The Judas Line

“What a tale you have spun whole cloth out of the fabric of fantasy, Mr. Sicarius!” Cain declared as I finished my story. He took a sip of whisky and flashed a gamine’s grin. “I fancy that you have had quite some time to concoct such an elaborate fabrication.”

My throat was dry and I had a headache. The whole story took over two hours to relate and my shoulders had long since cramped up under the iron hands of the golem. “Listen, it’s the truth, man,” I snapped. “I didn’t come here for my health.”

“The truth is a slippery thing, too subjective to be boilerplate for all mankind.”

Who talks like that? I asked him again.

“Today’s language offers no music or grace,” he laughed. “When LOL and OMG are considered the soul of wit, I must needs revert to a more intelligent method of conveying meaning.”

“You have got to be shitting me.” The golem’s hands flexed slightly, enough for me to feel it.

Cain lost his smile. What came out of his mouth next was a Word. Truth. It carried a cloying hit of garlic. “Is the story you related a factual one?” he asked, becoming very still.

A familiar vise-like pressure filled my head and it felt like my brain was about to squirt out through my ears. “Yes,” I gritted my teeth. “It’s a true story.” With that said, the pressure eased.

“Hmmm.”

I had to smile. That was the shortest, least convoluted sentence he’d uttered since we met.

“It is at this point, Mr. Heart, that I am presented with a quandary. There is no love lost between me and the Sicarii, but I confess to an overweening fondness for my skin and its placement upon my frame. That said, you should provide me with a suitable argument to sway me.”

This guy was going to give me schpilkas. “How about saving millions of people from Earth?”

“That reason does hold merit, but as I see very little chance of success against the Dagger Men, it is not good enough.”

I’d been holding back one last card, one that could get me dead at the hands of a golem right quick. “Cain,” I said, licking my lips. “My real name is Olivier Deschamps.” During my story, I’d left that little bit out, fearing that it might lead to sudden iron poisoning. With my eyes shut, I waited for ferric hands to crush my torso.

There was an expectant hush, as if the universe was waiting for the other shoe to drop, then, “Deschamps?” Soft, deadly.

Eyes still closed. “Yes.”

“You are the son of the current head of the Sicarii?”

“Yes I am.”

“Excellent!”

What? No painful death? I opened my eyes to see that, once again, Cain grinned from ear to ear.

Seeing my confusion, he explained, “Nothing would provide me with more joy and satisfaction than tweaking Julian Deschamps’s nose by aiding his son to foil his nefarious plans.”

Nefarious? “Okay, great. Now can you tell the Incredible Hulk to let me go?”

The golem’s hands did just that and I nearly passed out as the blood rushed back to my shoulders. Muscles began to spasm and that awful pins-and-needles sensation traveled up and down my arms. The lumbering monster clank-clanked to the door and gently turned the knob with an intricately jointed hand. Freezing wind rushed in as it disappeared into the darkness, closing the door behind it.

“Th-thank you.”

Cain nodded and retrieved a bottle of vodka from the refrigerator freezer. Pulling a tumbler from a cabinet, he poured two fingers worth and held it out to me.

Liquor splashed my wrist as my hands shook, but I managed to put the glass to my lips and take a long pull. The burn slithered all the way down and warmed my belly.

“Oh my,” I breathed, “I needed that.”

Tap, tap, tap, went Cain’s fingernail against the kitchen table as I finished my drink. Tap, tap, tap. “One question, young Deschamps, if you would be so kind. For two millennia the Sicarii have endeavored to shorten me by a head, to end my ceaseless wanderings upon this troubled earth. Why would they undertake such a trying and perilous task? Everyone has met a swift end at my hands, or the hands of my protectors.” He gestured to the golem. “Such as the formidable Walter.”

“They want to spit in the eye of God and prove that they’re the best.”

He raised a bushy eyebrow.

I sighed. “You were cursed by God and marked, so no man would kill you lest they suffer His vengeance. The Sicarii don’t fear God, so killing you, the world’s oldest man and strongest magus, would be quite the feather in a Dagger Man’s cap. It would make him or her a legend.”

“Then they are foolish indeed.”

“Indeed, but you already know all this.”

“It has evolved into a force of habit to inquire about the motives of the Sicarii, imprudent as they may be. You are such a stubborn lot.”

“Stubborn or not, I’m a tired man who needs a good night’s sleep.”

“Of course, young man, I shall provide you with that very thing.” He pointed to the opposite end of the cabin, to a sofa next to a fireplace where a few persistent embers glowed. “My domain is small but comfortable, as you will discover. Liquid good cheer I have supplied and the couch offers generous comfort to ease you to slumber. My room is beyond yon piney door. Should the occasion arise for my assistance, you need only call.” That said, Cain walked through the “piney door” (made of rough-hewn timbers and glowing with beeswax) and returned a few moments later with an armload of blankets and a pillow. I stoked the fire, coaxing it back to life with more wood.

“Between that comforting fire and warm quilt, you will find that night passes most satisfactorily.”

I nodded, noting that he stood a good head taller than me. “Didn’t think early man would grow so big.”

Once again those teeth blinded me with reflected firelight. “In the beginning, God crafted the first men well. My own father topped my own height by a handspan.”

I translated that into at least five or six inches. Added to Cain’s own six-five, possibly six-six, Adam would have been close to seven feet tall. “Holy shit!” I blurted.

“Indeed, we were all giants in those fabled early days,” he said. “And long lived. Most men had the capacity to live well past twenty-five score years, although I am the current record holder in the category of longevity.”

Five hundred years? Maybe God crafted men too well back then. Cain appeared to be not a day over forty. What must his life have been like, all those years of wandering, knowing that everyone he cared about would die long before he met his own fate? The loneliness must have been overwhelming, the strain of such longevity eating at his sanity for millennia. Or maybe that was the real curse God inflicted, forced sanity in an insane situation. Suddenly his archaic, perambulating speech patterns didn’t seem so odd; perhaps it was a defense mechanism that helped him cope with the sheer weight of time.

“Cain, I have to ask …”

“Why do I encumber my visage with sunglasses?”

“You have to admit, it’s a little odd, unless you live in the Matrix, man.”

“That is not the first time I have heard that interrogative.” Cain pursed his lips, as if considering some internal landscape and then removed his shades.

Whoa.

Ever see a Siberian Husky? A beautiful creature with a nice thick furry coat, well suited as sled dogs. Many of these dogs have white-blue eyes that give them a ferocious, almost alien, appearance. Cain’s eyes were like that, the whites blending seamlessly into white-blue and centered with the fathomless black of the pupil.

A small gasp escaped my lips as I felt the remorseless heat of his gaze, the stress of his attention that was like a constant pressure wave from an eternally exploding bomb. I took an involuntary step backward and the sofa’s edge hit the back of my knees, dumping me unceremoniously on my butt.

That insidious pressure abruptly cut off as the glaciers slipped back over Cain’s eyes and air rushed back into my lungs because I’d finally remembered to breathe. “Damn.”

Once again he flashed a smile. “Quite correct, Mr. Deschamps, I am damned for as long as the Lord desires me to be so. Despite the excessively extended lifespan, not to mention the near ceaseless wandering, I am content that my punishment is a just one.”