CHAPTER ONE

Captain Spencer sits quietly on the floor of a bunker, fondling the box. Sweat beads off him like a skydiving priest with a faulty parachute.

Hmmm, he thinks, I wonder what would happen if I touched that button in the middle.

And so he does. Blue lightning sparks from the cube as it begins to transform. You gotta give him major points for getting it on the first try. Captain points, rather. Major points are only given to majors and those aspiring to be majors. Elliot Spencer has no such aspirations.

“Ferff,” he gasps, hurling the box aside. Music plays from deep within like a jack-in-the-box. A hole has opened in the middle, revealing nothing but blackness—a blacker black than the blackest of black blacknesses.

Hmmm, he thinks, I wonder what would happen if I inched ever closer to it.

He inches ever closer to it.

Hmmm, he thinks, I wonder what would happen if…

Six chains dart from the hole in the box. All six chains have hooks on their ends, and all the hooks sink themselves into his taffy-like skin.

He screams, which is the appropriate thing to do in this situation. So, captain points for that as well. He could just as easily have laughed or danced or cooked a steak. But he screams, which, as I have said, is very appropriate, especially in the situation in which he presently finds himself.

And as the barbs sink deeper into his flesh, the mutation begins. His skin pales. His teeth become yellow and dirty. So much for listening to the dentist. All that brushing, all those years, negated in one instant. A knife comes from out of the darkness and cuts hash marks into his head. And everywhere those lines intersect, a nail is driven in deep. And all the while, he screams. You gotta hand it to the captain; when he finds something he’s good at, such as screaming, he sticks with it.

“Ah, the suffering. The sweet suffering.” He speaks in a dark, spooky voice, not unlike that of our old pal Pinhead. Why, if I didn’t know any better, I’d think that… hey, wait a minute. I get it now; this was a very brief backstory!

 

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