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GULP

I rocket through the air, snarling.

But Dr. Terrible just casually waves his powerstaff as if dismissing a servant. And some sort of invisible fist knocks me back up into the air and holds me pinned here. Now I’m writhing in midair against some kind of invisible restraint which is savagely squeezing my throat, choking me.

I can’t breathe. My eyes are bulging.

I glance down and see Fribby on one haunch, with black fluid dribbling out her beak.

Hold tight, Fribby. I’m coming.

Dr. Terrible studies me wriggling helplessly up in the air, as if he’s a spider examining a fly caught in its web. He shakes his monsterish scaly head and chuckles. “My failed disciple.”

Then he raises his talon. And my bloody ragged wing leaps up off the chamber floor and flies into his palm.

Smack.

Holding my bloody wing up in front of his black beak and turning it this way and that, he carefully inspects it.

“Personally,” growls Dr. Terrible. “I have always preferred my meat well done.”

Now he tosses my green wing high up in the air and opens his beak and proceeds to blast the wing with a firestream. The leathery wing is suspended up in the air, held aloft by the force of his firestream buffeting it from underneath. You can hear the meat sizzling, and greasy juices bubble up out of it and rain down.

The chamber quickly becomes choked with smoke. The ghastly smell of my own cooked flesh comes clawing its way up my nasal passages and stabs my brain. I feel like I’m going to vomit.

Then Dr. Terrible’s firestream vanishes and my cooked wing drops out of the air.

Falls down.

Right into.

His outstretched talon.

“Now that,” growls Dr. Terrible as he admires the smoking charred wing in his talon, “is what I call just right. Cooking has never really interested me as a field of study. Not cerebral enough. But I’ve always had a knack for it. If I do say so myself.”

Dr. Terrible opens his black beak wide and takes a huge bite out of the wing.

Chomp!

Meat juice flies and spatters everywhere.

My toe claws shudder.

And then this psychotic scaly bastard makes a big noisy production out of chewing the meat with his fangs, for my benefit. Little crumbly bits of burnt wing meat are falling out of his hideous glistening beak as he chomps and snuffs and snorts. It’s grotesque in the extreme.

But most hideous of all is the sight of Dr. Terrible closing his eyes and groaning with pleasure as he swallows.

“Gulp. Mmmmm.”