Prascher smiled that same secret smile that he had on that silent night. His innocence had shattered on that night, and, oh, how it had broken apart, like the snow globe that the boy had been holding only an hour and half before his demise. Certainly, there had been much rationalization on his part for the monstrous atrocities he had committed, but deep down, he knew that he was no insane man, and he also knew that, no matter how hard he pushed it down and away, the way he was going on was far from what would be considered in any pretense of normal.
He might have lost track of how many years had passed when he had first made his home, three states away from his hometown, where he committed his first acts of violence and depravity. It would seem that his newfound hobby had somehow re-energized him, allowing him to effortlessly enter the school system of the town in which she had implanted himself. It was in that town that he quickly grew to be a part of the local middle school, as the science and math teacher for most of the children in the county. Although he had believed that the reason for his crimes had been due to the stress of losing his job and losing his girlfriend, even when he had a good paying job and a quiet place to now call home, he found that his ruthless, secret desire had not, in any way, diminished.
Prascher put his all into his lessons, eventually becoming known as one of the most lenient teachers on the staff, as well as a favorite of almost all of the students. When he took the first elementary school child (he could now just barely recall that he had tied the body down with rocks, so that he could toss it into the nearby lake) he had been frightened that his popularity in the community would lead to him being easily fingered as the murderer. If anything, however, his popularity in the community worked as a shield against any accusations that may have otherwise come his way, and any general doubts that may have been cast on his character.
The body had been found, and, despite any worries that he had, Prascher was surprised to find that the community had damned the boy's grandparents as the murderers. The elderly couple were, in a sense, excommunicated from the community in total, and Prascher came to the fearful conclusion that the two boys that he killed were now enough. He found that the fear of waiting for somebody to discover that he had committed a murder was far greater than the fear he felt while waiting for someone to find out that he was a child rapist. The more he interacted with the children in the community, however, the more certain that Prascher became that he would be safe from any insinuation or allegation. As Prascher rested comfortably into his role of an educator, thinking always about the thrill of the illegal, he rested well every night, knowing that he was safe.
It was on a nondescript morning that the world finally came crashing down on him. It was roughly three years after he had fled his hometown, and Prascher was halfway through teaching his first Math class of the day. He was shocked, and the shock hadn't worn off a week after he found himself in jail.
They found the kids that would come forward - first in his current town, and then, eventually, in his hometown, they have found the girl, and then moved on to find the boy's body, which had long been a mystery in the town, since it had been found after the area had undergone a long period of rain that had washed the corpse off of the side of the hill that it had been buried in.
It was a bad time, then, for while. It was a certainty that he was going to jail; if he hadn't been certain that it was likely to be his fate, he became certain when the news went worldwide. After that, there was absolutely no chance that the courts would be able to find an unbiased jury for Prascher. It was awhile before his attorney actually decided to tell Prascher that there was talk that he may have a chance for an insanity plea. At first, he had completely pushed the the thought of there being any possibility of his pleading insanity and actually being believed. When Prascher had told his attorney that he had his doubts that he would ever be considered insane, his attorney had initially shrugged, telling him only that he believed that Prascher had no chance that he would ever have a “happy ending” at the end of the day. It then became about the search for the lesser evil.
Two weeks later and it was then that what both Prascher and his attorney considered to be a very long shot had increasingly become the man's last resort. He knew he was, by no definition, insane, but a conversation had erupted in the wake of his crime spree; it seemed that somebody had used his actions as a means to reopen old wounds, as an example of these “sick times”, in which mental illness was treated by throwing people in jail, or by throwing them out of civilization and onto the streets. It was beyond amazing; Prascher had gone from child rapist/child murderer to the poster boy of the new movement in the treating of psychological illnesses, when he, himself, was in no way, in any definition of the word, “insane”.
His case became a movement for asylums to be reopened, and for more to be created when there were shortages of asylums that could be reopened, and Prascher being declared insane or mentally stable became a topic of discussion seemingly everywhere. Even though he was grateful for the apparent god-send, Prascher felt an immense pressure to always be aware of his actions. In court, he took up to tying two of his ties together as a belt, and made great pains to remain oblivious to everyone in court, most obviously including the families of the children accusing him of his various crimes. As he came into court, he waved and smiled broadly at the family members, in one case asked the father of one of the children if his oldest, who had recently gotten into his last math class, had still had been struggling with homework.
All was not lost on the part of the prosecutor; Prascher watched them with hidden amusement every day as they attempted to inform the biased jury, that, despite what they personally believed, insanity was a vastly different definition in the world outside television dramas and movies.
Despite how assured the prosecution had been that the the jury understood the correct definition of the term insane, to everybody else but the prosecution, it was too obvious that the world, by large, was willing to ignore any correct definition of what it was that Prascher was, and assumed that the contents of his mind were, in fact, disordered.
It came as little surprise when the end came and Prascher dodged a life sentence for a semi-permanent stay at a state-of-the-art facility. It was to be his retirement, after five years of child stalking and bludgeoning. Although he had initially thought that his life was ruined by the courts, the fact was that he was now the new face of movement in American health care reform, and he had been especially careful to pay attention to the new buzzwords in this future of health care reform. The buzzwords were recovery, and then returning to normalcy. He figured that he could very easily stage the mental recovery of the suburban boogeyman and and return to the real world, where he would have to eventually find somewhere where nobody would recognize him.
Prascher's long journey through the American justice system had taken him to the sprawlingly large Higgins-Straley historical mental hospital. As Prascher first met the building, he was unable to think of anything more proper to call the “hospital” than a hospice. Very quickly, Prascher realized that the patients there were in there for longer periods than a weekend “Get well soon”, and had to prove that there was something dire that was wrong with them in order to get them into the ivy-covered walls of the building that so reminded Prascher of a plantation. To get inside required knowledge and persistence more akin to that of a star student entering Harvard than the babbling insanity of a homeless man. This institution was not interested in vanilla flavors of insanity, but was, instead, interested in credentials and in case-study fodder in return for what was, likely, for many in this institution, to be a life-long stay. Although Prascher certainly was glad that he was sound of mind, he could not help but be a little envious of some of the screws who were treated like the last living specimens of a near-extinct species.
Prascher was told that he was allowed to lounge around in his spacious apartment and in the various rooms in the massive building for a week before he was required to see the doctor. that had been assigned for him after he had completed the entrance examination.
The entrance examination proved to be as odd an experience as he had imagined it to be. No less than four people, dressed in clothing that could have been collectively worth more than the apartment that he had lived in before his capture, sat behind a table that looked to be more expensive than he dared to guess. The group of people then began to painstakingly question every aspect of his mind, his life experiences, and delicately tiptoed around the subject of his crimes. Despite his worries, Prascher was escorted out of the room after the interview was over, and he got the overall feeling that the examination, was, in fact, a mere formality, and he was escorted into what was to be his new home without any hesitation to otherwise.
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