December 24, 2000.
8:43pm.
The night before Christmas.

The back doors of the mall swung open as a skinny man dragged a crying boy by the arm.

"I want my mommy," the little boy cried.

"I toldja, kid," replied the skinny man. "She sent me to get ya so she could give ya the surprise she just bought."

The man’s name was Hooper Swells, just recently paroled from prison after serving three years of a nine-year sentence for child endangerment. And that was only one of his many other charges. There were many more victims than the police had charged him with, but Swells wasn’t about to offer that information up. Besides, it’s not like anyone would ever find the others.

Hooper stood five-foot-seven and weighed a measly 143 pounds. His hair was unkempt and his teeth were an unappealing shade of yellow that darkened to brown around the edges. Hooper was not what you would call a scary or intimidating person if you were an adult, but to his victims he was the Devil.

Hooper had a fancy for young children. He could tell by the way they looked at him, with their big innocent eyes, that they wanted to be his special friend. And Hooper Swells was all too eager to please. The problem Hooper always had was once he finished satisfying the animal inside him the children wouldn’t stop crying. He knew he couldn’t trust them to keep quiet, so he started silencing them himself. Strangulation was his preferred method of dispatching his victims. He wasn't always a killer, but to stare into the childrens' big, fawn-like eyes, watching the life ebb out of them, was a thrill that grew on him. Eventually Swells even found that the children didn’t need to be alive to serve his purposes.

The boy couldn’t have been more than four-years old, and the constant whining coming from this one was irritating Hooper. If anyone found him here with the boy he could be in a lot of trouble.

"Look kid, if your real good I’ll take ya to see Elmo," Swell tried to reason with the scared child.

"I don’t want Elmo," the little boy pushed out from behind a hail of tears. "I want my mommy!"

Hooper pulled the boy down the hall even faster. I might have to shut this one up sooner than I thought, Swells thought as he made the sharp corner with the child in tow. I’ll never get to the car unnoticed with him crying like this.

Being so preoccupied with the kid, Swells didn’t see the man standing in front of him, and ran right into him. The pedophile bounced back and stared at the man with stunned awe. The guy had to be seven feet tall if he was a foot. His body was wide, jam-packed with muscles, corded in distending arteries, marred and scarred like some survivor from a train wreck. But the most disturbing thing was the goalie mask the man wore.

"Huh-h-hey, s-sorry 'bout that. I-I-I should watch where I’m guh-going." Hooper was stumbling over his words badly. Shit, if I don’t look guilty!... he thought.

The large man didn’t budge -- he seemed to be lost in space staring straight ahead.

"Okay then, I gotta run," Hooper said nervously. "Sorry 'bout running into ya."

Hooper pulled the crying child by the arm and quickly made his way around the big man, sweat beading on his forehead. Swells felt a wave of relief wash over him when he realized the big man didn’t notice him or didn’t care. Hooper was almost home free when the child grabbed the dirty pant leg of the big man as they went past.

"Please mister," the child weeped, "I just want my mommy."

With the tug on the leg and the plea from the little shaky voice, Hack looked down at the child. The large eyes holding a reservoir of tears, the pleas locked on the child's face, they somehow transfixed the mountainous mute.

"Please help me find my mommy," the boy repeated as tears rolled off his reddened cheeks, spilling onto Hack’s blood stained boots. His drank in the tears.

"C'mon now, Billy. Your ma is right down here," Hooper said with a forced smile as he felt the nervousness coming back.

Hack felt a small hand grab his little finger and hold on as the skinny man pulled at the boy. With the touch of a hand Hack’s mind went racing through the busy mall, from person to person in a millisecond until it found her.

Hack could see a frantic woman pushing her way through crowds of people. Her mascara ran down her face, marking her cheeks. He could hear her calling, Andy! Andy where are you! Oh God, please help me! Where’s my little boy! She was beside herself with grief as she ran through the mall frantically calling.

Worst of all, Hack could feel her pain. He felt his heart folding in on itself; he felt the loss and desperation of the woman. A strange sensation came over Hack as he felt the influence of something else around him, something that was moving his body.

Hack reached out and grabbed the skinny man by the back of the head, casually slamming his face into the cement wall. The thin man went down like a bag of bones, folding onto the hard floor.

Turning around, Hack faced the crying boy. He watched as the little person wiped at the tears in his eyes with the back of his hands. Then the boy extended both arms out to Hack, mumbling, "I want Mommy."

Hack felt his heart stop and he froze before the boy, feeling his body start to quiver a bit. The huge monster couldn’t understand how the little boy was paralyzing him. Then it happened -- as if Hack was beside himself. He witnessed his hulking body reach down to lift the boy up without his permission. He scooped up the boy, then walked to the metal doors leading back into the mall.

Hack pushed open the double doors with his broad shoulder and emerged into a stream of people who froze at the sight of him. He stood still for a moment, cradling the boy as he looked at the crowd quickly forming around him. Stepping slowly backward, Hack headed for the direction he sensed the frantic mother.

As the ogreish mute moved in the direction of the woman, he heard the mass behind him saying "What did he do to that boy?" and "Is that monster hurting the kid?"

Hack ignored the voices as he moved head and shoulders above the throngs of shoppers. The tears from the little boy’s eyes stung the skin on the big man’s chest. Hack was stunned, as he didn't really understand what he was doing, but his body kept moving.

It was only about a minute before he found the panic-stricken mother. As he approached her, she immediately spotted her son in the big man’s arms and rushed for him. The boy looked at her and held his arms, yelling, "Mommy! Mommy!" The woman snatched the boy from Hack’s arms with a fearlessness the monstrous man had never seen.

The woman squeezed her son tightly and buried her face in his shoulder, crying. "I’ll never let you out of my sight for even a second.  I'm so sorry."

The little boy responded by patting his mother on the back and said, "It’s okay now, mommy. Don’t cry."

Hack could feel a strange feeling flooding over him. He wasn’t sure what it was, but  it almost felt like his soul had been lifted of its pain. The evil that poisoned the fiber of his being had been diluted. So good the feeling felt that the giant didn’t even notice the large, surly crowd growing around him. He just stood seemingly dumbfounded, staring at the mother and child, possibly remembering a time long ago.

"What did you do to that boy, you monster?" The voice from the crowd snapped Hack back to reality. The crowd was growing uglier by the second.

"Did he hurt that boy?" asked one man.

"Kidnapper!" an old woman chimed in.

"Merry Christmas, you scumbag!" another voice offered.

Hack looked to all directions, seeing nothing but angry faces closing in on him. The woman and child were swallowed up by the crowd as they closed in. The quiet giant barely saw the little boy as he looked at the big man and called, "Don’t hurt him."

But his plea was lost in the angry yells of the crowd.

"Get that pervert!" yelled one man.

Hack put his arms out defensively and shook his head as if to say no. It didn’t help, the crowd collapsed in on him. Men punched, women scratched and kicked, and everyone yelled at him. The oversized man reached into the air as if to call for help, but no noise came from his mouth, and the violent throngs overwhelmed him -- consumed him.

But Hack didn’t resist either. He felt something inside of himself being crushed. He fell to the mob as they kicked and stomped him. He just laid there, accepting the punishment, until something inside him made him wish he was not there.

And then he wasn’t.

Hooper Swells woke up on a damp, moldy stone floor. He sat up, placing his hand on his forehead to feel a large bump.

"Damn," he muttered.

Swells looked around the place.

"This ain't the mall corridors," he said, claiming the obvious.

He sat in the middle of the musty, darkened room. Sections of the walls were missing, others pocked and marred. The place looked like a bomb hit it. He got the feeling he was under ground but he couldn’t be sure. He felt like he was in a dungeon.

He could see a door a few feet from him, a dillapedated door as light from the next room passed by its warped edges and touched the stone floor. As walked closer to the light, Hooper realized that he wasn't approaching a door -- just a doorway. It was the large man from the mall that blocked its threshold. The man’s hand slowly balled into a fist, and Hooper could hear every knuckle cry out with a resounding pop-pop-pop.

Hooper swallowed hard and said, "Hey buddy?"

The large monster known as Hack walked toward Swells
 

Home       Gaming Guidelines        PC Roster        NPC Roster