twisted sense ▹ kitty

chapter one.

CHAPTER ONE:
the weird stalking
fetish to fill emptiness

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FORTY-FIVE MINUTES BEFORE DAWN.

It was time to go.

Kit slung his backpack over his shoulder, mostly because he was reluctant to leave any of his more important belongings alone with his dad. He glanced around the empty living room. Light snores came from his father's bedroom, audible through the thin walls. Various papers and trinkets were scattered around the coffee table and worn couch. 

Rather pointedly, he avoided his reflection in the mirror only a few feet away from his front door.

His reflection often called him out for stalking.

Not that he was stalking anyone. Of course not. Acute observation, that was what he told himself. He had to teach himself to be perceptive to survive being Johnny Rook's son. Not following through on his tradition morning plans would be slacking off. That was it.

Not questioning his sanity whatsoever, Kit headed out the door, careful to close and lock it as quietly as possible behind himself. Johnny tended to awake over the lightest sound. While Kit hadn't been caught for the past thirteen mornings, he would hate for the two week mark to be the exception.

That annoying voice in the back of his head suggested that watching a stranger for two solid weeks was another sign of impending insanity. 

Kit didn't know which was more troubling: that he was obsessed enough with someone to awaken before dawn each morning on summer vacation, or that he had a voice in his head. One that chastised him for his insanity while ironically, its very existence added to the belief that he was losing his mind.

Pretty anti-climatic.

Ignoring any potential rationality or common sense, Kit tightened his grip on his tattered backpack, beginning the trek to the Los Angeles beach.

It was only a fifteen minute walk from his house. According to his calculations, which were not at all further evidence that he belonged in a mental institution, the boy arrived approximately thirty minutes before dawn each morning. And sure enough, just as Kit arrived and took up his usual spot by a wilted palm tree several feet away, the boy was just settling in.

He had a different novel with him today: The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. For the past few days, it was The Hound of the Baskerville. Before that, it was A Study in Scarlet.

The boy read faster than anyone Kit had ever met. With headphones consistently over his ears, too. Somehow that didn't shatter his concentration, only encouraging him to flip the pages quicker, the sound of rapidly moving paper echoing throughout the empty beach.

Not that Kit paid that much attention to him. Obviously not. That was one of those absent, accidental, totally awkward observations. But not intentional. 

No, Kit just came here every morning for the . . . sunrises. And fresh, polluted air. 

Nothing quite like sunny L.A.

Curling up against the malnourished palm tree, Kit dug through his backpack. It was never boring to watch the boy, but he did feel a bit awkward and like the villain from a terrible horror movie when he just stared at some guy he didn't know from a distance. To give himself another focus, his fingers latched around the cold brush of metal against his skin.