John Goodewitch stared at the wall and wondered why anyone would not only invent, but also systematically utilize, a cannon that shot cats out of it. The blood and sinews had dried to an ugly brown spider web. John reached into his coat pocket, a drab beige affair over his black t-shirt and black slacks. His red wingtips stood out as the only real color in his ensemble. He pulled out a pack of cigarettes, flipped the box open, and fished one out with his teeth. His fangs caught the sullen yellow light creeping into the warehouse and made the Dim City CSI nervous. He lit the smoke and inhaled sharply. Cancer was a worry of the living; John Goodewitch shared no worries with anything living. John exhaled with a definitive conviction. The bluish smoke cascaded down his face and back up into the stale air above his head. "Looks like the work of a Ghoul..." His sure baritone voice cut across the empty space and made one investigator eek in surprise. "I swear you scare the shit outta them on purpose, John." Chief Constable Baroque oozed out of one of the warehouse's dark corners, snatched the cigarette out of Goodewitch's mouth, and unceremoniously took a pull off of it. Goodewitch didn't even flinch. "Takes a big man to steal a smoke from someone that could snap you like a fucking twig, Baroque." "Takes a bigger man to just shut up and light another one, you vampy prick," Baroque countered with a lopsided grin. John just smiled back, making it look painful, and got out another smoke, lighting it. "Looks like a Ghoul." "You said that." "Ghouls are tricky. They're little fuckers all high on paint fumes and think they're demons with enormous red cocks. They think Satan is talking to them through Iron Maiden records they play backwards. Thing is, they do the worst shit they can think up and regular folks think there are actually demons running around." Baroque nodded gravely. "Turns out its twats?" "Exactly." Goodewitch turned away from the scene of the crime and made his way silently outside. His skin started to faintly itch as he stepped into the waning sunset. He shrugged it off, knowing in less than half an hour it would dark and he would be fine. He wasn't a "vampy prick," as Baroque had insinuated. John Goodewitch was a Thing of Science. He was an amateur scientist and professional police detective before a botched hit left him in his current state. He managed to shoot the mugger, a blood junkie, but he was stabbed with a hypo of what Goodewitch could only classify as Really Weird Shit. Three days later, John Goodewitch died. Two days after that, he dug himself out of his grave. Without any family, John made his way to his home and his lab in the basement. He was surprised when he ripped the door from its hinges. After that, he noted, his post mortem state would require further testing. He found that his increased strength and speed were due to his body constantly fighting against rigor mortis, his muscles pulling against resistance like taut rubber bands that refused to snap. After bribing a friend at Dim City General Hospital, a MRI revealed that without the need to produce white blood cells, his bone marrow had decayed and led to re-calcification and inhumanly strong but lighter bones. Of course, it took days to reconfigure the MRI when he found out the paleness of his skin didn't allow him to appear in mirrors, photographs, or video surveillance. Weeks later, when he finally broke down and "borrowed" two bags of O-negative blood from the hospital (for scientific reasons, he assured them), he found the blood replenished his diminished proteins and allowed him sharper physical senses and sped up his already augmented healing rate. He deduced, with the ease of talking the verdant medical interns into giving him more blood, that if he lowered his voice and focused, he could make people believe what he said. He systematically worked out that his new form exuded pheromones that made "normal" people susceptible to his will. By the end of his self-analysis, John Goodewitch realized that as a Thing of Science, the urban legends, the monsters, the creatures roaming the dark must be able to be explained away as well. He set out, in his new un-life, to find the things preying on an innocent human society and bring them to justice. This quest had now led him to an underground heavy metal bar called the Meat Hook Hang.