Captain Scotto and His Heroes To Be

Episode Nine

I was really, really tripping out by the time Laurel and Crank Boy finally managed to close the refrigerator door on my leftover omelette. They had to secure the door shut with several hundred rolls of duct tape, four hundred chains from my "private little dungeon" (if you know what I mean, wink wink, nudge nudge), and a round of nails from the pneumatic nail gun I kept in the kitchen next to the toaster (sometimes the deli meat slips off the sandwich, you know, and you have to take drastic action). I didn't have the guts to tell them I don't eat leftovers. That could wait until we were coming down and everyone was already bone-crushingly depressed because we didn't have any mushrooms in the house to follow up all that acid.

Now my intention at that point was to turn on the TV and slap on a trippy movie of some kind. I had an array of prime psychedelic videos in front of me ready to go: there was Don Knotts in The Apple Dumpling Gang, and there was Don Knotts in The Shakiest Gun in the West, and of course, there was Don Knotts in Cannonball Run II. So many choices… but I turned the TV on before I had come to a conclusion as to which brand of Knottsian brilliance we were to soon experience, and so I caught a glimpse of a most unfortunate story on the local news.

It seemed Dr. Ugly was on a rampage….


It was not enough that Dr. Ugly had taken my prized CD collection and exchanged it at a local rekkid shop for the complete works of Whitney Houston. No, that injustice was just the start of the punishment Dr. Ugly had in store for me. He intended to wreak a kind of unholy havoc upon my home city of Seattle. He intended to bring the city to its knees as a way of punishing me for his sad infliction. He intended a whole host of things that are ultimately best referred to as "the stuff crazy people do when they aren't locked up." His maniacal mind had waited for this moment for many long years, and now he attacked Seattle with a vigor and viciousness previously only seen on pay per view wrestling specials and occasionally during high school chick fights.

He focused his attention on the heart of Seattle's famed Capitol Hill neighborhood, where the immensely cool and fashionable mingled with the weird and the strangely incontinent. He started at the north end of Broadway Avenue, a maddeningly hip avenue that on some level probably deserved what it was about to get anyway, but still. He stepped into the center of the avenue and pulled the makeshift hood off of his ugliness, and watched as traffic immediately went flying onto the sidewalks to avoid his horrendousness, smashing into pedestrians and buildings and telephone poles and each other. I imagine it was actually kind of neat to watch.

As he began walking slowly south down the avenue, even the very pavement in front of him ripped itself up in an attempt to flee. Dr. Ugly cackled like the madman he was; it was a cackle he'd been practicing for years while incarcerated. At first his cackle had been kind of weak and lacking in that certain je n'est sais pas, but soon he got the hang of it and began to work with it, develop it, really rehearse it until it was a polished, professional cackle that could truly add to the inherent fright that his uncovered visage already produced. The rain fell in agonizing trajectories away from him completely, causing sudden torrents of rain in front of him and behind of him. The sheets of rain couldn't blind the hapless shoppers that day from his terrible ugliness, however. Some of them simply froze, their gaze horribly locked upon Dr. Ugly as though they had stared at a Medusa and been turned to stone right there on the spot. Massive coronaries and brain hemorrhages spread down the avenue like sweat running down a stripper's back. The facades of the storefronts ripped themselves off and collapsed onto the streets, brutally crushing those poor innocents who hadn't yet managed to escape.

Buildings began to collapse as, once the facades were gone, actual building structures themselves attempted to flee in terror. Like a row of dominos, the structures on either side of Broadway Avenue tumbled to the ground, crushing the unfortunates inside like grapes squashed under someone's foot – you know, with, like, juices squirting out on all sides and everything. The hoods of crashed cars peeled themselves off and went flying through the air in front of him, decapitating fleeing souls in their paths. Then the engines of those cars spontaneously exploded in huge fireballs rather than accepting the inevitable approach of Dr. Ugly, and those fireballs enveloped other poor fleeing souls. Dr. Ugly could hardly keep score, but he was sure he totally had the high score at this point with the killing people and stuff.

He took his time, turning off of Broadway to head down the giant hill known as Denny Way. The police arrived and then just as quickly turned around and fled. Seattle's finest would not be able to stop the ominous approach of Dr. Ugly. Television helicopters that got too close suddenly found their cameras exploding in terror at the sight in the viewfinders. Electric lines snapped and attempted to run away, causing black outs throughout downtown and surrounding neighborhoods. As the street ripped itself up, exposed sewer lines burst open in fear, and fountains of sludge rained as far away from him as sludgily possible.

And what was his ultimate mission? Dr. Ugly now had his sights set on the only thing in Seattle that gave Dr. Ugly a run for his ugliness – the World's Tallest Space Needle itself. Surely that nincompoop Scotto would rush to the aid of Seattle's pathetic little tourist trap… and Dr. Ugly would be waiting, of that there would be no doubt! He relished the thought of torturing that damnable Scotto, replayed the imaginary footage over and over again, then ran it through a couple of neat filters, made it look all trippy, ran it upside down and all inverted and shit, put down some killer beats on it, totally made the edit TIGHT.

Yes indeed, he thought, that bastard Scotto was in for quite a surprise….