Hack lay on the cold damp floor in the basement of the abandoned mental institution, curled into the fetal position.  Long abandoned spider webs adorned the ceiling like a diaphonous curtain over a long forgotten bassinet.  Every muscle in his body was tensed, every vein pushed to its limit against his skin.  The sweat on his skin formed small heated droplets in this musty, stale environment.  The pain was next to unbearable, given testament by the whimpers and grunts coming from the large man.  It would attack him in waves; with every new wave, the massive form of Hack would writhe in violent agony.

This was sleep to Hack, as strange as it may seem.  Whenever he stopped causing havoc and mayhem for too long, the pain would start again.  It was his dark reminder that he still had work to do. It was rare for Hack to get four straight hours of sleep.  When he was able to, words like "slaughter" or "massacre" would appear as news headlines the next morning.

Enough was enough.  Hack rolled to support his weight on his knees and goalie mask covered forehead.  Holding his abdomen, he made a guttural noise and drove his thick hand into the floor.  The stonework couldn't resist that kind of abuse and broke apart with a sharp crack, leaving only a crater in its place.  The quick spark of pain in his hand distracted him from the chest and stomach aches.  It was a brief moment of bliss, soon washed away with another tide of agonizing attacks.

Hack lifted himself to his feet, preparing to alleviate the pain once more.

In the darkness of the basement, Hack's heavy boots scraped across the damp floor, followed by a grunt of exertion, rewarded with the explosive sound of stone being demolished.  Seconds passed, and the demented symphony repeated itself.

With every shoulder-jolting punch landing on the wall, a lightning flash of pain ran up Hack's arm, detracting from the pain in his chest.  It must have felt good to relieve such crippling agony -- the pain in his arms and hands would be dealt with later.  Besides, Hack knew he healed very quickly.  His hands were never in any real danger of being mangled, although the scars were something that he wouldn't quite get rid of.  "Pain's Jewelry" was what Orchid called the scars.  If in fact they were the Jewelry of Mistress Pain, that must have meant Hack was in a serious relationship with her.

Another right -- THUD!  Then a left -- THUNK!  Then a right again -- THUD!  Hack's chest felt better than five minutes before, but he was determined to remedy the problem entirely.

And then suddenly Hack felt a presence behind him, the light, graceful padding of a woman's feet.  He remembered how good his chest felt after crushing a few of those sorority girls.  With an effort that could only be called excitable, Hack's seven-and-a-half foot frame spun around, both hands clasped together and high above his head, ready to bring the forces of Hell down upon his interloper.

As his chest tightened, and his shoulder muscles shifted, bringing down the full force of his wrath, Hack's blind rage cleared just enough to notice a familiar woman standing before him. Her hands were out towards him, fear etched on her face.  The human behemoth's body ground to a grating halt.  He stared at the slender woman for a moment.  He kept his eyes fixed on her till his vision cleared completely and he was sure it was Orchid.

Orchid was glad her heart had stopped working years ago.  If it still worked, this scare would have probably stopped it.  Hack stared blankly at her for a moment that lasted forever.

"Hack, it's me, Orchid.  Remember?"

God, she hoped he remembered.  It was a good sign that he didn't follow through with the double axe-hand. It meant that those bastards didn't destroy his entire brain, and that he recognized her.  But then again with Hack, one never really knew.  The behemoth standing before her slowly unlocked his massive bloody hands from each other and his body took on a more relaxed stance.  She was safe once again.  Hack hung his head, putting a hand on the side of his friend's face -- a hand that could damn near wrap around her entire head!

Orchid, grasping at one of those fleeting moments of humanity, said to her old friend, "It's okay, Hack.  I'm here with you now. Is it the pain again?"

The hulking figure in the hockey mask slightly bobbed his head up and down.

Orchid looked around.  The basement was a dark place of suffering that only the twisted minds of Horror Show could stand to live in.  Entire walls were knocked down as the Bad Room grew in size like some malignant cancerous growth.  The structural integrity of the building would be in danger if Hack's torturous demons weren't exorcized properly.

Orchid turned to face her friend again, a hint of compassion on her features.  "Let's go take care of it, my friend," she said and took Hack by his huge arm.

The two ascended from the dank, dark bowels of the asylum.

Orchid soon found herself standing by one of the large windows in the asylum's main hall, looking out at the newborn twilight through jagged, broken glass.  She cringed.  Like all over the country, in every ugly city, Philadelphia would wake each morning like a whore, and floss suicides from her teeth, and comb out rape victims from her tangled tresses.  Orchid had seen her at night, her back alleys cooing sins and vices.  She had watched her during the warm days, superficial and revolting, apathetic towards the evilness that resides in every throttled passage.  Orchid scowled, noticing that the broken glass about the window frame looked like vicious teeth -- a gaping mouth sinking its fangs into the pitiful cityscape in the distance.

"Yes, Hack," she said.  "Let's see if we can purge your pain."

The emergency room of Jefferson Hospital was usually busy.  But on nights when the moon was full, the number of incidents seemed to grow tenfold.  The waiting room was packed with people screaming for doctors.  Most of them just had the sniffles which, compounded with no health insurance, meant that the emergency room was the only place they could receive free medical attention.  Of course, the full moon ensured a steady flow of strange injuries and horrific car accidents.  Needless to say, every member of the staff was running low on the one kind of patience they most needed.

Mercury was getting angry at the amount of time that had elapsed since he arrived into the emergency room.  He needed to get back on the street to make sure his girls were working for his money.  He had arrived three hours earlier with a possible broken hand from hitting his one girl, Sheila, for bringing in less money than any of his other girls.

In a huff, Mercury found himself talking aloud.  "That fuckin' bitch's gonna pay for makin' me sit here waitin' for these muthafuckin' rich cracker doctors!  They back there screwin' them bitch nurses while I'm out here in fuckin' pain."

He was sure he was gonna hurt Sheila for having such a hard head.  Mercury passed the time he was waiting thinking about what he was gonna use to teach that skanky bitch a lesson.  When he thought he had the perfect punishment, a nurse walked through the curtain to his bed area.

"It's 'bout time, a man could die in here waitin' for one of you!" Mercury spouted with as much cool as he could muster.

The nurse looked at his chart.  "Mr. Mercury Brown, right?"

"You good, is that why you make all the big money?"  Mercury shook his head sarcastically.

The nurse continued trying to ignore the rude comments of the angered patient.  "It says on your chart that you injured your hand when you accidentally bumped it. Right?"  In a very professional manner, the nurse took the man's hand and started examining it.

Mercury was trying to angle his view to get a better look down the woman's uniform that hung at the neck just a little, exposing a narrow view of her breasts.  To keep her off-guard, Mercury decided to try and start a little conversation, maybe even get a phone number.  "So what took you so long gittin' in here, sweet thang?"  he asked in his best lover voice.

"Mr. Brown," the nurse replied, "we currently have three doctors working tonight and six nurses.  The waiting room has about thirty-five to forty people waiting to get in to our already filled fourteen beds. More people are coming in than we can keep on top of."  She was starting to lose her professional calm, and so she paused, took a slight breath, and continued.  "I would also appreciate it if you stopped glaring down my shirt, Mr. Brown."

Trying to make light of the situation in his normal uncouth way, Mercury playfully replied, "Well den, I think you fine nurses should stop suckin' those doctas' dicks in da back room and start waitin' on some patients.  Maybe I should go back to school and become a docta, maybe I could get a nurse like you, huh?"

With that, the nurse had enough.  "Mr. Brown! I will send a nurse back to finish looking at your hand, only when you can control yourself and act like a person with some respect for others!" She then turned sharply and exited the examination area.

Mercury glowered.  "You white fuckin' whore, get your fuckin' ass back here!"  But his effort was for nothing as the nurse continued out, sliding the curtain shut behind her.

Frustrated and looking for a way to vent his anger, Mercury looked around the small curtained off examination area for something to break.  Something had caught his eye, something that wasn't there a few minutes ago.  Behind a portion of bunched up curtain behind him there was a figure standing.  The large work boots sticking out the bottom of the curtain were a dead giveaway.

With an angered air of authority, Mercury sighed.  "Who da fuck is back there."  After a silent moment of tension, he continued.  "You betta come out now before I fuck you up, bitch!" Still nothing -- no reply, no movement.

Mercury got up, favoring his good hand, and threw back the curtain to find a looming, powerfully built man, heavily muscled and wearing a hockey mask.  The man had dried blood all over his hands, and the whites of his eyes were all too visible through the dark holes of the mask, staring straight at Mercury.

Mercury swallowed hard, taking no time turning tail and making a run for the safety of others. Unfortunately, he wasn't fast enough.  As he got three feet from the curtain, the large man thrust a scarred hand forward into the bridge of Mercury's back.  The force of the gesture was unbelievable, as Mercury's skin gave way and the man's hand dug deep into the pimp's back. With nothing but a yelp, Mercury's spine was pulled out of his body like a rip cord.  The rest of Mercury's limp corpse fell back against the gurney with a wet thud as the man known as Hack dropped the spinal column on the white sheets of a nearby bed.

Orderly Mike Jacobson, a first year Phys Ed student with a physique most men strive for, was heading for exam bed seven when he heard an obscene amount of racket coming from behind a curtain close by.  Putting on his best take-no-crap posture, he prepared to have a talk with the man who was probably destroying the examination area.

As he reached the curtain, he slipped on the floor.  He looked down to see blood running out from the exam area.  Even as all the hairs stood on the back of his neck, he reached out and sharply pulled the curtain aside.  He had only a fraction of a second to see the monstrous hand traveling to his face.

The punch hit so hard that it removed Mike's head completely from his body and sent it lopping into the nurses station.  In shock, Nurse Weatherall looked agaped, seeing the body of Mike Jacobson in freefall to the floor.  Standing over the body was the form of a huge bloody man in a mask.  The nurse let out an ear-piercing scream as the figure grabbed hold of an IV pole and rammed it right into her throat, cutting her scream into a gurgle of pain.  Hack then lifted the nurse by the pole and flung her into one of the other examination areas.  Crimson graffiti spilled all over the white curtain before it gave way, sending her wrapped in it, and onto the chest of the patient in the neighboring room.

The pain was subsiding.  Hack needed more freedom from the curse that tore at his chest constantly, and there was no shortage of painkillers in this emergency room.

"Stop right there, y-you fr-freak!"  A voice pierced through the symphony of screams that Hack was creating.

As Hack turned toward the waiting room, he saw two men pointing pistols at him.  It was Lester and John, the hospital security guards.

"D-don't move a muscle, y-you bastard!" the fat one said, pushing aside frantic patients.

It wasn't the "bastard" part that got Hack's attention; it was the reference to being a "freak" that stirred Hack's ire.  Slowly Hack proceeded forward when suddenly a crack split the air.  A bullet punched right through his skin and lodged into his stomach -- a minor distraction.  Hack started moving faster towards the two men.

Crack! Crack! Crack!

Three more bullets found their mark, but Hack kept moving in.  The two men opened up with their weapons, firing seventeen, nineteen, twenty-one more shots.  Hack's skin busted open as the hot lead ripped into him, but it was the shot that found its home in his eye that dropped him.

The two men quickly reloaded their pistols as the perforated freak lay in a puddle of his own gore, but before they could slap the next magazine into their weapons the form sat up.  The two men fumbled with their guns as the monstrous man rose to his feet.  Blood and optical fluids ran down his stained mask as his bullet-riddled chest heaved in rage.  The guards finally got their magazines slapped in and started raising their weapons, but it was too late.  Hack grabbed the two men by their heads, clacking them together with such unearthly force that their skulls shattered like champagne bottles.  Red and gray matter sprayed outwards, christening the area with its vile mess, all the while the men's guns somersaulted through the air.

More pain drained from Hack's body.  The feeling was euphoric.

Hack spun around to focus his attention on the staff once more, seeing the nurses and ward clerks behind the counter desperately fleeing.  Hack took a step forward, then leaped, trying to clear the desk but fell short, crashing through the desk.  These were the kind of people who made him the monster he now was.

Hack didn't want to use his chainsaw on them.  They didn't deserve to die that quickly.  He grabbed the nearest nurse and the defibrillator machine that was next to her.  Hack wrapped the wires around Nurse Ida's neck and squeezed.  He knew not to squeeze too hard -- he didn't want to pop her head off.  He wanted her to suffer slowly, and he wanted to savor every last kick and struggle as her life ebbed away.

As Hack was slowly choking the life out of the nurse, he noticed another nurse beside him starting to run for the door.  Not wanting anyone to get away, Hack planted a firm kick between the fleeing lady's shoulder blades, sending her flying thirty feet through the pane glass of the emergency entrance.  By that time Nurse Ida stopped her wiggling and her eyes bulged out, and so Hack let go of the cords.

In all his frenetic bloodlust, Hack didn't even notice Orchid, in her cat-like way, pull Doctor Humpfrey, OB-GYN, into a small employee's lounge.  Sharp-eyed with hunger, she dragged the half-mesmerized man in with her and pulled the curtain, shutting out Hack's exorcism of his own personal demons.  She shuddered as she turned her back -- not even Daxrathas was so brutal.  But life, she thought, is often brutal. Never let philosophy get in the way of a hot meal.  She turned from the chaos and bit down hungrily into her victim's neck.

Hack bounded over what remained of the desk and headed straight for two nurses running for a corridor.  They barely reached the double fire doors when Hack caught them.  He threw one into a wall so hard her body literally exploded into pieces; the second one he had other plans for...

Dragging the nurse by the hair, Hack tossed her onto a gurney in the neighboring ward.  He pinned her down with one hand, and started rifling through the medical drawers with the other hand.  He slammed drawers to the floor, smashed apart carts, until he found what he needed -- the syringe drawer.  Hack started punching handfuls of needles into the nurse, her screeching cries for mercy falling on deaf ears.  The screaming soon stopped as Hack was finished.  Every needle in the drawer jutted out of her pin-cushion body, a tongue depressor gagged her, and a stethoscope constricted her neck.

Everything was near silent.  All the patients and people in the waiting room ran for their lives, leaving only the sound of blood running off the gurney and dripping into a puddle on the floor. Hack let in the carnage about him.  The pain was almost gone.  Maybe one more victim would cleanse his soul completely.

Hack lumbered down the ward, peeling back each curtain he passed. Men and women in blue gowns stared at him, each beyond repair.  Amputees, burn victims, unlucky survivors with mangled limbs in traction.  Despite Philadelphia's best efforts to maintain a workable system of triage, the trauma ward managed to find itself directly adjacent to the emergency center.  The patients in this ward were physically wounded, and spiritually wounded, the spark of life missing. Hack, in his warped sense of reality, identified with these patients, and so didn't harm them.

Hack shuffled across to another ward, catching the fleeting glimpse of a running patient.  No, he wasn't running, he was moving across in a wheelchair.  But there was something about this patient.  He seemed to challenged Hack, kept trying to reel him in by turning back and staring at him.

"C'mon, ya monster!" the patient hollered, his voice raspy and old.  "What, ya can't catch an old man?"

Hack stopped, stared at the patient, tilted his head slightly.  Whether he noticed the Army tattoo on the side of the patient's right arm wasn't certain.  It really didn't matter for the patient puzzled Hack nonetheless.

"Ya goddamned freak!" the patient goaded as he wheeled down the ward, veering through a set of curtains.

Hack strode after him with surprising speed for his size.  He paused before the closed curtains the patient wheeled behind.  He opened the curtain to pounce on the unlucky victim within.  But there was no one behind the curtain, only four oxygen tanks.

Hack looked to his left, at an adjacent exam area, and saw the old man pointing a gun at him.  It was one of the security guard's pistols.  The patient cracked a withered smile and said, "You poor stupid bastard."  Then he pulled the trigger. But he didn't aim for Hack as the bullet hit an oxygen tank, causing it and its three brethren to explode -- an explosion that Hack was at ground zero for.  Hack flew across the ward, landing head first into a cinder block wall, his body burning and crisscrossed with makeshift shrapnel.

A moment of darkness and then Hack's eyes sprung open again.  He could hear the old man crying out in pain from across the room.  Hack rose to his feet and looked down.  The sprinkler system that went off while he was out doused the parts of him that were on fire, leaving only charred skin.  He watched his chest as the shrapnel was pushed out by the newly forming scar tissue. More Jewelry from Mistress Pain.  Hack walked over to the old man, who was now on the floor fifteen feet from the obliterated exam area.

The old man looked up.  "Buh-buh-but how?"  Hack's answer was a stomp on the man's head, crushing it.

Doctor Everett was in the Fracture Room with Nurse Marla and their patient, little Kelly Garner, and her parents when the ruckus outside started.  He told Nurse Marla and the three-year old's parents to stay put as he called for security.  Two minutes later there was an explosion and the fire system went off.  Doc Everett insisted that they remain calm until the hospital called a code that let them know where the fire was.  Another two minutes passed and things quieted down, the fire system shut off.

Outside the door to the Fracture Room the doctor heard a meek voice.  "Mama, are you in there.  I'm scared."  It was followed by whimpers and weak sobbing.  Being a pediatric doctor, Everett's heart was with kids.  He went over to the door, knelt down and opened the door to let the scared child in to a safe place.

As he opened the door a large hand swatted him back eight feet, and Hack entered the room. Nurse Marla and the parents all screamed.  Hack quickly moved in and back-handed Nurse Marla, knocking her out as with the doctor.  He picked up the two and left the room.

Hack quickly moved to the alley beside the emergency room, dropping off the two unconscious victims, then headed back into the hospital.  He could hear the sirens approaching in the distance and knew he had less than a minute.  He grabbed the arm of the nurse with all the needles in her, tearing the limb completely from its socket.  Using it like some giant morbid pen, he wrote one word on the wall:

HACK.

As Hack exited the front doors, he was blinded by headlights with a row of red lights along the roof.  It was an ambulance pulling in quickly.  Tire rubber screeched as it laid on the brakes, but the vehicle still hit Hack in the center of his chest.  Hack barely moved; he was done with this game.  He grabbed the front of the ambulance and lifted it off the ground.  The fiberglass body of the van crushed in on its own weight until Hack's hands found support on the engine.  He tossed the ambulance in an arc, and it landed nose-first before the emergency entrance, having the machine trap the people inside against the metal frame of the entry way.

With that done, Hack reclaimed his two prizes and headed back toward the asylum.  Orchid came behind him, picking her way out of the bloody wreckage of the hospital.  She put a tentative hand on Hack's scarred, massively muscled arm and looked up at him, sympathy deep in her eyes.  He looked down for a moment, the goalie mask expressionless, then shifted his burden higher and stalked off towards the asylum.

The pain in his chest was just a distant memory now, but the Jewelry he found tonight would be with him for a long time to come.
 

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