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     Creating Caddman
     Part 3:  "Death of a Salzman"
     by Jeff Pruitt
        (Throw away your staples.  Always use thumbtacks.)


     The trip from Grandlake Drive to Ludlowville was not far, only five
miles or so.  It *was*, however, a rough-enough trip to knock Dan Salzman
unconscious for the final time in this life on the inside of the trunk lid.
"Not again," he thought as he dropped into uneasy slumber.
     The Lincoln Mark 8, black of color, was nearly invisible on this night.
A night similar to most others in this upstate New York town.  The best way
to describe weather conditions in this town (oh, let's give it a name
already.  It is after all, the third chapter! Let's call it Ithaca.) could be
done so in a single word:  rain.
     In Ithaca it rained.  A large percentage of the time.  Rain.  Drizzle.
Sprinkle.  Downpour.  Snow.  Liquid-sunshine.  It was called many things, and
came in many varieties, but it was all the same, really.  Which, of course,
made Ithaca a real gloomy place to live sometimes.
     Overlord liked gloom.  He preferred it to sunshine, heat, warmth -- all
those anti-Ithaca weather patterns.  Eventually, they all lead back to that
*sweat* phobia.  Dank, musty places were livable places.  He accomplished his
best work in damp basements.  This also helped to explain why he had
constructed his office-away-from-the-office where he had.
     The night had just come on, and grew to pitch black by half past eight
on this mid-April evening.  The Lincoln was still nothing more than a shadow
in the light drizzle that was falling.  It even acted like a shadow; the rain
could not grab hold of it, and only fell on the road to either side.
     The road twisted and turned the closer the badniks came to what they
liked to think of as their clubhouse.  Hitman enjoyed the sound of water that
was all around the place - it put him in a killing mood.  Henchman enjoyed the
feat of engineering.  It was a quiet place away from the rest of the world.
He could pretend he was a real businessman while in the clubhouse.  Overlord
liked the wind-drops.
     Once in the town of Ludlowville, the road turned back to dirt, as a
tribute to the town's forefathers (or was that four fathers?  You could never
really be sure in Ludlowville).  The Lincoln took pleasure in inflicting pain
on its luggage in the trunk.  It hit every pothole it could find, jostling
Dan all about, keeping him unconscious.
     Ludlowville, for those not familiar with the town, is not really large
enough to call a -ville.  It should be referred to as a flea on the left ear
of a miniature camel, but since there's no simple name for such a thing, (at
least not in English) I suppose they just verbally increased the town's size.
(Just as an example, Ludlowville is too small to have a "four corners".  It
has "two corners and a village playground".)
     It was this playground's parking lot that was the hangout of the Lincoln
Mark 8 while its owner was taking care of other business.  It would often sit
there in the lot during warm summer days, looking lost and deserted, broken
down, or abandoned.  But at night it took on a completely different
personality.  Ludlowville youngsters would sneak into the playground for late
night fun, all the while unsuspecting the fright that lurked in the darkened
dirt lot.
     The Lincoln would watch them run and frolick through the park until at
last they stood just in front of its front bumper.  And then it would flash
on the high-beam headlights!
     It would watch with delight as the kiddies froze in their tracks, staring
into the lights as though instantly transformed into turtles seeing for the
first time the semi that is thirty feet away. Oh, what it would give (its
interior lights, maybe) to hit the accelerator just then!
     But until the Overlord agreed to clean up afterwards...
     This evening it allowed Hitman to guide it into the familiar parking
space.  It sighed a car-sigh when the occupants got out and pulled their
groceries from the trunk.  (Think about it -- does a car know that *people*
are getting in and out and not oversized bunches of asparagus?  Well, some
extraordinarily bright cars do, I suppose.)  For all Lincoln knew, the
Overlord had put a large grocery bag in the trunk.  Groceries that for some
inexpliccable reason needed to be knocked from consciousness.
     Overlord lead the way through the darkened playground.  He quickly looked
around the damp grasses for life signs.  There were none in this weather.  And
so he lead Hitman and Henchman onward through the park to the edge of a steep
embankment.
     Downward he lead them, slowly here as the bank was littered with trees
which deepened the blackness.  They climbed down the craggy, rock-strewn
hillock, picking their way between boulders jutting into their path.
     "Are we there yet?" Henchman asked.  "I'm cold."
     "Shut up!"  The Overlord went throught this every time he brought them
to this hideout.
     They could hear water cascading over falls not far ahead, but for the
present, their path continued to follow the slope of the land.  At last it
leveled and the ground became muddy and treacherous; they were nearing the
stream.
     Back upstream Hitman and Henchman followed the Overlord, carrying Dan
Salzman between them.  "Are we there yet?"  Hitman whined, knowing from the
many previous trips here that they were not.
     "Shut the Hell up," was the murmured reply from not too far ahead.
     Onward they trudged through the muck on the bank of Ludlowville stream
until at last after a quarter of any hour, they stood at the base of the
waterfall.  The wind was against them this night; the misting water wetting
the faces of the three villains and their prisoner.
     Overlord had not paused, he continued to walk toward the water, seemingly
oblivious to the cascading water, determined it would seem, to drench himself.
He would wait no longer for his men.  They would follow or they would drown.
And with them, Dan Salzman...
     He turned to wait for them, then continued to the very spot where the
water splashed into the basin littered with rocks that had broken off from
far above.  Here he opened a door in the wall of rock that was the cliffside.
     Beyond was a short, U-shaped tunnel that lead them to an alcove beneath
the falls.  It was here, at the far back wall of the alcove, that a small hole
lead into the Overlord's hideout.  On the wall above this place, he had carved
a sign into the stone.  "Seekrit Highdout of the Overlord,  Do Not Come In.
This meens yoo.  And if yoo do, then I will bee mad!"  He could never quite
explain why he had lost so many of his belongings from within...


                                  *** Why ***


     Destiny Joy Fate had been completely devistated when Dan Salzman had
told her to get the fu!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (D.E.V.O.L. here -- we regret to inform
you that the writer has taken verbal liberties in this paragraph that are not
acceptable for all social conversations.  Perhaps, in the future, a time will
come when we can replace these words.  Until then, we offer the following
lines to complete the paragraph.)  Dan had told Destiny in a very bad way to
go away and never come back.
     She did go away.  But soon decided that he needed to be paid back, and
began using her mostly-latent telepathic powers against her ex-lover.
     She began slowly at first, while developing the talent, by hiding Dan's
keys, or pulling his chair from beneath him.  As she became stronger and more
powerful, she found she could knock him over with telepathic punches.  Once
she even unrolled all the toilet paper into the bowl and flushed just as Dan
was entering the lavatory.
     Yesterday she had stopped sensing him for about two seconds in the early
evening.  It was as though he had not lived through those few moments.  She
dismissed the event as a quirk in her powers.  Later she had slapped him a
couple times, first in the face and then in the groin.  That had kept him
alert for a little while.
     This evening, Dan's presence seemed distant, as if he were separated
from her by a wall of stone.  Destiny could barely sense him.  And as such,
could not disrupt his evening.  'Oh, well,' she thought, 'maybe I could tease
Buddha for a while.'

                                  *** does ***

     Twenty miles to the south of the Overlord's hideout, a somewhat anonymous
man was standing on the side of town road number 6, waiting for his dog to
finish marking its territory.  Minutes later, he would continue the walk, down
the road to the stream that ran next to the old village cemetery.  The dog, a
German Shepherd known to the man and his family as Tosha, knew this place
well.  At the first sounds of rippling water, it would begin to pull the man
along by the leash, unable to wait to go swimming.
     The man was no one of consequence.  He was simply the person who had
given Tosha a bed and kept her fed, lead her on long walks, threw the ball for
her, and kept her from jaws of the larger dogs down the road.
     Tosha was not just a dog.  Or, more appropriately, she was more than just
a dog.  She was proof that life-after-life is more than religious belief.
She had been human in her last life; a very brilliant and well-learned human.
A strikingly beautiful, red-haired woman from Leningrad.  And some of her
traits were carried over into her canine existence.
     Tosha had what her keeper called "a knack for reasoning".  To him, it
seemed that she could figure out with incredible speed puzzles that eluded
dogs of supposedly greater intelligence.  She had learned entire phrases, not
just simple words like other dogs that he had owned.  His dog Ben had learned
the usual words "ball" and "sit" like most dogs do.  Tosha knew those as well
as if they were her own words for food, but she had also executed perfectly
the phrase "get your ball from your pen" when the ball had been placed there
without her knowledge.
     To her master, Tosha was a very smart dog.
     To Tosha, her master was an average human that knew far too little about
the canines of the earth.  She might also say that he spent too much time, as
did most humans, concentrating on acquiring wealth and fortune, and too little
time trying to find out why humans reincarnated as dogs.
     Tosha spent the times with her master as any "good dog" would.  That is,
barking, burying bones, fetching the tennis ball.  By night, and while her
master was at work, she conferred with the local dogs, mostly mutts, with
little intelligence (especially Bart), and hardly worthy of being called
canines, but able to assist just the same.  Together they helped the animals
in the community:  talking cats out of trees before they could throw them-
selves to their deaths; setting up the schedules for the Neighborhood Bark
Committee; fetching the mail for the elderly women up the road.  The CSP,
Community Service Pooches, one old woman had begun calling them; all the while
her family insisting that her medication was getting too strong.
     Hiding the fact that they were actually intelligent creatures, and could
comprehend complex scientific calculations if given the chance, was just what
Tosha wanted.  Otherwise, she and her companions would end up in a 3'x3' cage
at Cornell, with Bert the scientist wondering just what the Hell was going on
with evolution.  She could imagine his basic reasoning:  He would conclude
that there was a design flaw in the universe because he had been studying the
mating habits of South American fruit flies in Mexican taxi cabs for the last
thirty years and had gotten no recognition whatsoever; then along comes a
significantly intelligent dog that hogs all his press while he is questioned
about the military uses of what would be called *Caninus Reelismartus*.

     Tosha amused herself with thoughts like this from time to time, but this
night she was interupted by Willie, the Mastif that lived with the Grinzey
woman.  She listen to his call, "Hooooooooooowwwwwwwwwwwwwlllllllll! Yiiiip!!
Barrrrrrk!  Baaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrk?!  Yip-Wooooof!"  (Translated:  "CSP's,
listen up!  Just passed on from Jack up on the hill, there is a stranger
lying in wait for Jen Gradelli as she goes for a run!!  He's in the brush on
the left side of the road, just a minute's trot beyond the Wilcox house.  Get
your haunches in gear, kids, Jen's a great girl -- she gives us free food,
without wanting us to shake paws or roll over."  Needless to say, canine
vocabulary is much like the German language: there are separate words for
every possible occurence in the world, which means that the entirety of War
And Peace could be barked in about fifteen minutes.)
     The thoughts of Bert the Scientist left behind, Tosha got up from her
cedar-chip bed, went out through the swinging leather flap that was her doggy-
door and stood in the driveway, barking orders to the other CSP's.


                               *** the word ***


     Again Dan awoke in the Darkness.  This sort of thing never happened at
home.  He could never seem to fall asleep with the lights off, and so kept a
Jessica Rabbit night light burning beside his bed.  Being knocked unconscious
overcame this problem.
     He was learning a thing or two about waking up in complete darkness,
though.  The first and most important thing was that you NEVER reached out
with both hands.  It tended to extend the amount of time that you slept.  The
other thing was that no matter how enjoyable that feel was when you reached
your hands out, you DID NOT linger your hands there.  It was very painful.
     So Dan sat there in the utter darkness, waiting for the door to open,
exposing him to brilliant light.  He fully expected it to happen.
     It did not.
     Dan waited, sure that it would happen at any moment.
     It still did not happen.
     Dan continued to wait.

     Seven hours later a door had still not opened.  There had been a change
to his surroundings, however.  The floor had been dry seven hours ago.  Now
Dan realized that he was up to his chest in cold water, and more was dripping
onto his head from somewhere high above.
     "Did I say I was thirsty?!" he shouted upward, getting a mouthful of
sewer-quality water at the same time.
     From some unseen valve far above Dan's slowly drowning body, water began
to drip a little faster.  The hand controlling the valve paused there, wanting
desperately to simply open the valve completely, getting it over with already.
But it did not.  That would not please the Overlord, who wanted the man's
death to be slow and painful.  It seemed to Henchman that painful was not the
correct word.  Dan Salzman had absolutely no idea what was happening to him.
He was "clueless", to use a favorite word of some useless bitch he had once
dated from Rochester.  (Hey, whadaya know about that, DEVOL missed a word...)
He was a moron.  He was soon to be a dead moron.  Hee-hee!

     Dan waited, still hoping though less than before, that a door would open
for him.  Then, without warning, his mind changed, and he hoped that Destiny
would have a change of heart and would come to his rescue.  What he needed
rescuing from he was not sure, but it seemed logical.
     The sudden change in his mindset nearly caused his brain to seize up.
That sort of thing didn't happen often, and when it did, it caused such a
start in him that he nearly screamed.  He didn't though; he didn't have the
inclination.
     The water had risen to his shoulders.
     "You know?  I am kind of thirsty.  I could really use a cup about now!"
     Again, from high above, Henchman turned the valve open just a little
more.  The water flowed in then at a steady stream.
     The water continued to rise, unmindful of Dan's request.
     From a one-way glass nearby, the Overlord watched with delight as the
water rose closer and closer to Dan's nose; that point-of-no-return for his
victim.  "What may I get you, before you die?" he called into an intercom.
     Dan shook his head around, attempting to determine where the voice was
coming from.  "Peace."
     "PEACE?  I'm murdering you, you SOT!"
     Dan stared about once more.  "PEACE?  I said PEAS!  As in cooked, with
butter and a little salt!"
     As the water reached Dan's mouth, the Overlord suddenly was engulfed by
a fit of sneezing.  He turned to find the box of Kleenex that he had laid
down somewhere in the darkness.  (That was one of the problems of enjoying
the darkness -- you could never find anything.)
     The water had risen to Dan's mouth.  He instinctively turned back his
head to prolong his life.


                                *** UNIQUE ***


     Destiny had had enough.  She had spent the last eight hours annoying an
iguana that had no idea what was happening to it.  She had lifted it up by its
tail, each of its legs, and for just an instant, to be really mean, by the
snout.  It was truly no fun teasing animals.  They couldn't scream back at her
to quit it.  They didn't flail about like Dan did.
     She decided to try contacting Dan.  He had been distant for almost twelve
hours and she just hadn't been unable to contact him for such a long time
before.  She would simply need to give a little extra shove to get through to
her ex-lover.
     She left the couch where she had been during the exercises with Buddha,
and went to sit on her bed.  This was where she usually contacted Dan from. It
was her most comfortable place.  She felt completely relaxed here, and could
concentrate on the task at hand.
     Destiny closed her eyes and thought about Dan Salzman.  She visualized
his face, his body, his arms and legs.
     Many minutes passed before she first sensed him.  He was still distant;
the signals she was getting seemed to be crossed.  She saw him standing in
deep water with a plastic bag stuffed into his pocket.
     An idea came to her about that...


                                 *** have ***


     Dan was up to his nose in water.  He was already standing on his toes,
and was occasionally breathing in the dirty water.
     He felt something he hadn't felt in half a day.  It was Destiny.  She had
returned to him, and she was powerful this time.  He couldn't refuse to listen
to the voice in his head.  (If Dan had any sort of mind of his own, he would
have been able to do so, but that just wasn't his way.)
     'Dan?'  Destiny spoke in his mind.  She didn't wait for him to respond.
'I dare you, Dan.  I doube-dirty-dachsund-dog-dare you, Dan, to put the bag
over your head!'
     Dan, having been unconscious so much lately, and just being Dan Salzman,
complied.  He pulled the bag from his pocket, raised it up over his head,
shook the water from it and placed it over his head.
     'Now tighten it around your neck, Dan.'


                               *** synonyms? ***


     When Overlord turned back to the window, having relieved the sneezing fit
that had overcome him, he saw only water in the pit.  Dan's shadow shimmered
just below the surface.
     Overlord grinned.  He'd done it!  He had killed that son-of-a-tech Dan
Salzman!  His goal was complete!  He could finally get on with his life!!
     He looked one more time into the water-filled pit.  The dripping water
continued to fall.  He climbed a flight of stone-carved stairs to stand at
the top of the pit.  He looked about.  Henchman was gone, and had not turned
off the water.  Overlord tugged on the handle, but it refused to move under
his weak grip.  He shrugged.  'Ding dong the Danny's dead' he thought.
     As he turned away, his arm knocked into a packing box close by.  The box
overturned, spilling a layer of packing peanuts into the pit, covering the
water with the brilliant colors.
     The Overlord, Doctor Kryshna he would now be called once again, walked
from his clubhouse, returning to the Ludlowville playground in the light of
the early morning.
     "Dead" he said as he got into the Lincoln Mark 8.  Hitman and Henchman
were awaiting him there.
     Together they returned to the office on Grandlake Drive to celebrate
the success of the Overlord's mission.


IS DAN SALZMAN DEAD?
WHO WILL THIS SERIES BE ABOUT?
WHO WILL DESTINY ANNOY NOW?
WHAT WILL OVERLORD DO NOW?
WHO WILL RID THE WORLD OF THE DEVOL?
IS THE LINCOLN MARK 8 A REINCARNATED '57 PLYMOUTH FURY?
WHAT IS DESTINY'S DESTINY?  TO HELP DAN?  TO HELP OVERLORD?  TO HELP HERSELF
   TO SOME MORE CHEESE ENCHILADA?
AND WHY HAVEN'T WE HEARD FROM ONTARIO RON AND THE TEMPLE OF BOB?


Stay tuned, kiddies.  We will return with answers to these intriguing
questions in the next issue of Caddman.

Only on the hand-tossed, thick-crusted, super-deluxe, everything-on-it-
except-anchovies Superguy!