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JackCain · (05-01-2017)

**Jack Cain sits alone on the hood of his car. It's dusk as he looks out over a quarry. next to him is a large sniper rifle, a smaller snub nosed carbine and a handgun. The setting sun glints off the wing mirror, and reflects off the scope that's attached to the top of the sniper rifle. Cain squints as the dying beams catch the corner of his eye. Deep in thought, he reaches into his pocket, and pulls out a small leather folder. He delicately reaches inside, and pulls out a piece of paper that's been meticulously folded into four neat quarters many times. Gently, carefully, he begins to open out the note. The words on it are faded with the passage of time - but he knows them by heart. Each time he starts reading it anew, he begins to smile - filled with memories of joy and happiness. But he knows each time he reaches the end that joy will have gone, replaced by rage, anger, and finally emptiness. He starts to read out loud**

"Dear Jack,

I know that this is the letter you've been looking forward to getting for weeks. I know it's the letter that has kept you going through the dark places, and I know how dark they are for you.

I want you to know that this letter is to help you get away from those dark places - to know that someone loves you enough to take your hand and drag you away from all the thoughts that you have that you've tried so desperately to leave behind. You need someone like that Jack - whether you believe it or not. Someone with that much dark in their life needs some light. I hope I've done that for you.

People told me when I met you, that you were a man difficult to connect with - but I still wanted to try. My mother and father didn't approve. They wanted me to marry a schoolteacher, or a football coach, or a lawyer - something respectable, and safe.

But you weren't safe were you? You never were. And I loved you despite that. You were always first to stand up for someone. To stand up for me. You taught me freedom of choice, freedom of expression, and never to be afraid of standing on your own two feet.

We were perfect weren't we? Before you left for that awful war, you were the man who made me a more confident, rounded human being. You taught me the value of life, why doing the right thing was important. I'd like to think that I helped you become a better human being, not focusing on those negative thoughts that I know you had, and still have.

Which makes what I have to say all the more difficult.

I love you Jack, I really do, but I don't think I can save you anymore. Where you've been to, I can't bring you back from. When you came home from your last tour, you'd changed. Your temper was worse, you didn't notice that I needed more from you than ever - but you were just so obsessed by the war. You talked about it every day. You dreamed about it, thought about it, and when you got into that fight, it showed me just how much you'd changed.

Seeing what you've become, I can't really say I can be the person you need. You're beyond what I can do for you. When I saw that darkness, that despair, that violence in your eyes, I just wanted to get away from you.

I was scared of you Jack, and that scares me even more.

That's why, when you get home, you won't find me there anymore. I've not taken anything - I've left you with what you need to get by, but there is one thing I hope you take from me: Hope.

Don't let the darkness consume you Jack. You're better than that. You're a good man, deep down. The fighting, the violence, the side of you that I've started to see - I know that's not the real you, I just know it's how you've been melded, shaped and distorted by what's happened to you. I just can't twist you back into shape anymore.

You were my soulmate Jack - I just can't love a man who has no soul anymore.

Karen."

**Cain continues to stare at the paper**

I never heard from her again. I saw her a few times. I even found out that her new boyfriend Jeff was a football coach. I watched them together a few times and contemplated what I'd do. I thought about confronting them, I thought about the rational approach, arguing my point, and even pleading that I wasn't that far gone.

Then I thought about beating the shit out of Jeff, and leaving her crying in the street. That would have felt good.

But then I realised that doing that meant she was right.

The dark - it had come to get me - and I'd given myself willingly to it. I'd jumped in headfirst because I wanted to. I wanted to make sure the world was a safer place, so I fought, scrapped, and killed to do my part for my country, but I realised in the end I was just doing it for myself. All I was doing was making myself feel better about me. I was filling a hole that I couldn't hope to fill with anything else. Not lvoe, affection, a family. None of it mattered.

All I wanted to do was hurt people.

I remember gunning down insurgents in Iraq. I remember seeing the life disappear out of their eyes when they realised they were taking their last breath. I remember fighting a guy and punching him so hard his face busted open - then hitting him some more because I wanted to make sure he would never get up.

There's nothing so primal as seeing another man recognise that you're the man taking it all away. You're the man destroying his life. You're the reason he won't go home tonight. You're the reason his kids will never see him again. Sometimes, you're the reason a mother won't go home to her children, or why a daughter won't live to become a mother. Because of you.

**Cain carefully refolds the letter and places it back in the leather wallet, before putting it back in his jacket pocket. He gets off the hood, and picks up the handgun**

But none of that matters, because you think you have something to cling on to. You think you have a reason to put all that behind you. You believe that everything you're doing can't be all bad, because there is something - someone - of pure heart waiting for you at the end.

**Cain contemplates the gun. He picks up a magazine, slams it into the stock, racks the rails and flicks off the safety. He looks down the barrel**

This is a Beretta M9. It ain't the pussy version you see in the movies - that's a 92F - this thing takes 15 9mm rounds, and can put a hole in your head the size of a golf ball. And it's easy to use. All you have to do is point it in the right direction and squeeze the trigger.

**Cain points the Beretta at the ground and fires twice. The shots echo around the quarry like a drum**

But it's a weapon of limited means. There are no guarantees. Fire it from far enough away, maybe it sways in the wind, maybe it jerks when you fire, maybe the round nicks off a bone, hits soft tissue. There's loads of ways you can escape it. It's a weapon for how I used to feel - unfocused, full of power, but no direction. This is what Karen meant. I knew what I had to do, but how I did it was a mess, and there was lots of potential for collateral damage.

**Cain puts the gun back down. He picks up the carbine. He cracks the magazine into place and pulls back the bolt. Aiming down the sights, he lets off five three round bursts**

The Colt M4 Carbine. Powerful, precise, and capable of great damage. A three round burst can shatter your spine or gut you like a fish. You can't outrun this, or outmanoeuvre it. It's only drawback is penetration. Just as much chance of a flesh wound as there is of a killing shot. And if whoever you're shootin' at finds cover, then you gotta use a lot of ammo to flush em out. Like Karen said, you gotta use a lot of effort to get what you want.

**He puts the carbine on the hood. Finally, he moves to the sniper rifle - a huge weapon that relieves pressure on the hood when it's lifted. Even Cain, at 6'10" and 328 lbs, struggles to haul it onto the roof. He flips open a cap on the scope and brushes dust off the muzzle brake at the end of the barrel. He aims and lets off a single shot. The noise booms around the quarry like a thunderclap. Across the other side of the ravine, a dust cloud blooms where the .50 round punched into the granite.**

This is the Barrett M82A3 - 10 box mag with .50 cal rounds. This is where I am now. Karen said I was overwhelmed by the darkness, that I couldn't live through it.

Well you know what? I was, but I learned to focus it. To aim it, to turn it into a weapon. Like this. It's got precision, and devastation. It'll pop any part of your body open like a grapefruit. It'll finish you off before you even know the guy firing it has pulled the trigger. It's dark lightening in a bottle, and all you gotta do to let it out is squeeze.

That letter Karen wrote to me showed me that while she thought that darkness was wrong, and I needed to be saved - there ain't really any point. Yeah, she was saving me, but when she ain't there no more, there ain't no point to being saved. Now, I'm just a weapon.

I didn't give in to the darkness, I welcomed it in like an old friend, because it's made me what I am.

Danny Imperial, I'm focused, I'm ready, I'm angry and I've got nothing to lose. I don't want your title for the reputation, or the vindication. I don't want it to suddenly prove I'm above all the things that have made me how I am today. I don't want the prize because it might make me more money or enhance my reputation. I want it because it give me a chance to do what I do best.

Like the Barrett, there's no chance of error. When I hit you, and I will hit you, you will get the full force of everything I have and there will be no spot where I won't do damage. I will hurt you so bad that you'll be wishing your limbs were cut off to spare you the pain.

Thomas Nixon? Everyone seems to think you're some big deal - that you're some smart ass psycho. I don't really care. All I know is that if you can be dark, I can be darker. I've seen what happens when people are really scared - Goddamn it I even scare away the people closest to me. The sad part is I don't care anymore. So you think I'm scared of you? You think I care what you - either of you - try to do to stop me?

There isn't any way to stop me - because I don't care anymore. If I have no soul - it means I have no remorse, no compunction about what I'm about to do - and you're gonna feel what it's like to be told your time is up.

**The camera fades away on Cain as the sun begins to set**

Threaded Mode \| Linear Mode What drives a man with no soul?
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