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Show Acting Alone pa g e !g Chapter Three One day Sam found a spent wooden match in his bathroom sink. He did not smoke. Maybe Bouncy had come down, used some oriental discipline to pop the lock on the door without bruising the wood, and, maybe, in a sort of grand proprietary gesture (you know, some philosophical thing where the killer owns the home of the man he is about to kill, something real deep and mystical like that, like in Kurosawa movies), Bouncy gloatingly went to the bathroom and then lit this match to burn off the methane reek? So Sam got mildly scared. Much as his mentor Dr. Abraham would disapprove, Sam decided to excuse his classes for a couple weeks or months or so and escape to the seeming safety of Nebraska. The match had surely been gushed up through the drain when the girl upstairs' washing machine changed cycles, just like all the other nightmarish things he found floating in the sink every day. That realization came into Sam's head even before the idea about Bouncy. The idea about Bouncy took a few minutes to formulate. But Sam needed a reason to leave town for a while, because he was falling for Shannon and grading her themes more leniently than her classmates'. He needed distance. Because, if he married such a tiny French/Irish A-plus thing, she'd probably be split in half trying to have his babies; and he was currently at that petulant grabby pouty age - should've been a bit |