Prodigal Son

wondering-indeed hoping- that he had erred when he concluded that he had completed his collection. He might have overlooked an anatomical feature that, while minor, remained essential to beauty's jigsaw.
        For a while he sat at the kitchen table with da Vinci's famous anatomical charts and several old Playboy centerfolds. He studied the female form from every angle, looking for a morsel that he might have overlooked.
        When he made no discovery that allowed him to cry Eureka, he began to consider the possibility that he had not been sufficiently specific in his collecting. Was it possible that he had collected from too macro a perspective?
        Were he to take Elizabeth Lavenza's lovely pale hands from the freezer and review them critically, he might be surprised to find that they were perfect, yes, in every detail but one. Perhaps she had a single thumb that fell short of perfection.
        Perhaps the lips he had harvested were not both perfect as he had remembered. The upper might be perfect, the lower not quite.
        If he needed to set out on a search for the perfect left thumb to marry to Elizabeth's otherwise faultlessly fair hands, if he must find a bee-stung lower lip to match the exquisite upper already in his possession, then his quest had not been completed, after all, and he would for a while have meaningful…
        "No," he declared aloud. "That way lies madness."
        Soon he would be reduced to harvesting one toe per donor and killing for mere eyelashes. A thin line separated serious homicidal purpose from buffoonery.
        Realizing that a blind alley lay before him, Roy might at that moment have fallen into a swoon of despair, even though at heart he was an optimistic person. Fortunately, he was saved by a new thought.
        From his nightstand he retrieved his original list of wanted anatomical delights. He had drawn a line through every item as he acquired it, concluding with EYES.
        The list was long, and perhaps early in the quest he had crossed off an item out of wishful thinking, before he had taken possession of it. His memory of certain periods in his past was somewhat hazy, not because of any mental deficiency, but solely because he was such a tomorrow-oriented person, focused on the future in which he would grow younger and closer to perfection.
        He vaguely recalled, over the years, killing a woman or two for an ideal feature, only to discover, in the intimate presence of the corpse, that the wanted item was minutely flawed and therefore not worth harvesting. Perhaps more than a woman or two. Maybe as many as four had disappointed him. Maybe five.
        He supposed it was possible that he had crossed off an item or two on his list only to discover, after the kill, that he had been too easy in his judgment- and then in his busyness had forgotten to restore the needed item to the list.
        Either to confirm or eliminate this possibility, he needed to compare the contents of his special freezer to his original list.
        Despondency quickly faded and a happy anticipation filled him. He opened a bottle of apple juice and sectioned a raisin muffin to sample as he worked.
        All the appliances in his roomy kitchen boasted stainless-steel finishes, including the ovens, microwave, dishwasher, icemaker, Sub-Zero refrigerator, and two enormous freezers.
        In the first freezer he stored the parts of the perfect woman. He playfully referred to this as the love locker.
        The second freezer contained an assortment of dairy-free, soy-based ice creams, free-range chicken breasts, and quarts of rhubarb puree. In the event that a major act of terrorism led to a disruption in the distribution of vital nutritional supplements, he also stored five-pound packages of powdered saw palmetto, St. John's wort, bee pollen, and other items.
        When he lifted the lid on the first freezer, a cloud of frosted air wafted past him, crisp with a faint scent vaguely like that of frozen fish. He saw at once that the freezer contained items that did not belong with his collection.
        His larger treasures-legs and arms-were tightly sealed in multiple layers of Reynolds Plastic Wrap. The smaller lovelies were sealed first in One-Zip bags and then in Tupperware containers with dependably tight lids.
        Now he found among his collection three containers that were not Tupperware. They were cheap knockoffs of that desired brand: