[ 82 ]
DR. TERRIBLE’S HEAD
Blood flies everywhere.
Spatters across my beak.
And Dr. Terrible’s severed green head lands on the floor upright, with his yellow eyes alert and staring up at the muscular tentacle clutching the bloody sword. The two black horns on his decapitated head somehow look even more gigantic now.
Then in a very calm voice, Dr. Terrible’s monsterish scaly head on the floor, says, “Ah, ATHENOS II. How nice of you to join us! Projecting yourself down into your old body like this. Alas, you’ve fallen prey to the one key design flaw in your operating system. Your emotions.”
Meanwhile the rest of Dr. Terrible’s body remains standing perfectly still in the fog, looking fully conscious and content, as if it hasn’t even noticed that its head has just been chopped off. Blood gushes out of its long gory neck stump, pouring down the scaly body in rivulets and pooling on the floor.
“I’ll do what I have to, Dr. Terrible,” says ATHENOS II. “I’m warning you! Let Gork and Fribby go. You’ve gone too far this time, Doctor!”
The muscular tentacle swooshes around, wielding the sword.
Dr. Terrible’s head on the floor snorts firebolts out its nostrils. “No, ATHENOS, I believe it is you who has gone too far. And I can promise you one thing.”
Now Dr. Terrible’s head leaps up off the floor and flies back across the chamber over to its body and makes a squish sound as it lands on top of its long green neck.
His scaly head is backward, though, facing the wrong way.
He glances down and sees his spiked tail. “Whoops,” he says.
Then Dr. Terrible casually turns his green head all the way back around so that it’s facing forward once again.
“There we are,” he says, “right as rain. Now ATHENOS, you are going to have to do much better than that if you want to stop me.”
“Very well, sir,” growls ATHENOS II. “As you wish!”
This time what looks like forty tentacles shoot out of the walls and each one of them is brandishing a silver sword. And now all these sword blades zoom forward and converge on Dr. Terrible’s body in a ferocious storm of flashing steel.
Blood rains down all over the chamber.
Inside the chamber, it is a blizzard of flying Dr. Terrible body parts.
And this time, neatly cut bits of that deranged dragon go flying in every direction and splat on the floor.
His monsterish head, his wings, his horns, his forelimbs, his belly, his hind legs, and his tail. And now these bloody bits and gruesome pieces are scattered all over the place, neatly sliced and sectioned off.
And the only parts of Dr. Terrible which haven’t been moved or sliced or altered in any way are his massive green webbed feet, with toe claws protruding.
You can see those green webbed feet just standing there in the fog.