A sheen of sweat slides down the side of my face as I swallow hard. My breathing gets heavy, and my heart beats faster than 100 beats per minute.

I turn slowly to see the person behind me. There he was, standing with his right leg crossed across his left ankle. Placing his left hand over his hip and Guru swirls the chair with his right hand. He lifts his eyes to meet mine, and there is no calmness in his face, no soft, playful tease in his eyes that he had when we met in college. Instead, his face looks scary, and his eyes horrify me as it did when he tried to kill.

He takes a step forward as I take one backward. My legs start going weak, and I start to feel a strange pain in my legs. Guru sits on the rolling chair comfortably, crossing his legs and taps his fingers one by one like a wave on the armrest. "I'm very much impressed," he says with a snort.

"I was thinking the other night it was a missed chance, that you were awake before I came and hearing the sound you did everything for self-defense," he shakes his head at me in disbelief. "I thought you were cracking that question was pure luck. Tsk. But no, you already know what those number sequences meant, ain't you??" he questions me, cocking his head.

Still breathing heavily, I collect myself and ask him, "How do you have the screenshots of my chat in the Fidus Friends App?"

"Question for a question," he laughs evilly before standing up from the chair and walks toward me. I take a few steps backward until I come in contact with the computer table.

He stops in the middle of the distance between us and says, "Simple darling, I hacked it like you entered my house," shrugging his shoulders.

He strolls, "You didn't know that your account was hacked, but I knew that someone entered my house. That's why you should not be careless with your security settings."

"When you entered the first incorrect passcode, I received an alert and left college immediately," he says with pride.

"But I'm really impressed. You were smart enough to reach until here," he says, moving closer to me. "It's going to be fun in killing you," he says as he caresses my left cheek with his right-hand knuckles. I jerk my face in disgust.

He laughs at my reaction and says, "That scene is not here. I don't feed on my prey."

"Why do you have that? Why are you killing every one of us? What have we done for you to kill us?" I ask as I feel sweats starting to flow from my head to all over my face and neck.

He walks to the wall of collage and crosses his arm against his chest, watching the girl's picture. "You directly didn't do anything to me. But in the future, you may do something to someone like what she did to me," he points at the girl's picture before turning toward me.

Shit. I'm still in the terror of being caught by him, and I forgot to run when he was looking at the girl's picture. "I met her on the Fidus Friends App, and we became friends. I liked her, and so did she. We met in real life, and we started dating," he says with a pleasant smile on his face.

But his expression changes into a frown, "What I didn't know was she was doing the same with other guys too. Going out, buying things, spending our money, sharing explicit pics, and many more," he starts inching toward me.

"She was my first kill." He says, stretching his arms at his side in a grand manner gesturing to be proud of himself.

"But I was not like that, I've been on that platform for the past three months, but I haven't met any guy in real life or even did those online things you mentioned as what your friend did. You have hacked my chat and read all my messages, did I seem that kind of person?"

"NO. You are not that person. YET. But soon, you will turn into the one before that I have to kill." He is standing just a few feet away from me.

"I won't, and I know that. If you are killing everyone who is on that app, what did Vedhika do? She was not even in that app for heaven's sake."

"But you were asking her to join and find new friends, aren't you?" he asks while he rocks front and back on his heels.

"So you want to kill us? Is that the only solution? If you kill girls like us from the app, everything will be solved?" I ask him, my breathing rages up and down with mixed emotions.

"FYI, If a woman wants to cheat, she doesn't need an application to do it, she can, by any means. It applies to a man too. You are talking as if boys are being used. Not only you, but in every movie and song, the male character blames the female character. They don't see what she is going through within herself." Guru rolls his eyes as I speak and twists his neck as if he is trying to relieve some stress.

"Don't you see any news about boys exploiting girls? Molesting a few days old babies to a aged women and throwing acids when the girls don't accept a boy's love? Either this way or that way, you men victimize us but still blame us, and you want to punish ..."

"Cut the crap. Just that I let you speak, you keep on talking, talking, talking." He holds his head as if he got a headache from my speech.

Placing his hands on his waist and jerking his head up, he asks, "What I didn't see on the news? Huh?"

"If a man exploits a woman, it comes on the news, but if a woman exploits a man, it's not a big issue," he asks, tilting his head left and right.

"There are exploiters in both men and women. But only when a female is victimized, it's being highlighted by the media for their TRP hunger. But no light is shed on what a guy goes through. NOTHING," He says as he crosses and uncrosses his wrists, gesturing no.

"You were saying that men are exploiting women online. Despite knowing the risk, why are you staying on that type of platform, and making friends with strangers?" He walks as he speaks and stands in front of me. I lean back, stumbling on the table, and he leans forward, placing his hands on either side of me. "Can't you befriend people from real life? The ones you know, whose face you can see and understand whether he is a good person or a creep or a serial killer like me?" He leans down more and whispers the word 'serial killer' in my ears.

"But no, all you want to do is find some stranger whose identity might be fake. He can be a person younger than you or much older than you, without knowing anything, you'll befriend him. Either you'll exploit him, or he'll exploit you, and if he is one who exploits you, you girls will make it a big issue."

I muster my courage and look up into his eyes, "So you are going to kill all the girls who join any friend-finding or dating App? Even the ones who haven't committed any sins? All because one girl used you."

Guru starts giggling as he goes backward. The giggles turn into laughter, and it gets darker, every passing second. "Do you really think that by giving a speech about women being victimized and advocating that you have done nothing wrong, you can escape?" He talks between his laugh and heavy breathes. "Silly girl. I could be a fool if I let you go after you discovering my secrets," He spats in between his panting and charges on me.

I reach for the wireless keyboard on the table behind me and smashes it against his head. Holding his head, he stumbles back with a groan, and I take the chance to lift the monitor off the table and throw it on him. It crashes against his face, and blood starts oozing out of the pores where the glass from the monitor screen has poked him.

"You ***** *""," he curses at me as I try to dash past him toward the stairs. But before I could make any further, he catches me around my waist, and we land on the floor in my struggle to escape. He turns me over and strangles my neck, the blood drips down from his face and falls on mine. I wiggle hard to escape, but his hold becomes stronger.

I need to escape... I have to survive.

I think those words in mind and try hard to fight him.

"You thought that you could escape by overpowering me? Huh? It's my den. Do you know what a beast could do when a prey like you enters its den? It will hunt down the prey with its own hands. Now, I'm going to do the same. I'm going to kill you with my own hands." He grips harder, and it becomes difficult for me to breathe.

"I never had to make a second attempt in all these killings, but you made me fail for the first time." His hands put more pressure on my windpipe.

"You know what? I was going to kill you using my toy even for the second time," he nods his head at the gun in the glass box, "but this seems more fun. Do you know how amazing it is to watch your face turning red as the oxygen to your clever brain reduces, and you struggle to breathe?" He chokes me with his full strength.

I feel my heartbeat getting slow as my body become immobile. I try to lift my hands to pull his hands away, but they go numb. My eyes go dark as my eyelids shutter, and they finally close.