Skoolz

Back in high school, before I became Supreme Ruler of Hypnotopia, I was not a popular child. I like to think that it was because others thought I was too cool for them in a James Dean sort of way, or that they were in awe of my massive brain, and the way the green light reflected off of it in my See-thru SkullDome(tm). But looking back, I realize that it probably had something to do with my pulsating death aura, and the effects it had on human skin. I had some friends, of course, like Baron Firebrand, the Insatiable, and Old Tom. As his name suggests, Old Tom wasn't really a student, but more of a hobo who lived down the street and paid me in hard candies to lure my fellow classmates to his "shack of pain," whatever that meant. Still, he was a friend. I also had a zombie friend named David, but he was eaten by a condor when we were still freshmen.

I tried to become more popular, by joining some clubs and extracurricular groups and keeping my grave-robbing on the down low. I joined the baseball team, and even hit an in-the-park home run my first time, mostly by refusing to drop the bat as I circled the bases and wildly swinging at anyone who came within several feet of me. I was disqualified for putting five opponents, two teammates, and one argumentative umpire in the hospital. My coach came to the prison to tell me he was kicking me off the team, so I caved in his sternum with another baseball bat I had sneaked into jail. Where did I hide it? It is a mystery even I cannot answer...

I still wanted to play sports, though, so when I got back to school I joined the basketball team, which for some reason refused to let me use my baseball bat on the court. I wasn't very tall, so I mostly rode the bench and drew pictures of various crimes against nature that I wanted to create, like the "manticorsican" (a beast with the body of a lion and the head of a Corsican sailor). When I did finally once get to play, I knew what I had to do to prove my worth to the team: I placed the ball under my shirt so it looked like I was pregnant, pulled down my pants, and "gave birth" to the basketball. Did I also possibly shit my pants? Yes, but that's my secret. The ref was unamused by my antics, but that might have been because I kicked his five-year-old daughter in the face afterward. I guess I figured at the time "well, I'm probably getting kicked out of this game anyway, so I suppose the least I could do is steal that girl's teeth and make a necklace." So I did that, and then I sold the necklace to Old Tom for sticky handful of Jolly Ranchers. Back at school, people considered me a hero. No wait, not hero, madman--they considered me a madman.

I was also kicked off the rugby team when I mistook the ball for a condor egg and stabbed it with a knife, because of my hatred of all things related to condors (I hope you can read this story in zombie heaven, David).

It was around this time that I realized my place was in the lab, among the formaldehyde, test tubes, and three-legged dog fetuses, where I could do the preliminary studies that would later win me the Nobel Prize for Unicornology. Only one person could actually rival me in the lab: Brainallax. Man, he was smart. No one was as smart as he was, not even Brainallax. We became rivals; if I built a thirty-foot robot, he had to build one thirty-five feet. If that robot had ice breath, mine had to have flamethrower hands. If he then gave his robot a laser katana, I had to kill Brainallax, because nothing tops a laser katana. Afterward I would have to put his body under my shirt so I looked pregnant, and then "give birth" to the corpse (this is called "doing the dingo").

I did have a modicum of luck with the ladies, and many of the more effeminate men. If I couldn't get a particular lass to go out with me, I'd just convince her with my "mind control ray," which is what I called this heavy lead pipe I once found in a ditch. One time a raccoon ate my date's face, but that's a different story altogether. My first real girlfriend was Marilyn Monroe (no relation) who worked with me and King Kong Jr. on the school newspaper. We dated for about six months, and it was so cute: she'd insult me lovingly, and I'd follow her home, pretending to hide in the bushes. Then I'd climb up the ivy trellis on the side of her house and watch her get undressed--often, she'd roleplay with her friend Arthur for my benefit. Sometimes she'd even get her dad involved in our little games; he'd run outside, firing his shotgun into the night and screaming my name, but he knew it was all in fun, and so he'd always shoot to wound and not to kill. One time she got the sheriff to play along, too, although I'm not allowed to talk about that.

These memories are the kinds of things, like our love of hard candy, that never leave us, no matter how old we get or how many people surround our murdercastle with torches and pitchforks. We can try to run from them, or tell the sheriff they didn't happen, but we always get drawn back, looking for our lost youth, like a zombie searching for a kid, only the kid is really the zombie from before he was dead, and also the zombie has astigmatism and needs glasses--but you know what? No one's going to prescribe glasses to a zombie. The point is we're all that zombie. Or possibly the kid, I'm very bad with metaphors.