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JackCain · (07-01-2017)

**Grey skies over New York. A black Plymouth Gran Fury cuts a swathe through the water that's pooling on the asphalt from the torrential rainfall. Windshield wipers are flying back and forth, sending water splashing off to the sides as the car drifts in and out of traffic. Horns sound as people cut each other up, drowned out by the noise of thousands of engines grumbling along, mirroring the sentiment of their owners.

Lights drably illuminate the roadway as more cars join the carriageway. Day slowly turns into night as grey gives way to black. The lights become pinpricks of white, orange and red against a blanket of ebony, coating the busy road.

Inside the car, Jack Cain grips the wheel, the sound of the rain like rapid gunfire bouncing off the roof of the old vehicle. The radio blares out the song above, barely audible above the atmospherics. When the chorus hits, Cain breaks out in a twisted smile as he steers the car into even thicker traffic**

Y'know, I could try and get classical here, but it don't look like Jenny Myst or Neville Sinclair want to hear what I gotta say. There's a nice little line that everyone keeps misquotin': "Music soothes the savage beast."

Only, as usual, everyone keeps gettin' it wrong. Everyone thinks it's Shakespeare - but it ain't. It ain't even the right quote.

William Congreve. The Mourning Bride. 1697. See Neville? I'm learnin' culture. Pour me a cup of chamomile and butter me a scone. The caveman has a brain.

But I'll get to you soon. First I wanna talk about Jenny. My friend Jenny.

**The music in the car seemingly gets louder as Cain pauses. He grips the steering wheel tighter, his knuckles turning white, betraying his calm exterior**

You think you saw fear in my eyes last week? You think I'm scared? You don't know fear Jenny. You don't know scared.

You will.

Fear's relative. Lesnar is my problem. Not yours, and yeah, I'm preparing for him, but at the end of the day, like Gilmour is next Wednesday, you're small change compared to him. You're a fuckin' warm up act Jenny. The entertainment before the main show.

You seem to think that people are waitin' with baited breath to see you on their TV screens - and you know what, they are! They absolutely are! But they aren't the guys who want to spend their evening with their greasy hands rammed down their pants - however much you'd like 'em to be. They're the ones who are sick of your fuckin' pixie prattle Jenny. All the guys who've got a moanin' old bag like you at home, who have to listen to some little foot stompin' crybaby talk about wine, goin' out with the girls and how much better life would be if they just gave 'em more money.

All those guys want to see me crack your fuckin' mouth open and give you a facelift that you wouldn't wanna pay for. All those guys will be tuned in on Saturday, beggin' me to boot you so hard up the ass you're gonna have to take a shit outta your mouth for a year. Hell, even Chris is backin' me to do that. Go on, ask him? He'll tell ya "yes baby, you go and beat mean old Jack", when really he's just glad for five minutes peace from your fuckin' incessant yappin'. It's ok, Chris, I'll do you a favour. and break her jaw so you can finally get some shuteye instead of listenin' to her drawl on about Baywatch or some shit at 4am. Hell, I'll even give you a TV Title shot outta sympathy if it means givin' you 15 minutes outta earshot of that scraggy bitch.

Unless you like the idea of guys wankin' off to your slut's plastic titties? They ain't been near the real thing though have they Chris? It's like one of those commercials where you see like a cereal and it's in ice cold milk and the cereal looks all crisp, when in reality it's plastic cereal and superglue - all artificial. Just like your old whore.

At least if I'm an oversized freak Jenny, I'm oversized in the right places. Big nose, big hands, big feet, maybe even a big dick, but I'm sure you've seen your fair share of those in your time. I'd offer to show it to ya but it'd be like drivin' a semi-truck through the Channel Tunnel: It's still big, but compared to the fuckin' cavern between your legs, it'd never touch the fuckin' sides.

**Cain checks his face in the mirror as he waits to take an off ramp from the freeway**

But y'know what really hurts Jenny? The fact you keep sayin' I'm ugly. It's really upsettin' me y'know? I'm not sure how I can go on. I have a catcher's mitt for a face? Holy shit, that's some A-Level mental trauma there lady! You really think I give a fuck how I look? If I did, I wouldn't be quite happy to fuck myself up, just as much as you.

I would walk through barbed wire just to get a chance to break every bone in your body. I'd go barefoot over broken glass just for the chance to avoid pissin' on you if you were on fire (I know you normally charge guys for that, but we live in a consumer society, so I can't blame ya).

That should give you an idea of just how much I want to finish what I started in that battle royal a few weeks ago. Perfection's relative Jenny. To you, you're perfect - to me, you're just another spoiled little girl who's opened her legs to entrap a guy too dumb to know what's best for him. I don't know who's the bigger fool - you or him. If he thinks you're perfect, he needs an eye test or a fuckin' IQ test.

Unless he was one of those guys in the basements you keep talkin' about?

Unless Chris Chaos was just a serial internet porn wanker who was the absolute best you could do while all the guys who you really wanted were off with the prom queen, or the other girls who didn't have vaginas that looked like a horse had been munchin' on them for six months?

**Cain takes the off ramp and re-tunes the radio as he drives down to a quayside not far from the freeway**

Well, this is appropriate isn't it? A song about how shit the rich authority figures are and how they treat other people like dirt. Jesus Christ, Neville, I'm surprised they ain't gotta pay you royalties every time this comes on, it's like it was written about you!

Your past, your whole fuckin' country's past, is all about class, and how you love to keep the workin' man down - and if the guy stands up for himself? Well, just crush the fucker under your boot, ain't that the way it works Neville?

Well it will be come Saturday, cos what you're forgettin' is that while you're lookin' forward to our match, it don't compare to actually bein' in there. You got a nice little warm up last week, but I make it my fuckin' business not to give people like you an easy fuckin' ride. This is a different pot of Assam, if you get my meanin'?

So how about I crush you under my boot, like you crush people who are less fortunate than you? I can do it. Ask Super Mario. Ask Brian Harris. Ask Gabriel Emerick. Ask Obsidian Air. Ask Mezian. Ask Dredzin. Ask Thomas Nixon. At least three of them ain't been seen since I knocked 'em out. That should tell ya somethin'. This ain't a tea party or a reasoned debate - and you're right, tryna' read up on British history maybe wasn't the best way to go about it.

All it did was show me how to lose, because that's what you're good at ain't it? When was the last time your country won a war, that wasn't against people wearin' grass skirts, unless we turned up to bail you out?

The UK is great reflection of you Neville. You talk a good show, but when it comes to the crunch, you really don't have the confidence or belief to back it up. Your damned government even needs 10 guys from Ireland to make it work. You vote to leave Europe, then a year later you decide it might not be a good idea, and your Prime Minister fucks things up, and her nearest challenger turns up at a fuckin' music festival to put flowers in his hair.

But you're still pretty good at fuckin' over the common man ain't ya? Takin' money off pensioners, turnin' down the chance to raise a pay cap for doctors and nurses? Fuckin' hell, anyone would think you want the rich to get richer, and the poor to get poorer?

**The car stops at the quayside, and Cain gets out, heavy rain spattering against his leather coat as he squints his eyes to shield them against the oncoming storm. He lifts his collar and plunges his hands into his pockets**

That was somethin' my dad taught me Neville, and before you start spewin' bile about him, I heard it all before, and so did he, so if you go diggin' up that grave, I'll split your fuckin' skull in half so quickly Hugo won't have time to blow his nose.

But there is somethin' he used to teach me, that struck a chord when you started talkin' to me about Afghanistan.

If you think me refusin' an order was offensive, then fuck me son, I apologise profusely. But y'see it's easy for you to sit in your fuckin' mansion and play with your balls while watchin' Coronation Street. When you're out there, you got people like you who send guys to die because they don't know any better. And you got guys like me who try to save the people who don;t give a shit about as long as you get a medal.

Let me tell you somethin' about war Neville. It's about the preservation of an ideal. It ain't about dyin' for a cause. It's ain't about doin' your duty. There' ain't no point to an ideal if everyone dies to protect it, cos then the ideal dies too.

Yeah I disobeyed an order, and I just wonder if that boils your piss that I was right and your precious chum from the the mess hall was wrong? Could it be that a dumb grunt like me actually knew better than one of your privileged officer types? Hell, maybe we'd be done better in that fuckin' rat hole if we'd listened to guys like me instead of just sendin' guys into hails of bullets to die.

Sometimes courage ain't just wanderin blindly into the line of fire to get your liver blown out. Sometimes courage is tellin' the guy who's told you to do that that he can fuck himself. Can you imagine if everyone had done what he said, and got killed, then Al-Qaeda comes down that hill, skins him alive and leaves him screamin' in the road? Instead we thought about it, came up with a new plan and burned those shitstains alive in their little foxhole. So more of our guys got to go home instead of rottin' in Arlington.

Cos that's what happens when guys like you are in charge. You never see the bigger picture you keep talkin' about, that one order can be a bad one.

And that's where my dad comes in. He told me, before I joined up, that followin' orders was a lot like life. If it makes sense, do it, but if it don't, if it strains every sinew in your soul, then question it, and do whatever is necessary to make sure the people around you get outta that alive. You think orders are to win the battle?
No they fuckin' ain't. They're done to minimise casualties while achieving an objective. And if you give that order to some shit who values the colours over the lives of his men, then people die. Dumb cunts like you wouldn't get that Neville - you'd just wave the flag, shine your sword and ride into the bulletstorm - after you'd sent 10,000 men before you.

How clever you are.

The "rank and order" you talk about, that protects people like you from being accountable for their actions, is what's wrong with you. Rank doesn't mean as much as respect Neville. Rank is earned in the right circumstances, but in most cases, it's given. Respect though, is purely earned. You can buy rank - you of all people could buy rank Neville - but it wouldn't do you any good when you're out there in the real world. You don't have to explain it to me, I may be a grunt. but I knew enough.

The guys in my outfit knew that if the shit started to fly, then some officers would look after them, others would use them as human shields, others would just turn tale and run.

I wonder which one you'd be?

You talk about that bigger picture like a man who painted it, rather than lived it. Real leaders don't make decisions thinking about jolly old Blighty back home. They don't think about trotting home to Cecilia so you can be married on Micklemass Day.

Are you really dumb enough to believe all that claptrap you're fed on the news about wars being for "the greater good"? Ask Bush, Ask Blair. Ask the guys who died because those two kicked off a war they didn't have a fuckin' clue how to win. That's not about protectin' your homeland - that's about winning political points. Leadership isn't about how many buttons you have on your tunic, how many stripes you have on your arm, how many medals you have on your chest. It's about respect. I got those guys outta that situation in Tora Bora, and I got those men's respect. I didn't get it for sending them off to die.

You might think of yourself as a great leader of men Neville, you might think you're much like your Lord Nelson, a fantastic commander who'll be loved and revered by your peers and descendants for years and years to come.

But men like him ARE men of influence Neville. They ARE men who command respect. But you're not like them. You can't be. You have no fuckin' influence. You can't influence the outcome of this match any more than you can pull Queen Elizabeth outta your fuckin' ass.

Influence ain't worth anythin' to a guy like me. I don't care about your influence, or anyone influencin' me. You have to have the strength of mind to be yourself. You don't have to be a leader to have respect, and I'd rather have that than influence, you stuck up Limey fuck.

**Cain straightens up and looks into the bay, watching the raindrops dissipate into the water below**

I'll tell you something about influence Neville - it dissolves over time. Respect doesn't. Nelson's influence has faded, otherwise your great country wouldn't be fuckin' things up like they are now. Your influence, however great, will fade, like rainfall into the river. You can watch it fall all day and all night, but once it hits the surface, it's forgotten.

That sums up you, and Jenny. You desperately want people to notice ya. You desperately want to be remembered as the most beautiful, the most intelligent, the most attractive, the most classy. For a while, you'll be all anyone talks about, just like the rain.

But eventually, you'll fall into the river, and you'll be swallowed up, and no one will remember you. Not your ass, not your tits, not your influence, not your education.

They won't even know you existed.

And that time?

Well, it's just like the rain.

It's comin' sooner than you think...

**The camera fades to black on Cain as the sound of the rain hitting the water's surface continues...**

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