Marie sat at the edge of her bed, stretching with a moan. I looked at the time -- 7:19pm. She was on night shift again and had to be at work by ten. She leaned over me, checking if I was awake. My eyes were slightly open. Smiling, she kissed my temple. I reached around and touched the skin on her hips. A feeling of safety washed over me, which was making it impossible for me to stay awake.
She walked to the washroom, a towel hanging from her arm. I sat up. "Go back to sleep," she said.
"It's okay. I'm up," I mumbled.
"Just stay the night. There's food in the fridge."
"It's okay, I'll leave with you," I yawned and lied back down. "Just ten more minutes."
"Stay here."
Only half awake, I heard the shower turn on. Time skipped, and I heard the sound of her blow dryer. I rolled over to her side of the bed and smothered my face in her cool pillow, breathing in her scent, falling into an even deeper sleep.
I woke up to perfect blackness and silence. The clock radio showed 11:18pm. My head ached from too much sleep.
"Marie?" I called out, my eyes slowly focusing and making out shapes in the dark room. The cross on the wall sent a prickly shiver up my back. I sprung up and searched the wall for the light switch. Finding it, the light bulb on the ceiling brightened the room, revealing a picture of the Virgin Mary looking down on me with palms open, exposing a bloody hole on each hand. I lumbered across the room and it seemed like her eyes were following me.
In the living room, the statue of Jesus loomed over me, and I stared at it for so long that I thought I saw the figure breathing--its rib cage rising and falling. I made a mental note never to look at it again, and turned to the clunky computer beside it. As the computer loaded, my eyes wandered to Jesus again, his eyes rolled up in hellish pain.
On the computer, I see a new email message from my therapist.
Date: September 22, 2022 3:35:09 AM GMT-04:00
Subject: Next Appointment
Please contact me to schedule your next appointment. Remember, attending regularly scheduled sessions is essential to your rehabilitation. Please contact me at your earliest convenience.
I deleted the email and opened the CityNews website. An ad popped up, forcing me to watch a thirty second commercial about a new weight loss drug. I thought about making coffee, but the ad finished before I could get up and I clicked "continue".
The home page featured an article about the Blue Jays beating the Yankees and clinching their first AL East title in 22 years. Below the article ran a column of thumbnails and headlines – a photo of Idris Elba with the headline "Guess what the stars had to say about TIFF 2022" – a photo of a car wreckage with the headline "Street racing a possible factor in fatal Highway 401 crash".
I scrolled further down, catching up on older news I had missed in my two day stupor, and then a single photo caught my eye, alluring me – the burnt face of a two storey building complex, its second floor windows blackened and shattered. There was a small Trinidadian grocery story on the first level, and the rear of a fire truck was jutting into the photo from the left of the frame. The headline read: "Arson investigators on scene after 60 year old man dies in west end house fire."
I clicked on the thumbnail. The full article read:
09/20/2022 12:04 PM by Toan Nguyen
YOU ARE READING
The Online Profile of a Serial Killer
Mystery / ThrillerThis is the rule. Whenever you read that a story is true, it is always and inevitably untrue. But in this case, however, everything you read here is true. The burnt remains for Rachel Amina Darwish were discovered in Algonquin Park in Ontario, Canad...
