Disclaimer: Johnny the Homicidal Maniac and its characters are copyright Jhonen Vasquez. The Original Characters in this story are mine, not yours. Enjoi.


Metal met rotating metal and dastardly sparks of golden and red flew out onto the floor. Gore's rotating saw-spear pressed down against the edge of Mort's decrepit, aged shovel. The trusty metal of the spade held out fast while meeting the 4,000 RPM force of the uninhibited table saw.

"How is it?" Gore growled. "This is the same weapon I used to end the lives of hundreds of non-believers! I have a record average of 8.12 kills per second in any given rampage!"

"What kind of priest" Mort shouted "measures something like that? Shouldn't you concentrate on detaching yourself from worldly goods? You are a twisted existential pastor, after all."

"Twisted?" Gore said. Mort pushed away and came in. He knew if he could get inside his weapon, past his effective cutting range, it would be too much hassle for him to draw the killing edge back and Mort could go to town. Gore backed up, staying aware of his environment, then stepped away to the side just as he neared the wall. Mort spun to keep him in front and had to block the sawblade once again, bracing it with all his weight. "The views of such a prophetic process are subjective. It's nothing someone like you could fully comprehend!"

"Oh really?" Mort said. He pushed the blade away. Gore backed up and brought the edge in on the other side of Mort's body. Mort swatted it away and rushed inside his range. Gore grabbed onto a handle for steadying his grip and pulled down on it. Mort didn't have to understand mechanics or engineering to know what happened, he just had to understand his enemy's intentions. He ducked and rolled as the blade came zipping down the shaft where his head was, making a high-pitched whine as it went. Gore aimed the empty shaft down at Mort and released the handle. It and the blade snapped back to their original place. Mort rolled away and found his back to a wall with two other walls at his sides. That's when he noticed the gravest error of all.

"Men like you" Gore began, lowering and slowing down his weapon, "are all the same. You're lazy, uncooperative, deceitful-"

"Are you talking about me" Mort began "as an individualist or me as a black man? I just need to gauge how insulted I should seem when you talk to me hereafter."

"Racism" Gore began "is the single most foolish invention of the lunatics of God's creation. Why hate a man for being different? You'll end up hating all men! If you hate men because of their skin, you'll lose the focus of an individual perspective and not be able to tell who is truly worthy of subjective and objective loathing! The worth of a single man will be judged by the bigots and other assorted shit-head candy-dandies solely by his race! It's a travesty of justice; no, it's a travesty of modern thought!!!"

"So" Mort said "you're insulting my views? I can live with that."

"Let's you and I face it" Gore continued. "The 'isms' of today have gotten out of control! It's unlikely that you won't find a person who holds some anti-group loathing anymore. There's always something stupid that the populous loves to abhor and they do it en mass most of the time. But enough about that. I'd prefer such a broad subject goes untouched between us for now." Mort nodded in agreement. "Unlike your neck, which I intend to sever." Gore revved his saw up with a deafening whine and lurched slowly forward.

Shit Mort cursed. This room was built specifically for him to fight in. He can control his effective attacking range, close or far, and his weapon is just long enough to reach from his body to the wall on either side of him! I'm trapped...however, it seems that he enjoys fighting more than pushing his prey into hopeless corners. Mort ditched his shovel. I apologize for that digging pun. With his primary weapon, the tool by which he murdered so many people in the past and would have done so with in the future, was on the ground. Mort jumped up to the knee-high table behind him and grabbed a modified chainsaw with with two blades and four exhaust pipes.

"What are you doing!?" Gore asked over the chugging growl of Mort's new weapon as he revved it up. He held both the choke cords in his grip and ripped them until the engine began humming and roaring its evil roar. The blades moved with the godspeed destruction that drove Mort out of his mind before, but this time less human thoughts came into his mind as he wielded the marvelously evil weapon.

This thing Mort thought would never be a part of anyone's military. In a battlefield situation, detection equals death. Running around with a chainsaw would be like running around with a live flare tapped to your head. Why anyone would choose to use these tools in combat is beyond me, because they are prone to breaking, backfiring and a myriad of other negative circumstances to its user.

"Why" Mort said aloud, over the impossibly loud roars, "are we fighting like this!? It would go much faster if we tried to strangle each other to death wearing neck braces!"

"Why shouldn't we fight with these!?" Gore demanded. "They are tools for ripping through even the toughest natural materials! This saw of mine can cleave a man's skull with a single stroke!"

"So can a sword!" Mort said. "Even so, simply caving in the skull would kill a man. Overkill like this is barely passable as cinematic, and even I would like to think an audience that's well-researched in action films would want to see a fight with a bit more substance to it."

"YOU TALK TOO MUCH!!!" Gore shouted. He spun his staff overhead and prepared to strike down. Mort rushed in and swung his devilish weapon, hitting the already spinning blade of Gore's weapon head on.


Mort and Gore started out on opposite sides of the room now and rushed each other. Mort dove in under Gore's stabbing motion and tried to make a simple, shallow cut without forcing himself into a follow-through run. He failed, and his simple cut made him spin with the inertial force the heavy machine he wielded produced. Gore was too close to hack at Mort with his polearm, so he began backing away. Mort finally repositioned himself and began to rush in, but Gore stabbed at him with the blade horizontal. Mort considered blocking it, but considering how easily Gore could manipulate the device to fit through the space between his chainsaw blades, he opted instead to dodge it and then hit the metal pole so it would get thrown to the side.

The shaft of Gore's polearm carried the weight of Mort's slight tap and the whining circular blade skipped off the floor and through the wooden wall. Mort rushed in screaming, though his scream was covered by the roar of two loud gas-powered murder tools. Mort mad ea thrust upward, carrying the weight of the tool so the blades faced straight up. Then, with a stomp, he brought it screaming down. Gore gripped his shaft tightly and brought it in front of his face for protection. The flashing sparks shone on Gore's mask, a simple white one with only one dark hole for breathing and a red swatstika. No visible eye holes or nostril slots, just the mark of Hindu fortune. Mort pushed and broke Gore away, gaining ground. Gore ran back but couldn't retreat faster than Mort could pursue and got caught in another power struggle.

Mort followed through with his attack, released the weight of his body into his weapon, and spun on his heel to make another slash using the power of the previous one. Gore barely escaped with his midsection attached. His robe was torn into ugly tatters and his undergarments were revealed. He wore plain farm-hand style clothing stereotypical of southern hillbillies. Denim overalls and a dirt-stained white shirt. Although, knowing the history of Gore as a bounty of Hell, the dirt most likely dried blood. Mort said something under the roar of his blades, which Gore heard and responded properly to. They broke away and lowed the growling hum of their weapons.

"I'm getting concerned" Mort admitted "about the constant spiral of this mad little dance we're doing."

"How so?" Gore asked.

"These things" Mort said, looking at his shaking weapon "are deliverers of devastation, but they are also prone to inducing bouts of madness in their wielders. Like cursed swords, or something cliché, they are instruments that deliver sane men into a realm of total darkness, total madness..."

"I am aware of that" Gore admitted. "In fact, if you haven't yet noticed, this entire chapel and the religion I have founded is based solely around such madness. You see, that feeling of blood clogging and flooding the brain delivers men into fits of uncontrollable rage! If men can learn to harvest that pooling blood and feed it into their brains, they can unlock hidden power and potential that would otherwise seem alien, godly! I can turn men into living miracles!"

"Is that" Mort began "how you transported me outside of ordinary existence?"

"You're embracing the madness!" Gore said. "Yes, I replaced the reality you perceived with the one that I live in. I brought you into my world for the amount of time necessary to transport your body here."

"Then I'll be blunt" Mort said, revving his chainsaw and making it bark. "Why not do that now?"

"You're too good a man" Gore said "to be tricked twice!" Gore revved his blade up again and came in hard. He spun as he advanced and spun his weapon likewise over his head, then with all that movement behind it hen grabbed it in the proper places and smashed it into Mort's revved-up defense. The serrated teeth of the saw were biting into the metal of the chain around Mort's weapon. One of the blades was dangerously close to breaking, and where and how fast it would fly, who knows? Mort didn't like such odds and ducked down while dragging the blade away. He hopped back and then advanced with a downward slash. Gore blocked it with his weapon and threw Mort off. Mort came in again, reeling at his waist, and attacked with a horizontal strike.

He's just trying to shatter my weapon Gore thought.

BREAK, MOTHER FUCKER!!! Mort thought. Mort's efforts were finally realized, not by breaking the weapon, but by guiding it out of Gore's grip long enough to force it into the floor. Gore tried to pry it loose and yanked on the handle to get it out, but the paneled wood was too thick. Mort stepped to the side of the shaft and hacked at it with both blades of his saw. The string attached to the blade was broken and it coiled up on itself, snapping Gore in the hand. Finally, after so many sparks and so much hoarse shouting, the shaft shattered, the wires frayed and the sinister blade stopped. As its whine died down into a dead hissing Gore dropped to his knees and sighed.

"That's it then" Gore said. "In my old age I just can't compete with you young people. All the strength in the twisted nether world couldn't save me." Mort shut off his chainsaw and threw it away. Gore looked up at him curiously as he watched his killer reaching up for a silver-plated titanium-framed shovel with a pure, aged wooden handle and a horizontal bar at the end of the shaft to aid in powering through dirt.

"No one could save you" Mort said, his black goggles reflecting a curiously starry sky in the room. "This is the universe rejecting you. Fate is calling for a corpse to be made, and the Mortician shall answer such a beacon!" Mort used his new, perfectly balanced shovel to smash Gore's mask off. Gore was unflinching, an avatar of maddened discipline. Mort looked down at his face, and removed his black goggles speckled with sawdust. He couldn't believe his eyes.


"So" Gore began, "are you surprised?" For a man in such garb, imitating the speech and general patterns of any given white supremacist, Reverend Gore looked like an elderly black man with full, thick lips, a heavy brow of wrinkles, high prominent cheekbones and of course skin as black as crude oil. He opened his eyes, both golden from demonic magic, and raised himself up to eye-level with Mort. "Ironic, isn't it, that the Klan inspired my particular style of dress."

"Ironic?" Mort asked. "Hellishly twisted and stupid is more like it. Why would you imitate them? Are you blind or dumb?"

"I joined them, actually" Gore admitted "out of ironic protest back when I lost control of my mind. I left just before they found out I was black, though. I think someone there is still looking for me, and most of them will most likely find me in Hell."

"Ah yes" Mort said. He kicked Gore's knees in and forced him down with the point of his spade against Gore's wrinkled throat. "That reminds me. The murder. I should get to that."

"Such a light heart" Gore said "in the eyes of death. What terrible traits for a murderer."

"Who weighs the values" Mort began "of a ruthless killer, exactly? We are a breed that disregards the ratings of society, and we then carve our own ideals into the corpses of our victims! Who says killers have merit or rules!? We kill and then when we are caught killing we die, regardless of how long it takes for the shit-coated justice system to get us in the chair! Even though I have effectively defied that perpetuation of order by being spirited away by some hell-spawned demons seconds prior to my execution, the absolution of the universe remains the same!!!"

"If all men die" Gore said "and all murderers die, buy some perverse logic all men are murderers."

"Yes" Mort said in total agreement. "That is exactly it." Gore was confused, though the thick wrinkles of his face were strained in showing it. "All men are guilty of sin, and therefore they kill their innocence. If sin is not something you believe in, then all men commit karmic infractions and slowly murder their purity in the eyes of Buddha."

"What about the agnostics and atheists?" Gore asked. "Where do they fall in this debate?"

"They kill faith" Mort said sternly. "All men and women are guilty of killing something in their life. Even the most innocent and pure angel among creation has some hidden skeletons of desire or worth or fame. All people kill, but those who kill men are of an extreme class who choose to defy the regular laws of mortality. When one life is taken before its time, before fate calls for it, the world is thrown into confusion. Such killers are truly a bane to the ongoing revolution of our lives in this reality."

"I'm enjoying this" Gore whispered to himself. "Tell me, Mortician, where you and I would fall on such lines that you describe. Where innocent men kill ideals and values and truly horrific men try to kill cultures and races, how far have we strayed from that balance in the center of the continuum?"

"We are the center of the continuum" Mort said. "Men who kill men are the most balanced murderers of all of them. They exorcise their emotions through brutal acts against the individual whereas Hitler tried to do the same against the Jews. The ability to grasp guilt and bury it safely inside of one's heart is the trait of a perfect killer."

"A guiltless sinner" Gore said. "A man who can sin in God's eye and be without remorse. A man who refuses to repent for things undone and unnecessary to inspect. I agree. A man who can walk the earth without feeling is a perfect killer."

"Then we have common ground" Mort said. He relaxed finally, removing the spade from Gore's throat, coming to the realization that his enemy was an ancient old man with too much time in deep thought about life and its worth. Gore wasn't as dangerous as Mort had thought, he was just manipulative to the weaker minded fools who prowled the halls before. He was just...a brilliant man. Now that Mort realized that, his victory was bittersweet.

"You've given me" Gore began "a sufficient reason to be happy, Mortician. I feel, with men like you thinning the populous herd and culling the flooding of information in the world, that I am no longer needed. My fashion was far out of date, unfortunately. However, before you send this debtor to his jail, I ask that you do it in my favorite style."

"Gas-powered?" Mort asked.

"The one on the wall" Gore began "plated with wood, the one made before the days where these machines were popularly used, that is the first tool of destruction I gained. It is not gas or electric powered, but gyro powered. A perpetual generator lies within it which pulls the chains fast enough to sever bone from flesh. It is more advanced than most instruments of its kind today. It is my favorite in this orchestra of death. I implore you, as my parting wish, I want to feel the same pain that so many have felt from me. Cut my head like a tree with that blade and I shall not resist the demons." Mort had no problem obliging. He first sheathed his new shovel on his back, then walked over and retrieved his other shovel, seeing it just as good as the other one and more sentimentally worthy. Mort then retrieved the wood-paneled metal-framed chainsaw and revved it up with the cord. The saw whined with an air-hissing silence. It was barely audible, just the metallic singing of chains moving on metal.

Just under the hum of the weapon Gore said something which Mort heard and understood, nodding at his words with a smile of affirmation. Then, in a vicious spray of blood and gore, Gore was decapitated by his beloved oldest weapon. Mort found the job infinitely easier with this weapon than any of the other chainsaws he had used before.


"The 'Gore'" Mort said. "In honor of a misguided mind, I name this weapon 'Gore'. This shovel on my back, I name it 'Penance', along with my age old weapon the 'Spade of Fate'. The winds of destiny have roared today, blowing a storm into the sky. Now those clouds have passed, and I can feel the universe shining light on me...Now how the fuck do I get out of this place?" Mort looked around, seeing no door. The more he looked the more barren and empty the room seemed, until he realized that he had been caught in an illusion and was now standing in the middle of an infinite stretch of hardwood flooring. No walls to bust through, no ceiling to break though, Mort was trapped yet again outside of regular existence.

So he sat and meditated. Shit always happens to the man destined for greatness He told himself. This is just another road bump, made of shit, that I will have to endure if I am to truly achieve my destiny... While Mort's eyes were closed the darkness crawled. Demons with greedy hands came from all over in an instant to reclaim the body, all of them led by some nameless creature in a full-length robe of distorted colors. Its head featured two horns that curved up and out, creating a cleft of skull directly bisecting the symmetry of its head. A crease formed where the face would be normally, and on either side of the head where the ears on a man would be this demon sported two faces.

"He is waiting?" the face on the left asked.

"He is thinking" the face on the right answered.

"Where will he go?" the left asked.

"We will take him there" the right said. Gore was gathered up by a gaggle of demons who passed through the floor and took his body with them. They dissolved into a bubbling blackness that led directly to hell and were gone. Mort's eyebrow twitched as the two-faced thing neared him, and curious visions passed in his mind's eye. Visions where he had seen such a figure eluding his sight before.

"The end" both faces said "draws near. Time will take no prisoners. Nihil est Eternus. Nihil est Eternus." Their chanting continued on while Mort steadied his soul, as his body was catapulted through the universe to some part unknown...