It was a rainy Sunday in summer, and San Francisco was on edge. Danny Tanner, Godless since '87, hadn't stepped foot in a church in ten years. Not since that drunk bastard had gotten behind the wheel and turned his wife Pam into a human bowling pin.
On the counter rested the Sunday Chronicle. The headline told a tale that had become all too familiar to San Francisco that summer. "Bay Area Butcher Claims Twelfth Victim."
"Maybe now's a good time to start praying again," he thought to himself, mopping the floors bitterly.
Tanner couldn't bring himself to look, placing his bottle of 409 over the newspaper and exiting the kitchen toward the living room.
DJ, Stephanie, and Michelle sat in front of the television, nervously watching news of the murders. "Police revealed that the latest victim was gutted like a hog," Becky Katsopolis told viewers. "The Butcher left a cryptic message carved into the man's chest. It simply read, 'I wish I were a triangle…'"
"Wake up, San Francisco," Danny said somberly, shaking his head.
Katsopolis struggled to maintain composure as she continued the report. For once, her tired, sad eyes and diminished will to live were not because of her twin boys, Nicky and Alex.
Instead, what Becky wasn't revealing to viewers was that the Butcher's latest – now thirteenth – victim was a family friend. More specifically, he was a member of her husband Jessie's band.
For years, the man had played tambourine beside Katsopolis at a seedy Knob Hill drug den known to locals as the "Smash Club." Though the rock club has struggled in recent years after being turned into a brightly-lit hangout for the Tanner family, Katsopolis and his bandmates have maintained a loyal following by shunning original material in favor of only covering "My Sharona" by the Knack.
Without a tambourine man to keep rhythm, nod, and smile, however, the band's future remains in question.
"The Ripper got ripped," quipped Joey Gladstone, turning off the television.
Dinner was tense as usual that night. As tough as the pork chops that Tanner had prepared without care.
Danny tried to maintain silence, but the conversation kept returning to the Butcher.
"Judging by the taste of these 'chops, Mr. T," Steve joked, "maybe you're the Butcher, feeding us your victims for dinner."
"The Rippers will never recover," Jessie lamented. "No one could tap his foot to the music while smiling at the other Rippers like Carl."
"You're in big trouble… mister," Michelle said fearfully, pointing to the police sketch of the balding man with angular glasses splashed across the front page of the newspaper.
"Guys, can we talk about anything other than the Butcher," Danny begged. "I don't care what the hell the topic, as long as it's not that damn maniac."
"Michelle," he asked. "Is there anything different you'd like to discuss?"
"When will Papouli come back to life, Dad?" Michelle asked, in reference to her grandfather who had come into town to meet her and had promptly died twelve hours later.
"Papouli is dead honey, just like your Mother, and neither one is coming back."
Though his face dared not portray it, for a fleeting moment, Tanner was jealous of the old Romanian. "Might be better than this shithole of a life," he thought, looking around at the table of unappreciative children with their petty problems, freeloading, careerless adults charading as his "friends," and a braindead golden retriever that couldn't go a day without getting lost.
Attempting to break the ice, Gladstone reached his hand out from under the table to reveal a monstrous puppet known to the family as, "Mr. Woodchuck." Woodchuck wore buckteeth, a pink shirt, and a powder blue sports coat. This twisted, rodent pimp spoke obsessively of only one subject: wood.
"Hey Danny," 'Chuck said, turning its gaze to Tanner.
"Is this table made of..."
As the puppet twisted his head back and forth, Tanner snatched it from Gladstone's hands and threw it down the stairs.
If not for the fact that Mr. Woodchuck provided Gladstone with his sole source of income, meager as it may be, the puppet would be sharing the same shallow grave in the backyard as Mr. Bear.
"Dad, I'm going to the mall with Kimmy" Tanner's oldest daughter DJ interjected, already making a move toward the door.
"Like hell you are," he snapped angrily, almost surprising himself. "The last time you went to the mall, Stephanie ended up in prison for shoplifting an oversized fleece sweater. I still catch her making hooch in the bath tub."
"But Dad," DJ complained.
"Plus, you've been watching the news. It's not safe on the streets."
"It's never safe," he said, his voice trailing off.
"But Dad?"
"He's gutting people, DJ," Tanner said, nearly losing control. "Literally, carving out their guts with a knife and leaving equations and reflections cut into their flesh."
Stephanie, through trembling lips, thought of the Butcher and silently mouthed, "…. How rude."
Two AM. Danny Tanner sits in the dark on the bathroom floor, swirling the ice cubes in what's left of his fourth tumbler of scotch and wondering where things all went so wrong.
With the city.
With his family.
With his life.
San Francisco sleeps, and the only sounds in the house come from the ice cubes in his glass, and the basement, where the Katsoplolises are having sex loudly enough to be heard from Haight Street.
A red studio light illuminates the hallway, indicating that Becky has finally forgiven Jessie for letting fame get to his head during the Ripper's recent tour of Japan.
"My Sharona" blasted, and to show support for her husband, each squeak of the bedspring appeared to be accompanied by the corresponding rattle of…a tambourine.
"He can sell out the Tokyo Dome, but he can't help with the fucking rent," Danny slurred angrily, emptying whatever was left of the scotch bottle into his glass.
As the alcohol began to take hold over him, Tanner's mind wandered back to the night that Pam was killed. Mowed over in the streets. Flailing about like a rag doll as she bounced from telephone pole to telephone pole before her body finally came to a rest at the bottom of a sewage outlet.
Even worse, the police never found the monster who did this – the man who had turned Tanner into a widow, his children into bastards, and his wife into a speedbump.
Tanner, feeling like the evening's 'chops were about to come up, crawled toward the toilet to avoid choking, too drunk to notice the commotion going on outside.
Comet's bark quickly turned to a whimper, and his whimper turned to silence.
The strange man at the backdoor carefully slipped a tiny, rubber hose under the back door. The hose was attached to a canister, and when the man turned the valve, a faint smell took over the Tanner house.
The scent of…. Lumension.
Readers should be warned that the rest of this article addresses a very strong, even dark subject matter. It is not intended for young readers.