Excerpt: Mister Phoenix

My name is Eduoard Fournier. That is the name I was born with, and the name I died with. I am grateful that I can still remember that name, and swear I will never forget it. I am thirty two years old, and have been married twice, once to Marie and once to Roberta. I have had three children, two boys and a girl, Frederick, Louis and Catherine. I do not know where they are or if they remember their long-dead papas.

I also have killed four hundred and twenty eight innocent men, women and children that I know of. I do not know their names, for which I am profoundly grateful. Yet they haunt my nights, faceless ghosts choking in the smoke of petrol fires, limbs as twisted as the metal cages that have pierced their bodies.

I do not resent their presence in my dreams. They deserve to be there, more than I.