Just Imagine...

Not long ago, ISB reader and alleged "goth ninja" Erin Palette put out the call for re-imagined versions of super-heroes as written by established prose authors, kicking off the whole thing with her own highly entertaining offering, Chuck Palahniuk's Batman.

And that's how I ended up with something like this:



For Maria
Our love was a mystery,
But now you are riddled with bullets.

Gentle Reader,

I'm sorry to say that the story you are reading is horrifically violent. It is, to say the least, an extremely brutal tale of a very angry man who, despite being rather clever and possessing a very grim sense of humor, has chosen to react to tragedy by shooting, stabbing, or blowing up virtually every single person he encounters who is not dressed in some sort of garish spider costume.

In the volumes leading up to this one, in fact, he has perpetuated an uncountable number of crimes, found himself strapped to a gigantic cannon, attended an ersatz ninja training camp in the dreadfully boring flatlands of Kansas, and, in one particularly disturbing scene, struck a polar bear in the face with a closed fist.

Such is his lot in life, but I would encourage, nay, implore you to seek out some lighter super-hero fare, perhaps settling for one where someone who runs very, very fast defeats a bank robber armed with a curved stick. For there is no such joy to be found here.

Least of all in the person of Jigsaw, whose face could charitably be likened to a man who fell in love with a waffle iron and, against his better judgement, showed said affection by lavishing kisses upon its surface while it was still plugged in. Needless to say, he was slightly unbalanced, and since being unceremonously thrown face-first through a plate glass window, he had devoted his life to the utter destruction of Frank Castle.

It was a fact that Frank was well aware of as he lobbed a generous helping of Willy Pete--a militaristic codename which here means "White Phosphorus," a useful compound for creating smoke screens and incredibly painful burns, both necessities in Frank's day-to-day life--over the partition that separated him from the rest of the abandoned warehouse.

The amount of abandoned warehouses within the city is staggering, but not entirely unexpected when one takes into account the continuing recession of the construction industry, which has led to both shoddy materials and a constant, ever-present danger of death by falling masonry. Still, when finding yourself in one of these abandoned monuments to a more propserous time, engaging in a running gunfight as you attempt to murder someone is considered almost unforgivably rude.

Unfortunately, needs must--a phrase which here means that when faced with a choice between breaking the rules of polite society and suffering the indignity of a closed-casket funeral courtesey of a mildly disfigured madman, one should almost always take the latter--and so Frank stepped out from behind the relative safety of the partition. Using Jigsaw's coughing--and a string of words which my concern for readers of a weaker constitution prevents me from repeating here--Frank shot three times into the smoke, feeling a mild sense of satisfaction at the sound of a wet thud and the clatter of a dropped submachine gun across the concrete floor.

I truly wish I could report that this action was the end of the evening's violence, but, sadly, there was much, much more in store for Jigsaw and fourteen employees of sub-legal industries. For the sake of happiness, however, we shall turn our attention to Joan the Mouse and her dismal culinary offerings for the rest of the chapter.

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