Chapter three: Mickey Altieri

The announcement of their son's name on TV shouldn't have surprised either of the young man's parents, but it had.

They had always known that their son was…off.

Yes, they knew that there was something not quite right about him, but they always had summed it up as him just being different. He had been different. He had just had a different perspective of things than most people had.

He had always been such a sweet boy. Always such an affectionate child that loved movies.

He had loved movies so much, apparently, that he had…

Fabia and her husband, Louis, they had never wanted to stifle Mickey or stifle the things he enjoyed doing. They had wanted him to be free to express himself, to express what he loved.

Whenever they had seen a parent deeply criticize what their children enjoyed doing, they saw how it hurt those children.

That was why they had tried so hard to be the opposite of that.

To encourage his hobbies and his passions. Mickey, they felt was a free spirit. He went against the grain and didn't conform to other peoples' rules about hobbies.

They tried to be good parents. Really, they did.

Over the years, they had heard him say occasional morbid things, but they always would shrug it off as a joke or as something that he meant in reference to one of the movies he liked watching.

Had they known….

But had it only been the movies? Or had it been something much deeper?

Something beyond their control?

They hadn't wanted to acknowledge it. But they knew now, that they had to be honest with themselves.

They were getting calls and calls from reporters.

None of those calls, needless to say, they answered.

It came as even more of an insult, when one of those calls was from Gale Weathers.

They didn't blame her for having had a hand in their son's death. They weren't like Nancy Loomis, who seemed to think that Sidney should have just let Billy Loomis kill her. What were Gale and Sidney supposed to do? Let Mickey and his fellow murderer, Nancy, kill them?

What they blamed her for, was eating up the fame that arrived with killing their only child, and expecting them to give her something juicy to further her career.

In days after that initial night, Fabia would remain in her room crying, and Louis would rewatch old family movies of when Mickey was young, back when things seemed to have made sense.

Louis watched one film, watching young Mickey, his head full of as usual, untidy brown hair, age eight and a half, showing his parents the cake batter covering his hands that he had tried to steal to eat while his parents had tried to bake him a cake for his upcoming ninth birthday, sticking his tongue out at his parents when they lovingly scolded him.

Louis's eyes flooded with tears. Brown eyes that Mickey had inherited. Brown eyes that Louis knew he would loathe every time he now looked in the mirror, reminded of his son.

Louis heard Mickey's laugh and choked on a sob, as the questions inevitably flooded his mind, as it likely had flooded his wife's mind, the moment Mickey had been announced as a serial killer.

Questions like, how did neither he nor Fabia see? Or like, was there something either of them could have done? Or could they have saved Mickey from himself? Was the evil always there, and he and Fabia just hadn't wanted to see? Or had it developed over time and were he and Fabia the reasons for it?

Had they spoiled him too much?

If they had just been a bit tougher on him, could they have saved him? If they had looked more closely and had seen the signs, could they have sent him to get the help he needed?

Louis could no longer hold back his sobs, when in the video, Louis laughed at Mickey's antics and picked the boy up and hugged him, while Mickey blew raspberries at him.

He shook in the easy chair as the sounds emanated out of the TV.

"Mickey," he wept quietly, "Mickey, my son…I failed you."

Author's note:

There wasn't much to go on for Mickey, since we know nothing about what his home life was like. So, I had to embellish, to say the least.