Editing Different Seasons (section)

=== ''Summer of Corruption'' - "Apt Pupil"===
The story is set in Los Angeles in 1974 and is told in the third-person perspective. The story follows Todd Bowden from the age of thirteen up until he graduates high school. The story opens with Todd as he arrives at the doorstep of an elderly German immigrant, named Auther Denker, and accuses him of being Nazi war criminal Kurt Dussander. Dussander does little to deny his identity and Todd insists that Dussander tells Todd about the crimes he had committed lest he turn him in to the authorities. Todd then begins to go to Dussander’s house every day demanding to know the details of all of his crimes in excruciating detail.

As months go by, Todd begins to have nightmares and his grades begin to slip. He resigns to forging his report card before giving it to his parents. Eventually, his school’s guidance counselor Ed French, requests to meet with Todd and his parents to discuss his failing grades. Todd, desperate for his parents not to find out convinces Dussander to pretend to be his grandfather and accompany him to the meeting. Now aware of his failing grades, Dussander uses this as blackmail to force Todd into studying during their meetings. Todd’s grades begin to improve and he decides he no longer has any need of Dussander and plots to kill him and make it seem like it was an accident. Todd tells Dussander that should anything happen to him he has a friend he gave a letter to listing all of Dussander’s crimes that will be mailed to the police upon his death. Dussander realizes Todd’s plot, however, and tells him that he wrote his statement and placed it in a safe deposit box so that if Todd were to kill him, the authorities would know he was willingly conversing with a war criminal. These statements prevent them from killing each other despite both of them lying about the ‘evidence’ they had on one another.

As the months go by, Todd begins killing homeless people on the street as it helps alleviate his nightmares. Years pass and Todd visits Dussander less and less. Todd greatly enjoys the thrill associated with killing, stating that he believes it to be better than sex. However, he is uncertain if he dislikes sex in comparison to the thrill of killing simply because he enjoys killing more or if sex with his girlfriend is unenjoyable because she is Jewish. Similarly to Todd, Dussander has also begun to have nightmares and kills homeless people to relieve them, burying the bodies in his basement.

One night when Dussander is burying one of his victims he has a heart attack. He asks Todd to clean up and hide the body before calling an ambulance and being sent to the hospital. While in the hospital Dussander shares a room with holocaust survivor Morris Heisel. Heisel does not immediately remember Dussander’s identity but makes it known that he remembers his face. Todd visits the hospital a few days later to tell Dussander that he would never visit him again, only for Dussander to tell Todd to be more careful with his murders.

Eventually, Heisel realizes “Mr. Denker”’s true identity as the commandant of the concentration camp where his wife and daughter were killed. Heisel contacts a Nazi hunter named Weiskopf to visit Dussander and tell him he had been found out. After the encounter, Dussander steals drugs from the hospital dispensary and commits suicide. Weiskopf along with police detective Richler then interviews Todd because of his connections to Dussander.

Later, French meets with Todd’s real grandfather and realizes that he had been lying when he said that Dussander had been his grandfather. This leads French to check Todd’s report cards and discover that Todd had been tampering with them. French confronts Todd, showing him a newspaper clipping describing Dussander’s death and his true identity. Todd kills French in retaliation. Afterward, Todd goes on a killing spree and is eventually killed by police five hours later.