It was the same dream that always haunted Frank Castle; the dream that always started the same but had a million different endings. Sometimes the dream would end worse than it really happened; other times it would have a happier ending. Frank never knew the outcome of the dream until it happened but, no matter how it always ended, he’d always wake up to the harsh reality of finding his wife and children were dead.

“Go long, Dad!”

Frank Castle Jr., or David since he liked going by his middle name, held the football in his hands. His father, Frank Sr, looked over at his wife Maria, who was watching while not involved in the book she was reading. His daughter Lisa was sitting next to Maria, playing with a doll while wearing her new sundress. David tossed the ball and his father caught it, smiling as he tossed the ball back but David fell to the ground before he could catch it, scraping his arm on the pavement of the basketball court he’d run onto.

“Are you all right?” Frank asked as David sat up and realized his arm was bleeding.

“Yeah,” David replied as Frank looked at the boy. He knew his son was holding back the pain as he wasn’t one to cry, always trying to be a man in front of his father.

“There’s some iodine and Band-Aids in the car,” Maria said as she came over and looked at the wound.

“I’ll get them,” Frank said as he looked at the cut. It wasn’t too bad but he didn’t want to risk infection. David was only eight years old but had a very powerful throwing arm and Frank was going to make sure his son was ready for football when he started high school in a few years.

David picked up the football and started tossing it into the air, trying to ignore the pain in his arm. He tossed the ball through the air and went to catch it as it fell into some bushes. David ran in to get it when he stumbled upon a group of men standing around a beaten and bloodied man with a gun to his head. Before David could react, a bullet pierced the man’s head, sending blood and chunks of skull flying to the grass.

That’s when the men saw David standing there, with the football in his hand.

Frank headed towards the car to get the supplies. He dug through the trunk when he heard the sounds of rampant gunfire and screaming. Pulling out the gun he’d kept in a hidden compartment for protection, he raced back towards his family. Seeing his beloved Maria huddled, protecting their two children, Frank saw the men targeting his family holding their guns out, ready to fire, ready to kill his family.

Frank fired first, hitting them squarely in their foreheads. All the men that dared to try to harm his family fell dead to the ground, almost instantly. Not wasting a single bullet, he killed every man that came out of the bushes. When they were finally dead, their eyes staring up into the air, Frank rejoined his family, holding them tight in his arms.

“You’re safe,” Frank told them. “I’ll never let anyone hurt you. Ever.”

Nicky Cavella stared into Frank Castle’s face as the man sat in a white chair, chained to it with his hands behind his back. The chair appeared to be an antique as it seemed to be quite old. As Cavella sat in his own chair, waiting for Frank to return to consciousness, he knew he should kill the man right now. A bullet through the head would end all of this. But no, that would be too easy. Frank Castle had to be awake for this. He had to know why he was going to die.

In Cavella’s hand were Frank’s dog tags from the war. The proof he needed for when he told the heads of New York’s crime families that he’d been the one to take down the unkillable Punisher.

“I hope you’re dreaming of your family, Castle,” said Cavella bitterly as he leaned forward, “because you’re going to wake up to your worst nightmare.”

OUT OF THE PAST

Part II

By Tobias Christopher

Hell’s Kitchen
New York

It was early morning as Chip Carter walked into the motel room he’d paid to spend a few days in. He’d arrived in Hell’s Kitchen a full week earlier than his planned meeting with Frank Castle was scheduled to take place, but he needed time to make sure that this was really what he wanted. He still had a full week to turn around and go home; to finish his college education…to try to find some normal life and maybe put the past behind him. Chip turned on the light and looked around the empty room. It didn’t look like a room anyone would want to spend a few hours in let alone a week. The empty bed looked…unsanitary…to say the least, and needed a new set of sheets.

He tossed his suitcase onto the bed where a twelve-year-old boy who wasn’t there before was now sitting. He had shaggy reddish blonde hair and looked like a younger version of Chip. Or rather, what Chip envisioned the boy he’d only known for six months to look like at age twelve.

“Can I watch cartoons?” asked Chip’s younger brother, blood still spilling from the wound on the side of his head. The last thing Chip had heard before slipping into his coma twelve years ago was the sound of his six month old brother Morgan being shot dead in his crib. It was a never-ending fountain of red liquid but, luckily, it was only visible to Chip.

Well, maybe not so lucky for Chip.

“I’m pretty sure this TV only gets porn, Morgan,” said Chip as he looked at the cable box on the TV he saw the pamphlet listing all the *shows* that came on after 10 p.m. He’d have to make sure Morgan was gone so he could check out ‘The Jizzer of Oz’ later that night. Figment of his imagination or not, he wasn’t about to watch porn with his baby brother in the room. “But I guess I could rewire it to get Cartoon Network.”

“Fuck the Cartoon Network, I wanna watch Spongebob,” replied Morgan as Chip sighed while re-wiring the box. He regretted the day he even started watching that damned show. Now whenever Morgan showed up, that’s all he wanted to watch.

“You know once I get my pills refilled…you’ll have to go away again,” said Chip as he turned on the TV, sitting next to his dead little brother. Part of Chip thought he was being haunted for never going to visit Morgan’s grave, or even bothering to find out where he was buried.

“Why?” asked Morgan as he turned his head toward Chip, granting his big brother relief from having to stare into his brother’s exposed brain. “I thought you loved me…that you wanted to have me around.”

“I do, it’s just…” As he tried to find the words, he laid back on the bed. “Remember when Connor found out about you, right after I moved in with him and his parents? Everyone thought I was insane. Hell, I thought I was insane. It’s bad enough what happened to us, but if they sent me a mental ward because I didn’t stop seeing you…I wouldn’t be able to find the bastard who took you and our parents away from me.”

Morgan laid down next to Chip as the sheets started to become soaked with imaginary blood.

“I promise you, Morgan, once the guy who killed you pays for this with his life, you’re going to be able to rest in peace,” said Chip, making a note to get some new sheets before he went to bed. “I swear. But I need to do this with without you distracting me. I need those pills.”

“Okay,” relented Morgan as he sat up and put his full attention onto the TV. As he did, he didn’t see the tear falling down Chip’s face. It was getting harder and harder to say goodbye to Morgan, and Chip knew that one day that’s exactly what he was going to have to do.

Frank Castle’s eyes started to open and it didn’t take him long to realize how bad the situation was. He felt the chain around his body as he looked around. It was the same room he’d lost consciousness in, only now it was daylight out. That meant he was being kept alive for a reason, and Frank Castle didn’t like surprises.

He saw that there were three guards standing at the door, smiling as they looked at him. Cavella had stepped out earlier, giving his men orders to watch over Castle and make sure he didn’t escape until he returned. He only told them to make sure Frank was still alive when he returned; he hadn’t given explicit orders for him to not be harmed otherwise.

“It’s only fair to warn you that you should run now while I’m just waking up,” warned Frank as he looked at the men. “Because once I’m fully awake…I will kill you.”

“You’re chained to a chair,” the largest of the men, a balding fat man said. “What are you gonna do, spit on us?”

“Yeah,” a thinner Asian man said as he walked closer to Frank. “You’re helpless. Meanwhile, we can beat on you all we—”

Frank jumped up in the chair, bringing the leg of the chair back down onto the man’s foot. As he screamed in pain, Frank picked the chair up and swung it around, knocking the man to the ground. As the third man, a muscular guy, rushed toward Frank he moved out of the way as the muscular guy ran past, hitting the wall. Frank used all of his might to push Cavella’s desk against him, pinning him to the wall as the fat man ran towards him.

Frank turned back around and leaned back in the chair, using his legs to push his weight against the fat man as he arrived. As he leaned his weight backwards, Frank’s legs lifted the fat man, throwing him over and through the glass window, next to the muscular guy.

The fat man fell screaming from six stories up, creating a large mess from the height he’d fallen from on the pavement below. Frank struggled to get the chair upright again, as the muscular guy in the room still had to be dealt with.

The muscular guy pushed Cavella’s desk out of the way and ran towards Frank and, while not not watching where he was going, tripped over the Asian guy, landing in front of Frank. As he rolled over onto his back, he saw Frank’s boot come down repeatedly into his face, until his skull had been crushed in. As the Asian man started to realize what was going on as he laid on the floor, he saw the leg from the chair Frank was sitting in come down on him, breaking through his teeth, ramming through his throat, and pinning him to the floor in agony.

As Frank looked around the carnage in the office, only one thought occurred to him: “The fat guy better not be the one holding the keys to these chains.”

Upper New York

The heads of the remaining crime families looked to the head of the table where Nicky Cavella was sitting, smiling sadistically. He’d called a meeting at the usual place in a bad neighborhood in the basement of a rundown hotel.

“I don’t like this nut being here,” Louie ‘Big Time’ Caprelli said to the man sitting next to him. “I’ve heard about this guy. Heard he fed David Kai’s own son to him one time when the Cappo wanted a piece of Chinatown.”

“Yeah, well, I heard the psycho killed his own family just to inherit his dad’s holdings,” the man replied.

“Gentlmen,” Cavella said as he addressed the room, “I’m glad you could make it, because I’ve done the one thing that none of you, or your respective families has ever done: I’ve taken down the Punisher.”

“Bullshit!” shouted Caprelli as he stood up. “Nobody can take down that beast. We’ve all tried!”

“Yes, there are graveyards filled with the men who have tried,” replied Anthony ‘Bloody Mary’ Paison. “The orphanages are filled with the children of the men he’s killed. The singles bars are filled with the wives he’s widowed. You are not capable of—”

Cavella reached into his pocket and tossed Frank’s dog tags onto the table. “I’m going to kill the Punisher at 8:00 tonight at my warehouse. You’re all welcome to attend and celebrate after the main event. And the best part is…he’s going to be begging me to do it.”

The men looked on in awe as Caprelli looked at the tags. “They look authentic…but how do we know you will come through? That Frank Castle won’t escape and kill you, and us, afterward?”

“Because,” smirked Cavella as he leaned forward. “I have the only thing in the world that matters to him. He’s sitting right on top of it as we speak and doesn’t even realize it.”

Frank continued to struggle with the chains, having searched the two dead men and every inch of the room that he was able to while restrained. “So the fat bastard does have the keys,” realized Frank. “I’ll just have to break the chair and walk out.”

Frank dragged the chair, and the man who still pinned under the leg, away from the desk he’d been searching through. After shaking the man he’d killed with the chair leg loose, he tried to find a hard spot on the floor he could crush the chair on.

As the car pulled back up to the factory, Cavella saw the bloody, splattered corpse of one of the men he’d told to keep an eye on Frank.

“Oh, I guess he’s awake,” said Cavella calmly as he reached into the fat man’s pocket, taking back the keys. Rushing back up to his office, he saw Frank about to destroy the chair he was chained too.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” said Cavella. “There’s an interesting story behind that chair…one you might be interested in hearing.” Looking around the room, he saw the blood from the other two men all over the floor. “And you ruined my carpets.”

Pulling out a taser, he shocked Frank to weaken the Punisher enough for Cavella’s men to come in and subdue the man again.

“Try not to let him kill you, although I guess it doesn’t matter now that my cleaning deposit’s shot,” sighed Cavella as Frank was dragged out of the room.

Meanwhile, in Hell’s Kitchen

“I need a prescription filled,” said Chip as he stood in line at the local drugstore. He handed the woman behind the counter the slip.

“I’m sorry, I can’t refill this,” the nasally voiced woman told him.

“What? Why not?” asked Chip.

“Yeah, why not?” added Morgan as looked at the woman like he had expected her to actually answer.

“Because it says here you had this prescription filled just two and a half months ago,” the woman told him.

“I know, but I accidentally put the pills into storage back in Washington and didn’t realize it until I was halfway here,” said Chip, pleading his case. “Please, I need those pills.”

“Yeah, he’s crazy, look at me!” added Morgan, pointing to his wound. “Do normal people see shit like this?”

“FDA regulations prohibit us from refilling a prescription of a drug this powerful before the noted refill date,” the woman told Chip, not realizing Morgan was dripping blood all over the counter. “You’ll just have to wait the two week period remaining before—”

“Lady, I needed those pills last night,” said Chip, trying not to get too angry. “I can’t go back to Washington to get the other ones. I—”

“Sorry, can’t help you. Next!” the woman said to the next person in line.

“Oh, we’re gonna get this bitch,” said Morgan as he looked up at Chip.

Chip rubbed the bridge of his nose, grabbing Morgan by the shoulder, which looked odd to the people in line as they saw Chip pushing an invisible force out of the drugstore.

“You don’t know who I am, do you?” asked Cavella as Frank was brought to the main room of the factory, a large open space that looked like an auditorium. “You don’t know how you fucked up my life, do you?”

“I fuck up a lot of people’s lives,” replied Frank casually, waiting for his chance to get free. “You’re no better than any other piece of mob scum I’ve taken out over the years.”

Cavella laughed as he smacked Frank across the face. “You cocky son of a bitch. You fucked up my life long before this whole Punisher thing you had going on. In fact, you’re the one who made sure I didn’t escape this life. You’re my sole purpose for staying in this business.”

“Do tell,” said Frank sarcastically.

“First things first,” replied Cavella as he pointed to three large objects that were covered in cloaks. “You see, you took something very important away from me, Frank: my little boy. He died because of you. But I obviously couldn’t take your son away from you. The first one, that is.”

Frank got an angered look on his face as Cavella smiled. He knew he’d finally struck a nerve, the first, he hoped, of many.

“That’s right, I know about the secret fruit of your loins,” said Cavella as he paced back and forth between the three cloaked items. “Unfortunately I found out about him too late, because I’d already started my little plan. But, seeing as to how you had two sons, I think I’ll keep one for myself once I get hold of the little bastard.”

Frank felt the rage boiling inside of him as he struggled even harder to break the chains. It was one thing to screw with him, but now the son that he wanted to have a life away from this dark world was in danger.

“So, that only leaves the dead son,” said Cavell as he pulled the cloaks off, revealing the caskets of the Castle family. “Welcome to the Castle Family reunion!”

To Be Continued…