CHAPTER 1
"We'll be on-air in another five minutes, Mr. Kramer, sir," said the ever-eager young director wannabe, Gabriel Spitz, wrongly ejected from New York's renowned NYU Film School because of a jealous lie told by a fellow film student not wanting such stiff competition to continue.
John Kramer silently nodded, while sitting before a large illuminated mirror in the makeshift green room of the surrogate TV studio that used to be an ex-soap factory. One used for the filming of movies that were R-rated productions.
Then he replaced the oxygen mask, attached, naturally, to a hospital-type tank, before finally removing it in order to respond in a frighteningly harsh voice halted by hacking coughs, "Tonight, Mr. Spitz…you shall realize…your highest achievement. Far greater…than anything that…a mere film school…would've demanded. Tonight…you graduate…to greatness."
Gabriel fell all over himself over such a sinisterly delivered compliment, while his own personal lust for bloody vengeance grew ever-stronger within a heart blackened by a hard-luck life that would now, thanks to John, achieve a level none could comprehend.
"Th-thank you, s-sir," he said even as an unseen someone spoke to him via his standard studio headset. "Right. Mr. Kramer, sir, Amanda says th-the contestants are in p-place. Almost time."
"Start the theme music," said John after taking one last taste of oxygen via the clear mask in his too-pale hand. "I shall be out…once she introduces me…to our viewing…public."
"C-certainly, sir," said the bespectacled, criminally compliant little man with larger-than-life fantasies, just as he swiftly exited the green room set up for the sole star of tonight's televised festivities.
"Show time," convulsively coughed the white-haired, ashen-skinned killer even as he slowly, devilishly lifted the black, redlined hood of the matching robe over his head and shakily stood, struggling against the constant pain racking his ravaged-by-cancer Self.
Then the theme music started: something suggestive of any number of game shows that had so dominated the meager minds of television viewers so starved for titillation that they would devour whatever the networks tossed onto their large plasma screens.
Such as his game show tonight.
One that, for the first time in his blood-soaked life, would be transmitted via special pirate signal that, ingeniously, would insinuate its heinous images onto all cable channels.
Whether fifty or five hundred.
END OF CHAPTER 1