I really hope there is a bright light and a long tunnel. I hope God will approach me and shake my hand and order me a drink from the bar. If He should, I am sure the liquor will be stiff and the glass will be tall. I can see God as a bourbon guy. Bourbon and unfiltered cigarettes. I bet he’ll wear sneakers too.
Maybe I’ll meet up with all of the great minds of the past, and they will turn to me and say in unison,
“You had it right.” Maybe there will be a flavor better than vanilla. And perhaps, just perhaps, I’ll get another crack at this world. Maybe you will too. And perhaps, just perhaps, I’ll come back as your son or daughter.
Maybe then you’ll understand what true love is all about, when I look at you and you look at me and we enjoy a moment of comfortable silence.
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And maybe years from now, Doctor, as I sit beside you on your deathbed far away from here, I will turn to you and say thanks for bringing me into this lovely world, and bring a smile to your face. For that is all I could ever want.
—Edward Pritchard Caine
Page 157
Addendum
Edward Caine died on February 13th. He didn’t quite make Valentine’s day, I am sorry to say. It was his favorite holiday. It is my duty now, as he would have liked, to finish the tale with the same instrument I’ve been using all this time.
Edward spent the last years of his life in a compromised mental state. From all of the evidence I can gather, he was a good man with a big heart. In his final days, I spent a lot of time speaking with him, getting to know him, really. Sometimes a clouded mind speaks the most truth. Unfortunately, his mind did not provide for him all the years it should have been expected to.
Edward’s father was a sore subject for him, but I feel it would help you now to know more about him.
Robert Caine was a merchant who married too young and for all the wrong reasons. There’s no need to name them. When Edward arrived in this world, Robert felt jealous of him. Jealous of his own son. I don’t believe Edward ever got over this fully. The guilt was omnipresent.
Edward felt he had a lot to prove. He took to drinking as a young man, and he left his best years behind him as a teen. Very few people were able to see the good in him after that time. To be truthful, very few people saw the good in him before, from what I hear.
It is my belief that his real problems—the problems that eventually led to his mental breakdown—
originated at the time that the Solemn Stalker was doing his thing, back in the fall of ‘05. The whole occurrence turned Edward against humanity, and who can blame him? He began to dwell on the limitations and flaws of modern society. At first it led only to heavy drinking and a fatalistic attitude, but then the element of nature came into play. He seemed to develop a belief within himself that he had a purpose, something that most of Page 158
us never find for ourselves. For that I give him credit.
Unfortunately, he never reached his full potential.
Not by a long shot. His actions became despicable. He would curse the very people he loved. But it is my belief that he did all of this with the greatest of intentions. It was Edward’s desire to shake up the world, which we must quietly admit has gathered quite a bit of dust in recent times.
Edward was given a mind which craved knowledge, and he felt alone in that cause. There was no way anyone he knew could ever understand what he was feeling, no more than we can understand what anyone is feeling on God’s green Earth. Suffice it to say, he began as a simple man who had little noticeable effect on the world around him, and ended as a complex man who had just the same.
In truth, Edward never murdered anyone. Maybe now you’ll understand that, if you didn’t before. He fell into a spiral of self-pity where every day was a gray day in his eyes. He had, after all, only two options. He could try to fight an impossible battle—waking up the world to its own limitations—or he could fault himself.
He was a good man, as I’ve stated, and he chose the latter, not out of laziness or incompetence, but because he realized the other would only cause pain. Pain is something he’d rather inflict on himself. And so he did.
It started mentally, creating a fantasy world where the rules were his to create, where there was reason and purpose, and where he could place the blame squarely where he felt it belonged.
Eventually, his mind suffered from it, and this had repercussions on his day-to-day existence. He lost his lust and love for life, the qualities which made such a simple man so oddly admirable to begin with. At last, I presume, he found it just wasn’t worth the effort anymore.
I found his body on a Friday; that much I remember. The worst part about it is that, yes, it was my gun he used. And I have to live with that, always.
—Jill McIntyre-Caine
About the Author:
John W. Podgursky
John Podgursky lives in Brooklyn. He’s spent the last 15 years traveling the U.S. of A., trying to make sense of it all. He’s still confused, but sleeps well at night knowing that nobody else knows any better, and in the end we’re just going to die anyway.
Also from Damnation Books:
Concubine
by Geoff Chaucer
Erotica Horror
Short Story
ISBN: 978-1-61572-027-9 ebook
The Emperor fi nds a certain concubine very pleasing. She studies with an old hetaera to make herself yet more pleasing but soon discovers that the old woman is actual y in the employ of the Empress and has something other that the sexual pleasure of the Emperor in mind.
Natural
selection
has
become
unnatural. Having dealt with the vicious murder of his wife, Edward Caine takes his rightful place as a One-Percenter, eliminating those not fit for the human race. He must fight his instinct to use his role for revenge; he is after those who live on only because of money and medicine.
The weak-gened are not fit to breed, and it's the job of Edward and his brethren to see that they don't. But can he finish the job before his own mind betrays him? He is an agent of the Earth. He is a One-Percenter.
Damnation Books, LLC
P.O. Box 3931
Santa Rosa, CA 95402
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
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The One Percenters Page 16