🚀 go-pugleaf

     Caddman
     Part II:  "The End is Near"
     by Jeff Pruitt  (Staples are worthless)
        jap11@cornell.edu for comments...


     Dan recovered from the sting of Destiny's slap.  He reached out again,
more slowly this time, still in darkness all about him and slightly higher
up.  He didn't want to be slapped again.
     His hands didn't connect with anything.
     Not immediately, anyway.
     The woman's ear-splitting scream was followed by a shooting pain in his
groin.
     Dan slumped to the floor.  This was the second time today that he was
unconscious.


                              *** I'm serious ***


     Dan had just woken from a beautiful dream of the day that he had broken
up with Destiny.
     The dream had begun with her arrival at his apartment that fateful
Friday evening.  On the phone the previous evening, Destiny had called him
an ignorant ass for not calling her on time.  He met her half way up the
walkway. Destiny quickened her pace and outstretched her arms to Dan.  Dan
did not share in her excitement.  He stood, arms folded across his chest,
his face firm with the resolutions that he had made.
     Destiny threw herself at Dan, clutching him, kissing him; not noticing
for a moment that the previously known feelings were no longer eminating
from him.  "What's wrong, honeybear?"
     Honeybear broke free from the woman's strangle-hold.  "Go home,
Destiny!" he said in the dream.  His real words had been much more harsh.
     The dream Destiny walked slowly back to her car and got in.  The
initial click of the ignition was followed by an enormous explosion.  The
car and Destiny with it no longer existed.
     (Dreams have such an interesting way of showing our true feelings.)
     Dan was still lying on the floor, adjusting his eyes to the darkness,
wondering if there actually were a woman in here with him, when the door
opened to the tiny room.  He was blinded by the brilliant light that flooded
in.
     He was grabbed by an arm extruding from that light and dragged from his
cell.

                         *** about the ***

     Hitman lay slumped in the corner of the boardroom, sobbing.  His
confession to Overlord had been emotionally draining.  He didn't regret
killing Hooligan, and he was proud that Overlord was proud, but he felt the
need to have a good, long cry.  He always felt healthy and ready to kill
again after a good cry.
     His partner dragged their prisoner into the room, releasing him directly
before the Overlord.  His task complete, he relaxed against the rear wall.
     Overlord stood above the prisoner.  He gloated over Dan.  He was proud
that the capture had gone so well.  He could rejoice when Dan Salzman was
dead and the mission was complete.
     'Mission?' he asked himself.  'Is that what is was?'
     It had started twenty-six years ago at Dan's birth.  It was more like a
hobby back then.  The late sixties had been a time for experimentation.  For
the Overlord, experimentation meant murders, rapes, strangulation, knifings.
Oh, and he simply couldn't forget the lead-pipe-beating he'd given that woman
rollerskater.
     He suddenly remembered why this whole undertaking had begun:  Overlord
had been a businessman back then, many years ago.  Not a well-respected
businessman, mind you, just an ordinary Ph.D. grad with an idea for a
business.  He had a dozen or so employees, all of whom he treated like they
were dog drool.  One of them, a lowly technician of some sort (he could no
longer remember precisely) had grown tired of the endless suffering dealt out
by the Overlord.
     After one unusually loud argument between them, the man stormed out, not
to return for many months.  And then, it was only to inflict revenge on his
ex-boss.
     With a Nerf pistol in one hand and a wrapped white box in the other, the
technician stepped into the office of the man he had called Dr. Kryshna, and
locked the door behind him.  The pistol hung silently in view from his belt.
     He, too, was silent as he untied the string that held the box closed.
The room was instantly flooded with the unmistakable odor of chocolate.
Thousands and thousands of calories of the stuff.  All of it bonded together
to create a fabulously rich, moist cake.
     Chocolates of every variety were found within this cake, as the
technician cut a slice from it.  Milk chocolate.  Dark chocolate.  Mint
chocolate.  Chocolate chips.  Chunks of chocolate.  Baker's chocolate.
Semi-sweet chocolate.  And just a touch of white chocolate for a change
of color.
     At Nerf-point, Dr. Kryshna was forced to eat this cake.  A cake-of-the-
month cake, inexplicably delivered to the tech from the magnificent bakers on
034CHOCOLATE instead of the usual cake for May.  Every crumb.  Every drop of
deathly sweet icing.
     The tech pulled the Nerf pistol from his belt holster as Dr. Kryshna was
forcing the last forkful between his icing-covered lips.  Aiming, he pulled
the trigger, blasting an arrow directly at the other's head.  A life was
spared that day, as the bolt was caught by a wind coming through the open
window, deflecting its course.  Kryshna howled in pain as the deadly yellow
sponge whizzed past his head, slicing his hear and trimming his hair back.
     His only shot spent, the tech fled the building, never to be heard from
again.
     Dr. Kryshna never went a night without envisioning a slow, hideous death
to the man that had tried to take his (in his mind) wonderful life.
     Then came a day, years later, when Dr. Kryshna (now known as the
Overlord) heard news that the technician had become a father.  A plan began
to form in the lump of anthracite that was his mind, and continued to form
for several long years.  He would destroy the life and love's of the tech!
THAT would be a fitting revenge.
     Even after the technician's death, the goal to destroy the young boy
couldn't be dismissed.  It seemed too important.

     Overlord shook the thoughts from his mind.  Those events were in the
past.  What truly mattered was that he would now fulfill those goals.
     "Do you know why it is that you have been brought here?"  The Overlord
glanced momentarily behind his prisoner.  Hitman was still crouched in the
corner, his sobbing now under control.  His brother, Henchman, still stood
with his back to the wall, content to listen intently to the voices in his
head.
     Quite seriously, Dan said, "Because Vanna White is pregnant and Ted
Koppel is no longer amusing to watch unless he is translated into Swahili?"
     "Sarcastic bastard!"  For the third time that day, Dan was hit about the
face.  This time, however, it was by the ungloved hand of the Overlord.  (The
Overlord would have preferred to beat his prisoners with a leather glove, but
he never wore gloves, they made his hands sweat.  And people always said
"Never, ever, let 'em see you sweat.")
     "I will tell you, you worthless *****, why you are here!  (Sorry, dear
reader, the DEVOL cut out a few words.  Oh, that's right, you haven't yet
been introduced to the DEVOL.  They are the Department for Extrication of
Verbally Offensive Language.)  Overlord raised his hand to strike once more.
"You are here to die!"  His nasal, maniacal, Pillsury-dough-boy Hee-Hee laugh
broke the stillness that had settled throughout the windowless room.
     When the echos had died away, he asked, "And do you know why you are to
die?"  He immediately regretted the question.
     "As a sacrifice to Roseanne Arnold, Thea Vidal, and Nell Carter?"
     The hand came down across his face once again.
     The Overlord was tiring of this nonsense.  A welcome thought it was that
within a few hours, this man would be dead.  He spoke again, more slowly as
he tried to tame the rage building inside.  "It is my destiny!"
     Dan's head whipped upward to stare into the face of the Overlord.  He
saw there only purest hate, accompanied by a grimace that could have turned
Richard Simmons to a cheesecake.  "She's dating you now?!"


                         ***** subliminals *****


     Dan awoke several hours later, the pain still throbbing all through his
body.  He recalled only that Destiny seemed to have something to do with his
being here.  He opened his eyes to find Overlord still towering above him.
     "Henchman!  Hitman!!"  The two thugs snapped to attention at the back of
the room.
     Overlord grinned for the first time in many, many years.  A great weight
was lifting from his chest, and he sighed in relief.  The moment was at hand.
"Take him away!"
     No longer could he contain himself.  He jumped into the air, landed,
high-fived the air around him, and ran from the room shouting incoherently.
He whooped.  He hollered.  He screamed.  He shouted in his happiness.


WILL OUR HERO BE DEAD IN THE NEXT EPISODE?
DOES TED KOPPEL SOUND BETTER IN SWAHILI?
WHAT ABOUT THE DEVOL?
IS DESTINY PART OF THE OVERLORD'S PLAN?
WHY DOESN'T ANYONE ON STAR TREK EVER HAVE TO GO TO THE BATHROOM?


What evil lurks in the hearts of men?  Superguy knows!  So stay tuned!!