Nachzehrer

Nachzehrer is the story of a ninety-nine-year-old man, Gary Paine, tortured and forgotten, living in a cardboard box covered with thick dark plastic. As death approaches, the man narrates the truth and lies of his life to his only friend, the teacher, as they share coffee and donuts under an abandoned bridge.



Gary's story begins in 1936 when he is seventeen years young. Gary tells his friend about the innocence of his early years and how he stole a Curtis Jenny Canuck biplane and zoomed upside-down dropping rotting pumpkins and leaflets at Halloween. In 1939 Gary decides to travel from rural Ontario to London England to join the Royal Air Force and fly Spitfires or Hurricanes. On a train to Montreal, he meets a kind and generous man who assists Gary in his quest to become a fighter pilot. Against orders, Paine chases an ME 110 across the channel and is shot down over France, eventually captured, and is assigned to Plotzensee prison in East Berlin, rather than a Prisoner of War camp. In time, Paine understands why this has happened. During the next four years, under the direction of the prison Commandant, Paine is tortured and broken and then reconstructed. When the Soviet army enters East Berlin in 1945 Paine departs the prison, bound for England and then Canada, now an eater of souls; a Nachzehrer.



His story told, and while death awaits, Gary wonders if the ghouls that have chased him since 1945 are real and what will happen when they catch him. He hopes that they will take him home to his lost love but fears the worst. Before he dies, he presents a great gift to his friend, the teacher.