Disclaimer: Johnny the Homicidal Maniac and its characters are copyright Jhonen Vasquez. The Original Characters in this story are mine, not yours. Enjoi.

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The four killers stepped into the main lobby of their target building and stayed quietly still in the darkness. Only the flashes of lightning gave them visibility, and what they saw caught the most horrible of their attention. Little children had taken crayons to the walls and depicted, in the crudest of their artistic skills, a hideous scene of gore and murder in a mural spanning the length of the lobby wall. One man dressed in stark white with made blue eyes and a fanged smile taking a knife to some benevolent woman with a pearl necklace and Xs for eyes. The children, meanwhile, were drawn with neutral expressions, standing around perfectly still with their names on their shirts, all drawn in just as crude writing as one would expect form a child just learning the symbolic importance of their written name.

“Huh” Sam grunted. He drew one of his smaller pistols, checked the ammo and cocked it once more, then put it back. He took off immediately in a business-like gait down the hall where the crayon drawing seemed to trail into infantile shapes and more caricatures. No one bothered to stop him, even though his knowledge was just as shunted as everyone else's. Mort made the first nervous motion as his eyes adjusted and stood with one hand on his hip and the other rubbing the back of his neck.

“So who're we hunting?” he asked. Tom was just looking around in the darkness, paying particular attention to the floor, like he was looking for something he dropped and couldn't see. Yvonne was keeping a careful eye on him as he made his squirrely motions.

“I'm not sure” Yvonne admitted. “I'd imagine we're playing some kind of hide-and-murder game right now. First to find someone that isn't one of us and kill them gets the win.”

“Sounds fair” Mort said, taking his hand from his neck to his chin to rub it. He looked around and found on the wall an electrical panel. “One moment. I'll try to get some electricity up. I assume, as we're in a school, that one panel only relates to one section of the hall. These switches should turn on these lights for the lobby and possibly the other halls.”

“Provided” Tom said, finally speaking up, “that there is any electricity at all for the building.”

“It is a thunderstorm” Yvonne pointed out, “and we are playing for the most sadistic freak in existence” she added. Mort rubbed his chin in thought, then lowered his black goggles and worked with the calm breezes of the cosmos at his fingertips. He flipped switches, yanked off the plastic panel covering and checked the wires inside the wall, but the lights refused to be on aside from the uncontrollable, annoyingly bright lightning from outside. Mort pushed away from the wall and cursed.

“Shit. Alright...” Mort was thinking, pacing slowly and staring at the ground, keeping a wide breadth from the other two. “Alright, we'll just go and do this as we always do. I'll stay near Sam. I think you two understand that he's an untrustworthy kind of guy, and I'd like this to be as fair a process as possible.”

“We'll go the other way” Yvonne said, speaking up for Tom. Mort nodded and pulled out his trusty, old, weighty shovel.

“Best of luck” Mort said as he spun his shovel in his palms and jogged onward. Yvonne started in a slow walk, waiting for Tom to follow her, but when she looked back she only saw the stark, dark form of his body standing motionlessly in the open ground. He was still searching around for something, and at a sudden flash of lightning his head jerked up and to the wall. He saw something there that he waited for again.

“Tom” Yvonne began, sounding concerned, “if you don't hurry you'll get left behind. You might lose...and get eliminated...” Tom continued waiting for some arcane signal through an even more indescribable time. The rain's harshness increased in the darkness outside and another white flash of lightning blasted light and noise into the building. Once the darkness returned Tom made the motion to raise his mask from under his chin and covered his mouth. Then he took his hands back and drew up a hood the covered the rest of his face aside from his eyes.

“Let's go” he said. Yvonne nodded and they ran down the opposite hall, forking left instead of right where Sam and Mort had gone. Yvonne was tempted to question him, but at the moment she just focused on keeping her bat in her hands and her shotgun strap tight between her breasts.

“I” Tom spoke up “just wanted to see something before I went on.”

“What?” Yvonne asked.

“My shadow” Tom said. “In the darkness, I felt like I had lost it. But when I saw it, and it was mine, I felt much better. Sorry to worry you.” Even through that black mask he wore, she could see the sincere apology in his eyes. She nodded and turned forward to continue running through the graffiti marked halls with him.

“'m never worried about you” Yvonne admitted. Now in friendly company the two continued their hasty run through the halls, unaware of the dangers that already stalked after them. One such apparition was already behind them, standing feet shoulder-width apart in the hall. A flash of lightning illuminated a pair of steel-gray eyes and deep, black pupils, but as the darkness set again the figure was gone, disappearing into the malevolent air like a ghost.

The walls began to stir with dancing shadows. As the rain cascaded from the windows of the elementary classrooms that shone through the windows on the doors, a villainous movement occurred. The marred walls began to pulsed with life. The four-fingered hand of one young child wearing a wide, toothy grin, began to move from the wall and reach out into the air. That very grin followed it, stretching out like a face against the stretchy plastic webbing of a cellophane wrap, and a new monster hissed into the air....

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Sam did little above acknowledge Mort marching after him with his heavy glare in his direction. He didn't care. Mort didn't hold the same precedence of power that he had. Sam adjusted his glasses and tried to change his view by peering just past them for a moment. He wanted to see around the corner up ahead to prepare himself for an inevitably staged attack. He tried, but God save him he couldn't use his magnificent eyes. He wasn't startled. He just adjusted his tie and took a slower approach to the four-way diversion.

Figures Sam thought. They were inside my head for the longest time, it's inevitable that they would find out about my power and somehow manage to block it from my own use. No matter. I still have the precise eyes of a soldier and the gunsmanship of a God. Regardless of the handicap, I will win. He casually walked into the intersection and looked around. Nothing right, ahead or to the left, so he went left. Mort caught up to him, saw him go left, and with a flash of lightning jumped as he saw a long, narrow shadow extend from the right hall. Mort stomped and swung his shovel into his hands like a blade, already prepared to defend himself. Sam spun around on his heel and aimed his gun just past Mort's head.

Nothing to the right. Sam stowed his gun while Mort sighed and loosened his stance again.

“Don't get so intense” Sam said. “You're twice as big as whatever punk Hell neglected to pick up yet.”

“Size doesn't propagate victory in this kind of battle” Mort said as he turned slowly around. “It's all about one's instincts.” Sam met his eyes, but yet again, a shadow coaxed his attention away, and his gun went up past Mort's face. Mort slid to the side with his shovel out and Sam shot. He hit the darkness that was standing in the hall and saw it burst like a cloud, then witness Mort as he dove in and placed the polished spade of his titanium, perfectly balanced shovel at his throat. “Speed, if anything, dominates a running game” Mort said. Sam put his hands up and let his pistol hand by a finger.

“I wasn't aiming for you” Sam said. Mort drew away and sheathed his shovel, looking over his shoulder at the stained spot of blackness across the hall. In a sudden flash of lightning, a deafening crack of thunder, that stain was gone.

“I know” Mort said. “I'm going that way. You do whatever.”

“Have fun dying” Sam said, waving good-bye. He lowered his hands into his pockets and pressed his glasses up with his middle finger. “This is getting aggravating. The enemies seem to be able to appear at their own convenience wherever they want, while we're stuck meandering through the halls, looking for some material sign of their existence. Fuck. We're screwed, aren't we?” Though he asked no one, the figure behind him nodded with a grin. Sam spun around and was prepared to fire but the lightning interfered once more. That figure, with those wide, steel-gray eyes and drowning puddles of black, grinned a wide and flat-toothed grin before vanishing with the light. Sam's shot was silent against the blast of thunder and spots formed in his vision.

Sam rubbed his eyes until the spinning balls left and looked around. Things seemed lighter now. The darkness wasn't as opaque anymore and he could make out the regular details of the floor and the walls, all of which had the lines of colorful pastel crayons from many a child's hand. Sam breathed slowly and stowed his pistol in the holster nearest to his heart.

“If worse comes to worse” Sam said as he began walking again, “I've still got a magazine of purging bullets. On top of that, if these monsters are physical, I can take them down hand-to-hand regardless of their size.” Sam's confidence gave him an aural presence that seemed to stir the walls he walked past. Like rippling waves of air, each step he strode made the lines of the wall wave and twist. Some of the lines peaked just outside the plaster walls and then dipped back in. Without his vision, Sam couldn't see this happen, but he certainly felt a strange disturbance at his back, like the bated breath of some horrid monster stalking after him...

Mort, meanwhile, kept up his guard as he walked in a crouching stride through the halls, always watching the walls where the winds of fate seemed to nervously avoid and waft away from. He was tempted to touch them, but at the same time a dreadful force forbade him from going near them. He toed the center-most line of tiles as he made his way through the halls, his mighty axes of dirt 'Spade of Fate' and 'Penance' on his back as well as the nefarious instrument 'Gore' bestowed to him by his mighty foe from before.

The forces of the universe are nervous Mort noticed. Something is terribly amiss about this place... Suddenly, to the reverberating sound that only Mort's existential ears could hear, a huge blast of air came roaring from far, far down the hall. At the head of that rolling wind there was the figure of a child, a boy dressed in a pin-stripe vest and patching pants over a white shirt and polished-brown shoes. His head was round and large and his eyes, terrible and round, were the color of faded steel with infinite sinking abysses for pupils. From cheek to cheek, spanning his entire jaw-line he grinned and seemed to skip ahead of the rolling wave of wind that came at Mort. He stopped just in front of Mort, far ahead of the wind, and reached up on his toes to tap the frozen black man's forehead.

“I've got you”

Mort looked up at the wind, where there was only wind, and was knocked to his back by the blast of energetic fate. His vision was clouded as his goggles fogged. Mort was stunned by a paranormal presence that he had never before experience, one that struck at and stopped his heart...

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To all those ears not so acutely refined to pick up shift in cosmic destiny, it sounds like the lowing moans of a mass of dying, hopeless children. Upon hitting a wall of such wind, however, it bombards one with the sounds of painful screaming, the final moments of some noisy rampaging murder spree. Tom and Yvonne first heard that low moaning as the invisible force came hurtling their way. They stopped dead in their tracks and waited for the comfortable silence to return to them.

“What the hell is that?” Tom asked. Yvonne cupped on ear with a hand and pressed her head against her shoulder to block the other.

“God that's annoying!” she shouted. The wave of force passed over them as a screeching terror of noise and rolled through the rest of the building as a forceless wind. Once the screaming faded away the walls began to stir. Reaching hands and crawling feet came from all directions, spawning out from the plaster-white walls stained with the marks of juvinile hands. Those caricatures of children became real children, as anatomically correct as such children would believe their own art to be. On each of their chests was a name, their name, and on their young faces a disgusting look of murder.

Tom drew his sword and automatically attacked, losing himself to the blade. He cut one bowl-cut boy's head from his slim, childish shoulders and kicked the body away. As the head fell he jumped up and used his other leg to kick the head into the body. When both feet met the ground again he hopped backwards and landed in his pose. One was down. Yvonne was just stunned to watch it. In keeping her attention spread, she saw some dark apparition coming up from behind, running on all fours like a deranged animal, ready to pounce at Tom's undefended back.

“Duck!” Yvonne shouted. She made a swing for Tom's face and he ducked just as the child went gliding through the air. Her bat made a mess of the child's face and she swung his little body down to the floor where he bounced away and gathered himself up to his palms and toes again, like a total animal. He shook the plastic-dripping blood, it looked like a stream of crayon red color, from his shattered nose and glared up at her with his innocent, round eyes.

“What the fuck are these things?” Tom asked. The one he chopped down had slowly dissolved into a puddle of plastic color, a mound of fused and melted crayons. The others took small, child-sized steps forward and glared up at the taller kids through the devious shadows of their brows.

“Hey you!” a young girl demon exclaimed. Yvonne tensed up and turned to see a long-haired little girl in a ink shirt and long, red skirt with the name 'Rachael' across her chest, pointing to her face. “Are you scared?” she asked, her tone mocking in its innocence. Yvonne straightened up and pulled out her shotgun. That threat forced the other demonic things to pounce with ravenous, nail-toothed maws open like traps. Yvonne fired a shot and let the shotgun's force carry itself in a circle around her finger. She spun it twice before throwing another swing across her body and bashing one child past Tom who sliced the creature in half as it flew past him.

One childish thing got an advantage and snuck in under Yvonne's radar, crawling along the ground and grinning up. Yvonne noticed it too late when it made a sliding kick and tripped her over. Two boys, 'Mark' and 'Devon', both round in the face and one round in his belly, pounced on her chest and began squeezing her breasts, wringing them with both hands and paralyzing Yvonne with pain.

“You got big hooters!” Mark, the round one, said. Tom decapitated both of them, kicked Yvonne's arm up and grabbed her hand to drag her to her feet. Her plain shirt seemed discolored where they touched, very light smudges of color.

“We need to get out of here” Tom said as he sheathed his sword and kicked a group of pouncing children away with a single, swift turning kick. He spun on his heel and around to meet Yvonne, chest to chest. They met eyes, though it held no meaning, and Tom took her under his arm to help her run away with him. As they retreated he sprayed fire behind him while she held up her breasts and breathed in pain.

“Little pricks!” Yvonne growled. “Pervy little bastards. Fucking shit-stains!” Tom stopped in the middle of a hall where the lines on the wall were wiggling like waves. The children rose up, one by one, and kept glaring ahead with their terrible smiles still showing all their fangs.

“Hey, girl!” Rachael again called. Her face had been blasted mostly off, leaving her missing from her right eye back and exposing a pinkish inner coloring of her crayon body. “You should be scared! Really, really scared!”

“That's right!” the others agreed, very matter-of-factly, keeping their hideous faces intact.

“Cause, you know,” she continued, “there are monsters here!”

“Yeah!” the boys all said.

“Terrible monsters” the other girls added in unison, producing a creepy choral voice. Tom reached into a satchel around his waist and pulled out a grenade, very high power. The walls wouldn't be a problem if he got it to center in the hallway perfectly.

“The kind of monsters” she continued, “that killed all of us...!” Such a mad silence, made only worse by the widening of all their eyes in unison. A flash of lightning only made that murderous gleaming shine ever brighter into Yvonne and Tom's eyes as the children began a swaying walk forward. Tom pulled the pin of the round grenade with his thumb and lightly tossed it into the middle of the group.

“Hey kids” Tom shouted, “why don't you play 'Hot Potato' for a bit?” He ducked with Yvonne away from the hall just as the grenade exploded. It was a shaking, fierce explosion that shook the walls it didn't even touch and blew apart the ones that it did. As the sound and smoke died down Tom and Yvonne could clearly hear the rain from outside as it fell swiftly through the cold air. Tom patted her shoulders down as a silent command to stay where she was and turned the corner with his gun out. The ceiling was fractured, the holes in the wall were gaping, and the dust that hadn't settled moved back like a shroud down the hall. What was left of the little demons wasn't much, just the sickly mixed texture and color of the waxy pastel colors that had splattered all over the broken walls. Even the floor seemed stained. The force of the explosion blew the color into the linoleum tile so hard that it was not the only distinguishable color to the flooring.

Tom spun his Uzi in his fingers and sheathed it in his side holster. A maleficent force lingered in the air for but a moment, and the dust moved away as if someone was drawing it in with heavy breaths, but once Tom took attention to it all it ceased to bother him. Yvonne was up and adjusting her bra.

“Those fuckers” she said in a whining voice “milked me!” Tom looked down at her quickly, then quickly looked away. The stains she had on her shirt were too perfectly placed to be tears, and it'd be rude to draw any attention to it if it was bothering her. Yvonne straightened herself out and tapped her bat into her palm with the metallic ting of aluminum hitting flesh. “Thank you, Tom. Now, point to where more of these little tit-grabbers are and we'll be on our way.”

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This school building, condemned due to a merciless slaughter of innocent elementary and middle-school aged children some years ago, is much unlike any other school building. It was contracted during a solar eclipse and built during a month where the moon stayed a bloody red from atmospheric effects. The day it was both started and finished were followed by nights illuminated by full moons. The ground it was built on was a regular hosting sight for many a dark and Satanic ritual not even weeks before the land was bought using the blood money some richly black-hearted fiend inherited from the 'natural passing' of his widowed grandmother and sickly wife. It is a building that is steeped in such clichéd terror and malignancy that it has time and time again been held up for auction to deconstruction companies as a testing ground for their new equipment.

But no one buys it. No one ever will, because no one knows of believes any of the terrible facts about this damned building. It's just a building to all of them, one completed in amazing record time, where many children used to go to school and learn their letters and arithmetic and other scholarly things. No one ever suspects it to be a place of unequivocal evil. No one ever suspects the obvious places like this to foster such malcontent spirits to perpetually haunt and ensnare the intruders in such grim, blood-stained claws.

No one knows but those who choose to forget it. One such man now stands at a window, looking out to an infinite expanse of otherworldly plains and rolling hills.

“What the fuck...?” Johnny said as he moved slowly away from the window. It was an aggravated exasperation, not one of undying curiosity and strangeness. “Now where am I?” He sat down at one of the tiny, kiddy desks and kicked his heels up onto another desk platform. His conscience just sat and smoked, now wearing a plaid and pleated high-school skirt and a matching top with her hair up in buns. Her legs were slender, smooth and totally pitch black. When she breathed in the insect spikes and spokes all folded up like thick, solid hairs hairs and revealed the dirty auburn hue of her true skin.

“I'd take a guess” she said, gazing out the window, “but I'd be wrong no matter what, right?”

“Even so” Johnny said, “I'd like at least a general, vague observation from something that isn't held down by human logic.” So she gazed out the window at the infinite rain and rolling, verdant hills and the solid-black sky. She looked long and hard, all around the endless terrain and into the stretching horizon, and finally she looked straight down, down nearly seven stores of windows which she wasn't even at the top of, and saw the staggering, lethargic bodies of many leaning against the sides of the building. They looked dead and tragic, like bodies searching for their lost, wandering souls.

“Purgatory...” she said. Johnny stood up so quickly that he knocked over both the desks he was sitting on and looked at her with a certain strange, disbelieving disgust.

“What?” he said, tilting his head and cringing his eye.

“Looks like purgatory” she said. “This building shouldn't be this big, anyway. No real building is.” Johnny grabbed her shoulder and pushed her aside. Since she didn't exist he could touch her and be perfectly calm about it. When he looked out the window at the ten-plus stories of solid-green walls and dim windows that stretched out forever on either side, he couldn't help but begin laughing.

“Give me a fucking break” he said as he leaned out and looked up through the rain. “Purgatory is just one, big building!?”

“Looks like it” she said, taking a drag and puffing it out. Johnny leaned back and whipped his head up to shake off the rain water. He had a nasty smile and shadowy eyes. His back was straightening out as his head jerked slightly with hissing laughter. A psychotic stream of laughter was inevitable.

“!!!!!” Johnny made a hasty march to the door of the room he was in and kicked it in. He entered the halls and saw them stretching long and wide in either direction, splitting off before becoming indistinguishably long into crossing corridors and intersections. He spun two blades into his hands and continued grinning as he darted his head to and fro, his wet hair moving around with him and falling over his face. “I've been to Heaven, Hell, and I've found my way outside of space and time itself!!” Johnny lifted his head up as if he wanted the dimension he was in to acknowledge his madness, but only the feminine figure of his subconscious dared to watch him from within the room where they had first appeared.

“Purgatory” Johnny growled, throwing both his arms out. “Yeah! FUCK YEAH! This is just where I should be! HAAAHAHAHAAAA!!!!” She smiled at his tangent. He clenched his jaw and began marching away in a hurry. He soon broke out into a run.

“Run, crazy, run” she said as she disappeared into nothing. The full madness of Johnny would be unleashed in the Land of Lost Souls. A place this building was directly connected to, where so many had lost their way and died only to become a part of this terrible place. This building of infinite, endless, restlessly tormented souls. This is Purgatory, and it's about to get fucked up.