might be a bit sloooooow, but I promise I will finish this story.