It began as a simple hunting trip. The Fall season was in full swing, and young Bert Rampling was all alone near his grandfather's deer camp. No one knew where he was, and he hadn't reported to anyone where he'd be. To be honest, his family was relieved that he was gone that weekend. He had a personality that was grating. Always the loudest voice in the room, Bert Rampling was one who pretended to be an expert on everything, even things he'd never heard of before, and this was painfully evident after just a few moments in his presence. He was the type of person who seemed to know no boundaries, and who pretended not to know a stranger. If he went to a restaurant, he'd go into the kitchen and make small talk with the cooking staff, or try to tell bawdy jokes to the manager. People couldn't stand him, but the conventions of polite society demanded he be left to his own devices. Unfortunately, no one but Bert Rampling was aware of what he was capable of, whether he had access to devices of any kind or not.
His childhood was an odd one. The child of the proverbial dominant mother and passive father, his favorite past-time as a little boy was frying ants with a magnifying glass under the blaxing light of the sun. At least until he discovered that larger prey reacted differently than ants when scorched by his make-believe laser beams. He graduated from ants to lizards fairly quickly, and from lizards to toads, then small birds became his victims, and then cats and dogs. During the summer months, when left unattended, he sometimes sought out the neighborhood kittens, and if he didn't smash one's head in by swinging it around by its tail until he loosened his grip and let it hit the nearest wall, he'd bag several together in a potato sack and weigh them down with stones and dump them in the nearest pond until their air bubbles stopped rising to the surface.
When Bert was given his first airgun, he immediately sought out the little crabs that dwelt in the marshy area behind his family home, and carefully shot off their pinchers, smiling as they continued to wave what remained of their tiny forearms. Then he moved on to lizards, and was fascinated when he hit one in the side, and ripped open his side, exposing its pounding heart and rapidly pumping lungs. He smashed it into a stone with a piece of concrete, and then moved on to squirrels.
Bert Rampling was always in trouble at school, always getting suspended, and when he was expelled as a teenager, he sought revenge on the principal who issued the verdict by breaking into the school and stealing the sound system in the gym, which he promptly dumped into the Cape Fear river. He didn't get away with this, and was arrested and sent to a juvenile facility until his parents stepped in and agreed to send him off to a military school, where he met others who were cut from the same cloth that he was spawned from; they taught him many things. Thinking he'd changed for the better, he returned home, and it wasn't long before he took a government test and was given a position at the downtown post office. In his off time, he took up hunting as a hobby, sometimes with a group, but usually by himself,. so he could torture the animals he caught alive and relish their pain in private.
So it was that, one fateful night, Bert Rampling was out hunting by himself, and he heard an odd noise in a thicket. Without thinking, he opened fire, and when the smoke from his weapon cleared, he was shocked to see that he'd just slaughtered two teenagers who'd been making out on a blanket. Without missing a beat, he carefully cleaned the scene of the killing up, rolled up their corpses, and carefully placed them in the trunk of the car they'd left unlocked. Then he drove it to a wooded area, far from the scene of his crime, that he knew no one frequented, and saw to it that the vehicle was completely obscured from view by stones and debris, and he left it there, leaving no traces whatsoever that would prove he'd ever been there. And at that time, in the age before cell-phones and surveillance cameras, no one ever could, and no one ever did.
Some say that dogs of any breed, if they ever taste human blood, must be put down, or they'll develop a taste for it that will drive them mad. The thrill of his first human kills had this very effect on Bert Rampling, and every time he heard tell of the missing lovebirds he'd slain, he chuckled inside to think that most folks believed the two had run off to be married, probably because they were about to become a family with a child on the way.
It wasn't too long before Rampling began to plot out his next killing spree, and then his next, and his next. He never picked targets who knew him. To do so would invite suspicion, and if he were to continue to feed his addiction, it was too risky a prospect. Usually, his preferences were for out-of-town folks, or homeless people. If he didn't kill them where he found them, he'd take them back to his parents home when he knew no one would be there, and he'd alternate killing techniques. He was quite creative about his murder styles, and almost fancied himself an artist. It was a shame, he thought more often than once, that no one would ever be appreciative of his work.
One night, however, he selected the wrong victim at the wrong time, and in the worst possible place. The end result would lead to the beginning of the end for him. That is, if you believe the hype surrounding the murder trial that resulted from the events of that night and all that followed afterward.
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