Sitting in his cell, hopping around with shackled ankles, 'Bacchus' whistles cheerily, the tune sounding similar to that song about the drunk sailor. A mistimed hop, however, sends him spilling to the ground, making him crack his head on the cold steel floor. However, the pain doesn't register in his mind, evident in the way he somehow manages to work himself back up to his feet and, blood running freely down his face, staining his straitjacket, continues to hop around, his fractured mind wandering back to the time when he was finally captured.

[i]Three years ago, in a small town in the mountains, sixteen-year-old Ethan Taylor was walking home from school. This was before he lost his mind, back when he was just a normal, kind-hearted kid who happened to have a special talent, although no one knew about it, other than his parents and himself.

It was a good day; School had served his favorite lunch, he aced his physics test (barely), and he finally got up the guts to ask his childhood friend out on a date. Imagine his surprise when she said 'yes.' Anyhow, on his way home, he had stopped off at the local convenience store and bought himself a bottle of strawberry milk. It was when he turned back towards the exit that a couple of squad cars tore down the street. It was then that the first red flag, although it was small at the time, went up in his mind, Ethan having noticed that they were heading in the same direction he would go to head home. Shrugging it off as coincidence, he shoulders his backpack and exits the store.

The second red flag came when an ambulance screamed past, heading in the same direction as the squad cars. Watching it turn down the street, he began to feel a cold seed of dread take root in his chest, but he continues brushing it off, although it was getting harder and harder to do so. Now jogging, he runs up tot he end of the block and turns, feeling that seed erupt into a full-grown tree of despair.

Halfway down the street, where he would normally see his mother waiting patiently for him while his dad was inside, working on renovating their home before work, which he had been doing for the past two weeks. Now, crowding the street in front of his home, were a few squad cars and a couple of ambulances, all with lights flashing while a group of bystanders watch on, their morbid human curiosity for what was happening overriding any sense of respect. As Ethan watched, his milk falling from his hand as his bag slips, unnoticed, from his shoulder, a couple of paramedics bring out the first stretcher, upon which lies the body of one of his parents, a white sheet draped over their body and a circle of crimson where their head is.

As the second body is brought out, Ethan could swear he heard something inside of him snap. The world fell away as a low rumbling began to fill the air, the bystanders crying out in alarm as the ground begins shaking beneath their feet. A low laugh then begins to sound from Ethan's mouth as his sanity, in one fell swoop, shattered as easily as a china plate dropped from the top of a skyscraper...[/i]

As Ethan, now codenamed Bacchus, continues to hop around, his whistling morphing from the song about the unfortunate sailor to one about a woman who lost a sheep, he remembers that first spark of amusement when he began tearing that idiotic group of spectators apart as easily as if they were made of wet tissues. He also remembers the sting of the electrified bullet that had slammed into his shoulder, sending him to the ground after he had already killed off an easy 90% of his town's population and the law enforcement agencies that had come in an attempt to stop him. He also remembers the strange, unsettling feeling of sorrow as he looked into the tear-streaked face of Anna, the girl he was supposed to go to the movies with that weekend, as she screamed how much she hated him.

However, all of that may as well have happened in another life. Now, he doesn't care what anyone thinks of him. All that matters to him is when he can finally get out of his box and massacre anyone standing in his way.