She was surprised at how young, nice-looking, and reasonable he seemed to be. He stood nearly six feet tall and had hair the color of apple pie, a pleasantly wide mouth, and caramel eyes. He even professed to have faith in God.
He did seem a bit confused during the interview, and when asked why, he claimed it was the result of the tumor growing in his head.
Of course, the Sister was not pleased to hear Mr. Stone’s views on euthanasia.
“Until this happened, I honestly didn’t know which way I would vote,” he told the reporter, referring to the bill before the Oregon legislature. “I only hope I live long enough to cast a yea vote.”
An evil thought flashed through the Sister’s mind: she felt satisfaction that God would strike Mr. Stone down before he could use his legislative power to wrap man’s greatest sin in the cloak of governmental protection. Of course, the Sister’s brain didn’t seem to process the paradox of its own thought, that Jared was being swayed to vote in favor of euthanasia by the very tumor the Sister believed to be an instrument of God. In any case, the Sister knew enough to recognize a wicked thought for what it was; she crossed herself three times and turned her attention back to the TV.
What caught the Sister’s attention most was that Mr. Stone lived in her parish. She didn’t know if he was a Catholic, but one needn’t start out a Catholic to die a Catholic martyr. And if Sister Benedict had anything to say about it, Mr. Stone wouldn’t be dying for a very, very long time.
She reached for the phone to call the monsignor.
***
When Sherman Kingsborough first saw Jared Stone’s listing, he knew he had to bid, but he didn’t quite know why. When he saw Jared on the news, a face now given to what had merely been a notion, his interest bloomed into an obsession. His brain went through a kind of mental gymnastics as it considered what to do with Jared:
Maybe I could perform brain surgery, he thought. I can be the first man to execute a full-brain transplant, maybe replace his sick brain with a healthy monkey’s brain. That would be funny. But even Sherman realized he would need so much training that he wouldn’t have time to succeed. He filed the idea away for future reference.
Maybe he could turn the man into a suicide bomber. But Sherman didn’t have anything he wanted to bomb, and that seemed kind of pointless.
Maybe, he thought, I could just kill him.
Sherman let that roll around his mind for a bit. Yes, kill him. What would that be like? Would I feel powerful, like a god? Would I feel sad? Not knowing what he would feel like was all the impetus Sherman Kingsborough needed. This was something new, and that made it desirable.
For the record, Sherman’s brain didn’t have any damage to the anterior prefrontal cortex, nor did he have an excess of monoamine oxidase-A—two of the more likely indicators of violent behavior or lack of a conscience. No, Sherman was just bored to tears and desperate for a new experience.
He began to contemplate how best to murder someone, and none of the options felt quite right. Guns weren’t sporting, lethal injections were boring, and while drowning had a certain appeal, it seemed as if it would be over too quickly. Maybe, Sherman thought, bidding on this guy’s life isn’t really worth the trouble.
He spent time surfing the Web for ideas and was about to give up when he came across a reference to a 1932 film called The Most Dangerous Game: a shipwrecked man washes ashore on a remote island owned by a deranged Russian who plays a game hunting humans.
“Hunting humans,” he said aloud after reading it. “Hunting humans.” Sherman’s brain conveniently ignored the part about the “deranged” Russian, seeing only what it wanted to see.
He knew that the man who had posted the eBay listing had a brain tumor—it was a central point of the news story—but he didn’t really know what that meant. What if, by the time he purchased his prey, the guy was comatose? No, he needed a victim who would run, hide, and fight back.
As he had learned from his father, when you need a piece of information, go to the source. Sherman composed a note to Jared using eBay’s contact form, sent it off, sat back, and waited.
***
Jared was still reeling from his encounter with the media. They’d descended on his house like the Portland rain. The lights, cameras, and blitzkrieg of reporters felt like a vise grip on his right temple. Or was it the tumor making his head hurt? Or did the lights and cameras and reporters make the tumor hurt, which made his head hurt? Whatever the case, his head was throbbing, again, and his focus was all but gone.