What Happens in Real Life Not Reality

The liquid was coarse, dark and terribly over processed, but it was heaven to someone who hadn't slept in twelve hours. Josephena sipped her cup of coffee, taking a moment to reflect on scrawling message in her lap. The crisp piece of printer paper crackled loudly as she gripped it for some measure of reassurance. It was only paper, and it offered nothing but the message it bore. Stop This Article. Stop it or you will die!

Josephena had discovered the message left in her email box directly after her meeting with her partner and editor. At first she'd merely considered it one of many messages that would undoubtedly appear once news spread that she and her co-writer were collecting several revealing articles on Celebrity. The gossip mill was always working overtime in this industry, but on further examination, it seemed that this particular message wasn't sent by a jilted starlet, or any company therewithin, but originated from somewhere else entirely. She couldn't explain it exactly, at least not in a way which would make sense. She, however, had an eerie feeling that this was only the beginning of something more to come.

As she sat tucked away in the back of the De-Nile Cafe, pondering her new found fears over terrible coffee, she wondered for a moment, if perhaps she might be over-reacting. Rebecca had warned them both that no one in this town enjoyed bad publicity, but they had merely laughed it off. Who didn't enjoy publicity, bad or good? In this town everyone was clamoring at the chance to start a scintillating rumor. It was the foot-in-the-door for a reality show, or line of slinky lingerie. Why would anyone care if they printed a collection of articles? It was press, it was media, it was exactly what they all wanted.

Although, looking down at the crisp piece of paper, now slightly crimped by her anxious fingers, she couldn't help wondering if all this work would ultimately put her in a place where her next headline might read "Drowned in bad coffee, dead before she made her mark."

Shaking her head in an attempt to banish her collective fears, Josepehena decided that she had to get to the bottom of this. And what better place to start, then with her partner and their work. Somewhere in there, might lie the key to this new mystery.