Logline:

There is a dark secret that follows the lineage of Jay Bozeman (15) and it usually presents around puberty. His father compares the transformation to a self-awakening, but it’s more of a nightmare. Jay starts to realize, like his father and grandfather before him, that his greatest urge in life is to kill other people.

Synopsis:

Jay Boseman has a beautiful face. He has beautiful eyes. He is detached and aloof, but he is whip smart and just charming enough to make people overlook the fact that he may or may not be staring a little too long at their necks. He has a life that people would probably call charmed. There is only one slightly troubling obstacle that keeps him from leading a happy and prosperous life in the suburbs: he is turning into a sociopathic killer.

It happened to his dad at fifteen. The same with his grandfather. They both went to war and got it out of their systems. That is the one saving grace of his situation – the impulse can be alleviated and the hunger seems to fade with each bloody knife or smoking gun. This fact does not immediately comfort Jay, who has already chosen his first victim. It’s the girl next door.

His father and grandfather beg him to try to control his urges until they can send him to an active combat site. They start googling the idea of making him a foreign national so that he can fight somewhere quickly. Jay asks how they kept a lid on the family secret so long. It turns out that both of them were able to lie and get into the service early. Modern record keeping makes that much harder.

A couple of brushes with temptation leads his father to take him to uncle Gary. He is the only one of the family who has not killed anyone. He lives on an island in a lake. He practices the guitar all day. When Jay asks his secret he finds that the answer is less about self control and more about killing himself slowly with the poisons of the world. It creeps him out. He cannot follow that path.

His situation brings him to a crossroads. He plans the discrete murder of the girl and ends up saving her life from an attack. He is the hero. She kisses him and proclaims that he belongs to her now. They are soulmates.

He once considered that his problem might have been the pre-existing condition of being born without a soul. Maybe this was a new way out?