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  and cried, “We must strike while the iron is hot!

  Her condition is worse than at first I’d assumed,

  so we mustn’t delay, or else she is doomed!

  It is clear to me now that certainly she’s:

  got Parapsychotic Delusion Disease!

  There is only one method to fix it within…

  which I’ll demonstrate now, before I begin.”

  He opened his bag with imperious pride,

  and Katrina saw horrible things were inside:

  needles and skewers that filled her with fright,

  as they glinted and shone in the shadowy light.

  The doctor reached deep in his medical case,

  and took out a tool too gruesome to face.

  It looked like a drill, but especially made,

  with clappers and claws and a rotary blade!

  He fondled this thing, with the subtlest touch.

  “I love it!” he cried. “Oh, ever so much!

  It’s the finest, most delicate tool of its kind.

  It’s the

  And if you’ll excuse some innocuous fun,

  I’ll demonstrate now how the mincing is done!”

  He spun on his heel, and he leapt in the air,

  recalling the cadence of Freddy Astaire,

  but never as nimble, not nearly as spry

  (more like a hippo with mud in its eye).

  He leaped and he danced with his terrible tool!

  He flourished and spun like a blathering fool!

  “Madam,” he puffed, when his dancing was done,

  “In the surgical world, I am second to none!

  So you’ve nothing to fear, for I’ll snip off her top.

  I flip up her lid and I’ll give her the chop!”

  But Old Krabby was bored. She looked up at the clock.

  She was eager to get to the butchery block.

  “Doctor LeFang,” she said, with a smile,

  “I don’t mean to rush you or hamper your style,

  but perhaps we should start by moving upstairs.

  It’s best if Katrina is…caught unawares.

  It’s not that your banter is dreary or dull,

  it’s just that I’m anxious to crack at her skull!”

  They both looked above at the balcony ledge,

  but Katrina already had left from the edge.

  She had scampered away and back to her bed,

  trembling with panic and dizzy with dread.

  It would seem she was caught in a bit of a scrape,

  and the only way out was to stage an escape!

  So she packed up a sack, full of clothing and socks,

  and much of the junk from her treasury box.

  Then she tied up her sheets in a delicate line,

  like Tarzan would do with a tropical vine;

  one end she tied to the foot of her bed,

  while the other she tossed out the window, instead.

  Then she leapt out herself, swung down on the sheets,

  repelling below, to the dark of the streets.

  While up in her bedroom, Old Krabby was there,

  ranting and raving and tearing her hair.

  She had searched all the rooms, from hither to yon,

  and discovered Katrina was thoroughly gone.

  She howled with a shriek that was bitter and shrill.

  It was just as the doctor leaned over the sill.

  “Look! Out the window!” he said with a scoff,

  “…I wonder why all of my patients run off?”

  Mrs. Krabone cried: “Don’t mess around!

  We can catch her again if we get to the ground!”

  She wrangled the doctor away by his cuff,

  and they sped down the stairs in a tumbling huff.

  But when they arrived at the base of the stair,

  Katrina was gone—by barely a hair!

  She had fled! She was free! (Not a moment too soon.)

  She had scampered away, by the light of the moon!

  Yes, she’d escaped, when the timing was right,

  but what dangers awaited, out there, in the night?

  Meanwhile, Old Krabby was red as a beet.

  She was gnashing her teeth! She was stomping her feet!

  She clutched at the collar of Doctor LeFang,

  subjecting the man to a hairy harangue:

  If it wasn’t for you and your yakkety-yak,

  I’d have my Katrina now under the knife.

  She would finally give me some peace in my life!

  But instead of my peace, as I’m sure you can guess,

  I get only a lousy, lamentable mess!

  So listen up good, you botchery buff!

  You bungler! You dunce! You pandering puff!

  May it take us a week! Or a month! Or a year!

  We will find my Katrina, and bring her back here!

  Then using that miserable ‘Mincer of Mind,’

  you’ll finish the job that you were assigned!”

  So Mrs. Krabone (and the Doctor, as well),

  began searching the streets for Katrina Katrell.

  They scoured the ground. They hunted and hoped.

  They rummaged and rooted and grabbled and groped.

  They sniffed with their noses. They narrowed their eyes.

  They even looked up to the dark of the skies.

  They listened as well, but heard nothing at all…

  just the flap

  of the sheets

  that hung from the wall.

  Chapter 4

  a fluttering flame

  With Katrina, her story began with a leap, eluding LeFang—that nefarious creep.

  Mortimer’s story was hardly the same.

  It began with a sort of a lottery game…

  A game with a prize that was truly bizarre:

  Not a nifty new house or a nimble new car.

  Not the tastiest meal or the fanciest clothes.

  A prize that was nothing like any of those.

  Not boodle, not moolah, not money or gold,

  or anything else you could handle or hold.

  What sort of prize could it possibly be?

  Read on, my good reader, and soon you will see…

  It was late in the night, in Underwood Bluff,

  as Morty tramped home in a bit of a huff.

  All day he had toiled at the Rumor Review,

  at a legion of deadlines, soon to be due.

  So staggering home, he was bleary and beat.

  He was sluggish and slow. He was dragging his feet.

  There was only one thought in the whole of his head:

  To find his way home and to climb into bed.

  But he couldn’t quite yet. He still had to stop

  and check on his Pop in the Hospital Shop.

  It was then something happened: a scent on the breeze.

  It blew up his nose and he thought he would sneeze.

  The odor was acrid. The odor was hot—

  like a casserole burning inside of a pot.

  It tickled the whiskers that grew in his nose.

  He stopped in his tracks. He suddenly froze.

  Holy smokes! Morty thought. A fire?! But where?!

  He snuffled and followed the smell in the air.

  It led him away, to the end of the block,

  where Mortimer Yorgle was in for a shock…

  There stood the Ballplayers Hallway of Fame.

  It glimmered within with

  a fluttering flame!

  “Oh, no!” Morty cried, with a panicky yelp.

  “The Hallway! It’s burning! Hey, somebody! HELP!”

  He ran in a circle and waggled his arms.

  “Hurry!” he hollered. “Sound the alarms!”

  But no one came running to Mortimer’s aid.

  He was all by himself, completely dismayed!

  For here was his favorite place in the world,

  going up in a fire that flickered and swirled.

/>   Feeling woozy, he wobbled and fell to the ground.

  No one was coming. There was no one around.

  He thought of the trophies, the statues and plaques,

  melting in puddles of silver and wax;

  and all of that history—all of it lost!

  It had to be saved! No matter the cost!

  It was then, to his horror, that Mortimer knew,

  there was only one thing he could possibly do.

  He couldn’t just sit there, he couldn’t just wait.

  He’d been poked…by the ficklest finger of fate!

  (But Morty and fate were like water and oil:

  From the latter, the former would always recoil.)

  So Morty did nothing. He slumped and he stared,

  while firelight sizzled and fizzled and flared.

  Why me?! Morty thought. I’m just a chump!

  I’m a rube! I’m a clod! I’m a sap! I’m a frump!

  Where are the sirens? Where are the lights?

  On this, the most terrible night of all nights?!

  And what if, perhaps, they just never came?

  Would it burn to a crisp—The Hallway of Fame?!

  The answer, of course, was a definite: Yes!

  There’d be nothing left but a smoldering mess.

  And for even a chump that was easy to see.

  Aw, crud, Morty thought. It’s all up to me...

  He got to his feet, his heart full of dread.

  He pulled up his trench coat over his head.

  He looked at a window that rippled with heat,

  and willed himself forward on faltering feet.

  Then faster and faster! A blundering dash!

  He dove through the glass with a clattering

  Inside of the building, the walls were ablaze.

  The smoke in the air was a murderous haze.

  Everything blossomed with yellows and reds,

  braided together in fiery threads.

  It felt like the heat was a million degrees!

  So Morty got down on his hands and his knees.

  Bewildered and aimless, he started to crawl

  the length of that lofty, illustrious hall,

  randomly grabbing whatever he could:

  trinkets of plastic and metal and wood.

  He wormed to the end, where the heat was the worst,

  his mouth going dry as if dying of thirst.

  There, behind glass, in an elegant chest,

  was a relic more precious than all of the rest:

  A zorgally ball that once had been flung

  by Cyril “The Slinger” Zipzorgle DeYoung,

  in the very first Underwood Champions Match,

  when balls were still woven from ravels of thatch.

  Morty opened the case and plucked up the ball,

  as the fire was rising to swallow the Hall,

  abruptly erupting in flashes and blooms,

  imbuing the room with its poisonous fumes!

  It was then Morty knew: The time was at hand

  to blow this proverbial popsicle stand!

  But he hardly could see! The smoke was too dense!

  The heat all around him was more than intense!

  He snaked on his belly and made for the door,

  through inches of ashes that covered the floor.

  He might well have made it, but started to choke,

  inhaling a lungful of cindery smoke.

  All at once he was weak, he was gasping for breath.

  He was two or three breaths from the edges of death!

  His stomach was churning. His vision was blurred.

  If you said: “He’s a goner!” I would’ve concurred.

  But then he heard something: A series of thwacks,

  like the chopping of wood with the crack of an axe.

  And then something else: the tromping of boots,

  from zorgles in bulky, voluminous suits.

  They stood around Morty, who lay like a log,

  whose senses were fuzzy and lost in a fog.

  But before passing out, he was never afraid,

  for the boots…

  they belonged to the fire brigade.

  When Morty awoke, he was tucked in a bed,

  an uncomfortable pillow supporting his head.

  In the room where he was, the lighting was bright;

  the walls and the ceiling were blindingly white.

  He smiled to himself. He was hardly surprised.

  How ironic, he thought, I’ve been hospitalized.

  He looked down at himself and instinctively cringed.

  He was covered in cuts. His hair had been singed.

  I’m a loser, he thought. I’m a dough-headed klutz!

  What was I thinking?! I must’ve been nuts!

  “Welcome back!” said a voice. It was gruff, like his own,

  and Mortimer realized he wasn’t alone.

  He rolled to his left and there was his Pop.

  They were sharing a room at the Hospital Shop.

  “Hi, Pop,” Morty said. “I screwed-up, I guess.

  Just look at me here! I’m a terrible mess!”

  “Screwed-up?” said his Pop. He was taken aback.

  A part of him wished to give Morty a smack.

  “But I love what you did! Sounds like it was fun!

  And you know what they say—like father, like son!”

  “Yeah, right.” Morty scoffed. “Maybe you think it’s cool,

  but I’m aching all over. I feel like a fool.

  I haven’t felt this bad since—I dunno when!

  I’ll never do something that stupid again!”

  “Ssshhh!” said his Pop, as he nodded his head

  to the stranger who stood at the end of the bed:

  A respectable zorgle, impeccably dressed

  in a Chesterfield cloak and a cardigan vest.

  “Who’re you?” Morty squinted. “When’d you arrive?

  I don’t need an embalmer, ’cause I’m still alive.”

  The stranger said nothing to Mortimer’s joke.

  He reached with a hand in the folds of his cloak.

  He came out with a document wound in a roll,

  an archaic and rather elaborate scroll.

  The stranger unfurled it. It flapped to his feet.

  The inscription was lush and exquisitely neat.

  he recited, beginning to read

  the document’s pompous, punctilious screed.

  “On behalf of the Bureau of Heroes

  and Quests,

  we acknowledge your deed, which plainly attests

  to your selflessness, bravery, vigor and verve,

  as well as your steely, unwavering nerve.

  Thanks to your efforts in tackling the blaze,

  we can rebuild the Hall and its many displays!

  Such spirited courage should not be ignored,

  which is why we confer you this noble reward…”

  The stranger then paused, leaning over the bed.

  He held out his fist and momentously said:

  “To Mortimer Yorgle, of Rumbleton Road,

  his lottery ticket is humbly bestowed!”

  The ticket was crimson, its lettering blue,

  saying:

  We NEED A HERO, AND MAYBE IT’S YOU!

  When Mortimer read it, he said with a smile,

  “I think that I’ll pass. This isn’t my style.

  I know how this works. I know what you do.

  You send people off to run errands for you.

  But it’s usually terrible, dangerous stuff.

  And the both of us know—it’s nothing but guff!

  ’Cause you make it seem noble and daring and cool.

  But you’re not duping me! I’m nobody’s fool!

  In this game the winner does nothing but lose.

  They won’t come back alive—whoever you choose!

  So honestly, sir, I would love to comply.

  But a ‘hero?’ Not me. Yo
u got the wrong guy.”

  “No! I think not!” the stranger replied.

  “The selection is hardly for you to decide!

  Why, this is an honor! A privilege, sir!

  You cannot decline and you cannot defer!

  You haven’t a choice! You will come to Draw,

  in accordance with Zorgledom Chivalry Law!”

  The stranger gave Morty the shallowest bow.

  “You hereby are hero material now.”

  Then he turned on his heels and turned up his nose,

  and he left with his scroll and his marvelous clothes.

  “Fat chance!” Morty called. “Like I’m gonna go!

  I won’t be some stooge in a lottery show!”

  But then, when he turned and he looked at his Pop,

  the old guy was grinning—he just couldn’t stop.

  “Just imagine!” he said. “To be given the chance,