When he dies, the family comes out of the woodwork by the hundreds. A firm believer in the virtue of his genetics, and, also, that he would, somehow, eventually, cheat death, he didn’t just have offspring, he seeded himself across the western hemisphere like a white Temujin. The immortality never came, of course, but the children do, drawn by the promise of his vast fortune and the human need to see him lying dead to know for sure, blood and bone, that he was truly gone and would not threaten to return.

In the high school auditorium the attorneys reserved for the reading of the will, they crowd the bleachers, eye each other warily, half-siblings all, with no connection save of blood. Which of them finally caught up with him? How had they done it? He wasn’t smart but he was paranoid. Had it been poison? A knife in the dark? A plausibly malfunctioning car? Had they bribed a servant, cozened his latest child bride into mixing something extra in with his pills? Speculation is rampant, a deep rumbling through the gym, loud enough to drown out the lawyer as he tries to take the stage.

When he has their attention at last, he coughs and reads a short statement: “Per the wishes of the deceased, the doors have been locked and the building wired to explode. There shall be no inheritance, nor heir; if I have gone, I will take you all with me.”

They howl, and howl, and, when the building fails to explode, turn on each other in fury. When the police arrive to unlock the doors, they wade through blood and viscera three feet deep to arrest the sole survivor.