Everyone called him Zeke. He came from a small town not far from the Oklahoma border. All of his male relatives died of cancer, specifically cancer of the prostate. His grandfather, his great-grandfather, and great-great-grandfather before him, and also all his uncles died of prostate cancer.

Zeke told his tale to a genetic counsellor. The good news, the counsellor said, was that none of Zeke’s first-degree relatives had prostate cancer. Yet. His father and his seven brothers had been spared. So far.

The bad news, the counsellor said, was that there was nothing Zeke could do but undertake regular tests. There were no lifestyle changes that could help him. “To put off bowel cancer you can eat better; to put off lung cancer you can stop smoking; to put off melanoma you can stay out of the sun, but with prostate cancer the biggest risk is your family history – and you can’t change your family history.”

Zeke went away and thought about it. He decided that the counsellor was wrong. He could change his family history.

Zeke invited his family to Thanksgiving dinner and, over the roast turkey (in fact, out of the roast turkey), he pulled a semi-automatic submachinegun and mowed down his male relatives, whom he had seated on the left side of the table for the convenience of murdering them.

He was arrested. The news anchors called him “The Beast.”

Against his lawyer’s advice, he pleaded self-defence. He was making sure none of his first-degree male relatives died of prostate cancer. It was hardly his fault that his parents had been such prolific progenitors. The self-defence strategy was not successful. The judge was unsympathetic and the jury found against him. Zeke the Beast was sentenced to death by electric chair. He appealed and lost. He wrote to the governor, who did not write back.

As he waited and watched the days run down towards his execution date, he was weighed down. If his male relatives had lived long enough to grow prostate cancers, then that his risk would have increased as well. His logic he knew was unimpeachable. But he could convince nobody — not even his surviving female relations, whom Zeke found to be strangely unwilling to listen to his persuasions.

The execution day duly arrived. It had taken many years but Zeke saw the truth at last. His life had to end this way. It had been ordained from the day he revealed his family’s predisposition to violent death among males. He had exhausted all appeals. He had won no reprieve. He walked to the electric chair without family or friends. The jailers strapped him down. He spoke no last words. There was a be a final pause and a last breath and then, with a downward movement of the wrist, the executioner fulfilled Ezekiel’s familial providence.