Just a few comments here before the psychotic narrative begins. Firstly, characters and locations in this fiction that are found in Twisted Metal: Black are owned by the creators of that game, and not by myself, and their use in this fiction is unauthorized. That being said, this fiction is intended to gain me no material profit, and exists both to entertain the reader and to glorify the source material. For those of you who have never played Twisted Metal: Black, fear not, you will not be lost. I am not writing this on the assumption that everybody knows the characters beforehand. I still recommend that you buy the game, though. Not because it is necessary in order to understand the story here, because I just said it isn't, but simply because it is one hell of a good game. And to those of you who have played Twisted Metal: Black...I could soooooo kick your ass in multiplayer.


If he had known what had happened, he never would have done the things he had done. Nobody on earth was clearer evidence against the old proverb 'ignorance is bliss' than the uncreatively nicknamed John Doe. In his case, it was utter hell. The food was, too. He had been locked up in solitary for the past week. Punched an orderly. She had forgotten his drink at breakfast again, and for the first time in a while, he had calmly asked for her to go bring it. In reply, she remarked that of all people, he should get after her for forgetting something. Bitch. She had asked for it, but the old warden didn't listen when he told him that. After all, she wasn't the one in the cell. You can't begin to crack the guard/nutjob dynamic in Blackfield asylum. From the moment you're admitted, you are limited to maybe one or two friends: the counselor, and on days when he worked in your wing, that one young security guard wasn't so bad either. For the most part, the other patients weren't worth knowing. At the moment, though, our man was denied even their company. All alone, he took some time to reflect.

He pored over his reflection in the metal food tray. Several small scars disturbed an otherwise smooth, handsome face. His thin black moustache seemed to punctuate his expression, emphasizing at the corner of his mouth some kind of defeated resignation, a period at the end of a question he had grown tired of asking. Maybe it was that way because he was always frowning, who knows? Who gives a shit? He certainly believed he didn't. He studied the tattoos on his chest and arms. Skulls, pentagrams, spiders, swastikas, the works. At this point, he wasn't so sure that he had been the kind of guy you'd say hi to on the street. He was almost convinced that if he ever did remember, he'd want to forget it again. The only thing he remembered about himself was his birthday. He would be 33 in about two months.

That thought alone took him back to his earliest memories, about two years ago, waking up in a hospital bed, writhing and panicking like a six foot tall newborn. It was horrifying; there was nobody, nothing he knew. But one thing he did know was that it couldn't be natural to have all those hoses and wires in you. The plastic tube running down his throat made him gag as he tried to scream. Men and women, some in white and some in blue came in and started excitedly to chatter and babble at him, and all he could do was yell like an ape. He was too weak to stand. After about a week, some things had come back to him. He remembered how to talk, read, write, do math, and he remembered his birthday. He was 30 years old. He remembered all of the little things, too. He remembered things from movies, he remembered the Pledge of Allegiance, and he remembered the first two verses of Amazing Grace. But there were some things that he couldn't remember. The one that made him the most upset was that he couldn't remember his own name. So the doctors and nurses just called him John Doe, and he would scream at them that it wasn't his name. Once his strength had returned, he was kept at the police station, where they tried to match his fingerprints. That was when they discovered that he didn't have any. There was nothing on his fingertips but smooth, white scar tissue. When the police chief took him into his office and told him they couldn't identify him, he completely freaked. He attacked the chief, seized his gun, and demanded that the chief tell him his name. When he told him that he didn't know, John broke both of his arms, and then leaped out the window and into the parking lot where he was tazered unconscious by the SWAT team that had surrounded the building.

From that point on, he had been kept in Blackfield asylum, with nothing to look forward to but the next questioning, the next test, the next meal, and the next sedation. After a while they'd take him off the sedatives, and inevitably someone would piss him off and he'd do something stupid, like punch an orderly, and they'd stick him in solitary for a little bit and put him back on sedatives. When he wasn't in solitary he'd get to eat lunch in the cafeteria, play ball in the gym, and occasionally, go outside and get some fresh air. But everything was kept under a tight schedule, and under a close observation. Most of the other nutjobs were just morons, peeing their pants or asking why mommy won't wake up or begging you to tell them that you see the butterflies too. Some of them were really sketchy characters, though. There was a woman who was always bitching to him about how she was prettier than everybody, and yet she had never been married or even had sex, and once she added that last bit she would look him over really quick and grin. She gave him the absolute creeps. Every now and then there was the ugly redneck, Billy Ray, who was cursed not only with his shriveled face, but with the hickest name of all time. He was normally in solitary. He made a cranky fighter like John look like a pacifist. John couldn't really blame him. There was also a preacher who was okay for the most part, but every now and then he would start to talk about demons and hell. After a few minutes of this the guards would come up and take him away.

And then there were two more, and they frightened the hell out of him. One of them he had seen on his first trip to solitary confinement. John was being escorted by the young guard that time, the echoes of his boots slowly worked their way down the dank, dimly lit, rusty corridor and back. The doors on either side had small little sliding slots at eye level, and some of them were open. Looking out the corners of his eyes he might see people in the occupied cells. There was the preacher, kneeling in front of his window, the picture of piety with faint, misty light shining in upon his bowed head and shoulders. So that's where they took him to, John thought as he walked past. There was the redneck in another, and there was some goth kid in another cutting into her arm with her fingernails, and then there was a skeleton. He passed it, and then, shocked, he wheeled around to look again, nearly knocking over the young guard. "Hey, easy, dude!" the young man said mildly. John pressed his face up against the slot. There it was, a skeleton all right. It was fully clothed; the only visible bones were the ones that made up the large white skull. The guard tapped John on the shoulder. "Hey!" he whispered. John ignored him. The young man persisted. "Don't look at him, dude!" John kept looking. "Why?" he asked. The skull then turned and looked straight at him. There were eyes in its sockets. John gasped and shuddered. The whole skull was split in two, with leather stitches holding it together along the split. The jawbone was cut in half right down the middle, the halves sticking out sideways. It was hellish. The skull started to say something in a dry, low voice when the guard snapped the slot shut. John was sweating and out of breath. After a moment, he snapped out of it. "What the hell was that?" he panted. The guard began to lead him down the corridor again. Mutedly, he began to explain, "He's not dead. That was Grimm. He's never taken that cadaver off for anything. It's not safe to even try removing it. Rumor has it he killed some four of his rescuers in 'Nam when they tried to take it off. He's never been outside of solitary." "'Nam?" John asked. The guard cocked an eyebrow for a moment, and then, realizing, continued, "Oh, right, the amnesia…overseas conflict in the 70's. Shit, I wasn't even born yet. He's been here for about thirty years. Longer than anyone else, even the warden." "Old bastard" John interjected. The guard grinned at that. "Tell me about it. That ole bear's docking my pay." They reached the vacant cell. Reluctantly, John stepped in. He turned around to face the young man. He shook his head. "I guess I could have it worse." The guard nodded, then closed and locked the door. A second later his boots began to echo down the hall. The thought of being locked away all those years with a skull on your head deeply troubled him. The same thing might happen to him, the skull on his chest instead of his head.

On the other end of the spectrum there was a relatively new arrival, only three months ago, and he had seen him only once. They had brought him in a big truck out to the gate in the middle of the night and in the pouring rain. John was two days back from solitary, tired and sluggish from the sedatives, but still unable to sleep. He watched from the cross-shaped window. Big shirtless fellow, and judging by all the heavy-duty gear they were using to hold him, this guy was dangerously fucked up in the head. The guy was cuffed, of course, and he was escorted by five cops. One of the cops was holding a pole with a cage on it that went around the guy's head. Another cop was holding one end of a chain that attached to a steel belt that went around the man's waist. On top of all that, the asylum security that came out to meet the party came with shock sticks. The guards took the pole and began to lead him through the gate, when something happened that John would never forget. It looked like the top of the man's head flashed, and sparks fell through the cage. Then, the top of his bald head unmistakably burst into flames. Glowing red in the firelight, John could see the face of a clown. The image was now complete, the killer clown with a burning head. The clown began to scream, and he collapsed onto the ground. Wriggling and writhing with his bound head, hands, and waist, he looked like some kind of psychotic maggot, or worm. The guard with the pole yanked at it real hard, and the clown was violently jerked by his head about a foot across the ground. He was still screaming. The rain was now turning into steam above his head. The other guard began to jab at him with the shock stick. The scream turned into a shrill shriek, and he kicked fiercely at the air. The guard jabbed again, the stick making a loud zap and flashing blue as it hit the skin. The spectacle had become too much for John. He flattened his back against the wall by the window and slowly shrank down to the floor. The zapping and shrieking continued, but soon the shrieks had begun to sound like laughter.