Could there be a deep-rooted problem in Josef Heiter's past which would explain why he is the way he is? Maybe. (Language, of course, would be spoken in German.)

AGED FOUR

"Ugly little fucker, isn't he?" Dr Heiter, his father, that is, always said about him. There was no pride and joy. No warmth towards him. No love, just gloom, and a house that was filled with tension and hate. Dad didn't even seem to love mum that much, not really. Once, he made her walk around the house, naked. Sometimes, he made her crawl around, naked, whilst her son stood in the entrance to his bedroom with his teddy bear, looking on and not knowing why. And on more than one occasion, Dad hit Mum with his belt whilst she was on her hands and knees. Sometimes, he stroked her and called her his darling, and his precious little sweetheart. But mostly, there was something so wrong underlying here. Something that would have everlasting damage on this small boy.

When mum was fully dressed and on her feet, all blue eyes under her mop of brown hair, she was very pretty. And somehow, it gave her strength.

Sometimes, he heard them yelling. Once, he had caught them pummelling seven bells of shit out of each other. He screamed, and cried, and yelled at the living room door. Shouted himself hoarse until his father picked him up by the scruff of the collar and dragged him upstairs, locking him in his room. He didn't stop. He hollered and shouted and screamed, until his father bashed back into his bedroom and injected him with something. This Something made him sick, and sleepy. The Something knocked him out cold on the floor, where he didn't wake until two the next afternoon and cried until he was let out of his room.

AGED SIX.

He is bent, two small hands clenched into fists, stuffed in his pockets. His knees are scuffed, one sock is pulled up to his knee and the other rolled down to his ankle. He winces as his father hits his backside with the ruler. Once more. Though he's lost count, he believes it has been twelve strikes. A single tear rolls down his face. His mother, sat in a chair in the corner, flicks her cigarette and it catches his shin, which suddenly feels as though it is on fire.

"Not hard enough," she shouts at his father. "Five more. And hard as you can!"

"Shut it, bitch," his father snarls, dropping the ruler. "And you, you little creep. Get out." He feels the kick on his buttock, and he runs from the room, grabbing his backside only when he reaches the hallway. He bites his lip. It hurts. It always hurts.

And back outside, to play. He's been trying to teach the family dog to bring him the newspaper for three weeks now, to no avail. He lost his temper and smacked the dog last night, and the dog bit his ankle. Paulo didn't normally bite, he was a mild tempered, usually friendly black Labrador, but he would never forget the ugly grin wrinkled back in a hideous snarl Paulo gave him before leaping on him and savaging his ankle. He had aimed a good kick at the dog, but missed. He had been spanked this time, he thought, for complaining that the steak at breakfast table this morning was uncooked – and vomited all over the tablecloth. He was six years old, not two, but he had trouble remembering sometimes. A lot of time, particularly when he was trying to fall asleep, the voices in his head would start, and once they had started, they wouldn't stop.

Sat in the garden on the rusty old swing, he had the sudden urge to pee, and he turned heel and ran back into the kitchen; crept past the living room and slipped into the bathroom. Shit. His parents were both there – dad with his back to him, mum on her knees in front of him. Oh for Christ sake. Not this. Not again.

Neither of them noticed him. He crept backwards, hoping to shut the door as quietly as possible, and, by some miracle, did so. His father began to mutter, horrible, leering sounds. "Swallow it, bitch," he muttered. "Swallow it…."

He put his hands over his ears to block it out. That was one thing he couldn't bear hearing.

AGED THIRTEEN.

He had always been an odd child; there was no doubt about that. For one thing, socialising made him vomit. Just the thought of spending any time with classmates, or family, made his stomach heave.

Instead, he sat in his room, with his pets. He had a great many bugs – kept in a wine box under his bed. The last time he had looked he had three enormous spiders, two lady bugs (which had now been devoured by said spiders) a caterpillar, and two centipedes. The way the centipedes moved fascinated him – he could stare at them for half an hour or more without tearing his eyes away once. They would continue to fascinate him until his college years. Millipedes, on the other hand, he hated the things. If he came across them, he would crush them to a pulp, knowing they would not bite him. Centipedes gave him a distinct feeling of pleasure. He wasn't sure what this pleasure was, but it made the thing between his legs stiff, like dad's was that time when he caught mum on her knees next to him in the bathroom.

Centipedes reminded him of small, discoloured humans on their hands and knees, scrabbling about, predatorily to the smaller insects on which they fed.

This was another of the strange things about Josef. He regarded these creatures his best friends. He knew they would never turn their backs on him, call him ugly, or stupid, or useless, and if they were thinking it, he would never know they were. They would never grow to be six foot two, bend him over, wrench down his shorts and hit him with a ruler, or threaten to give him a brain tumour by hitting him over the head with a hammer. They would never turn into other children and laugh in his face. Like at school.

"How are you today, ugly?"

"Whats the matter, ugly?"

"What happened to your legs, Ugly? Daddy been hitting you again?"

He usually turned his back on them, but on one occasion he had turned around and lobbed his metal pencil case at Ambrose. It had hit Ambrose squarely in the eye and knocked him clean out, earning him a three day suspension from school but there was one thing for sure. Nobody called him ugly. Not to his face, anyway. Not any more.

Josef was hitting that age where his attraction to girls was beginning. Not just beginning, but it hit him squarely in the face, as the pencil case had hit Ambrose, for the first time on Tuesday 5th December, three days before his fourteenth birthday. Perhaps it was his parents fault that he had been so underdeveloped in terms of girls. It had to be.

But Lynn was different from any other girl he had ever laid eyes on. She was new at the school and she stood at the front of class on her first day, staring at the floor. His heart raced and took flight almost as suddenly as a rocket, and his palms began to sweat. His knees began to knock, and he suddenly could not breathe. Her hair swam down to her waist in dark waves, and her eyes were a clear, ocean blue. Her chest was another thing that struck him – it was a very developed chest for a girl of only fourteen. He put his hands over his crotch and tried to acknowledge his problem, which was enlarging by the moment.

"Josef," said Mrs Beyer. "Please come here and show Lynn to her desk. She will be sitting besides you."

"No," he spluttered. Lynn raised her eyes for the first time in surprise and gave him a cool, even stare.

"I mean – me?"

"Yes, you," Mrs Beyer replied impatiently. "Don't be so rude."

He sat there a minute longer, trying hard to think of something that disgusted him, to no avail. It was becoming uncommonly painful.

"Josef! At your feet!" snapped Mrs Beyer. He had no choice. He slipped his hands in his pocket, desperately hoping that no one would notice, but they all did.

"He's got a boner!"

"Haha! That's so gross!" Lisel screamed.

"Sit down, sit down!" Mrs Beyer shrieked, as the penny dropped. "Oh, dear god. Lynn, sit here beside Gretel instead." She flashed Josef a look of pure disgust, as though it was completely his fault. Lynn hurriedly sat besides Gretel, staring at Josef all the time. There was no mistaking the revolted look on her face.

Like his father, Josef Heiter Junior decided to become a surgeon. Separating Siamese twins for a profession. He didn't know that by the time he was twenty six he would be a leading surgeon in Germany, that by the time he was thirty four he would become one of the world's leading surgeons, that by the time he got to forty he would have fulfilled his dream entirely. Nor did he realise that his mental health would become worse and worse over the years, that his hatred for human beings would be forever looming over him, that his obsession with centipedes would take over his mind completely. He didn't know that he would never meet a woman he found satisfactory to settle down with, that the one serious relationship in his life would only last six months and she would leave him in disgust shouting that his mind was in the gutter, that he made her ill, that he was "sick in the mind." He wasn't quite aware exactly HOW ill he was, and when he lost his mother at the age of forty one, he went over the edge. Beaten to death, she was, by some tourists who stole her handbag. Beaten to death by two American girls and a Japanese guy who was originally from London, England.

He didn't know that all three of the criminals would be caught and sent to prison, inside him began a raging hatred for the Americans and Japanese. He did not know that two likely American girls and a Japanese man would be far too easy to get his hands on…far too easy to punish, far too easy…when he first saw Jenny and Lindsay, not a thing to do with his mother's death, in their innocence, he felt that familiar feeling which had stirred up inside him at school. That greedy organ began to pulse and throb, and, oh, it felt good.

He stares at himself in the mirror while they are upstairs before he drugs them, before he drags them downstairs, before he manipulates and changes them into something alien, and inhuman…something as strange, warped and messed up as he has always been, always will be.