"Was it enough for you Mark?" The voice of the late John Kramer AKA Jigsaw echoed within the mind of the aforementioned man.
"Will it ever be enough for you?" Struggling to "face" the imaginary intruder of his psyche, Mark Hoffman focused on finding a way to free himself of the shackle chained to his left foot. How had he fallen so far as to be chained up like an animal you may ask? Vengeance.
Mr. Hoffman was once a detective in his city's local police force, and a damn good one if memory serves right. He had been in that job position for over 20 years, in all that time he'd been rounding up all kinds of nasty unrepentant criminals. He had managed for so long, to be good at ridding the streets of the scum that inhabited them.
However, nothing lasts forever as you all know…
Family was a word that meant so much to Mark, for it was one of the only two luxuries he could ever hold dear to himself, besides his police work. And the world had robbed him of the very definition of said word. First his uncle, then his grandparents, then his own parents, and finally his sister. She was the last one who was left for him to lose. And it tore away at his soul so intensely.
Shivering from the cold atmosphere in the darkened and dingy bathroom, whilst also trying to keep himself from retching at the foul odour coming from the two long dead corpses that occupied the room with him. "This… THIS ISN'T FAIR!" Shouted Mark at the closed door situated a few feet away from the centre of his vision.
"It never is Mark. You of all people should know that."
"Shut up!" The trapped man grumbled to himself as he rested his back on the grime ridden bathtub behind him.
The stench of this whole place was unbearable. Like any other bathroom I shouldn't wonder. But this bathroom was special in a sense. It had been used as one of the many "tests" for serial killer John Kramer's victims. Tests that were meant to invoke the victim's desire and will to live through horrific means. They had to be "cleansed" of their personal sins first though, so that they could be reborn as a new person, one who appreciated life and spent every single second of their time showing that appreciation.
The good detective had once been involved in a test. And then another. And now finally this very bathroom.
His first test came in the form of a shotgun strapped to his body, a wooden chair with restraints, a mirror, and a very grumpy old man. The old man in question was in fact John Kramer. He had selected Hoffman to participate in a very special test to determine the latter's own corrupt nature both as an enforcer of the law and as a human being.
While Mark may have been a good police officer, his sister's death by the hands of her abusive boyfriend pushed him too far over the edge. Her killer received a light prison sentence of 5 years instead of an extra 20. During this period, Mark had turned to alcoholism, futilely drowning away his sorrows only for them to resurface once he'd sobered up.
When his sister's murderer, Seth Baxter, had served his time, Mark had some terrible ideas on how to deal with that. The one constant being murder.
"KILLING IS DISTASTEFUL!" That was what the old geezer had told Mark, when they first met. The hypocritical oaf he was.
For some time, the "Jigsaw" killings had been going on long enough for the police, the press and the general public to catch wind of. During one of the very first cases on the delusional torturer's killing spree, Hoffman was assigned to help investigate and clean up the equipment that was used in the brutal test of child molester Curtis Harrison. It just so happened that the gruesome demise of the "victim" was considered well deserved from a majority of people's perspective, including Hoffman, because of Harrison's appalling crimes.
Whilst working with forensics on gathering and analysing the evidence, Mark had become somewhat "inspired" by this Jigsaw killer. He chose his "unfortunate contestants" carefully, picking off each individual piece of filth this cruel & uncaring world had to offer, and offed them in grisly ways so they could never have a chance to victimise an innocent life ever again.
And Seth Baxter was a piece of filth who needed to be "offed", otherwise Mark's sister would never receive the posthumous justice she deserved. But Mark gave it to her. From learning the mechanics of how Jigsaw's "games" work, he had devised his own unique contraption to place Seth in. Only unlike Jigsaw's methods of giving his captives a chance to free themselves from their torment, Mark had devised no such thing for Mr. Baxter.
The despicable rat was strapped down to a table in an abandoned warehouse. A large pendulum blade would slowly cut him in half within a minute once his test would begin. Although he had made Seth's trap inescapable, Mark had craftly engineered the ordeal to be the work of Jigsaw, even using an altered video of "Billy the Puppet" with Hoffman's own voice changed to match that of Jigsaw himself.
It was for this little inconvenience that Mark was captured by John for his first test. The latter argued with the former about giving even the most ruthless degenerates of society a chance to redeem themselves to which Hoffman severely denied.
"You NEVER saw the blood on my sister's body." Wiping away the sweat beginning to permeate from himself, Mark took off his jacket and set it beside himself. Almost an hour he had been trapped in this godforsaken bathroom. How much longer? The smug Doctor Gordon had thrown away his only means of escape literally out of the door. He should've known John had saved him from his own test and taken him under his wing. But the pretentious asshole had to have been chosen like he was.
He and John came to an understanding in his first test. If Hoffman helped John in his shenanigans, John in turn would allow Hoffman to carry out his vigilante crusade. For years the duo helped one another. The even gained a new recruit by the name of Amanda Young, a former heroin addict who John had placed a reverse bear trap device over her head, which she was able to unlock right before it killed her.
Mark never saw eye to eye with Amanda or John for that matter. The former was a self-harming junkie and the latter a patronising fool who refused to admit to taking any joy in his victims' suffering.
Joy. That was another word that now held so much meaning to the twisted detective. But did he hold that dear to himself more than his love for his late sister?
"Do you enjoy how brutality feels Mark?" The one-time John had asked Mark that question was in regard to one of the last victims they'd captured together before the former's death from his cancer, the latter had been quick to answer. "Let's be honest. You want him to suffer just as much as I do."
And Mark did want to see this victim suffer. He had served a light sentence for killing a little boy when he was drunk driving. The deceased boy's parents ironically also wound up playing in Johnny boy's final test right before his own demise. And theirs…
For years Mark had been an apprentice to John. A mere lapdog, but one who learnt many of his master's old tricks and his deepest, darkest secrets. One juicy little secret involved (unbeknownst to John) Amanda.
Before John became Jigsaw, he was a civil engineer married to a woman called Jill Tuck, who ran a mental health recovery clinic. Amanda and her then boyfriend Cecil Adams were patients there, because of their respective drug addictions. Jill was pregnant with John's baby around this time. They were going to name him Gideon, after the name of a currently abandoned building which John had acquired the rights to with the help of his lawyer back then.
But all good things must come to an end.
One night, Amanda had pressured Cecil into robbing Jill's clinic for drugs, during which Cecil accidently killed Jill's unborn child by slamming the handle of a door hard into her stomach in a heightened frenzy. Cecil then ran off immediately after.
Thankfully Jill's life was saved, but the pain of losing her and her husband's unborn offspring was too much to bear for either person, especially John.
Cecil was unsurprisingly the very first Jigsaw test subject. He survived his personal trap as well as he could and still died. But that didn't bring peace to John. And before that he was diagnosed with a cancer that seemed inoperable, so combine that with Gideon's death, John tried to take his own life… But failed. And it was through this failed suicide attempt that John realised his will to live, but only after enduring such a traumatic experience. In his mind's eye, this will to live was something that needed to be brought to the forefront only through excruciating circumstances for people to truly be grateful to be alive.
Through unknown means, Mark had discovered Amanda's role in Jill's miscarriage, and threatened to blackmail her with it by telling it to John only if she killed the mother of the deceased boy, which she achieved at the cost of her own life, John's and the husband of the unfortunate woman.
Since then, Mark had done his best to pose as a hero in the eyes of the public, being the man who "stopped" Jigsaw. But it wasn't long before things got out of hand for the detective. Now we move along to the second test.
In the event of his death John had set up multiple contingencies in place should Mark go overboard with his traps (which of course he did), or if anything happened to Jill. Which too became a reality.
The mere prospect of killing people, including harmless innocents, had become a hobby in it of itself for Hoffman. This was a breach of the trust John had placed in him as well as a mockery of what he had stood for. Remember Amanda's test? I doubt anyone could forget it. Especially when Mark was placed in a similar trap courtesy of Jill. Like Amanda before him, he was able to escape the reverse bear trap just in time before he died of any grievous wounds. He may not have died, but he did sustain a grievous wound on the right side of his cheek, a wound that required a good deal of stitching.
Hoffman had gotten his own back on Jill. In twisted irony, he placed her in a reverse bear trap, but one that was inescapable, which I am sure you can guess the fate of its' victim.
That was exactly why Mark was trapped in this bathroom, left to rot for the rest of his days with no way of escaping.
"This… This can't… Be how it ends for me." He said through gritted teeth. A whole day had now passed since he first woke up in there. With there being no hacksaws or any sharp or blunt objects to help him cut through his chains, things were not looking good for Marky.
There was one alternative to freeing himself of his shackles, he could try and pull his foot off. But that wouldn't make any difference, apart from the fact that he'd bleed to death slowly, and there was absolutely nothing in the room he could use to cauterise that kind of wound. That was not how he wanted to go. No, this is not how he should be living out his final moments; chained at the ankle next to a rotten corpse, barely doing anything to help himself escape this unsanitary horror. But just maybe, he had become this way because he had accepted his fate.
He had no family left after all. Gone were his days of law enforcement. Gone too was his very will to live.
"Do you finally understand Mark?"
Mark turned his head upwards to look at the celling, with tired eyes, a shaky heartbeat and raspy voice he uttered a single sentence to no one in particular, save for the voice in his head, "Understand… What? WHAT!?" The last part of that sentence reverberated across the room and into the far sewage tunnels outside.
For nearly three minutes, no answer came.
With red hot rage burning inside of him, Hoffman stood up exhausted from the physical discomfort he was in. "UNDERSTAND WHAT, YOU FUCKING SON OF A BITCH?!" Still no answer came. Slumping to the ground on his knees, Mark lent forward, placing both his hands flat on the tiled floor below him. "Understand WHAT?! Huh Johnny? WHAT THE HELL DO YOU WANT ME TO UNDERSTAND?! THEY ALL DESERVED TO DIE! EVEN YOU, AMANDA AND ESPECIALLY YOUR DUMB WHORE!" With each verbal outcry of his anger, Mark felt more physically strained with each breath he took.
"Did we?"
Rapidly turning his head from side to side, Mark arched his neck, looking back at the celling from before. "Yeah, you… You… Did!" Coughing slightly, he drew himself up to full height once more. "No. No. No this is fucking crazy!" He hung his head slightly, momentarily wiping his sweat covered brow. "I've lost it! John's dead. JOHN FUCKING KRAMER'S DEAD!"
"He's dead… I saw his corpse."
"You may have seen the decomposition of my flesh Mark. But my soul can never die. I'm at peace now, as is Jill, Amanda and all of the people that we have tested over the years. You may not want to believe it now, but I know that there is peace waiting for you in the next world. And so is your sister."
"Oh yeah? Peace? For me? I don't think so John. I don't… Care anymore…"
It was true. It had been true from the day his sister died. When he'd started out as a police officer all those years ago, he'd been so full of hope and optimism for what the future could bring for not just him, but to his city as well. Now… All that was once good in him has died out and faded to dust. All care for any life in the world, now including his own, non-existent.
Maybe that was the way it was meant to be for him from day one? Who knows? There's a fine line between good and evil. More often than not that line is blurred every day. People have to deal with so much pain and hardship throughout their time on Earth, and for what? John Kramer knew why. He was the only one who knew why. Take nothing for granted, cherish each moment of your live, and stay on the right path. For if you do not… Ask Mark Hoffman, a once honourable member of society… Now nothing more than a demented wreck chained up in a dilapidated bathroom with no food, no live company, no chance of rescue whatsoever. Just… Nothing.
Author's Notes: Even though this was my first fanfic I posted to this site; I had a blast writing it. Despite the gruesome nature of the Saw flicks, I did think they at least made interesting crime thrillers. I'm still torn between liking Hoffman as a character. After all, what he did to his victims was beyond inexcusable. RIP Joyce. But the one good thing about him was that he served as a good example of what John could've turned into, had he let his past vengeance against Cecil cloud his reality and judgement.