It was a dark and stormy night....

The rain fell heavily around the footsteps of the tall man. The tail of his long coat was soaked with the water that splashed from his heavy footsteps. He walked with purpose, never glancing backwards. Never looking to see if he was being followed. He rounded a corner and walked down a darkened street. A flash of lightning briefly illuminated his chiseled face, and reflected off his round spectacles, obscuring his eyes behind the white circlets.

The thunder clap that followed nearly drowned the sound of the shop's bell, as he quickly stepped inside the warm and dry interior. A florescent light flickered, making the droplets on his hat appear to dance.

"Welcome to Uday and Qusay's Surplus Torture Goods. Can I help you find something?" The shopkeeper spoke evenly, his tone contrasting with his wild, unshaven and unkempt appearance. His dark eyes flicked up and down, sizing up this new man in his shop.

"Yes, I want to make men suffer." The man in the coat spoke so softly, yet infected his voice with so much vitriol.

The shopkeeper inhaled as he let out a sharp, short laugh, such that he sounded like he was wheezing. He picked up a small, sharp, and painful-looking item from a bin filled with blood-encrusted tools. "Well, then you've come to the right place. Perhaps I can interest you in the Cast-R8or™? One prick and," the shopkeeper emitted his wheezing laugh once again, "well, let's just hope he's already banked."

"No, that's not what I need," the customer said so forcefully that the shopkeeper jumped. He leaned in close to the shopkeeper and whispered, as if he wanted to prevent the walls from hearing him. "I hear you're the man to speak to about couches."

The shopkeeper's eyes opened wide and a sly grin oozed its way across his face. "Yes.... Yes. I believe I can help you there." The shopkeeper stepped behind the small wooden counter on which stood a cash register so ancient that Judas Iscariot may have used it to store his thirty pieces of silver. He stooped low and pressed a button.

There was a shuddering, then the small shop shook and the wall behind the counter opened wide to display a massive room, filled floor to ceiling with grotesque and hideous deformities that could only be called couches by a man so mad as to welcome death in for tea.

The shopkeeper ushered his patron inside an slid the massive iron door shut behind them. He tried to direct his audience's attention to one specimen. Sharp spikes, coated red with either rust or blood—or perhaps both—protruded from the sandpaper-like upholstery. "This is a very fine model here. One of my finest. I think you'll be quite pleased. The last man to sit on it was sent to the asylum. They have a special cell on the east wing for him, where he screams—"

"No, too garish," the shopper cut him off, and strolled off in another direction.

The shopkeeper ran in front of the man and tried to lead him to a pile of twisted metal, across which electric arcs jumped at seemingly random intervals. "Er, then how about this one? At the touch of a button, you can send 10,000 volts through the body of your victim. I like to watch the horror in his eyes as his body convulses uncontrollably."

A look of scorn crept onto the man's face. He shook his head. "No, this just won't do. I need something... something like...." He pursed his lips as he gazed about the room. His eyes came to rest and the corner of his otherwise expressionless mouth curled in a sneer of malice and contempt. "Something like that one," he said, pointing the finger from one black glove.

The couch was revolting. Hideous. Ghastly, grim, and gruesome. It had a paisley print in a shade of green that could only have come from a deep, dark, and forbidden corner of the '70s..

The shopkeeper kept his distance from it and hid behind his customer, as if he was afraid that the couch might leap up and charge the twenty feet across the room at him.

"Oh.... Oh." The words escaped the shopkeeper's lips in a nearly inaudible whisper. He knew that this man who had come into his shop must have the rage of hell pent up inside him, waiting to come screaming forth.

The shopkeeper took a moment to compose himself. "That one." He looked distant, as if he was looking through the couch to a gaping maw beyond. "That one was made by three men who toiled in a darkened cave deep inside the earth, where mortals ought not to go. They slaved over it for three years, pouring their hatred and malice for all that is right and good in this world into their abomination. It is a cursed couch, and the makers themselves have paid the price with their blood. One fell to a most wretched illness. His flesh decayed over a fortnight, while he screamed for death to take him. One was driven mad by his creation, and hung himself on a meat hook, impaled through his jaw. The police say it took him two days to bleed to death. The third was smote by the might of God, struck down by a lightning bolt on a clear night. It is said that whoever sits on it shall be wracked with a most unbearable pain, and whosoever sleeps on it shall awake screaming in agony, as if every bone in his body was broken, every muscle torn, and every ligament severed.

"It is an evil couch," the shopkeeper added in a whisper.

"It is perfect. I'll take it."

The shopkeeper looked up at the man, suddenly broken from his trance. "Of course, sir. And where would you like it delivered?"

The man reached deep into an inside coat pocket and pulled out a crumpled piece of paper. He handed it to the shopkeeper, who carefully unfolded it.

Scrawled in hastily written letters were two words: Hoag Hospital.