He’d never bragged about the spiders crushed. The caterpillars dusted with salt. The beetles set afire.
And without quite thinking about it, all but unconsciously, he had escalated from insects to small animals. Mice, gerbils, guinea pigs, birds, rabbits, cats…
The family’s thirty-acre estate in Delaware provided a plenitude of wildlife that could be trapped for his purposes. In less fruitful seasons, his generous allowance permitted him to get what he needed from pet stores.
He seemed to spend his twelfth and thirteenth years in a semi-trance. So much secretive killing. Often, when he made an effort at recollection, those years blurred.
No justification existed for the wanton destruction of animals. They belonged on this world more surely than people did.
In retrospect, Preston wondered if he hadn’t been perilously close to losing control of himself in those days. That period held little nostalgic value for him. He chose to remember better times.
On the night following Preston’s fourteenth birthday, life changed for the better with the visit of Cousin Brandon, who arrived for a long weekend in the company of his parents.
A lifelong paraplegic, Brandon depended on a wheelchair.
In Preston’s inner world, where he lived far more than not, he called his cousin the Dirtbag because, for almost two years between the ages of seven and eight, Brandon had required a colostomy bag until a series of complex surgeries ultimately resolved a bowel problem.
Because the mansion boasted an elevator, all three floors were accessible to the disabled boy. He slept in Preston’s room, which had long been furnished with a second bed for friends on sleepovers.
They had a lot of fun. The Dirtbag, thirteen, possessed a singular talent for impersonation, uncannily reproducing the voices of family members and employees on the estate. Preston had never laughed so much as he had laughed that night.
The Dirtbag fell asleep around one o’clock in the morning.
At two o’clock, Preston killed him. He smothered the boy with a pillow.
Only the Dirtbag’s legs were paralyzed, but he suffered from other conditions that resulted in somewhat diminished upper-body strength. He tried to resist, but not effectively.
Having recently recovered from a protracted bout with a severe bronchial infection, the Dirtbag’s lung capacity might not have been at its peak. He died much too quickly to please Preston.
Hoping to prolong the experience, Preston had relented a few times with the pillow, giving the Dirtbag an opportunity to draw a breath but not to cry out. Nevertheless, the end came too soon.
The bedclothes had been slightly disarranged by the boy’s feeble struggle. Preston smoothed them.
He brushed his dead cousin’s hair, making him more presentable.
Because the Dirtbag died on his back, as he always slept, there was no need to reposition the body. Preston adjusted the arms and the hands to convey the impression of a quiet passing.
The mouth hung open. Preston firmly closed it, held it, waited for it to lock in place.
The eyes were wide, staring in what might have been surprise. He drew the lids shut and weighted them with quarters.
After a couple hours, he removed the coins. The lids remained closed.
Preston switched off the lamp and returned to his bed, burying his face in the same pillow with which he had smothered his cousin.
He felt that he had done a fine thing.
During the remainder of the night, he was too excited to sleep soundly, although he dozed on and off.
He was awake but pretending to oversleep when at eight o’clock, the Dirtbag’s mother, Aunt Janice — also known as the Tits — rapped softly on the bedroom door. When her second knock wasn’t answered, she entered anyway, for she was bringing her son’s morning medicines.
Planning to fake a startled awakening the instant that the Tits screamed, Preston was denied his dramatic moment when she made only a strangled sound of grief and sagged against the Dirtbag’s bed, sobbing as softly as she had knocked.
At the funeral, Preston heard numerous relatives and family friends say that perhaps this was for the best, that Brandon had gone to a better place now, that his lifelong suffering had been relieved, that perhaps the parents’ heavy grief was more than balanced by the weight of responsibility that had been lifted from their shoulders.
This confirmed his perception that he had done a fine thing.
His endeavors with insects were finished.
His misguided adventures with small animals were at an end.
He had found his work, and it was his bliss, as well.
A brilliant boy and superb student, the top of his class, he naturally turned to education to seek a greater understanding of his special role in life. In school and books he found every answer that he wanted.
While he learned, he practiced. As a young man of great wealth and privilege, he was much admired for the unpaid work he performed in nursing homes, which he modestly called “just giving back a little to society in return for all my blessings.”
By the time that he went to university, Preston determined that philosophy would be his field, his chosen community.
Introduced to a forest of philosophers and philosophies, he was taught that every tree stood equal to the others, that each deserved respect, that no view of life and life’s purpose was superior to any other. This meant no absolutes existed, no certainties, no universal right or wrong, merely different points of view. Before him were millions of board feet of ideas, from which he’d been invited to construct any dwelling that pleased him.
Some philosophies placed a greater value on human life than did others. Those were not for him.
Soon he discovered that if philosophy was his community, then contemporary ethics was the street on which he most desired to live. Eventually, the relatively new field of bioethics became a cozy house in which he felt at home as never before in his life.
Thus he had arrived at his current eminence. And to this place, this time.
Soaring mountains, vast forests, eagles flying.
North, north to Nun’s Lake.
The Black Hole had resurrected herself. She settled in the copilot’s chair.
Preston conversed with her, charmed her, made her laugh, drove with his usual expertise, drove north to Nun’s Lake, but still he lived more richly within himself.
He reviewed in memory his most beautiful killings. He had many more to remember than the world realized. The assisted suicides known to the media were but a fraction of his career achievements.
Being one of the most controversial and one of the most highly regarded bioethicists of his day, Preston had a responsibility to his profession not to be immodest. Consequently he’d never brag of the true number of mercies that he’d granted to those in need of dying.
As they sped farther north, the sky steadily gathered clouds upon itself: thin gray shrouds and later thick thunderheads of a darker material.
Before the day waned, Preston intended to locate and visit Leonard Teelroy, the man who claimed to have been healed by aliens. He hoped that the weather wouldn’t interfere with his plans.
He expected to find that Teelroy was a fraud. A dismayingly high percentage of claimed close encounters appeared to be obvious hoaxes.
Nevertheless, Preston ardently believed that extraterrestrials had been visiting Earth for millennia. In fact, be was pretty sure that he knew what they were doing here.
Suppose Leonard Teelroy had told the truth. Even suppose the alien activity at the Teelroy farm was ongoing. Preston still didn’t believe the ETs would heal the Hand and send her away dancing.
His “vision” of the Hand and the Gimp being healed had never occurred. He’d invented it to explain to the Black Hole why he wanted to ricochet around the country in search of a close encounter.