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JackCain · (06-28-2017)

**Jack Cain sits in New York's public library. His leather coat hangs haphazardly from the chair behind him. On the desk in front of him is a half consumed bottle of water, replaced so many times it's left rings of moisture on the worn table top. Two candy bar wrappers are screwed up not far away. A pile of red bound, well-thumbed books are away to the left, with another three on the right.

In front of Cain, he is halfway through another lengthy volume. He wears a cheap pair of spectacles to help him read, despite the sunlight that streams through a nearby ornate window.

The camera cuts to a closeup on one of the books on the left, showing gold embossed words: "British Military History - Vol. 1"

Cain turns another page, and removes his glasses before rubbing the bridge of his nose with thick, callused fingers. He places the specs down on the table and regards the viewer**

Real interestin' to hear what you've gotta say, Neville. I mean. If I was tryna' tell everyone what a colossal prick I was then I'd be sure takin' an "education" from you.

Usual shit I noticed. "Blah blah I worked for my money", "Blah blah I've contributed to society", "Blah blah I want to be remembered for being a self made man"

I think the British phrase is... what was it?... Oh yeah.

Bollocks.

All I heard was another silver spooned skid mark tellin' me how superior they were to me.

Heard it all before Neville. You won't be the first. Won't be the last.

I focused on the money cos despite what you say, it defines you. You can't be "self made" if you don't have that at the end of it. I love the "I don't need it" shit.

If you don't need it - give it the fuck away. Go live in a flat in some run down suburb. Give up the butler. Give up the house. Go on - if you're sincere, show people what a great guy you are by givin' it away.

But you won't, because that's just the type of guy you are. You talk about it, but you never do it.

**Cain thumbs through the volume he's been reading**

Just like your little ode to Nelson. You praise a man who served, and then deify him because he had the stripes. I imagine it's somethin' you always wanted to be Neville. The pomp and circumstance? The shiny brass buttons? The feelin' of tellin' people to do exactly what you say, with no way to question you?

I've met plenty of people like you.

The only difference is if you send your man off to make your lunch, he's just gotta worry about overgrilling your sole.

The guys who I knew sent people off to die.

Power goes to the head of people like you Neville. Power makes you the type of man who'd think nothing of sending a man like me off to die, because you can.

You love guys like Nelson because they feed the romanticism of your idea of war. You think everythin' is a fuckin' brass band cavalry charge to glory.

But you couldn't be more wrong.

I'll tell you a story about "dime-a-dozen, tough talking, meat-and-potatoes SOBs like me"

December 2001, Battle of Tora Bora, a mountain range in Afghanistan. It's a failure - massive clusterfuck of the highest order - but that didn't rest with the guys on the ground. It rested with guys like you.

Me and the other guys from 1st Recon Battalion get attached to a Coalition squad that's supposed to sweep up the left side of the range, drive into the caves there, wipe out the shitheads who are dug in and use it to provide covering fire for the armour that's gonna head up what's left of the main road through the villages.

Only our intel is wrong.

We run into more machine gun nests than I've ever seen. The bastards are turning us into fuckin' red paint on this Goddamn dirt road halfway up a mountain in a country half of these guys can even spell, never mind knowin' why they should die here.

And there's this British guy in charge of the group. And he's told us to charge. To fuckin' charge. Three guys try to take this emplacement and they get mashed into shit. There's red running through the sand, soakin' it, turnin' it into thick, crimson mud.

"Keep goin' we gotta take it!" He shouts, and he points at me, and two other kids, and they go stormin' up that hill and the same happens. He looks at me and orders me to go, and I tell him to fuck off.

He looks at me and orders me again, and I tell him to fuck off again. I ain't dyin' so this prick can radio home and tell everyone to pour him a cup of Earl Grey.

He wants more guys to go, and I tell them to stand fast. He gets in my face while the bastards ahead of us are chuckin' lead at us.

He wants to send "dime-a-dozen" guys like me to die. So I told him to get off his fuckin' high horse and do it himself.

So I took command while he got behind a rock and screamed his head off after a round grazed his arm. We went up high and dropped grenades on these fuckers and then we made our way up.

By the time we get the call that Bin Laden ain't even there, Captain Jack is gettin' the evil eye from the rest of the troop who knew he'd of just kept sending them into the line of fire "because he was an officer".

But I did somethin' about it, Neville. I changed the strategy and we got the job done. Me. One of the "meat-and-potatoes SOBs" that you think nothin' of.

You're right, there's thousands of names on cenotaphs around the world from hundreds of wars that people stop rememberin' when the last soldier dies. No one knows every name. They can't. Too many died because they listened to people like you Neville. There aren't too many names of guys like you on there, because you're always the ones directin' traffic. World War I. World War 2. Iraq. Afghanistan. I've been readin' your history. Tales of politicians, generals, commanders who've done their part, and some who haven't. Your upper class buds drink whiskey and polish boots while some of us march through the mud and watch our friends die.

Strikes me you're just another finger pointin' Captain Jack. Sendin' people to do the things you don't wanna get your hands dirty with. Well to get hold of what you call "my pinnacle achievement" you're gonna have to do that.

You say your greatness is recognised? What greatness? What have you done, other than show everyone what a stuck up, unfeelin' shitstain you really are?

For all the people who've had to go off and die because a man like you told them to Neville, I'm gonna win.

For all the people who screamed for their mother while guys like you sat on a horse ten miles away and looked through telescopes, I'm gonna win.

For all the guys - like Nelson - who took a bullet because they believed in standin' by their men, I'm gonna win.

But finally, I'm gonna win cos you're no better than the hundreds of men before you who never made it onto those cenotaphs, because they were too fuckin' scared to stare death in the face.

**Cain gets up and folds his glasses, before gently replacing each of the books on the shelves behind him**

Oh don't think I've forgotten about you either Jenny.

I'm just lookin' for the section on infectious diseases to see if somethin' catalogues all the fuckin' infections you're carryin' around in your groin.

But I noticed you started insultin' my looks? Jenny. I'm hurt. I really am. I mean, I know I'm no oil paintin', but really, that's below the belt.

Pretty much like where Chris Chaos's brains gotta be if he's fuckin' you.

Seriously. I couldn't give a shit what I look like - and if the TV Title means I'm the face of the company, then it's a damned good job we air programmes after 9pm, cos otherwise all the little snowflakes and kiddies out there might get scared that big, ugly Jack is the champ.

What a fuckin' shame.

The thing is, if you wanna be honest about it - I can't see how you're gonna be an improvement.

Yeah, I got a broken nose. I got a cauliflower ear. I got a few split lips and a few black eyes in my time.

But can you imagine what the fuck you're gonna look like when I'm done with you?

Jenny, the only way Chris is gonna wanna fuck you when I'm done is if you have a bag over your head. I'm gonna take that pretty little face and make it look like someone's stapled a burger to your eyebrows.

I do like though that you called me Frankenstein. I really love that book. Aside from the fact you made the classic fuckin' error - Frankenstein is the Doctor, not the monster - I consider that a compliment.

Monsters are real Jenny. The sooner your realise that the better. And all the TV stations in the country love a bit of gratuitous violence - so on Saturday, I'm gonna fuckin' oblige 'em.

I'm gonna turn you into a monster Jenny. I'm gonna make you so ugly and ashamed to show your face in public you'll wish you were a fuckin' nun who's taken a vow of solitude.

**Cain stops by the horror section in the library**

Thing about Frankenstein though Jenny, is that it's really a story about warnings.

It's about a guy who doesn't heed the Doctor's warning. It's a warning not to become obsessed with trying achieve somethin' that's outta your reach. That you shouldn't spend your life chasin' a dream so relentlessly that you create a monster.

This soundin' familiar? It should. You're becomin' a monster Jenny. You're becoming' what you don't wanna be. You're lettin' your avarice and greed consume you. You're becoming' ugly Jenny. Because you wanna beat me.

You're becoming like me.

With that in mind Jenny, you should read the endin' of Frankenstein.

**Cain takes the book from the shelf - a black bound copy of Mary Shelley's horror story - and skips to the final page**

Cos what happens to dear old Victor's monster in the end - is gonna happen to you and Neville. Ain't no one gonna remember his China Tea Set claptrap when this is over, or your airheaded shitty monologue next week.

Just read the end.

**The camera zooms in on the final paragraph of the open book**

"I shall die, and what I now feel be no longer felt. Soon these burning miseries will be extinct. I shall ascend my funeral pile triumphantly, and exult in the agony of the torturing flames. The light of that conflagration will fade away; my ashes will be swept into the sea by the winds. My spirit will sleep in peace; or if it thinks, it will not surely think thus. Farewell."

He sprung from the cabin-window, as he said this, upon the ice-raft which lay close to the vessel.

He was soon borne away by the waves and lost in darkness and distance.

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