Disclaimer: Done at last! To reiterate: this work is not for children. It contains disturbing
imagery, violence, sexual content and adult language. Marvel Comics, DC Comics and
Dimension Films own and control the rights to most of the characters herein - full notes and
acknowledgements can be found after the conclusion. If you wish to read the previous chapters,
they can be found at the Fonts of Wisdom, the Itty Bitty Archives or at fanfiction.net.
Correspondence: XanderDG@hotmail.com
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H E L L R A I S E R : H E L L F I R E
by
XanderDig
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6
My first thought was that they'd cut off my hand below the wrist. I couldn't move my fingers. I
gasped and opened my eyes, convinced of the horror I would find when I looked down. Instead
of an amputated nightmare, I saw an immaculate, thick dressing tightly covering everything
below my left elbow. The hand was swollen, yes, but it was no longer engorged like some
fulsome tick.
Relieved, I gingerly lifted my hand to look at it. The dressing was nearly as thick as a boxing
glove. All the fingers were still attached, and though I could see a divot where the surgeons had
obviously cut, everything seemed to be in order. I took a deep breath and marveled at how much
better I felt. It had been days since my mind had been this sharp.
The bedside clock told me that it was 3:30, and a glance at the blinds over the window indicated
that it was the middle of the night. It was impossible to tell how long I had been in the room -
the last I checked at Pierce's, it had been shortly after midnight. Certainly I could not have only
been here for a few hours.
An IV was attached to my right arm, steadily dripping some magic potion of renewal into my
veins. The TV mounted high on the wall told me all I needed to know about my location.
Pierce had taken me to a hospital against my wishes, and God bless him for that. I sat up a bit
and winced. It was not my hand that hurt, but my raw chest.
I pulled the thin hospital sheets to the side and moved apart my Johnnie. What I saw gave me a
start. There were two square burns on my chest. One sat off to the left side of my rib cage, the
other directly on top of my heart. My God, could I have actually ...
Looking around the bedside, I found the nurse's call button and rang it without hesitation. A
hollow note chimed and I saw a light come to life above my door in the dark hallway. In a slight
panic, I willed myself to be calm. The only way to deal with medical people was to constantly
remind them that you were in charge. When they didn't understand that, all that remained was to
remind them that you had lawyers.
The pitter-patter of officious steps briskly walking down the hall never came. I waited for some
time, my heart quickening as my ignorant anxiety grew. At least it was beating at all. I pressed
down on the call button again, harder this time. The added force did nothing to increase the
volume of the electronic chime, of course. Nor did it bring a Nightingale to aid me through my
pain and confusion.
My father had been a shivering, broken thing the last time I had been in a hospital. The fall from
the roof hadn't killed him, but behind their reassuring platitudes it was clear that the doctors
almost wished it had. Never mind my own motivations. When they earnestly told me that the
old man had lost a great deal of blood, when they asked whether I might be willing to...
"Of course I will," I answered, a studied look of concern on my face. "As long as it will help
dad." I was a big young man. I gave nearly a quart. Pop was tough, too. The blood took almost
four hours to turn around on him.
Clicking and clicking did nothing to bring help, so I pulled off the sheets. There was a guard rail
meant to keep me from falling out were I in the throes of some fitful nightmare, and it took some
fumbling to get it down. Sitting up was painful and stiff. I grunted with the effort and rested
once I was on the edge of the bed.
After a few tired breaths, I looked up at the IV. The mooring it currently hanged from was
attached to the bed, but there was a mobile stand next to the closet. I reached up and pulled it
off its hanger.
Before going all out, I shuffled to the door to have a peek in the hall. If I found some
middle-aged nurse asleep at the switch, she would regret it for the rest of her brief career. I was
holding the IV bag above my head. My ass was cold hanging out in the air.
The hallway was dark. My room was near the end, two doors up from the stairwell. A couple of
doors were open down the long hall. The blue-gray light from television sets leaked out of them,
and I could faintly hear a symphonic cacophony that could only be from a Warner Brothers'
cartoon - Bugs was being chased, from the sound of it. I could see the recess where the nurses
station must be all the way down by the elevator. The hall seemed as long as a football field,
narrow as a subway car.
"Hello?" I asked quietly. Then again. "Hello?" The only response I received was a wretched
series of coughs from one of the open doors. There was something in the death rattle that made
me shiver.
I turned around and went back into my room. Hoping against impossibility, I placed the bag on
the mobile hanger then looked into the closet. Despite the unlikelihood, I still expected to see
my clothes. Instead there was only a weathered old fur coat of the kind an old woman might
wear. Better than nothing.
Stepping into the dark space, I reached out to take it. I paused when my hand touched the dead
skin. It was warm, alive. A small swarm of moths took flight and I batted at them. They
swirled around my face for a moment and I stumbled backward, falling to the floor. The IV
stand tumbled over, though not before the needle ripped from my arm. I hissed and clamped my
bandaged hand over the new cut. At least the fall provided me with some energy.
Standing quickly, I gritted my teeth angrily. Now, I did not only need a nurse for companionship
- I needed a fucking bandage. I wrestled the tape off my arm, a raft of hair going with it. Then I
stalked into the hall.
The lights were off, of course. All my bravado seemed to vanish with the nightlight in my room.
Instead of rushing to the nurse and demanding satisfaction, I walked slowly toward the soft glow
where the hallway turned in an L. The cartoon soundtrack grew as I walked further along the
polished floor. As I passed the door it wafted from, I willed myself not to look inside.
Willpower was never my strongest suit. My eyes drifted to the left, and the first thing they came
upon was the ancient ventilator. As large as an oven, the beastly thing oscillated heavily, an iron
relic from the 19th Century. Lying next to it in the hospital bed was an ancient woman.
A shock of thin white hair surrounded her head, and her face was pulled taut by a series of
electric leads wiring off to one monitor or another. At regular intervals, the grandmother tensed
and relaxed, tensed and relaxed as though the current was reversed. A plastic tube as thick as a
pipe snaked from the machine into her mouth. Something clanged within the terrible iron lung,
like a radiator on winter's first cold night. I started at the noise, almost hopping backward. The
woman heard my footfall over the din.
She lolled her head in my direction. It must have taken a great deal of effort, for the leads on the
opposite side of her face pulled taut, stretching her papery, withered skin. Her teeth were
crooked and rotting around the pipe. Fighting the tension on her face, she mouthed a single
word:
"Help." I stared at her hellish predicament. Her watery eyes floated in her skull, terrified and
hopeful that I might be her savior. "Help me," she mouthed.
"I'm hunting wabbits," said Elmer Fudd from the television.
"What does one look like?" asked the wily Bugs.
The woman tensed with current, then relaxed. I looked up the hall to the light of the nurses'
station, then back at the machine-woman.
"Well," muttered Elmer. "They have long ears ..."
"Like these?" queried Bugs.
She tensed again, then relaxed, the convulsions as regular as a ticking clock. Or a heartbeat. I
turned away from her and continued on my own path. The hall stretched impossibly far in front
of me as I padded forward on paper slippers. My feet whispered on the slippery floor.
There was another open door on the opposite side of the hall. Instead of veering away from it, I
moved toward. My legs, it seemed, had a life of their own. The door was only cracked, so I
reached forward and laid my fingers lightly upon the wood. Its grain was somehow familiar to
the touch when I pressed down. It squeaked on its hinges as it lolled open.
Three people sat on the bed. The two perfectly coiffed blond men might have been twins, some
Nazi eugenics experiment gone terribly right. They were both nude, their rippled muscles
catching the moonlight streaming in from outside. Between them, staring out at me with eyes as
black as the devil's, was a beautiful, raven-haired woman. The Aryans took no notice of me as
they lovingly caressed her swollen, pregnant belly with glistening oil.
The beauty took her arm from around one of the twins and slowly hooked her long finger toward
herself, bidding me to enter. I swallowed. My eyes moved from her full breasts to her smooth
belly and back to her eyes. Her lips pulled up in a smile or a snarl and she ran her tongue over
her mouth. At last, the twins looked up at me disdainfully. Their hands never ceased their
sensual work.
I could nearly feel how hot the woman's skin would feel under my hands - mother and lover in
one. Indeed, I took a forward step. But I wouldn't cross the threshold. Not this time. I needed a
nurse to give me answers.
My eyes never left the woman as I reached out to grasp the doorknob. The twins turned their
attention back to their work as I pulled the door shut. When the lock clicked I felt light for a
moment and leaned my head against the door. When I pulled back, I saw that the handle was
slick with blood. The cut from where the IV had torn out was dripping down my arm.
I turned to complete my journey down the hall. There were no more doors to distract me as I
approached the nurses' wide desk. I came to the corner in front of the elevator and found a wide
desk. There was only a clipboard resting upon it. Few visitors must ever have come to this
floor, for the sign in sheet was blank.
There was another desk behind reception, a large, white dry-erase board with all the room
numbers up above it. Despite the fact that I had come across at least two other patients, there
was only one name to be found. Room 217. Shaw. It was only then that I remembered that this
was the very room number my father had been in back in Philly the day he died of his injuries
from the fall. And the blood poisoning.
A nurse sat completely still beneath board, facing away from me. Her outfit was so white that it
nearly glowed.
"Excuse me," I said. Behind me, I heard the faint noise of the elevator going into operation. Its
gears groaned plaintively. The nurse didn't react, so I spoke again with more force.
"I need to speak with a doctor."
"It's too late for that, Mr. Shaw," said the nurse. She didn't turn around.
"Madam, I don't believe you know who you're dealing with," I said. "I don't give a damn how
late it is. You find me an attending physician immediately or you'll be hearing from my lawyer!"
"Mr. Shaw," said the nurse in a flat tone. "A damn is all you have to give."
My blood boiled with anger, and I was ready to tear over the counter and give the little bitch a
piece of my mind when the bell above the elevator rang. I turned to see the floor indicators
lighting one by one, each floor ringing a bell. It was coming down from the roof it seemed.
The ninth floor. The eighth.
"I need a doctor," I said miserably.
"Once, perhaps, Sebastian. No longer."
Seventh. Sixth. Fifth.
"Your transport will be here soon," said the nurse. I turned to look at her. A red stain was
growing on the back of her white blouse, soaking through, spreading. I backed away from the
desk.
Fourth. I turned and began walking the hall back toward my room. With minds of their own my
legs began to pick up speed, nearly running by the time the bell rang for the third floor. I moved
quickly past the old woman's room. There was no time to look at the gurgling noise leaking
from within.
The bell trilled for the second floor, and I stopped, rooted in place. The elevator door slowly
opened and I saw my shadow stretch out in front of me from the light it cast. Turning around, I
was momentarily blinded when the silhouette emerged. I squinted and saw that the Rook had
arrived, and he wasn't alone.
Two green clad orderlies flanked him, surgical masks covering their faces. They moved a
Gurney between them. One of its wheels squeaked as it rolled. The Rook smiled at me, and I
ran.
Nearly falling in my paper shoes, I charged at the stairwell door. A sign on the crossbar read:
EMERGENCY EXIT ONLY. This seemed adequate. I pushed through and a loud alarm blared
to life, blasting my ears.
The lights in the stairwell flickered maddeningly. I looked at the upward flights briefly, then
charged down. It was two flights to the first floor and I ran at the steel fire door. Slamming into
it nearly knocked me to the floor - it was locked. I stepped back to kick it down when I heard
movement in the stairwell up above.
I turned and ran down two more flights. A door marked "L" was locked as well, so I continued
my frantic descent. I didn't even bother with "B-1," preferring to put some distance between
myself and my pursuers. The deeper I ran, the more intermittent the light became. Down this
far, when the lights did flare off the wall, the cinder blocks were brown and pitted. I tried "B-3,"
found it locked, and turned to descend another flight.
Something wet and slippery covered the floor, and I tumbled down a flight. I stood unscathed,
better in fact, and continued down. There was more and more of the dark liquid and I rushed
downward into the dark. The air smelled of copper.
It was more than two flights to the next door. I still heard pursuers up above, the muffled voices
of people shouting. Running desperately, I lost count of how many landings I passed. Finally, I
found a door and prayed it would open - the stairwell came to an end. The door was marked
with only an "M." It opened easily.
Rushing inside, I whirled about. There was a heavy shelf next to the door and I knocked it
down. Frantically, ignorant of my surroundings, I piled tables and chairs in front of the door. I
shoved anything heavy I could find in the way. Only when a small mountain of heavy flotsam
was piled up in a barricade did I finally slow down and realize where I was.
The morgue did not carry the antiseptic sent of hospitals. It was a wet place. I flipped on a light
switch and saw why - the room was slick with a trail of gore. It streaked from the door I entered
across the room to the only exit. Stainless steel doors were set into the wall, traces of ancient
rust marring their clean surface. There was nowhere else to go, so I followed the blood through
the wide double doors. A small sign hung from a rusty chain above the gateway: "AUTOPSY."
On the other side was a wide room tiled entirely in white. Mildew grew on the grout between
the tiles, and thick brown sludge congregated in the corners. On the opposite wall, a long swipe
of drying blood ran in an arc like a rainbow over the Styx. A rusty tray on four uneven wheels
sat in the center of the floor, the surgical instruments on top of it covered is viscous, red fluid.
On either side of the gore-covered devices were two examination tables with bodies lying still on
top of them. They were both covered by sheets soaked nearly black. Behind me, I heard my
pursuers struggling with the door.
Staying close to the wall, I walked slowly around the room. The change in angle did nothing to
make the corpses seem more alive. I walked over to the table, standing at the head of the two
bodies. Beneath their stained sheets, one of the poor souls was more injured than the other. The
body beneath that sheet had joints in all the wrong places - it was as though someone had
systematically broken every bone against the grain. I reached out to pull down that sheet, to
reveal the victim's identity, but at the last moment I changed my mind and turned my attention to
the other cadaver.
The other cadaver's features were more regular. The only anomaly to the body beneath the sheet
was a large stain high on its torso, above the chest. The fabric had turned brown, but I was quite
certain that the gore had begun life as crimson. I pulled the top of the sheet down, just enough to
reveal the dead man's face.
Pierce's features were eternally frozen into a mask of unrelenting agony. His mouth hung open,
cold, gray tongue protruding slightly in an eternal scream. Even his milky eyes were wide in
terror and pain. The corpse smelled mildly of sweet vanilla. I pulled the sheet from the body
and bile rose in my throat. Understand that I was never a squeamish man. In the past I had
personally committed acts so abhorrent that guilt even wandered at the periphery of my own
mind (though never for long). But this was something else, again. Something that I had never
contemplated even in my wildest imagining.
The bastards had carved Pierce's chest cavity open while he was still alive. With retractors
clamped on the ends to hold them down, five wide strips of flesh were peeled back like some
infernal star. On the left side of his chest, a section of the rib cage was removed, cut out at the
sternum. The bone and gristle had been placed almost delicately over Pierce's genitals, a fig leaf
in hell.
His death must have been an agonizing one. Back in high school, I hadn't paid a great deal of
attention in biology. One lesson stood out, though. We had dissected a pig's heart, and my lab
partner, Sarah Wilkins had fainted dead away. I remembered the vessels that brought blood into
strong muscle like a tattoo in my mind.
I ran over the names even as the lock on the door broke under my pursuers assault. Pushing my
weak barriers aside, they would be upon me in moments. Nonetheless, time had slowed down as
I went over my private, infernal anatomy lesson quietly.
"Pulmonary artery," I said. "Carotid artery, subclavian artery." It occurred to me that I was
reaching out to the wound, as though undoing the bindings might be enough to bring Pierce
back. The surgical clamps glittered even in the muted light. Whoever butchered Donald Pierce
kept him alive as they systematically clamped off every vessel carrying blood into his heart.
They had been careful not to disturb his lungs, the better for him to scream.
Shaking with rage, I numbly turned to the other body. I pulled the sheet from it like a hedge
magician yanking a table cloth from the Thanksgiving table. Emma. My God, Emma.
What had they done? For all of the hardships Pierce had endured were only a shadow of the
beautiful woman's tortures. I had lived my life to that moment moving from victory to victory,
from jealousy to jealousy, from rage to petty rage. Never before had I encountered this cliche,
though: never before had I actually seen red. A high, thin noise tore through the room, hurting
my ears. The knowledge that it came from my of mouth seemed distant, illusory. LeMarchand's
Box lied on her white belly, the only part of her untouched. She held it there with her palms.
Her fingers had been taken.
My enemies burst into the room at last. The two men still wore their hospital garb, their faces
still covered by green surgical masks. They charged in full-bore, coming at me to subdue or kill.
Something broke their stride, though. Perhaps they saw what was coming. Perhaps they heard
the finality of the noise tearing from my throat. Perhaps they heard their own deaths within it.
I tore into them with animal ferocity. By the time it was done, one of the men begged for his
life. He cried that he had a family, that he knew nothing, that he was only to take me to the Club
and that was all. It didn't matter. I didn't stop until the skin on his back tore away in a single,
wet sheet. Then I still didn't stop.
After some time, after the men had been dead and out of my reach for minutes or hours, I looked
to the door. These fools had only been appetizers to my feast of rage. The Rook still waited. I
panted like an animal as I waited for his entrance, the officious little monster. We would see
how haughty he was after I had buried him alive. But he never came through the door.
I don't know how long I waited in the room of the dead. My blind hatred, my endless anger did
not begin to abate until the chill hit my feet. The blood on the blood on the floor began to cool.
My unreasoned lust for *hurt* chilled with it. At last, my breathing began to slow. My mind
began to work again.
The Rook must have seen what I did to his underlings and rushed back to tell Buckman. At any
moment, a full strike team, some men I had recruited myself would surely burst into the room.
But why would Buckman even go to the trouble. For the first time, the possible consequences of
my actions revealed themselves to me. I would surely spend the rest of my life in prison if the
police arrived. Supernatural abilities or not, I could withstand neither an attack from the Hellfire
Club's trained militia nor the NYPD.
I looked around the room. There was no way on heaven or earth to hide what had happened
here. For a brief moment, I considered running. It was possible that I could cash in some of my
holdings come first light and be away before I could be connected to my crimes. Before the
stratagem was even fully formed, though, I looked back to the still bodies lying upon the chrome
exam tables.
Pierce had given me shelter, and poor Emma had been too frightened to even offer assistance.
Yet Buckman (for it had to be the White King) had them killed regardless. He clearly thought
me a cancer, contagious and viral. I could not run from this man. After spending a short
lifetime in search of nothing but my own pleasure, perhaps I could do something for the dead.
I took the boots from the body of one of my opponents, and the Box from my dead lover's belly.
The time had come for Sebastian Shaw to have his revenge, and to learn the Box's secret.
***
Working from memory, I found the right ladder up into the sub-basement. The shit floating
down here was fine, Fifth Avenue shit. Excrement from the very *best* people. At least I met
no alligators or any of the Morlocks long rumored to live beneath the city.
The crawl through the sewer gave me time to think. When I thought that the future was mine for
the taking, that the Hellfire Club would one day be my own private plaything, I memorized every
plan for the building dating back to the eighteenth century. One thing I had sworn was that when
I ascended to the throne of the Club that I would build defenses against attacks from below. The
old sewers ran far deeper than the subway. They were the entrails of the City, and the one I was
in lead directly up into the club. If Buckman was afraid of disease, I would prove to be of the
most virulent variety.
As I slogged through the chilling filth, I began to see a way out of my predicament. Instead of
merely killing the King and Buckman, I thought I could frame them for everything. They had
clearly been involved in the deaths of Pierce and Emma; perhaps they had killed their own men
as well. It was possible at the end of the day that I would emerge from this nightmare with a key
to the city from Mayor Koch.
I climbed up, using my stored strength to break the bolt holding the access manhole shut. I
pushed it open and pulled myself into the lower level of the club, arriving in a small janitorial
supply room. Even if my fractious emotional state, I looked longingly at the soap. Never in my
life had I wanted a bath more desperately. The filthy liquid of the sewer had leeched into the
bandage on my hand, soaking it nearly black with grime and worse.
Instead of finding a sink and bathing (or at least dousing myself in bleach), I only pulled out the
Box and looked at it. Tonight I would discover what the Gashes were after. I would know why
they were in league with the White King.
Silently moving to the door, I opened it a crack. The hall was clear so I moved quickly. I ran up
a flight of stairs and began to move for the first floor hall when two people approached. I
stepped back into the shadows and hoped for the best. The longer I went undiscovered, the
better my chances for getting to the king.
"I hate these big events," said one of the men. I recognized him - a guard, but he was wearing
the ceremonial dress required of employees on special occasions.
"At least it's overtime man," said the other. "You smell something?" They walked on down the
hall. Their conversation did not bode well. When I got to the end of the ante-hallway, the only
way up to Buckman's suite would be to cross the great hall. If a party was going on, that might
be difficult to do with any kind of stealth.
I summoned up my courage. A sprint, then. And probably a fight as well. In the end, it didn't
matter much - I would get to Buckman and I would kill him as I had eliminated everything else
that had ever stood in my way. I stepped forward then, when an uncomfortable bit of vertigo hit
me. I clutched at my stomach - it was as though reality briefly folded on itself. Then things
were all right again. I moved quickly down the hall.
When I came to the door to the atrium, I pressed my ear against it. The soft scent of the forest
still radiated from the oak even two hundred years after it was cut down. There was something
big going on the other side. The incoherent babble of conversation and cocktail mumbled
through the door. This was it, then.
I threw the door open, hoping for surprise. A guard on the other side whirled, eyes widened in
shock. I raised the Box and brought it down on the top of his head. Something gave in his skull
and he fell to the floor. Two of his companions charged forward.
The first struck me hard in the jaw. By the time he reared back his fist to strike again, I had
grabbed him. I tossed him into his comrade, pinning them both against the wall. The strength
from his blow flowed into my veins and I kicked the first man with so much force that the wall
caved slightly behind the second. Stunned from the concussion of the blow, the two guards
crumpled.
Spinning as quickly as I could, I turned to the wide expanse of the great hall, readying myself for
the assault I was sure was on the way. Instead, I found a room full of people in their finest white
couture. The well-dressed men and women regarded me pleasantly, even happily. A tall, blond
man was the first to move. He brought his champaign flute above his head, the golden liquid
catching the light.
"Here, here," said the man.
"Here, here," added a woman across the hall. Lovely, with dark hair and eyes, I recognized
Chantel immediately. Her polar white gown pressed her breasts together in fabulous cleavage.
"And here," said another fellow near the staircase that was the focus of my journey. He smiled
at me in his linen suit, teeth whiter than pearl. "A toast."
The whole room, perhaps a hundred people, two hundred eyes focused upon only me. Each and
every one of them was smiling like Jones's cultists had been at the end. They all said the word
together: "Toast!"
Then a man stepped forward out of the group. The only person in the room not in white, he
wore an archaic English soldier's uniform. His bearing was disciplined, ram rod straight, his
receding hair doing nothing to diminish his complete ownership of the floor. Though my every
instinct told me to rush the stairs, to get to Buckman and finish it, I found myself waiting for the
stranger's pronouncement. The man's dark eyes were heavy with experience, and his voice was
tinged with irony when he spoke.
"To Sebastian Hiram Shaw," he said. His voice was familiar.
"Sebastian Hiram Shaw!" shouted the group.
"Black King, blacker heart."
"Sebastian Hiram Shaw!" shouted the group again. I peered at their smiling faces. To a man,
they were wrong, somehow. The smiles were too wide, the nostrils too reddened and flared.
Even beautiful Chantel was just not right. There was a beauty mark in her cleavage, the kind of
small black mole that accentuates beauty. This one was strange, an unhealthy stain that was
asymmetrical and wide. Cancerous.
I moved quietly across the room, exposed under the light of everyone's smiling faces. Except for
the strange soldier's - he simply stared. When I arrived at the stairs, the man who had spoken up
third in support of my toast grinned widely. Something black and fluid squirmed at the corner of
his mouth for a moment before leaking out. He didn't seem to notice the black ichor, so I
thought it better not to tell him. I moved up the stairs.
When I arrived at the balcony, I turned to look back at the crowd. Their faces were gray and
cold despite their supportive smiles. It was like looking at a room full of tired ghosts, just going
through the motions of their haunting. The soldier was nowhere to be found. When I looked
down at the Box in my hand, I found that it had changed of it's own accord. Somehow it had
flipped over on itself, moving from cube to eight-pointed star. Something was coming. I turned
back and went to Buckman's office.
Stupidly, inanely, years of social niceties worked a magic that no sorcerer could summon. I
knocked on the door. All that came from the other side was the gentle hiss of the running faucet.
I reached down to try the knob and to my surprise it opened easily...
***
...and I'm back out on the roof. It's one of those gray, Pennsylvania days in the early fall where
the chill gets in on your skin and just stays there no matter how much you try to warm yourself.
The old man has us out on the roof to clean the gutters. Sure, he could have waited. He would
have waited for the weekend since, you know, the weather man says it's supposed to hit seventy.
But no. And if he won't take my ideas on when to clean the gutters, then he certainly won't take
them on how to run the business. I'm looking to move our family into a higher tax bracket and
all the old man can think about is tradition. Fuck tradition, I say. Let youth reign.
And that's when the old bastard starts hollering. "Help me, Hiram! Help me," like some damn
old woman. So I high tail it over to the other side of the roof and pop is nowhere to be found.
"Good God, boy, help me! Please!" So I rush over to where the voice is coming from, get down
on my stomach and look over the edge. Sure enough, dad has slipped off the roof and is hanging
by the gutter. My first thought is to panic, fear dumping into my stomach like the best glass of
suds in the world. I reach down to him, but the cantankerous shit shakes his head like a spastic.
"No, boy! Remember what I taught you! Go up and loop a line over the chimney, then come
back down or we'll both fall!" I look past him. It's a long way down.
"But, dad...."
"Just go!"
I almost tell him that we don't need to worry about my strength. I almost tell him that I got
pretty banged up shooting hoops this morning, only when I get banged up I don't bruise. I get
stronger. But I know what happens at the end of that little conversation, so I turn around and
start working my way up to the chimney. The old man's grunting and groaning behind me and I
wonder how long he can hold out.
KEE-RACK. That's right. KEE-RACK! That's the sound of the gutter breaking. I shout some
choice cuss words and crawl back to the edge. Dad's holding on with one hand now, and that's
on a gutter that's about three quarters pulled off the house. For the first time in my life, I see a
tear roll down the old geezer's face. This time, when I reach down, he doesn't spit on my hand.
He reaches up with his other hand just as the gutter gives up the ghost and falls to the ground. It
smacks the pickup three floors down in the drive way. I don't tell him, but he feels light as a
feather. I'm so strong now that I could probably toss him and all his tradition back over my head
and off the other side of the roof.
"I've got you now, dad," I shout.
"Don't let me go," he screams. An old woman, I tell you. And that's when it hits me so hard that
my own thought is a surprise.
"Dad?"
"Hold on, Hiram. I've almost got it," he says. His breathing strains as he tries to kick his leg up
over the edge to pull himself up.
"I got you, dad," I said. And I do. I *have* him.
"Don't let go, boy."
"I got you, daddy. I've got you now." He must hear something in my voice, 'cause he stops
jerking around like a trout and looks up at me. I look back for a moment, then I look away, over
at the remains of the tree fort we built when I was twelve. The windows pop out of the truck
when he hits it.
Later that day, I'm sitting in the waiting room when some nurse comes out to check my blood
type. Seems like dad has lost a great deal. I've read a lot about mutants since my strength
showed up a few years ago. Though it's tough for a lot of people to tell, I'm actually not an idiot.
The information I've picked up can be very useful.
For instance, there are often incompatibilities between the blood in mutant and non-mutant
members of the same family. Sometimes the rejection can be violent, even fatal.
"Would you be willing to donate a pint of your blood to your dad?" asks the nurse. All I can
think about is how she would sweat in bed.
"I got a thing about needles."
"Please. Your father needs you." She bats her eyelashes like she's on an afternoon sudser, and I
decide to go for it. We'll see just how tough the old bastard is. The nurse leads me to a door,
and gestures for me to go through. She smells like vanilla.
***
I coughed hard into my hand, nearly vomiting as the world shifts again. The White King's office
was as empty and sterile as ever. I shut the door behind me. Whatever nightmare was occurring
behind me was immaterial now - I needed privacy. Buckman sat in a white chair staring out the
windows though the shades were drawn.
"Why, Buckman?" I demanded quietly. "They had nothing to do with this. Life may mean
nothing to either one of us, but there was no reason for their deaths."
Buckman didn't respond. He merely sat staring, my rage increasing.
"There was no reason! I even brought you your fucking Box!" I tossed it on the floor in front of
me. I lay still for a moment, then part of it rose up, turned, and came back down. The object was
once again a cube, the Box I first found in Thailand. "Turn around. Don't you want to see it?
Your great prize? I opened it, you know. Met your little friends inside and I'm still standing."
Still, he didn't move. This was enough. The game was done.
"Tell me what you wanted it for, White King. Tell me if it was worth your death!" I stepped
forward then, grabbing the edge of his chair and whirling him around. Then I gasped. It
shouldn't have surprised me, but it did.
Edward Buckman was dead. His eyes were swollen, bugged, and the reason for it was clear.
Thick, black marks encircled his thin neck. The heaviest were at the base of his warbling
Adam's apple, where the (my) thumbs had dug in. Four other marks lead away on each side
where fingers had anchored. The world hiccuped again, vertigo making me unsteady. I lurched
forward, standing before the body.
Almost against my own will, I reached out and placed my hands around the dead man's neck,
Though his eyes were blank, covered by the milky cataract of the grave, they still seemed to
stare through me. His skin was cold as winter. My fingers fit the marks perfectly.
I stood with my hands around the dead man's throat for a long time. Had I let go, I would have
fallen down. The world was folding and refolding. I had killed Edward Buckman. I killed him
seven years from now after he caused the death of my wife, I killed him long ago, before Emma
went over to the other side (Emma's dead no she's alive she's gone here gone here). I am the
Black King, I am the shy boy, I am the angry young man, dad, get on the train or lay on the
tracks it doesn't matter to me you old son of a bitch you can't hold me back...
Jerking myself away from the corpse, I wheeled around, looking desperately for the door. There
was nothing. Nothing. The doors, the windows were gone. Though the incessant hiss of the
faucet was endless, the object itself was nowhere to be found. There was only white. Endless,
interminable White as far as the eye could see. And the Box lying on the floor. And the dead
man.
A single bell tolled, deep and low. I ran forward. It was a room, for God's sake. There was a
wall only steps away. If I could get to that, I could get to the door.
Footsteps clicked on the floor behind me and I turned fearfully toward them. The Rook smiled
at me, then walked calmly over to Buckman's body. He pulled a crescent-shaped brass knife
from his jacket and stood over the old man.
He nodded to me, then plunged the blade into Buckman's chest. The dead man started
screaming, an inhuman startling sound. I shouted as well, horror engendered by the sheer
impossibility of it all.
With a cracking, awful noise, the Rook carved through gristle and bone. After a moment, he
scooped the gash he had made like a Jack-O-Lantern. The heart inside was still beating, and
Buckman's screams went on and on. I backed away from the carnage, finally turning to run.
I tripped and fell after only a few steps; good thing, too. I was at the precipice of a great fall, the
edge of an infinite chasm leading into more undefinable White below. Buckman squealed on
and on behind me, the carving sounds of the terrifying sickle echoing in the endless space. The
sawing had created a rhythm.
"It's got a good beat, Dick. You can dance to it," I said. They used to tape American Bandstand
in Philly when I was a kid. I had always wanted to go, but dad insisted that was nothing but a
bunch of nigger music. For all of his preaching about work ethics and building dreams, he was
nothing but an embittered old man insistent on sharing his misery. He got what he deserved. He
deserved what I gave him.
I turned around. There was color in the room now. Blood. Tidal waves of it had spilled from
Buckman's chest spreading out along the floor. Even as the White King screamed, the Rook cut
the moorings of his heart. Buckman finally ceased his mewling when the small man removed
the organ from his chest. He weighed it in his hand, considering. Then he looked at me,
smoothed his tie and walked over in my direction.
From the other side of the wide space, I saw another figure approaching. From what seemed to
be miles away he came at a deliberate pace. It took a long time to realize that it was the faceless
man. I had never seen him so close before. He was as tall as me, his features completely
obscured by a fleshy caul. He and the Rook stood abreast of each other, the Lament lying on the
ground between. I moved my mouth to speak, to ask, but nothing came.
The sound of jangling chains filled the room, and the deep bell continued to toll. The wooden
chopping block, scoured and pitted appeared impossibly. One moment it wasn't there, and the
next it simply was. The pale glow drained out of the white space as though it were being drunk
up by some massive, old god replacing the white with darkness. I knew what was coming, so I
made my stand.
With a yell, I surged forward with all my strength. Regardless of what might happen later, I
would at least take these two with me. But I never had the chance.
With the thin, air-parting noise of a whip, the hooks sliced through the air. Three grabbed hold
of my left are, jerking it taut. Another four grabbed the other . I screamed at the explosion of
pain as the barbs tore skin and muscle. I could *feel* one of the hooks grinding against a bone
in my wrist. With my arms above me, the blood from the new wounds flows up my skin,
birthing gooseflesh over my entire body.
"Yes, Shaw. Run," commanded a voice from out of the void. I knew the Gash's bass well, by
now. It rang out at me every time I shut my eyes. I tried to struggle against my bonds, kicking
wildly at the grinning Rook and the faceless man. Five more chains slashed out of the darkness,
tearing into my legs.
"No," I cried. "No, God!"
The Gash with nails in his skull appeared between the other two. He seemed to glide rather than
walk, his devil's eyes fixed on my own. When he stopped above the Lament, he held out his
hand. The smiling Rook placed Buckman's heart in his hand. The organ began to blacken as
soon as it touched the Gash's skin.
"Eat, Shaw," said the Gash. "Gorge on your avarice. Feast on your betrayal!"
"Why is this happening?" I wailed.
"Don't you know? Your life is a road map of lives you've destroyed. From the very beginning,
you have only existed to consume, a slave to your appetites."
"No!" I screamed.
"Do you not recognize your first victim?" The faceless man reaches up and dug his nails into the
skin covering his face. He tore into it, almost hungrily, tearing the flesh away. I tried to avert
my eyes, to avoid my dad's accusative gaze, but it turned out not to be my father at all.
The faceless man was me.
"The moral voice that you murdered in its bed as part of your quest for gratification. And this
one," he gestured to the grinning rook. "The loyalty you demand but refuse to give. So much
potential, Shaw. So much hope to be wasted on a greedy schoolboy whose ego knew no bounds.
You wished your appetites for lust and power fulfilled. Now they will be. Here with us.
Forever."
"No!" I screamed again, denying reality despite all the evidence.
"Oh, yes, Shaw. Oh, yes. This is your hell. A hell of victories thwarted, a hell of potentials
denied. A great man forever of the precipice of victory... forever the plaything of defeat." The
Gash stepped forward, and though I winced away from his cold touch, he laid his hand on my
forehead. "Your hell, Shaw..."
My life, a skeleton of defeats and horrors tore through my brain: my son my only son destroying
me my wife dead in my arms the world in my hands taken away again and again betrayed by
Piece betrayed by Emma they scheme against me they plot my death I might have I could have I
was nearly a god a living god but I could never win...
He took his hand away and tears flowed down my face. Tears for the pain in my body. Tears for
the pain in my soul. The Gash was right, that was the horror of it. I spent a lifetime after only
the acquisition of money and power for myself. Now I was to spend a lifetime having them
taken away.
"Please," I begged. "Please make it stop. Just make it stop!"
The Gash turned his head at me slightly. He smiled.
"Stop? No, Shaw," he spread his hands and at some silent command my world exploded with
abject pain. More and more of the hooks came from the ether. They tore into my face, my
torso. Then they pulled, the flesh taut. A plaintive, pained noise squirmed out of my throat,
though it wasn't as loud as my blood spattering on the floor. The Rook and the thing that looks
like me watch coldly as my body is slowly pulled apart.
"No, it will never stop. As you tormented others so shall you be tormented. From now until the
end of time. Welcome, Shaw," said the Gash with nails in his skull. "Welcome to hell."
The hooks twining through my body began to pull then. I was young, my skin taut and healthy.
It stretched agonizingly at first, then it began to tear, a ripping sound louder than I would have
expected. The noise in my throat rose along with the tensions on my flesh, a thin, maddening
noise. My biceps was the first to tear free, the skin from my skull ripping away immediately
thereafter. On of the hooks had snared my jaw. It tore away, boomeranging off into the dark.
The hooks in my torso finally separated the muscles in my stomach. Over the explosion of pain
there was a weird relief as my bowels spilled to the floor. I screamed in joy at the beautiful
agony. I screamed and I screamed. And I screamed.
***
The shower was so hot, and I had been in it for so long that it turned my skin a deep shade of
red. Some of the irritation was from the loofah I was using to scrub myself. I wanted to cleanse
myself of the dream. I had a need to take it out of myself. I stood under the hot water for so
long that the water heater gave up before I did. Then I stayed for a while under the cold.
Finally, I felt myself enough to emerge from the bath.
I wiped the steam off the mirror. My face was still the same. It was a bit jowlier than it had
been in the dream, the hairline a bit further back. Regardless, I was the same man I had been
before I had gone to sleep. Sebastian Shaw. Head of Shaw Industries. Black King of the
Hellfire Club on the very night of his greatest victory.
Primped and dressed, I emerged from my dressing room every bit the man in charge. After
months of work, Jean Grey would finally be ours completely tonight. She was set to become the
first Black Queen in my tenure, and after we defeated her erstwhile friends the deal would be
done. All that was left after tonight would be to get rid of Wyngarde. He was a bit too
ambitious for his own good.
I strolled downstairs to greet the troops, my own Inner Circle. They hailed me when I walked
into the room. Pierce was there, very much alive and better than ever. So was Harry Leland,
jovial as Falstaff. Jason Wyngarde was ready, as was Grey herself, strikingly beautiful in her
Black Queen's garb.
"Are we ready?" I asked gravely.
"Of course," responded Wyngarde. I rolled my eyes and looked to Leland. Harry was a slothful
tub of guts, but he was smart as a whip.
"We're ready, Shaw. The night's ours. In fact..." he looked over at Pierce, who grinned over at
me. We'd been friends for so long that I couldn't help but smile back.
"What is it?" I laughed. Pierce pulled a gift package from behind his back.
"This is one of the biggest nights in the history of the Club, Sebastian. One of the biggest in
three-hundred years. Harry and I thought we should get you something. Kind of a
congratulation gift."
"I put in, too," Wyngarde added petulantly. Donald handed me the box, large and wide - it
probably started life as a shoe box. I grinned like an idiot.
"Have you seen this gift, Lady Grey," I asked the rising Black Queen. The stunning red head
frowned for a moment.
"I've seen something, milord," she said sweetly. I smiled at my group, tore open the wrapping
paper and lifted the lid from the shoebox. Another, smaller box sat inside, inexplicably wrapped
in Christmas paper. I pulled it out, my pulse quickening.
"We didn't have anything else thanks to bozo here," said Leland, clapping Pierce on the back.
"Yeah, well, it's not the thought that counts around here. It's the gift," he said. "And I went
through hell to get this one."
I swallowed, staring at them. Then I looked down at the box. I didn't want to unwrap it, but my
fingers seemed to work of their own accord. One tear of the paper revealed the golden filigree,
the rich wood. I began to shake.
"You all right, Shaw?" asked Pierce. He sounded a million miles away.
"He's not," responded young Jean quietly. She was right. I peeled the paper away from
LeMarchand's Box like the peel from an orange. A strip here, another there, the object revealing
itself slowly. At last I held it up in a trembling hand.
"Always on the precipice of victory," I said. The box was warm in my hand, and I'm sure that
everyone else in the room wondered why I began to cry
"Good God, Shaw! What is it?" Pierce asked.
"Always the plaything of defeat," I whispered. Then I said it again as the memories rushed up at
me from the black depths. How many times had I arrived at this moment? How many times
betrayed and mastered in the end? "Always the plaything of defeat."
The End
__________________________________________________
Notes & Acknowledgments:
Chris Claremont created Sebastian Shaw, Emma Frost and most of the recognizable denizens of
the Hellfire Club that appear in this story. The funny, blond-haired fella Shaw speaks to in
London is named John Constantine. Alan Moore created him, though Garth Ennis's run on
"Hellblazer" is where I drew most of my characterization. Finally, LeMarchand's most famous
creation, the Lament Configuration and the ghastly things it summons were created by Clive
Barker. I've also drawn on elements from the "Hellraiser" movies written by Peter Atkins and
Scott Derrickson.
I should also acknowledge several people in the fan fiction universe who have been especially
helpful in crafting this piece. The story began with a piece of advice. I was complaining to
queenB about the lack of progress I was making on my other story, "Half Lit World," and she
told me I should take a quick break and write something small to take my mind off. Well, some
38,000 words later, the distraction has been fun. Now if only I can get back to the other story
again.
Several other people have been helpful. Luba Kmetyk provided me with great assistance in
researching some details of Constantine's youth, and Frito did the same thing keeping me honest
on ol' Hiram Shaw. Any mistakes, of course, are my own. Dex's LiveJournal entry from some
time ago about the sexuality of the White Queen, Emma Frost was an excellent resource in
writing her. Moreover, the version of her in "Hellfire" is greatly informed by the one Benway
advances in his intense story, "The Hero." Many thanks to all.
Read more nonsense: livejournal.com/~xanderdg
imagery, violence, sexual content and adult language. Marvel Comics, DC Comics and
Dimension Films own and control the rights to most of the characters herein - full notes and
acknowledgements can be found after the conclusion. If you wish to read the previous chapters,
they can be found at the Fonts of Wisdom, the Itty Bitty Archives or at fanfiction.net.
Correspondence: XanderDG@hotmail.com
______________________________________________
H E L L R A I S E R : H E L L F I R E
by
XanderDig
______________________________________________
6
My first thought was that they'd cut off my hand below the wrist. I couldn't move my fingers. I
gasped and opened my eyes, convinced of the horror I would find when I looked down. Instead
of an amputated nightmare, I saw an immaculate, thick dressing tightly covering everything
below my left elbow. The hand was swollen, yes, but it was no longer engorged like some
fulsome tick.
Relieved, I gingerly lifted my hand to look at it. The dressing was nearly as thick as a boxing
glove. All the fingers were still attached, and though I could see a divot where the surgeons had
obviously cut, everything seemed to be in order. I took a deep breath and marveled at how much
better I felt. It had been days since my mind had been this sharp.
The bedside clock told me that it was 3:30, and a glance at the blinds over the window indicated
that it was the middle of the night. It was impossible to tell how long I had been in the room -
the last I checked at Pierce's, it had been shortly after midnight. Certainly I could not have only
been here for a few hours.
An IV was attached to my right arm, steadily dripping some magic potion of renewal into my
veins. The TV mounted high on the wall told me all I needed to know about my location.
Pierce had taken me to a hospital against my wishes, and God bless him for that. I sat up a bit
and winced. It was not my hand that hurt, but my raw chest.
I pulled the thin hospital sheets to the side and moved apart my Johnnie. What I saw gave me a
start. There were two square burns on my chest. One sat off to the left side of my rib cage, the
other directly on top of my heart. My God, could I have actually ...
Looking around the bedside, I found the nurse's call button and rang it without hesitation. A
hollow note chimed and I saw a light come to life above my door in the dark hallway. In a slight
panic, I willed myself to be calm. The only way to deal with medical people was to constantly
remind them that you were in charge. When they didn't understand that, all that remained was to
remind them that you had lawyers.
The pitter-patter of officious steps briskly walking down the hall never came. I waited for some
time, my heart quickening as my ignorant anxiety grew. At least it was beating at all. I pressed
down on the call button again, harder this time. The added force did nothing to increase the
volume of the electronic chime, of course. Nor did it bring a Nightingale to aid me through my
pain and confusion.
My father had been a shivering, broken thing the last time I had been in a hospital. The fall from
the roof hadn't killed him, but behind their reassuring platitudes it was clear that the doctors
almost wished it had. Never mind my own motivations. When they earnestly told me that the
old man had lost a great deal of blood, when they asked whether I might be willing to...
"Of course I will," I answered, a studied look of concern on my face. "As long as it will help
dad." I was a big young man. I gave nearly a quart. Pop was tough, too. The blood took almost
four hours to turn around on him.
Clicking and clicking did nothing to bring help, so I pulled off the sheets. There was a guard rail
meant to keep me from falling out were I in the throes of some fitful nightmare, and it took some
fumbling to get it down. Sitting up was painful and stiff. I grunted with the effort and rested
once I was on the edge of the bed.
After a few tired breaths, I looked up at the IV. The mooring it currently hanged from was
attached to the bed, but there was a mobile stand next to the closet. I reached up and pulled it
off its hanger.
Before going all out, I shuffled to the door to have a peek in the hall. If I found some
middle-aged nurse asleep at the switch, she would regret it for the rest of her brief career. I was
holding the IV bag above my head. My ass was cold hanging out in the air.
The hallway was dark. My room was near the end, two doors up from the stairwell. A couple of
doors were open down the long hall. The blue-gray light from television sets leaked out of them,
and I could faintly hear a symphonic cacophony that could only be from a Warner Brothers'
cartoon - Bugs was being chased, from the sound of it. I could see the recess where the nurses
station must be all the way down by the elevator. The hall seemed as long as a football field,
narrow as a subway car.
"Hello?" I asked quietly. Then again. "Hello?" The only response I received was a wretched
series of coughs from one of the open doors. There was something in the death rattle that made
me shiver.
I turned around and went back into my room. Hoping against impossibility, I placed the bag on
the mobile hanger then looked into the closet. Despite the unlikelihood, I still expected to see
my clothes. Instead there was only a weathered old fur coat of the kind an old woman might
wear. Better than nothing.
Stepping into the dark space, I reached out to take it. I paused when my hand touched the dead
skin. It was warm, alive. A small swarm of moths took flight and I batted at them. They
swirled around my face for a moment and I stumbled backward, falling to the floor. The IV
stand tumbled over, though not before the needle ripped from my arm. I hissed and clamped my
bandaged hand over the new cut. At least the fall provided me with some energy.
Standing quickly, I gritted my teeth angrily. Now, I did not only need a nurse for companionship
- I needed a fucking bandage. I wrestled the tape off my arm, a raft of hair going with it. Then I
stalked into the hall.
The lights were off, of course. All my bravado seemed to vanish with the nightlight in my room.
Instead of rushing to the nurse and demanding satisfaction, I walked slowly toward the soft glow
where the hallway turned in an L. The cartoon soundtrack grew as I walked further along the
polished floor. As I passed the door it wafted from, I willed myself not to look inside.
Willpower was never my strongest suit. My eyes drifted to the left, and the first thing they came
upon was the ancient ventilator. As large as an oven, the beastly thing oscillated heavily, an iron
relic from the 19th Century. Lying next to it in the hospital bed was an ancient woman.
A shock of thin white hair surrounded her head, and her face was pulled taut by a series of
electric leads wiring off to one monitor or another. At regular intervals, the grandmother tensed
and relaxed, tensed and relaxed as though the current was reversed. A plastic tube as thick as a
pipe snaked from the machine into her mouth. Something clanged within the terrible iron lung,
like a radiator on winter's first cold night. I started at the noise, almost hopping backward. The
woman heard my footfall over the din.
She lolled her head in my direction. It must have taken a great deal of effort, for the leads on the
opposite side of her face pulled taut, stretching her papery, withered skin. Her teeth were
crooked and rotting around the pipe. Fighting the tension on her face, she mouthed a single
word:
"Help." I stared at her hellish predicament. Her watery eyes floated in her skull, terrified and
hopeful that I might be her savior. "Help me," she mouthed.
"I'm hunting wabbits," said Elmer Fudd from the television.
"What does one look like?" asked the wily Bugs.
The woman tensed with current, then relaxed. I looked up the hall to the light of the nurses'
station, then back at the machine-woman.
"Well," muttered Elmer. "They have long ears ..."
"Like these?" queried Bugs.
She tensed again, then relaxed, the convulsions as regular as a ticking clock. Or a heartbeat. I
turned away from her and continued on my own path. The hall stretched impossibly far in front
of me as I padded forward on paper slippers. My feet whispered on the slippery floor.
There was another open door on the opposite side of the hall. Instead of veering away from it, I
moved toward. My legs, it seemed, had a life of their own. The door was only cracked, so I
reached forward and laid my fingers lightly upon the wood. Its grain was somehow familiar to
the touch when I pressed down. It squeaked on its hinges as it lolled open.
Three people sat on the bed. The two perfectly coiffed blond men might have been twins, some
Nazi eugenics experiment gone terribly right. They were both nude, their rippled muscles
catching the moonlight streaming in from outside. Between them, staring out at me with eyes as
black as the devil's, was a beautiful, raven-haired woman. The Aryans took no notice of me as
they lovingly caressed her swollen, pregnant belly with glistening oil.
The beauty took her arm from around one of the twins and slowly hooked her long finger toward
herself, bidding me to enter. I swallowed. My eyes moved from her full breasts to her smooth
belly and back to her eyes. Her lips pulled up in a smile or a snarl and she ran her tongue over
her mouth. At last, the twins looked up at me disdainfully. Their hands never ceased their
sensual work.
I could nearly feel how hot the woman's skin would feel under my hands - mother and lover in
one. Indeed, I took a forward step. But I wouldn't cross the threshold. Not this time. I needed a
nurse to give me answers.
My eyes never left the woman as I reached out to grasp the doorknob. The twins turned their
attention back to their work as I pulled the door shut. When the lock clicked I felt light for a
moment and leaned my head against the door. When I pulled back, I saw that the handle was
slick with blood. The cut from where the IV had torn out was dripping down my arm.
I turned to complete my journey down the hall. There were no more doors to distract me as I
approached the nurses' wide desk. I came to the corner in front of the elevator and found a wide
desk. There was only a clipboard resting upon it. Few visitors must ever have come to this
floor, for the sign in sheet was blank.
There was another desk behind reception, a large, white dry-erase board with all the room
numbers up above it. Despite the fact that I had come across at least two other patients, there
was only one name to be found. Room 217. Shaw. It was only then that I remembered that this
was the very room number my father had been in back in Philly the day he died of his injuries
from the fall. And the blood poisoning.
A nurse sat completely still beneath board, facing away from me. Her outfit was so white that it
nearly glowed.
"Excuse me," I said. Behind me, I heard the faint noise of the elevator going into operation. Its
gears groaned plaintively. The nurse didn't react, so I spoke again with more force.
"I need to speak with a doctor."
"It's too late for that, Mr. Shaw," said the nurse. She didn't turn around.
"Madam, I don't believe you know who you're dealing with," I said. "I don't give a damn how
late it is. You find me an attending physician immediately or you'll be hearing from my lawyer!"
"Mr. Shaw," said the nurse in a flat tone. "A damn is all you have to give."
My blood boiled with anger, and I was ready to tear over the counter and give the little bitch a
piece of my mind when the bell above the elevator rang. I turned to see the floor indicators
lighting one by one, each floor ringing a bell. It was coming down from the roof it seemed.
The ninth floor. The eighth.
"I need a doctor," I said miserably.
"Once, perhaps, Sebastian. No longer."
Seventh. Sixth. Fifth.
"Your transport will be here soon," said the nurse. I turned to look at her. A red stain was
growing on the back of her white blouse, soaking through, spreading. I backed away from the
desk.
Fourth. I turned and began walking the hall back toward my room. With minds of their own my
legs began to pick up speed, nearly running by the time the bell rang for the third floor. I moved
quickly past the old woman's room. There was no time to look at the gurgling noise leaking
from within.
The bell trilled for the second floor, and I stopped, rooted in place. The elevator door slowly
opened and I saw my shadow stretch out in front of me from the light it cast. Turning around, I
was momentarily blinded when the silhouette emerged. I squinted and saw that the Rook had
arrived, and he wasn't alone.
Two green clad orderlies flanked him, surgical masks covering their faces. They moved a
Gurney between them. One of its wheels squeaked as it rolled. The Rook smiled at me, and I
ran.
Nearly falling in my paper shoes, I charged at the stairwell door. A sign on the crossbar read:
EMERGENCY EXIT ONLY. This seemed adequate. I pushed through and a loud alarm blared
to life, blasting my ears.
The lights in the stairwell flickered maddeningly. I looked at the upward flights briefly, then
charged down. It was two flights to the first floor and I ran at the steel fire door. Slamming into
it nearly knocked me to the floor - it was locked. I stepped back to kick it down when I heard
movement in the stairwell up above.
I turned and ran down two more flights. A door marked "L" was locked as well, so I continued
my frantic descent. I didn't even bother with "B-1," preferring to put some distance between
myself and my pursuers. The deeper I ran, the more intermittent the light became. Down this
far, when the lights did flare off the wall, the cinder blocks were brown and pitted. I tried "B-3,"
found it locked, and turned to descend another flight.
Something wet and slippery covered the floor, and I tumbled down a flight. I stood unscathed,
better in fact, and continued down. There was more and more of the dark liquid and I rushed
downward into the dark. The air smelled of copper.
It was more than two flights to the next door. I still heard pursuers up above, the muffled voices
of people shouting. Running desperately, I lost count of how many landings I passed. Finally, I
found a door and prayed it would open - the stairwell came to an end. The door was marked
with only an "M." It opened easily.
Rushing inside, I whirled about. There was a heavy shelf next to the door and I knocked it
down. Frantically, ignorant of my surroundings, I piled tables and chairs in front of the door. I
shoved anything heavy I could find in the way. Only when a small mountain of heavy flotsam
was piled up in a barricade did I finally slow down and realize where I was.
The morgue did not carry the antiseptic sent of hospitals. It was a wet place. I flipped on a light
switch and saw why - the room was slick with a trail of gore. It streaked from the door I entered
across the room to the only exit. Stainless steel doors were set into the wall, traces of ancient
rust marring their clean surface. There was nowhere else to go, so I followed the blood through
the wide double doors. A small sign hung from a rusty chain above the gateway: "AUTOPSY."
On the other side was a wide room tiled entirely in white. Mildew grew on the grout between
the tiles, and thick brown sludge congregated in the corners. On the opposite wall, a long swipe
of drying blood ran in an arc like a rainbow over the Styx. A rusty tray on four uneven wheels
sat in the center of the floor, the surgical instruments on top of it covered is viscous, red fluid.
On either side of the gore-covered devices were two examination tables with bodies lying still on
top of them. They were both covered by sheets soaked nearly black. Behind me, I heard my
pursuers struggling with the door.
Staying close to the wall, I walked slowly around the room. The change in angle did nothing to
make the corpses seem more alive. I walked over to the table, standing at the head of the two
bodies. Beneath their stained sheets, one of the poor souls was more injured than the other. The
body beneath that sheet had joints in all the wrong places - it was as though someone had
systematically broken every bone against the grain. I reached out to pull down that sheet, to
reveal the victim's identity, but at the last moment I changed my mind and turned my attention to
the other cadaver.
The other cadaver's features were more regular. The only anomaly to the body beneath the sheet
was a large stain high on its torso, above the chest. The fabric had turned brown, but I was quite
certain that the gore had begun life as crimson. I pulled the top of the sheet down, just enough to
reveal the dead man's face.
Pierce's features were eternally frozen into a mask of unrelenting agony. His mouth hung open,
cold, gray tongue protruding slightly in an eternal scream. Even his milky eyes were wide in
terror and pain. The corpse smelled mildly of sweet vanilla. I pulled the sheet from the body
and bile rose in my throat. Understand that I was never a squeamish man. In the past I had
personally committed acts so abhorrent that guilt even wandered at the periphery of my own
mind (though never for long). But this was something else, again. Something that I had never
contemplated even in my wildest imagining.
The bastards had carved Pierce's chest cavity open while he was still alive. With retractors
clamped on the ends to hold them down, five wide strips of flesh were peeled back like some
infernal star. On the left side of his chest, a section of the rib cage was removed, cut out at the
sternum. The bone and gristle had been placed almost delicately over Pierce's genitals, a fig leaf
in hell.
His death must have been an agonizing one. Back in high school, I hadn't paid a great deal of
attention in biology. One lesson stood out, though. We had dissected a pig's heart, and my lab
partner, Sarah Wilkins had fainted dead away. I remembered the vessels that brought blood into
strong muscle like a tattoo in my mind.
I ran over the names even as the lock on the door broke under my pursuers assault. Pushing my
weak barriers aside, they would be upon me in moments. Nonetheless, time had slowed down as
I went over my private, infernal anatomy lesson quietly.
"Pulmonary artery," I said. "Carotid artery, subclavian artery." It occurred to me that I was
reaching out to the wound, as though undoing the bindings might be enough to bring Pierce
back. The surgical clamps glittered even in the muted light. Whoever butchered Donald Pierce
kept him alive as they systematically clamped off every vessel carrying blood into his heart.
They had been careful not to disturb his lungs, the better for him to scream.
Shaking with rage, I numbly turned to the other body. I pulled the sheet from it like a hedge
magician yanking a table cloth from the Thanksgiving table. Emma. My God, Emma.
What had they done? For all of the hardships Pierce had endured were only a shadow of the
beautiful woman's tortures. I had lived my life to that moment moving from victory to victory,
from jealousy to jealousy, from rage to petty rage. Never before had I encountered this cliche,
though: never before had I actually seen red. A high, thin noise tore through the room, hurting
my ears. The knowledge that it came from my of mouth seemed distant, illusory. LeMarchand's
Box lied on her white belly, the only part of her untouched. She held it there with her palms.
Her fingers had been taken.
My enemies burst into the room at last. The two men still wore their hospital garb, their faces
still covered by green surgical masks. They charged in full-bore, coming at me to subdue or kill.
Something broke their stride, though. Perhaps they saw what was coming. Perhaps they heard
the finality of the noise tearing from my throat. Perhaps they heard their own deaths within it.
I tore into them with animal ferocity. By the time it was done, one of the men begged for his
life. He cried that he had a family, that he knew nothing, that he was only to take me to the Club
and that was all. It didn't matter. I didn't stop until the skin on his back tore away in a single,
wet sheet. Then I still didn't stop.
After some time, after the men had been dead and out of my reach for minutes or hours, I looked
to the door. These fools had only been appetizers to my feast of rage. The Rook still waited. I
panted like an animal as I waited for his entrance, the officious little monster. We would see
how haughty he was after I had buried him alive. But he never came through the door.
I don't know how long I waited in the room of the dead. My blind hatred, my endless anger did
not begin to abate until the chill hit my feet. The blood on the blood on the floor began to cool.
My unreasoned lust for *hurt* chilled with it. At last, my breathing began to slow. My mind
began to work again.
The Rook must have seen what I did to his underlings and rushed back to tell Buckman. At any
moment, a full strike team, some men I had recruited myself would surely burst into the room.
But why would Buckman even go to the trouble. For the first time, the possible consequences of
my actions revealed themselves to me. I would surely spend the rest of my life in prison if the
police arrived. Supernatural abilities or not, I could withstand neither an attack from the Hellfire
Club's trained militia nor the NYPD.
I looked around the room. There was no way on heaven or earth to hide what had happened
here. For a brief moment, I considered running. It was possible that I could cash in some of my
holdings come first light and be away before I could be connected to my crimes. Before the
stratagem was even fully formed, though, I looked back to the still bodies lying upon the chrome
exam tables.
Pierce had given me shelter, and poor Emma had been too frightened to even offer assistance.
Yet Buckman (for it had to be the White King) had them killed regardless. He clearly thought
me a cancer, contagious and viral. I could not run from this man. After spending a short
lifetime in search of nothing but my own pleasure, perhaps I could do something for the dead.
I took the boots from the body of one of my opponents, and the Box from my dead lover's belly.
The time had come for Sebastian Shaw to have his revenge, and to learn the Box's secret.
***
Working from memory, I found the right ladder up into the sub-basement. The shit floating
down here was fine, Fifth Avenue shit. Excrement from the very *best* people. At least I met
no alligators or any of the Morlocks long rumored to live beneath the city.
The crawl through the sewer gave me time to think. When I thought that the future was mine for
the taking, that the Hellfire Club would one day be my own private plaything, I memorized every
plan for the building dating back to the eighteenth century. One thing I had sworn was that when
I ascended to the throne of the Club that I would build defenses against attacks from below. The
old sewers ran far deeper than the subway. They were the entrails of the City, and the one I was
in lead directly up into the club. If Buckman was afraid of disease, I would prove to be of the
most virulent variety.
As I slogged through the chilling filth, I began to see a way out of my predicament. Instead of
merely killing the King and Buckman, I thought I could frame them for everything. They had
clearly been involved in the deaths of Pierce and Emma; perhaps they had killed their own men
as well. It was possible at the end of the day that I would emerge from this nightmare with a key
to the city from Mayor Koch.
I climbed up, using my stored strength to break the bolt holding the access manhole shut. I
pushed it open and pulled myself into the lower level of the club, arriving in a small janitorial
supply room. Even if my fractious emotional state, I looked longingly at the soap. Never in my
life had I wanted a bath more desperately. The filthy liquid of the sewer had leeched into the
bandage on my hand, soaking it nearly black with grime and worse.
Instead of finding a sink and bathing (or at least dousing myself in bleach), I only pulled out the
Box and looked at it. Tonight I would discover what the Gashes were after. I would know why
they were in league with the White King.
Silently moving to the door, I opened it a crack. The hall was clear so I moved quickly. I ran up
a flight of stairs and began to move for the first floor hall when two people approached. I
stepped back into the shadows and hoped for the best. The longer I went undiscovered, the
better my chances for getting to the king.
"I hate these big events," said one of the men. I recognized him - a guard, but he was wearing
the ceremonial dress required of employees on special occasions.
"At least it's overtime man," said the other. "You smell something?" They walked on down the
hall. Their conversation did not bode well. When I got to the end of the ante-hallway, the only
way up to Buckman's suite would be to cross the great hall. If a party was going on, that might
be difficult to do with any kind of stealth.
I summoned up my courage. A sprint, then. And probably a fight as well. In the end, it didn't
matter much - I would get to Buckman and I would kill him as I had eliminated everything else
that had ever stood in my way. I stepped forward then, when an uncomfortable bit of vertigo hit
me. I clutched at my stomach - it was as though reality briefly folded on itself. Then things
were all right again. I moved quickly down the hall.
When I came to the door to the atrium, I pressed my ear against it. The soft scent of the forest
still radiated from the oak even two hundred years after it was cut down. There was something
big going on the other side. The incoherent babble of conversation and cocktail mumbled
through the door. This was it, then.
I threw the door open, hoping for surprise. A guard on the other side whirled, eyes widened in
shock. I raised the Box and brought it down on the top of his head. Something gave in his skull
and he fell to the floor. Two of his companions charged forward.
The first struck me hard in the jaw. By the time he reared back his fist to strike again, I had
grabbed him. I tossed him into his comrade, pinning them both against the wall. The strength
from his blow flowed into my veins and I kicked the first man with so much force that the wall
caved slightly behind the second. Stunned from the concussion of the blow, the two guards
crumpled.
Spinning as quickly as I could, I turned to the wide expanse of the great hall, readying myself for
the assault I was sure was on the way. Instead, I found a room full of people in their finest white
couture. The well-dressed men and women regarded me pleasantly, even happily. A tall, blond
man was the first to move. He brought his champaign flute above his head, the golden liquid
catching the light.
"Here, here," said the man.
"Here, here," added a woman across the hall. Lovely, with dark hair and eyes, I recognized
Chantel immediately. Her polar white gown pressed her breasts together in fabulous cleavage.
"And here," said another fellow near the staircase that was the focus of my journey. He smiled
at me in his linen suit, teeth whiter than pearl. "A toast."
The whole room, perhaps a hundred people, two hundred eyes focused upon only me. Each and
every one of them was smiling like Jones's cultists had been at the end. They all said the word
together: "Toast!"
Then a man stepped forward out of the group. The only person in the room not in white, he
wore an archaic English soldier's uniform. His bearing was disciplined, ram rod straight, his
receding hair doing nothing to diminish his complete ownership of the floor. Though my every
instinct told me to rush the stairs, to get to Buckman and finish it, I found myself waiting for the
stranger's pronouncement. The man's dark eyes were heavy with experience, and his voice was
tinged with irony when he spoke.
"To Sebastian Hiram Shaw," he said. His voice was familiar.
"Sebastian Hiram Shaw!" shouted the group.
"Black King, blacker heart."
"Sebastian Hiram Shaw!" shouted the group again. I peered at their smiling faces. To a man,
they were wrong, somehow. The smiles were too wide, the nostrils too reddened and flared.
Even beautiful Chantel was just not right. There was a beauty mark in her cleavage, the kind of
small black mole that accentuates beauty. This one was strange, an unhealthy stain that was
asymmetrical and wide. Cancerous.
I moved quietly across the room, exposed under the light of everyone's smiling faces. Except for
the strange soldier's - he simply stared. When I arrived at the stairs, the man who had spoken up
third in support of my toast grinned widely. Something black and fluid squirmed at the corner of
his mouth for a moment before leaking out. He didn't seem to notice the black ichor, so I
thought it better not to tell him. I moved up the stairs.
When I arrived at the balcony, I turned to look back at the crowd. Their faces were gray and
cold despite their supportive smiles. It was like looking at a room full of tired ghosts, just going
through the motions of their haunting. The soldier was nowhere to be found. When I looked
down at the Box in my hand, I found that it had changed of it's own accord. Somehow it had
flipped over on itself, moving from cube to eight-pointed star. Something was coming. I turned
back and went to Buckman's office.
Stupidly, inanely, years of social niceties worked a magic that no sorcerer could summon. I
knocked on the door. All that came from the other side was the gentle hiss of the running faucet.
I reached down to try the knob and to my surprise it opened easily...
***
...and I'm back out on the roof. It's one of those gray, Pennsylvania days in the early fall where
the chill gets in on your skin and just stays there no matter how much you try to warm yourself.
The old man has us out on the roof to clean the gutters. Sure, he could have waited. He would
have waited for the weekend since, you know, the weather man says it's supposed to hit seventy.
But no. And if he won't take my ideas on when to clean the gutters, then he certainly won't take
them on how to run the business. I'm looking to move our family into a higher tax bracket and
all the old man can think about is tradition. Fuck tradition, I say. Let youth reign.
And that's when the old bastard starts hollering. "Help me, Hiram! Help me," like some damn
old woman. So I high tail it over to the other side of the roof and pop is nowhere to be found.
"Good God, boy, help me! Please!" So I rush over to where the voice is coming from, get down
on my stomach and look over the edge. Sure enough, dad has slipped off the roof and is hanging
by the gutter. My first thought is to panic, fear dumping into my stomach like the best glass of
suds in the world. I reach down to him, but the cantankerous shit shakes his head like a spastic.
"No, boy! Remember what I taught you! Go up and loop a line over the chimney, then come
back down or we'll both fall!" I look past him. It's a long way down.
"But, dad...."
"Just go!"
I almost tell him that we don't need to worry about my strength. I almost tell him that I got
pretty banged up shooting hoops this morning, only when I get banged up I don't bruise. I get
stronger. But I know what happens at the end of that little conversation, so I turn around and
start working my way up to the chimney. The old man's grunting and groaning behind me and I
wonder how long he can hold out.
KEE-RACK. That's right. KEE-RACK! That's the sound of the gutter breaking. I shout some
choice cuss words and crawl back to the edge. Dad's holding on with one hand now, and that's
on a gutter that's about three quarters pulled off the house. For the first time in my life, I see a
tear roll down the old geezer's face. This time, when I reach down, he doesn't spit on my hand.
He reaches up with his other hand just as the gutter gives up the ghost and falls to the ground. It
smacks the pickup three floors down in the drive way. I don't tell him, but he feels light as a
feather. I'm so strong now that I could probably toss him and all his tradition back over my head
and off the other side of the roof.
"I've got you now, dad," I shout.
"Don't let me go," he screams. An old woman, I tell you. And that's when it hits me so hard that
my own thought is a surprise.
"Dad?"
"Hold on, Hiram. I've almost got it," he says. His breathing strains as he tries to kick his leg up
over the edge to pull himself up.
"I got you, dad," I said. And I do. I *have* him.
"Don't let go, boy."
"I got you, daddy. I've got you now." He must hear something in my voice, 'cause he stops
jerking around like a trout and looks up at me. I look back for a moment, then I look away, over
at the remains of the tree fort we built when I was twelve. The windows pop out of the truck
when he hits it.
Later that day, I'm sitting in the waiting room when some nurse comes out to check my blood
type. Seems like dad has lost a great deal. I've read a lot about mutants since my strength
showed up a few years ago. Though it's tough for a lot of people to tell, I'm actually not an idiot.
The information I've picked up can be very useful.
For instance, there are often incompatibilities between the blood in mutant and non-mutant
members of the same family. Sometimes the rejection can be violent, even fatal.
"Would you be willing to donate a pint of your blood to your dad?" asks the nurse. All I can
think about is how she would sweat in bed.
"I got a thing about needles."
"Please. Your father needs you." She bats her eyelashes like she's on an afternoon sudser, and I
decide to go for it. We'll see just how tough the old bastard is. The nurse leads me to a door,
and gestures for me to go through. She smells like vanilla.
***
I coughed hard into my hand, nearly vomiting as the world shifts again. The White King's office
was as empty and sterile as ever. I shut the door behind me. Whatever nightmare was occurring
behind me was immaterial now - I needed privacy. Buckman sat in a white chair staring out the
windows though the shades were drawn.
"Why, Buckman?" I demanded quietly. "They had nothing to do with this. Life may mean
nothing to either one of us, but there was no reason for their deaths."
Buckman didn't respond. He merely sat staring, my rage increasing.
"There was no reason! I even brought you your fucking Box!" I tossed it on the floor in front of
me. I lay still for a moment, then part of it rose up, turned, and came back down. The object was
once again a cube, the Box I first found in Thailand. "Turn around. Don't you want to see it?
Your great prize? I opened it, you know. Met your little friends inside and I'm still standing."
Still, he didn't move. This was enough. The game was done.
"Tell me what you wanted it for, White King. Tell me if it was worth your death!" I stepped
forward then, grabbing the edge of his chair and whirling him around. Then I gasped. It
shouldn't have surprised me, but it did.
Edward Buckman was dead. His eyes were swollen, bugged, and the reason for it was clear.
Thick, black marks encircled his thin neck. The heaviest were at the base of his warbling
Adam's apple, where the (my) thumbs had dug in. Four other marks lead away on each side
where fingers had anchored. The world hiccuped again, vertigo making me unsteady. I lurched
forward, standing before the body.
Almost against my own will, I reached out and placed my hands around the dead man's neck,
Though his eyes were blank, covered by the milky cataract of the grave, they still seemed to
stare through me. His skin was cold as winter. My fingers fit the marks perfectly.
I stood with my hands around the dead man's throat for a long time. Had I let go, I would have
fallen down. The world was folding and refolding. I had killed Edward Buckman. I killed him
seven years from now after he caused the death of my wife, I killed him long ago, before Emma
went over to the other side (Emma's dead no she's alive she's gone here gone here). I am the
Black King, I am the shy boy, I am the angry young man, dad, get on the train or lay on the
tracks it doesn't matter to me you old son of a bitch you can't hold me back...
Jerking myself away from the corpse, I wheeled around, looking desperately for the door. There
was nothing. Nothing. The doors, the windows were gone. Though the incessant hiss of the
faucet was endless, the object itself was nowhere to be found. There was only white. Endless,
interminable White as far as the eye could see. And the Box lying on the floor. And the dead
man.
A single bell tolled, deep and low. I ran forward. It was a room, for God's sake. There was a
wall only steps away. If I could get to that, I could get to the door.
Footsteps clicked on the floor behind me and I turned fearfully toward them. The Rook smiled
at me, then walked calmly over to Buckman's body. He pulled a crescent-shaped brass knife
from his jacket and stood over the old man.
He nodded to me, then plunged the blade into Buckman's chest. The dead man started
screaming, an inhuman startling sound. I shouted as well, horror engendered by the sheer
impossibility of it all.
With a cracking, awful noise, the Rook carved through gristle and bone. After a moment, he
scooped the gash he had made like a Jack-O-Lantern. The heart inside was still beating, and
Buckman's screams went on and on. I backed away from the carnage, finally turning to run.
I tripped and fell after only a few steps; good thing, too. I was at the precipice of a great fall, the
edge of an infinite chasm leading into more undefinable White below. Buckman squealed on
and on behind me, the carving sounds of the terrifying sickle echoing in the endless space. The
sawing had created a rhythm.
"It's got a good beat, Dick. You can dance to it," I said. They used to tape American Bandstand
in Philly when I was a kid. I had always wanted to go, but dad insisted that was nothing but a
bunch of nigger music. For all of his preaching about work ethics and building dreams, he was
nothing but an embittered old man insistent on sharing his misery. He got what he deserved. He
deserved what I gave him.
I turned around. There was color in the room now. Blood. Tidal waves of it had spilled from
Buckman's chest spreading out along the floor. Even as the White King screamed, the Rook cut
the moorings of his heart. Buckman finally ceased his mewling when the small man removed
the organ from his chest. He weighed it in his hand, considering. Then he looked at me,
smoothed his tie and walked over in my direction.
From the other side of the wide space, I saw another figure approaching. From what seemed to
be miles away he came at a deliberate pace. It took a long time to realize that it was the faceless
man. I had never seen him so close before. He was as tall as me, his features completely
obscured by a fleshy caul. He and the Rook stood abreast of each other, the Lament lying on the
ground between. I moved my mouth to speak, to ask, but nothing came.
The sound of jangling chains filled the room, and the deep bell continued to toll. The wooden
chopping block, scoured and pitted appeared impossibly. One moment it wasn't there, and the
next it simply was. The pale glow drained out of the white space as though it were being drunk
up by some massive, old god replacing the white with darkness. I knew what was coming, so I
made my stand.
With a yell, I surged forward with all my strength. Regardless of what might happen later, I
would at least take these two with me. But I never had the chance.
With the thin, air-parting noise of a whip, the hooks sliced through the air. Three grabbed hold
of my left are, jerking it taut. Another four grabbed the other . I screamed at the explosion of
pain as the barbs tore skin and muscle. I could *feel* one of the hooks grinding against a bone
in my wrist. With my arms above me, the blood from the new wounds flows up my skin,
birthing gooseflesh over my entire body.
"Yes, Shaw. Run," commanded a voice from out of the void. I knew the Gash's bass well, by
now. It rang out at me every time I shut my eyes. I tried to struggle against my bonds, kicking
wildly at the grinning Rook and the faceless man. Five more chains slashed out of the darkness,
tearing into my legs.
"No," I cried. "No, God!"
The Gash with nails in his skull appeared between the other two. He seemed to glide rather than
walk, his devil's eyes fixed on my own. When he stopped above the Lament, he held out his
hand. The smiling Rook placed Buckman's heart in his hand. The organ began to blacken as
soon as it touched the Gash's skin.
"Eat, Shaw," said the Gash. "Gorge on your avarice. Feast on your betrayal!"
"Why is this happening?" I wailed.
"Don't you know? Your life is a road map of lives you've destroyed. From the very beginning,
you have only existed to consume, a slave to your appetites."
"No!" I screamed.
"Do you not recognize your first victim?" The faceless man reaches up and dug his nails into the
skin covering his face. He tore into it, almost hungrily, tearing the flesh away. I tried to avert
my eyes, to avoid my dad's accusative gaze, but it turned out not to be my father at all.
The faceless man was me.
"The moral voice that you murdered in its bed as part of your quest for gratification. And this
one," he gestured to the grinning rook. "The loyalty you demand but refuse to give. So much
potential, Shaw. So much hope to be wasted on a greedy schoolboy whose ego knew no bounds.
You wished your appetites for lust and power fulfilled. Now they will be. Here with us.
Forever."
"No!" I screamed again, denying reality despite all the evidence.
"Oh, yes, Shaw. Oh, yes. This is your hell. A hell of victories thwarted, a hell of potentials
denied. A great man forever of the precipice of victory... forever the plaything of defeat." The
Gash stepped forward, and though I winced away from his cold touch, he laid his hand on my
forehead. "Your hell, Shaw..."
My life, a skeleton of defeats and horrors tore through my brain: my son my only son destroying
me my wife dead in my arms the world in my hands taken away again and again betrayed by
Piece betrayed by Emma they scheme against me they plot my death I might have I could have I
was nearly a god a living god but I could never win...
He took his hand away and tears flowed down my face. Tears for the pain in my body. Tears for
the pain in my soul. The Gash was right, that was the horror of it. I spent a lifetime after only
the acquisition of money and power for myself. Now I was to spend a lifetime having them
taken away.
"Please," I begged. "Please make it stop. Just make it stop!"
The Gash turned his head at me slightly. He smiled.
"Stop? No, Shaw," he spread his hands and at some silent command my world exploded with
abject pain. More and more of the hooks came from the ether. They tore into my face, my
torso. Then they pulled, the flesh taut. A plaintive, pained noise squirmed out of my throat,
though it wasn't as loud as my blood spattering on the floor. The Rook and the thing that looks
like me watch coldly as my body is slowly pulled apart.
"No, it will never stop. As you tormented others so shall you be tormented. From now until the
end of time. Welcome, Shaw," said the Gash with nails in his skull. "Welcome to hell."
The hooks twining through my body began to pull then. I was young, my skin taut and healthy.
It stretched agonizingly at first, then it began to tear, a ripping sound louder than I would have
expected. The noise in my throat rose along with the tensions on my flesh, a thin, maddening
noise. My biceps was the first to tear free, the skin from my skull ripping away immediately
thereafter. On of the hooks had snared my jaw. It tore away, boomeranging off into the dark.
The hooks in my torso finally separated the muscles in my stomach. Over the explosion of pain
there was a weird relief as my bowels spilled to the floor. I screamed in joy at the beautiful
agony. I screamed and I screamed. And I screamed.
***
The shower was so hot, and I had been in it for so long that it turned my skin a deep shade of
red. Some of the irritation was from the loofah I was using to scrub myself. I wanted to cleanse
myself of the dream. I had a need to take it out of myself. I stood under the hot water for so
long that the water heater gave up before I did. Then I stayed for a while under the cold.
Finally, I felt myself enough to emerge from the bath.
I wiped the steam off the mirror. My face was still the same. It was a bit jowlier than it had
been in the dream, the hairline a bit further back. Regardless, I was the same man I had been
before I had gone to sleep. Sebastian Shaw. Head of Shaw Industries. Black King of the
Hellfire Club on the very night of his greatest victory.
Primped and dressed, I emerged from my dressing room every bit the man in charge. After
months of work, Jean Grey would finally be ours completely tonight. She was set to become the
first Black Queen in my tenure, and after we defeated her erstwhile friends the deal would be
done. All that was left after tonight would be to get rid of Wyngarde. He was a bit too
ambitious for his own good.
I strolled downstairs to greet the troops, my own Inner Circle. They hailed me when I walked
into the room. Pierce was there, very much alive and better than ever. So was Harry Leland,
jovial as Falstaff. Jason Wyngarde was ready, as was Grey herself, strikingly beautiful in her
Black Queen's garb.
"Are we ready?" I asked gravely.
"Of course," responded Wyngarde. I rolled my eyes and looked to Leland. Harry was a slothful
tub of guts, but he was smart as a whip.
"We're ready, Shaw. The night's ours. In fact..." he looked over at Pierce, who grinned over at
me. We'd been friends for so long that I couldn't help but smile back.
"What is it?" I laughed. Pierce pulled a gift package from behind his back.
"This is one of the biggest nights in the history of the Club, Sebastian. One of the biggest in
three-hundred years. Harry and I thought we should get you something. Kind of a
congratulation gift."
"I put in, too," Wyngarde added petulantly. Donald handed me the box, large and wide - it
probably started life as a shoe box. I grinned like an idiot.
"Have you seen this gift, Lady Grey," I asked the rising Black Queen. The stunning red head
frowned for a moment.
"I've seen something, milord," she said sweetly. I smiled at my group, tore open the wrapping
paper and lifted the lid from the shoebox. Another, smaller box sat inside, inexplicably wrapped
in Christmas paper. I pulled it out, my pulse quickening.
"We didn't have anything else thanks to bozo here," said Leland, clapping Pierce on the back.
"Yeah, well, it's not the thought that counts around here. It's the gift," he said. "And I went
through hell to get this one."
I swallowed, staring at them. Then I looked down at the box. I didn't want to unwrap it, but my
fingers seemed to work of their own accord. One tear of the paper revealed the golden filigree,
the rich wood. I began to shake.
"You all right, Shaw?" asked Pierce. He sounded a million miles away.
"He's not," responded young Jean quietly. She was right. I peeled the paper away from
LeMarchand's Box like the peel from an orange. A strip here, another there, the object revealing
itself slowly. At last I held it up in a trembling hand.
"Always on the precipice of victory," I said. The box was warm in my hand, and I'm sure that
everyone else in the room wondered why I began to cry
"Good God, Shaw! What is it?" Pierce asked.
"Always the plaything of defeat," I whispered. Then I said it again as the memories rushed up at
me from the black depths. How many times had I arrived at this moment? How many times
betrayed and mastered in the end? "Always the plaything of defeat."
The End
__________________________________________________
Notes & Acknowledgments:
Chris Claremont created Sebastian Shaw, Emma Frost and most of the recognizable denizens of
the Hellfire Club that appear in this story. The funny, blond-haired fella Shaw speaks to in
London is named John Constantine. Alan Moore created him, though Garth Ennis's run on
"Hellblazer" is where I drew most of my characterization. Finally, LeMarchand's most famous
creation, the Lament Configuration and the ghastly things it summons were created by Clive
Barker. I've also drawn on elements from the "Hellraiser" movies written by Peter Atkins and
Scott Derrickson.
I should also acknowledge several people in the fan fiction universe who have been especially
helpful in crafting this piece. The story began with a piece of advice. I was complaining to
queenB about the lack of progress I was making on my other story, "Half Lit World," and she
told me I should take a quick break and write something small to take my mind off. Well, some
38,000 words later, the distraction has been fun. Now if only I can get back to the other story
again.
Several other people have been helpful. Luba Kmetyk provided me with great assistance in
researching some details of Constantine's youth, and Frito did the same thing keeping me honest
on ol' Hiram Shaw. Any mistakes, of course, are my own. Dex's LiveJournal entry from some
time ago about the sexuality of the White Queen, Emma Frost was an excellent resource in
writing her. Moreover, the version of her in "Hellfire" is greatly informed by the one Benway
advances in his intense story, "The Hero." Many thanks to all.
Read more nonsense: livejournal.com/~xanderdg