The leafy campus of Parkdale College was quiet under the cloudy sky of an early spring morning. The chirping of the birds was the only sound to be heard. The curtains of the small but tidy office of Dr Delia Bumstead, lecturer in English language and literature in the Department of Social and Language Studies, occasionally stirred in the gentle breeze. But all was still.
Indeed, Dr Delia Bumstead was very still.
She was sitting at her desk, her hand gripping the mouse of her computer. In front of her, the screen waited for her to finish the email she had been about to send to the Head of Department and other assorted colleagues. But her email had been unexpectedly interrupted.
Savagely interrupted.
Dr Delia Bumstead's short dark hair was clotted with blood as her head lay on her desk, her lifeless eyes staring manically at the mug of coffee to her right, in which one of her contact lenses floated listlessly.
The silence was broken by footsteps down the corridor. Anne Dickinson, a second-year student of English and French, arrived at Delia's door and knocked. When she got no reply, she knocked again, a little more loudly. Thinking she heard a sound from within, she opened the door and went in.
Anne's screams could be heard from outside the building.