Recollection

A darker, edgier, gorier, never before seen, Punisher-MAX esque take on Johnny Blaze as Ghost Rider. Warning. There will be graphic descriptions of violence and extremely explicit language

ILLNOIS STATE POLICE DEPARTMENT, 9 A.M.
Forensics are looking at the bodies of the three grisly victims from last night's appearance of the murders, and are mystified. Detective Simmons Bold, assigned to the case, walks in to the room.
Bold: "We got names for any of these guys?" "Does anyone know what happened?"
The man working forensics, John Cherrygrove, always typing something on the computer, responds back in his usual, shrill, nerdy tone.
Cherrygrove: "We have names and occupation but not much else. All these men worked for Jerry Laughton, at his family construction company. The man we found chained to a gas pump here was Tony Capri. 35. Two years ago he had murder charges against him but they were dismissed by the DA. The guy with the dented skull is Jeffery Arons. 27. Spotless record, as far as we know. And the skeleton here belongs to one Garry Phillip. 32. Did jail time in his twenties but he was released on good behavior and his record has been clean ever since."
Bold paces around the room for a moment, looks back at Cherrygrove, and speaks.
Bold: "So we got three victims. One burned to a crisp. One with his skull dented in. And the other chained to a fuel pump. The attendant at the gas station where this happened last night wouldn't talk. He was traumatized, just yelling incoherently. You think this is the work of some deranged serial killer?"
Cherrygrove: "That's what we thought at first. But come over here. Look closer at Tony's corpse. Look at his eyes. His iris, they're just gone. It doesn't make sense. We don't know anything that could done this."
Bold walks over to the corpse and reaffirms what Cherrygrove just said.
Bold: "What the hell? What could've done this, then?"
Cherrygrove: "Like I said, we don't know."

9 AM, A VACANT CHURCH SOMEWHERE IN ILLNOIS
Johnny Blaze woke up, stretching and groaning in a small crater in the middle of the floorboards in the between pews as he usually did after these incidents. Johnny could remember the men from last night, getting stabbed, dying... But after that, he couldn't remember anything but a red haze and faint yelling. This wasn't the first time he had woke up in a church like this after a near death experience and it wouldn't be the last. Every time he blacked out like that he woke up in a church after hours. "Maybe it's something about these holy places that attracts him, maybe God is looking out for me" he thought to himself. Johnny felt around his throat and his stomach where he got stabbed and felt no wounds or pain. He stood up, walked over to a pew, and sat down, determined to shuffle through his memories of how he ultimately ended up here.
Johnny wondered what his father would do in his situation. Barton Blaze was a good man, but family was always his weak spot. Most of his life he ran a big car lot, the only car lot in town. He would always talk about how he wanted his son to have a good life and that he ran this car lot so Johnny could run off with Roxanne and go to college, and not have to be anywhere near this town, how nobody could see the evil lurking just underneath the surface. He'd always talk about how nobody could see the majority of the politicians, the buisness owners, and even some of the citizens in this town for what they really were, how a few good deeds and a facade made everything look crystal clear. Life was good until the new mayor got elected when Johnny was 16, and his dad talked about how his taxes went up by a lot and he had to get all new permits, and yet no one else in town talked about anything like that, and Johnny would always notice more shady men at the door than ever before making offers to his father, sometimes standing and talking for an hour or more. Now that Johnny was older, he realized that all his life there were bad men in town that wanted the only buisness that wouldn't sell out. One day when Johnny was 17 he came back to the house after a date to find him and a sharply dressed man talking about getting a loan from the Laughtons, and after formalities were exchanged and the house was clear, his dad took him into a backroom and talked about how he cut a deal and got the money to keep the car lot buisness running smoothly from these men and that he had no choice. Everything was okay until that point, from Johnny's point of view, until a year later when one night, Johnny came back from a family dinner with Roxanne and didn't see anybody in the shop office. He would go on to find his dad lying face down on the floor, dead. Two weeks later the coroner said it was a heart attack, and while Blaze had reason to believe the shady men might have had something to do with it, he knew there was no evidence for it and that Barton was the kind of man to tough out problems in order to make sure the people around him were okay. Either way, after that, the shop wasn't in Johnny's will anymore, it went straight to the Laughton estate, and while Johnny kept the house, he would go on to work odd jobs for a year until Roxanne told him she didn't want to be in town anymore, and that she needed to leave to go find herself and secure a future and a real life. Up until then Johnny would get phone calls from his uncle, Crash Simpson, talking about his condolences for his father and that if he wanted, he could go stay with him for a while and work for his gig at the Crash Stuntmen Show in West Virginia. He took up the offer and packed up what little he had, a classic black American motorcycle, passed down from his father, and immediately took off for the Wild and Wonderful state...