PREVIOUSLY: A serial killer was loose in Washington who left his victims faceless before leaving them to die. The Punisher decided to check into it and ran into his old friend James Griffen, an FBI agent and one of Frank Castle’s closest contacts. After a fruitless search, the Punisher discovered another victim, just as he was attacked by the killer, who didn’t appear to be as human as the Punisher expected!

SMILE, DARN YA, SMILE

Part II

By Tobias Christopher

Three Months Ago
Hannibal’s Dinner Theater
Washington DC

Now Showing – One More Day At a Time
Next Week – Thelma & Louise On Ice

Connor Duncan walked in with his girlfriend, Jenna Patrick, and looked around the lobby. They were dressed nicely, hoping for a nice evening out at the theater. Jenna rolled her eyes as Connor’s best friend, Chip Carter, walked in. He was dressed rather casually in a hooded sweatshirt, jeans and sneakers, and didn’t appear fazed at all the nicely dressed patrons waiting to be seated around him.

“I have to go drain the lizard,” Chip told Carter as they headed to the guest book where the audience members signed their names. “Or was it the scorpion? Maybe it was the vulture… anyway, I’ll be back.”

Chip headed off as Jenna slapped her boyfriend’s arm. “Did you seriously have to bring…that?”

The young man rubbed his arm as he tried to laugh it off while he signed. “Jenna, Chip got us these tickets and, well, he’s my best friend. Besides, he doesn’t get out often.”

“Clearly,” his date sighed as she stepped up and signed her name. Connor wrapped an arm around her and kissed her cheek as they walked along as another couple stepped up to sign.

“It’s just this one show,” Connor promised her as they waited for his friend. “Afterwards, we’ll take Chip home then we’ll go somewhere, just you and me.”

“Promise?” Jenna asked as Chip came back and signed his name a few spaces under where his friends had signed.

“Ready to go in?” Chip asked as he got between them and put an arm around both of their shoulders. “This is great! Three friends just having a fun night together; I hear they even got a t.v. actor for this play.”

“Is this the play about that guy who’s got an incredibly hot wife, but makes a deal with the devil to dissolve twenty years of marriage so his boney old aunt, who’s only got three months at best, can live?” Connor questioned as they took their seats.

“Yeah,” his friend replied as he watched Connor pull out his date’s chair. “Sounds like a real dumbass, huh?”

The lights went down as the show began, the audience awaiting the first glimpse of the anticipated show. Five minutes later, however, all anticipation went out the window as audience members started getting up and leaving, all due to one bumbling, incompetent actor who kept fumbling his lines.

Jonathan Powers had done everything he could to convince the producers to give him the lead in the play but, when that didn’t work, both the lead actor in the role of ‘Petey Poxler’ and his understudy had come down with a mysterious case of food poisoning just hours before the show was to start.

“This is so…horrible,” Connor replied in horror as he watched. In five single minutes the actor had botched lines, lost his blocking and accidentally fell through the set.

“Why did you let him talk us into coming to see this…awful, awful thing?” Jenna questioned her boyfriend as she looked at Chip. “This is your fault!”

“Come on, guys, this is one of the funniest comedies I’ve ever seen!” Chip replied as he kept focused on the stage.

“Chip, this is a drama,” Connor told him as he looked at his friend. “There hasn’t been a single joke so far. Well, besides the guy they got to play the lead.”

The actors on stage saw the audience members leaving as one of Power’s co-stars leaned over to whisper in his ear.

“What the hell are you doing? You’re ruining the play,” the man said between gritted teeth.

“Nonsense, I’m just warming up,” Powers replied as he kept fumbling through the scene. What remained of the audience started booing and jeering, ultimately starting to throw stuff onto the stage. “Fools! Can you not see an actor at work!”

“No, we just see some asshole whose ripped us off!” one of the audience members shouted as he tossed a glass of wine at the man, followed by more objects flying up at the stage, forcing the would-be actor to flee.

Chip just sat there, looking between his friend and Jenna for a few seconds. “Soooo…anyone up for tacos? My treat…”

Now

“Come on, Punisher, give us a smile!” the Jester shouted as he sat on top of Frank Castle, whose defenses were quickly fading thanks to being injected with some sort of paralyzing drug.

Frank’s vision was starting to become blurry but he gathered up enough strength to pull a knife out of a sheath in his belt, stabbing the man on top of him. The Jester shouted in pain as Frank followed through with as hard a punch as he could, knocking him off. Frank continued to try to fight the drug running through his system and had barely stood up as the Jester flew back towards him in an angry rage.

Just as the Jester was on him, a red and black Harley Davidson burst through the bushes, swinging around and hitting his opponent, sending the Jester flying to a hard landing next to the girl he’d killed earlier. The man on the motorcycle, who was wearing a red and black helmet that obscured his features, looked over at the body of the dead girl on the ground that he’d been too late to save. Without making a sound, the man on the motorcycle pulled out a handgun and fired, completely missing his target as the Jester ran off into the darkness, hissing at this new hero as he safely tucked his souvenir into his knapsack.

Unable to make a move to stop the Jester or face this new threat, Frank stumbled backwards as the man from the motorcycle came closer, losing the battle as the darkness came over him…

FBI Headquarters
The Next Day

“Another body, Chief, looks like our guy struck again,” the middle aged man said as he walked alongside Griffen down the corridor. “There’s still no MO.”

“Wait, look at this,” Griffen told the man as he opened the file. “This new dead girl’s boyfriend was the killer’s previous victim. That gives us our first connection. We need to figure out what these two kids had in common with the other three victims. Get on it.”

“Yes, sir,” the first man replied as he rushed off as Griffen opened the door and finding his daughter, Jasmine, sitting in his office, crying. The young woman was in her early 20’s, with long black hair, beautiful green eyes and an extremely attractive body. Griffen was immediately at her side the second he saw the tears, taking her hand. If anyone had hurt his baby…

“Daddy, Doug was cheating on me,” the young woman cried. “I found him in bed with some whore and he didn’t even seem to care!”

Griffen hugged his daughter, tired of seeing his little girl getting her heart broke in one bad relationship after another. It reminded him so much of himself.

“Don’t worry, baby, I’m here for you. We’ll go out to dinner and you can vent all you want,” Griffen told her as he stood up. “But first I have to take care of this sick son of a bitch who’s running around the city.”

Jasmine wiped her eyes as she looked over at her father. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

Griffen smiled at his daughter. “You know your internship here doesn’t start until fall. Look at my baby, it was just yesterday I was teaching you to ride a bike! Now here you are, ready to follow in my footsteps at the FBI.”

“We got something,” Griffen’s supervisor said as he opened the door. “We found a knife at the scene and the prints just came back. We think the Punisher’s connected to this.”

Griffen sighed as he rubbed the bridge of his nose with two fingers. He had to pretend he had no connection to Frank knowing about this case. “I’ll handle it,” he said as he looked at his daughter. “On second thought, I could use a cup of coffee.”

“Who lives in a pineapple under the sea?

SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS!

Porous and yellow and absorbent is he

SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS!”

The annoying sound filled his ears as Frank started regaining consciousness, as well as was the smell of something sweet, like cinnamon rolls. As the Punisher began regaining his senses, he tried opening his eyes and his blurry vision started coming back into focus as he looked around, seeing he was in a small studio apartment.

As he tried to sit up, he noticed he was laying on a couch in front of a t.v., where something resembling a mutant sponge was running rampant, laughing in an irritating tone. It reminded him of the last time he’d seen Wolverine. “It’s finally happened,” Frank muttered as he rubbed his throbbing forehead. “I’m in hell.”

It was then that Chip came walking out of the kitchen, holding a tray of cinnamon rolls. “Good, you’re not dead. Hungry?”

Frank usually avoided anything sugary or artery clogging, but his stomach was on empty and he needed a quick boost. He took one of the warm cinnamon rolls, quickly devouring it. “How did I get here?”

“I found you in the park,” Chip told him as he sat the tray down. “You were about to get the world’s most disastrous facelift. I drove the creep off.”

“You can’t fire a gun worth shit,” Frank told him as he reached for another roll. “You’re lucky he didn’t come after you.”

Chip looked away, embarrassed that Frank had seen that. The gun had been Connor’s, who’d promised to take Chip to the shooting range someday to learn how to fire a weapon. “That girl was my best friend’s girlfriend. He was the previous victim.”

Frank stopped in the middle of one of the rolls. “You know who this bastard is.”

“No, but I think I know the connection between the victims,” Chip replied. “And if I’m right…I’m one of the next targets.”

The Jester admired his partial collection of human faces as he ran his hand over the small book sitting in his lap. He opened it, looking over a list of names that went on for at least a few pages that listed each and every person responsible for his humiliation.

The killer had crossed off the names of the victims killed so far, and looked at the name of his next target. One name down from that was one Chip Carter. He closed the book and stood up, walking past the mirror in the living room. He stopped to stare for a second, catching a brief glimpse of the human he once had been.

“We have to stop,” the man underneath the makeup pleaded. “We can’t–”

“These people humiliated you!” the Jester replied in a sinister tone. “They ruined your career! They will suffer for your anguish!”

“Please,” the man pleaded. “A life of crime is one thing, but murder-”

The Jester laughed harshly as he once again took complete control of the man’s body, punching the mirror and shattering it. The laughter continued before he headed for the door, going to claim his next prize…

“How did you figure it out when no one else could?” Frank asked, feeling a lot better than he had, especially since the t.v. and the annoying characters within had been turned off.

“I dug deeper than the police and the FBI,” Chip told him as he headed to his computer. “I kind of…hacked into their files and started working the puzzle.” Chip pulled out the tickets he’d found in Connor’s wallet as he faced Frank. “This was the piece that connected it all.”

“Theater tickets?” Frank asked curiously as Chip turned to turn on the computer.

“I looked into the credit statements of the other victims,” Chip replied as he brought up the file. “All of them had bought tickets to the same show we’d gone to. It sounds strange, but it’s the most logical connection.”

“And why haven’t you gone to the police?” asked Frank.

Chip laughed as he turned toward the Punisher. “Someone who doesn’t trust the cops is asking me why I didn’t go to them after my best friend got slaughtered? No, I want this guy. I want to be the one to-”

“You want to take him out,” said Frank as Chip turned away, facing into the screen of his computer. “Can you take a life?”

The young man remained still as silence filled the room. Frank looked down at him, not knowing what to say; he hadn’t had to say anything even remotely comforting in years. “I know it hurts, kid.”

“He was my only family,” said Chip in a low, sad tone. “Connor…he was all I had left. Now I’ve got nothing. Is this what it felt like when you-” The young man stopped, not wanting to bring up painful memories for the other man.

“Find this bastard and I’ll do the rest,” Frank told him as he checked his weapons, which Chip had picked up at the same time he had Frank.

Chip looked over the file and looked back at him. “That’s the problem. There are dozens of potential victims and there doesn’t seem to be an order to how he’s choosing them.”

“He has to have some kind of record or log,” said Frank as he looked over Chip’s shoulder.

“Well, there might be one way he’s choosing his victims,” replied Chip as he looked up from the screen. “There was a sign in book. Connor and Jenna were the fourth and fifth to sign. I signed in a few places after them. There were at least three people before me.”

“And do you know how to find this book?” asked Frank.

“No, but I remember the names,” said Chip as he started typing while reading through the list of potential victims. “Thank you, photographic memory.”

Chip printed out a piece of paper and handed it to Frank. “Here you go.”

The Punisher eyed the names on the list and realized he knew one of the potential victims. “Stay here.”

“No way, I’m in this,” said Chip nervously, standing up as he tried to stare Frank down, immediately finding that he couldn’t do it and looked away. “Please?”

Frank shoved Chip back down into his chair and grabbed a wireless headset so he could keep in contact. “Lock the door behind me. Don’t open up for anyone but me.”

Griffen sat at his desk after everyone else had gone home, frustrated at not being able to make any connection between any of the killings, when the phone rang. He sighed as he picked it up, wondering who’d be calling him this late at night. “Griffen.”

“I know where he’s going,” said Frank over the wireless headset as he looked down at the address in his hands. “We don’t have much time.”

Jasmine put the popcorn into the microwave as she got ready to settle in to watch a DVD. She was still upset over having another bad relationship end and just wanted to relax for a night. She hoped her father wouldn’t be out too late again, although she was used to it by now. The microwave dinged as she pulled the bowl out, going to sit on the couch. She was about to start the disc when she thought she heard a noise outside…

“You’re sure about this?” Griffen asked as he pulled out of the parking garage, knowing exactly where to head.

“It’s the only lead I have,” said Frank as he ran down the street, “and if I’m right, we don’t have much time.”

“We’ll get this fucker before he can kill anyone else,” promised Griffen as he drove like a madman toward his destination.

Frank found the address and kicked the door open, ready to fire. He found he was too late, as the body of the African-American victim was already laying on the ground, faceless, smiling like they’d heard the world’s funniest joke. Griffen joined Frank seconds later and was startled by the sight of the body, knowing the victim personally.

“We were too late,” said Frank calmly as he looked at Griffen. “You going to be okay?”

“Yeah, I just…never saw the victims up close like this,” replied Griffen as he called it in. “Only saw the crime scene photos up to this point. This guy was Jasmine’s ex. I’ve never been so glad to know she dumped one of her asshole boyfriends, so at least she wasn’t here.”

“That just means she’s next,” said Frank as he looked at his old friend. “We’ve got to hurry.”

Jasmine opened the door, expecting to see her father outside having forgotten his keys again. What she found was a skinny white boy, looking around nervously.

“Jasmine Griffen?” Chip asked as she nodded. “You’re in trouble. We’ve got to get you out of here.”

Meanwhile, the Jester was standing across the street and grinning evilly as he looked at the book. His next two victims just happened to be in one place…it would be like killing two birds with one stone…

To Be Continued