Rodney Carlson was an average, unassuming microbiologist studying whipworm when, as a result of a co-worker's careless mistake, the specimen Rodney was studying inexplicably turned radioactive and jumped into his eye in a really gross chain of events that you kind of had to be there to see, but trust me, it was totally gross. Anyway, it made him into a hero who uses a parasite-like ability to feed and survive on a host. With these powers, he contributes nothing to the host's survival and hopes to one day fight crime as the STUPENDOUS CAPTAIN PARASITE!

"Hey Rod? When are you...you know...gonna leave? You know, get your own place?"

The good Captain had been staying at Gary and his wife Loretta's house for the past two weeks. He pretty much just slept and lived in the living room on the couch (it folded out). Most mornings, he went into the kitchen and ate a bowl of Frosted Mini-Wheats (that he got Loretta to pour for him) before going back into the den and spending the rest of the day on the couch, watching either cartoons or judge shows. Judge Hatchett was his favorite. Depending on whether or not Gary could get it folded back in before Cap got finished eating breakfast, some days the couch stayed out the whole day. At one point it stayed out for a full four day period. At night, he would get Gary to go to the Pizza Shack or Chinese Superhouse to pick him up an order--a huge one. Rod gave Gary a quarter to pay for it the first night, but ever since he had been giving him I.O.U.s scrawled out on Gary's unused checks. But since his "writin' hand's taken a hard one lately" in Rod's own words, Gary had to write them out.

Needless to say, Gary was getting a little restless and beginning to believe that Rod was overstaying his welcome. He felt bad for the guy--Rod had lost his job at the lab a month ago, had been evicted from his apartment, and was apparently having trouble finding work. Gary hadn't been there the day Rod was fired. He was on vacation in Lebanon, so he didn't know what had happened. But it seemed to him now, upon inspection, that Rod had lost all his energy. It was almost as if the guy didn't care anymore. Little did Gary know that Rod had lost his job in the first place because the guy had left the lid off of a syphillis specimen while he was in the process of trying to convince his coworker Lucy to make him a sandwich, and that somehow that specimen had gotten mixed together with a strain of plague and fused with it, creating some sort of Super-Syphillis that immediately started beating a number of prostitutes along the Eastern seaboard with tire irons, according to news reports.

Gary now stood at the foot of the couch's fold-out bed, holding the remote out of the good Captain's reach, while Cap tried desperately to flail his arms so as to at some point make them long enough to snatch it from him.

"I heard you saying something the other day about fighting crime or something, man," said Gary. "Why don't you try to find a job as a police officer? Then you could fight all the crime you want!"

"Man, that's not my style," said the Captain. "Didn't I tell you? I'm a superhero."

"A superhero?" asked Gary, exasperated. "How can you be a superhero? You don't have hideout! You don't have...muscles."

"Well, how could I have a hideout? I don't even have a place to live! I got kicked out of my place because I was stealing radiators and using them to generate heat for my body."

"You were--" Gary had to catch his breath. "You were stealing-- I mean, superheroes don't steal. Plus, you don't have a costume or anything."

"I've seen superheroes steal all the time," Cap said."And about the costume, I was hopin' you could make me one. Or get Loretta to. I bet she's pretty good with the ol' Singer."

Gary pointed to the door. "GET OUT!" he yelled. "Get out of my house you...parasite!"

Captain Parasite smiled. "Now you got it, man. Now we got the ball rollin'. Now we just add a 'Mister' or a 'Captain' or somethin' and we'll have name to start out with. Maybe print up some business cards. But I don't know, you're going to have to figure that all out. You're the ideas guy."

A few seconds later, The good Captain found himself face-down out in Gary's yard, pain in the distinct shape of a Dexter brand loafer planted deep in the left side of his posterior. He felt kinda bad about mooching off of Gary for so long, but what could he do now? When he finally worked up the energy to do it, he stood up, knocking over a lawn gnome in the process, clumps of dirt clinging to the clothes he had been wearing since July, with two comforts: one, that he had managed to get forty bucks out of Gary's wallet that morning while it was lying on the kitchen table, and two, that he was pretty sure that Terry, the guy he used to work with when he was making some extra dough at Radio Shack, still lived in that cool place on Ridgemont.

That would be totally sweet.

KingOblivionPhD@the-iss.com