Disturbance Read Free

lightly over the spines of one row of books. He paused before a second set of shelves and touched various littlemementos displayed there. Most weren’t biological, but the few items that had once been parts of living things were the most exciting to him.
    He picked up a lock of hair and inhaled. The shampoo scent had faded in all but his memory, where it came back to him now as clearly as the night he had captured the dark, silky curl. The woman who had been sitting in front of him in the theater hadn’t even known he’d taken it.
    At least, not at first.
    He carefully replaced this small treasure and kept walking until he reached the computer again. He stared at his reflection in the darkened monitor.
    He had been using the Internet to search for more details on the big story. The newspaper and television reports hadn’t told him much. If you entered “Nicholas Parrish” in any news search engine, you got thousands of hits. Since this morning, when the story came out in the
Express
, the number had increased.
    The recent stories started with the predictable phrases. “Convicted serial killer … perhaps as many as fifty victims, including six members of the Las Piernas Police Department …”
    He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, forced himself to relax. He glanced at his watch. His mother was upstairs, waiting for him to make dinner. She would have to wait a little longer.
    He smiled to himself, savoring his rebelliousness.
    Others had always seen his mother as a docile creature, but he knew that she had a way of getting what she wanted. His very conception had epitomized her acts of passive aggression. She used to be fond of telling him that it was a miracle she had not miscarried after the beating his father gave her on learning of the pregnancy. One of these days he would ask his fatherand find out if that story was true. He was inclined to believe it. To him, the story was just another indicator of her ability to endure hardship in order to get what she wanted.
    He did not consider this trait to be heroic in any way.
    He paused, wondering if she had what she wanted, these days. She couldn’t make it down the stairs now, which made him savor his hours in the basement all the more. Still, it was time to have dinner. He locked the room and slid the false wall back into place.
    He climbed the stairs with some anticipation, but not for the meal, which would be something he would prepare without real effort, and would be exactly like the meal he had prepared the previous day, and the day before that.
    His anticipation came from the knowledge that today’s issue of the
Express
would be upstairs. His mother had been a subscriber for years. He didn’t usually read it, but this morning he had noticed the name Parrish in the headline, and instead of his usual routine of putting the paper straight into the recycling bin, rubber band and all, he took it to the kitchen and opened it carefully, with something approaching reverence.
    This regard was not for the newspaper itself, of course. Not the reporting, not the photos, not the layout. It was the subject of the article that entranced him: Nicholas Parrish.
    The story had changed his whole day.
    Kai grinned and took the stairs two at a time. He went to the freezer, removed a frozen dinner, and put it in the microwave. He grabbed a can of a nutritional shake from the refrigerator and fitted it with a straw. The evening meal would be the usual silent affair. Afterward, he would read the story about Nicholas Parrish aloud to his mother. Her current state of health would force her to listen to it, like it or not. She would not. For him, this would be as good as dessert.
    He stood in the kitchen, listening to the hum of themicrowave. The air began to smell of steaming broccoli, melting cheese, and warming plastic.
    He felt contentment as he looked out the window and watched dusk fall. It would be dark soon. As pleasant as his dinner plans were, he didn’t expect to