Henry found himself once again in the sports shop. Being that he'd already taken what was worth taking without paying, he decided to be on his way before anyone could drop in on him and repossess his newly acquired weapons. "Let's see what's behind Door #1," he said as he approached one of the two doors in the corner.

He tried to turn the handle, but the door was locked. "All right," he said, readying his bat, "I'll just have to break it down!" He took a swing and hit his mark, the aluminum clanking loudly with the impact as the bat shook in his grip. However, much to Henry's surprise, the solid aluminum hadn't made a mark on the door, nor had it even bounced off. Somehow, it had magically phased through the passive barrier before him. Baffled, Henry looked from the door to the bat and back again. "What the hell?" he said. He decided to try again, but to the same effect. A ring of metal and the vibration of impact, but still the metal somehow phased through the solid door. Henry lowered the bat and heaved a sigh of exasperation. "Damn," he griped. "Must be those physical limits of the pixilated environment…" With a shrug, he tried the other door which, to his delight, was open.

He was in another indoor fire escape, the top-level hemmed in by chain link fencing. As he descended the fire escape, he vaguely wondered why it was indoors. After all, the purpose of a fire escape was to get one out of a building, right? "Someone really needs to punish the architect for his gross indiscretion," Henry said as he passed through the door at the bottom.

He found himself in another room, and the first thing he noticed was the telltale sound of Whiffies padding about; three of them, if he wasn't mistaken. He readied his bat and looked just in time to see one of the rotting, mange-ridden dogs dragging its tongue on the linoleum floor as it came out from behind a shelf. Henry gave a shrill whistle. "Here boy!" he called. "Come on, I got somethin' for ya!" He continued to beckon it in the most annoying manner as he swatted the large end of the bat against his palm in anticipation. The Whiffy, taking offense at Henry's stereotyping, immediately lunged at him with jaws wide open, intent on clamping them down on his leg in an effort to get him to shut up.

SMACK!

The Whiffy yelped in pain as it was knocked out of the air with a strike from a heavy metal object. Henry shouldered the bat, laughing with evil glee as he walked up to deliver the coup de grace. "Stee-rahhhk ONE!" he shouted in his best umpirial dialect as he brought the sole of his boot smashing down on the dog's throat.

He had just removed his foot from the rotting corpse when another dog, alerted by the ruckus, dashed out from around the corner. Unfortunately, it slipped in its dead comrade's drool, and ended up sliding into the wall with enough force to stun it. This provided Henry with another free kill. "Stee-rahhhk TWO!" he shouted as he brought his bat crashing down on the dog's skull.

He went further into the room in an effort to find the final Whiffy, and when he didn't immediately find it, he decided to take a brief moment to scan his new surroundings. The room was filled with shelves arranged parallel to one another, forming aisles like in a store. The shelves were stocked with various things, primarily dog and cat food and cages and stuff. "Looks like a pet store," he said, once again showing how sharp his skills of deduction weren't. "It's enough food for an army of cats…" He was suddenly grateful that he was alone, for he would've died of humiliation if anyone had been there to hear it. The only one that could've possibly heard it was the Whiffy, which he was going to kill anyway, so that problem was as good as solved.

He started slowly down one of the pet food-stocked aisles, bat held ready in anticipation of a hostile encounter. When he got to the end, he peered around the corner of the shelf just in time to see the last Whiffy wandering aimlessly out from behind the counter. Thinking quickly, he grabbed a box of dog biscuits off the shelf, opened it and withdrew something made of metal. "Huh, a prize…" he said as he inspected the item in his hand. It was a key, and the tag attached to it had the words "Abbot's Sports" printed on it. He recalled the locked door in the sports shop and decided that was his next stop. But first, he had to take care of the Whiffy, the sole ear-witness to his mortifyingly stupid statement. He reached back into the box and this time withdrew a cliché bone-shaped biscuit. With treat in hand, he leaned out from behind the shelf and called out to the dog. "Hey! Over here, boy!" he called out in a patronizing tone, giving a few rapid whistles as he waved the biscuit in the air. "Over here! Look what I got for ya!" The Whiffy immediately took notice of the proffered item and, without thinking, took off in Henry's direction, panting in eager anticipation of receiving a stale treat.

Henry ducked back behind the shelf, and the dog was just about to round the corner when the sudden appearance of an aluminum bat in its face halted its advance and sent it sprawling on the ground. Triumphantly, Henry came striding back out from behind the shelf and approached the spasm-wracked canine on the floor. "Stee-rahhhk THREE!" he shouted as he put the disgusting mutt out of its misery. "YOU'RE OUTTA THERE!" he shouted as he jerked his thumb over his shoulder for emphasis.

Henry set the end of the bat on the floor and leaned on it as he took a deep breath. "Smoke if ya got 'em, boys!" he said as he raised the biscuit in his hand to his mouth and took a bite. He chewed leisurely for a moment, trying to ignore how dry and bland it was when dawning realization suddenly caused his jaw to slowly lose momentum. He had just stopped chewing and stood there for a moment before bringing the object in question up before his face for inspection. Sure enough, he was clutching half a bone-shaped dog biscuit in his hand, and it didn't take a genius to figure out what had happened to the other half.

Henry just stood there, staring expressionless at the biscuit before letting his hand fall back to his side and shooting one of those plaintive, well-ain't-that-a-bitch looks at nothing in particular. He then proceeded to empty the partially-chewed material from his mouth, spewing the fragments with enough force to launch them at an escape velocity that could rival that of a number of spitballs expertly packed into a paper towel tube for a scatter shot effect. "Ugh! That's awful!" he shouted, tossing down the last bit of biscuit so he could grab his throat. "Ick! Awful! Horrible food!" His exaggerated melodramatics abruptly halted, and he brought his hand up to his mouth to lick the crumbs from his fingers. "Maybe with a little ketchup…"

Unfortunately for Henry, the biscuit particles he'd spewed from his mouth happened to pepper a number of Nail Bats that had been snoozing peacefully on the wall behind the counter. The Nail Bats responded with fury as they left their resting spot and immediately homed in on Henry. "Eyaaaaarrrgh!" he shouted under the relentless poking of the pointy proboscises. He took his bat and immediately started swinging away, but once again, he was unable to hit any of the targets. He decided it wasn't worth the health loss and made a quick dash for the door in the small alcove next to the counter.

He found himself in what looked like an office, complete with cubicles and desks with PCs and everything, even an eyesore of a clock on the far wall. It was a completely normal office with one exception – everything was upside down. Everything except that clock on the far wall, that is. "What the hell…?" he said. "I have really got to ease up on the White Claudia…" He wandered around on the ceiling, but upon finding no other way out, returned to the point of entrance. Unfortunately, his bewilderment at the upside-down status of the room he was in caused his short term memory to lapsed, and he'd forgotten about the angry swarm of Nail Bats inside the pet shop. And, being the dipstick he is, he wasted several moments in another unsuccessful attempt to swat them down. After losing a mildly laughable amount of health, he finally made it back to the store entrance where dashed back out the door and quickly slammed it shut behind him.

He stood there, heaving for breath as he leaned back against the door, almost as though he were afraid the Nail Bats would break free of their pet store prison. "This exotic pets thing has gotten way out of hand…" he said before ascending the fire escape and returning to the store known as Abbot's Sports, where he immediately put his newly acquired key to use on the locked door.

He exited onto yet another fire escape, except this one was outside. "Architect finally did something right for a change!" he said. He could hear the hooting of Rubber Heads below him, but he confided in his new weapon of choice's ability to crack some skulls, be they rubber or otherwise.

He was not, however, prepared for the abrupt sound of something landing on the platform behind him. "WHOA, MAMA!" he shouted at the top of his lungs as he wheeled around to face a Rubber Head that had apparently jumped down from the building's roof. Fortunately for Henry, the stupid ape-like thing had its back turned to him, giving him the preemptive. Not wasting any time, he immediately pulled out his stun gun. "Take this, ya missing link!" he shouted as he touched the electrodes to the thing's ass.

ZORCH!

The creature immediately went limp and did a faceplant on the grated walkway, providing Henry with all the opportunity he needed to finish it off with a boot-stomp. "Evolution sucks…" he muttered as he proceeded to the stairs. He had to take a few swings at some ascending Rubber Heads, but that only made it more fun, because they had a tendency to go bouncing down the stairs like grossly malformed tires when he knocked them down, and they snarled as they crashed against each individual step on the way down. "Aw yeah! I'm cool…" Henry declared as he made his way to the bottom.

He stepped out onto a rooftop, where he saw two more Rubber Heads waiting for him. One of them, however, was different. It had a reddish tint like blood smeared about on its body, and the skin over its goiter had apparently been ripped off, giving it the appearance of a monkey's ass. He christened the oddity the Assface and immediately set to work on bludgeoning them. Unfortunately, the Assface wasn't quite as passive as its Rubber Head counterpart, and it took numerous potshots at him while he tried to deal with the less colorful of the two. Several blows and even more salty words later, the two ape-things had had enough and fell to the pavement, where Henry stomped their lights out.

Now that the riffraff had been disposed of, he made his way along, following the roof as it led around a corner onto a ledge to the left, above which was a bright yellow neon sign. "Re…" Henry feebly attempted to pronounce the words as they glowed their cheerful yellow light. "Re… Res… Restur…" He had a good deal of trouble until he tilted his head to the right. "Oh! I get it!"

R
e
s
t
a
u
r
a
n
t

F
U
S
E
L
I

"They spelled it sideways," Henry noted as he tilted his head back to the upright position and made his way out onto the ledge hugging the wall.

As he went along, he paused to take a quick glance over the edge, where he saw a small, fenced-in alley several feet below. The bizarre effects it had on his depth perception were not unlike that of a video camera having its zoom feature abused by a hyperactive twelve year old. "Wow," he said, pressing his back against the wall, "kinda like that movie directed by that fat Britishguy's silhouette."

He continued to edge along until he got to a pair of elevator doors. The first one he came to wouldn't open, so that left the second and last one, which did. "All right!" he said. He hadn't even turned to press the button when he noticed a pair of doors on the other side. "Hey!" he said as he approached the other side of the elevator, "I wonder what's past these?" Of course, he should've been able to see, considering the doors were wire mesh, but then again, he needed an excuse to go poking his nose were it probably didn't belong.

He exited the elevator into what appeared to be a long service corridor. "I wonder what's down here?" he said. Then, suddenly getting an idea, he cupped his hands around his mouth. "HELLO!" he shouted, then waited.

"hello!" came the faint echo a brief moment later.

Amused, Henry did it again. "HELLO!" he shouted, and again, there was an echo. Another thought struck him, and he cupped his hands around his mouth again. "HENRY TOWNSHEND IS A REALLY HANDSOME GUY!"

"thanks!" the echo responded.

"What the hell…?" Henry started, baffled at how the echo didn't come even remotely close to what he'd just said, but he couldn't figure out why it would do that, so he just started down the corridor to see what might be at the end. "This might be interesting…!" he said, filled with anticipation as he rounded the corner to the right.

GROOOOAAAAN!

That sound stopped Henry dead in his tracks. He had heard that unearthly groaning before, and where he heard that, he inevitably encountered annoying dead things not long after. "Okay, maybe I'd just better keep walking…" he said, doing just that.

GROOOOAAAAN!

"Jogging…!" he said, increasing his pace a bit.

GROOOOAAAAN!

"RUNNING…!" he said, once again increasing the speed and length of his stride as he rounded the next corner.

GROOOOAAAAN!

"SPRINTING…!" He rounded the last corner at a full blown dash, but was soon forced to stop when the last length of corridor terminated at a solid wall. "DEAD END!" he bellowed at the top of his lungs.

"sucks to be you!" his voice echoed.

Henry wheeled around and began to stomp his way back down the corridor when he felt his foot come down on something other than the floor with the first step. He looked down and noticed another one of those funky-hilted swords under his foot. "All right!" he said as he took up the sword. "I'll take this!" He had just deposited it in his pocket when he suddenly noticed something else on the floor: a shovel. "Two for one!" he said as he took up the tool. "All right! Another poorly-constructed sword and a spade!"

"Excuse me!" a voice said behind him in a rather irritated tone, and Henry turned around to see a figure he had last seen beaten up in an old subway car.

"Oh, it's you," he said. "Where'd you come from?"

"Through that wall," the black guy in the sweater vest jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the large black patch of sludge on the dead end wall.

"And what do you want?"

"I demand to know why you use racially disparaging terms, like 'spade'!" the ghost declared. Henry gave him the most utterly annoyed look ever.

"I was talking about this shovel!" he said, emphasizing the final word as he held up said tool. "Otherwise known as a spade, or didn't you know that?" The ghost's insulted countenance was replaced by one of surprised discovery.

"Oh…" he said. "Then it wasn't a racial slur?"

"No, I have nothing against black people as a community or as a race," Henry said. "Therefore, it can't be considered a hate crime when I beat you up for trying to pull a Jessie Jackass on me!" With that, he immediately brought the head of the shovel crashing down on the ghost's skull, sending the victim reeling before continuing to beat the un-living bejeezus out of him.

"Rodney King! RODNEY KING!" the ghost hollered above the sickening rhythm of pain Henry was pounding out on his dead body. The thuds of impact and the crunching of breaking bone filled the corridor until the ghost finally succumbed to the onsloaught and fell prone on the ground.

"Black, white…" Henry said, resting the edge of the shovelhead on the dead guy's belly. "I'm the guy with the arsenal in his pants." Then, just for good measure, he drove the shovelhead into the ghost's gut with his foot, which rewarded him with that noisy death rattle the undead pests tended to emit when struck. He couldn't help but comment on his actions after standing there dumbly for a moment afterward. "God, that was violent…" he said.

"MO-THA-FUCKA!" another voice shouted from behind, and Henry turned around to see some weasly-looking punk in a red jacket and ski cap come floating down the corridor. "Da hell you doin' to my dealer!"

"Dealer?" Henry echoed, not understanding what the fuss was about.

"Yeah, foo'! My dealer! He hooks me up wit' my shit fix, yo!" Henry arced an eyebrow.

"So he sells you Pepto-Bismol?" he said. "You can get that at any grocery store!" The ghost responded by getting all up in is face.

"Yo, ease off!" the ghetto-wannabe snapped at him. "You best be gettin' on outta here, 'cuz you be steppin', yo!"

"That's right," Henry replied belligerently, shoving the ghost away. "I be steppin' all over your dead ass if you don't get your rancid funk away me!"

"Oh, you think you slick, you punk-ass, blasphemous, dope-fiend bitch!" the hood challenged. Henry raised his hand in a halting gesture.

"All right, stop right there," he said. "If you start bragging about how many times or how often you got your 'jimmy' 'whacked' recently--"

"Every day!" the hooligan declared proudly.

"What?"

"I had my jimmy whacked seven times last week!" the goon repeated. Henry's face scrunched with annoyance.

"Really?" he said, pulling out his baseball bat. "Well, how 'bout I whack it for the first time this week?" The punk put some distance between the two of them.

"Back da fuck up!" he shouted. "Idunno what team you be battin' for--"

"I'm straight as an arrow, thank you," Henry said. "I didn't use 'whack' as innuendo so much as I meant it in the literal sense." The ghost gave him a strange look.

"Da hell you talkin' 'bout, bitch!"

"ENGLISH, MOFO!" Henry shouted. "DO YOU SPEAK IT!"

"Now you talkin' my language!" the hood said, finally noting some familiar terminology.

"Then pay attention, you pant-sagging sockhead!" Henry said. "When I say 'whack', I mean I'm going to pound your 'inheritance' into Figgie pudding!" Then, before the ghost could react, Henry immediately launched into his usual assault, which landed two over-the-shoulder strikes right on the kid's crotch.

"OH!" the punk cried, holding his crotch as he slowly descended to the floor and fell flat on his back. Henry finished the three-hit combo with an overhead bash right to the same area. "Oh, right in the Mean Bean Machine…!"

"Roshambo!" Henry shouted as he raised his foot and brought it stamping down on the kid's crotch again. "That means to kick you squa' in the nuts…" he said as he shouldered the bat and started back down the corridor. "Give 'jimmy' my regards."

He had just gotten up to the elevator door and was about to step inside when he suddenly felt what must've been fingernails digging themselves into his ass. "YEEEOOOOOWW!" he shouted as he leapt away from whatever was assaulting his rear end. He then wheeled around to see none other than the black ghost he'd just beaten down at the other end of the hallway.

"Damn, man!" the ghost cursed. "Don't you carry a wallet with you!"

"What the hell are you rooting around for my wallet for!" Henry shouted. The ghost merely pulled a small plastic bag filled with suspicious-looking shreds of dried leaves out of his pocket.

"To pay for this damaged 'merchandise'," he replied. "I had intended to sell it to the junkie you assaulted a moment ago. That is, I was going to until you went and tainted it with blood and everything!"

"It's not my problem!" Henry shrugged.

"Oh, but it is!" the ghost replied. "See, I was supposed to use that loot for a few rounds of poker tonight! But seeing as how I can't make the sale due to your actions, you owe me reparations!"

"You know something? You're right!" Henry said. The ghost gave a surprised start.

"You actually agree with me?" he asked.

"Yes, I do!" Henry said in an all-too-acquiescent tone. "I know just how to rectify the situation." Before the ghost could react, a swing from Henry's bat connected with his temple, laying him flat once again. "See?" Henry said. "Problem solved." He then proceeded to the elevator, muttering something about "damned 'legitimate businessmen'" as the doors closed him in. No sooner had this happened than the other ghost he'd beaten up arrived on the scene. The punk noticed the first ghost lying on the floor, then hovered over his prone form with an idiotic grin plastered on his face.

"Man, you got knocked da fuck out!" he said. He was so focused on the other ghost that he hadn't noticed that Henry had hit the elevator's "Door Open" button for the express purpose of bringing the head of his newly-acquired spade crashing down on his skull (that is to say, the ghost's skull; if I'd meant Henry's, I'd have typed "his own skull" instead).

"Stupid spooks…" Henry muttered as the elevator doors closed him in again, leaving the two ghosts laid flat on the concrete floor of the corridor.

"Nice going, wigger," the black ghost said.

"You shuts da hell up!" the punk replied.

--------------------

Hell Count: 7
Total Hell Count: 60

A/N: Probably the most politically incorrect chapter yet. Hopefully nobody found any of the material to be offensive in nature, for its use was purely facetious. I also hope the ghetto reject's words pass as ebonics. At least the stuff I didn't rip from cinema about the 'hood.