Spooktacular Classics are dried-up chunks of word vomit which I like to regurgitate every time a Halloween Spooktacular event rolls onto the Interwebs scene.

You’ve been warned.
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Franklin Stein

When old enough to tie his shoes,
Ms. Stein once told Franklin, “Son,
I can’t help you with everything.
You need to steal pieces of other people.

“Older people.  Younger people.
Smarter people.  Even dumber people.
Steal every piece of them that you can
So you can grow to be the perfect man.”

And then his mother wanted nothing
To do with poor Franklin anymore.
She took to the streets of the City
To become a dirty drug-addled whore.

Franklin was placed in foster care,
For he had no other family.
And he thought of the words of wisdom
His mother had shared when he was young.

He observed everyone ‘til he turned thirteen years old,
Complying and doing everything that he was told.
But once he hit that dreaded Puberty,
He started taking his mother’s words literally.

Franklin was not only extremely smart.
He also had special gifts: He couldn’t feel pain
And he had a morbid love for the morbid.
So he decided to use these skills to his gain.

For what better way to become smarter
And learn the eternal secrets of youth
Than to take pieces of people he admired
And give himself a perfect body and mind?

He could cut himself and bleed without blinking an eye.
He could dismember his entire body and never, ever die!
So he started with the abdominals of his foster dad,
Replacing his gut with the six-pack he’d never had.

And, of course, after committing such a heinous crime,
Franklin had no choice but to run and hide,
Leaving nary a clue as to his whereabouts.
The Law couldn’t catch him, though they certainly tried.

Franklin met a man with sky-blue eyes,
So he snuck into the man’s house one night,
Tied the man up, sliced his eyeballs out of his head,
Then surgically replaced his own dull green peepers.

At a library, he found plush yet manly lips.
At a public park, he discovered perfect manly hips.
At the lake, he found a pair of nice pink lungs.
After raiding a porno set, Franklin was finally hung.

He replaced every muscle in his body,
Every blemish, every follicle of bodily hair;
His nose, his cheeks, his tongue, his feet;
He searched for perfection far and near.

Years passed, and Franklin finally felt perfect.
He even had new skin to hide his white bubbly scars.
But there was one last thing he needed, something
That wasn’t corroded and corrupt and black.

In an alleyway in the City of his birth,
He met an ugly woman who was double his girth.
He sliced her with a knife and beat her down,
And reared back a ballpeen hammer to strike her crown.

The fat, ugly woman trembled upon the cracked cement.
But as her green eyes stared in horror at his face,
Franklin paused in his downward blow.
He’d found his long-lost mother once and for all!

“Mother, it is I!  Franklin!  Your loving son!
Look, Mother, look!  Look what I’ve become!
I stole every piece of every person I possibly could.
And now I look just like a perfect man should!”

The pock-marked woman frowned and creased her brow
Until recognition flashed across her bloody features.
“Franklin?  Honey, is it you?  No.  It cannot be.
There is no way in Hell I spawned such a creature!

“Your skin is ashen gray, and your eyes are blue.
Your body is perfectly toned; your hair bounces and shines.
Why, I left behind a chubby little boy with green eyes,
Tan skin, flat black hair, and shitty yellow teeth.

Look at you, creature, all hideous with time.
No, you’re not Franklin.  You’re no son of mine.”
“But Mother, it is me!  I did what you said!
I stole the pieces of men who are now dead!”

“You’re not human, you’re an abomination!”
She screamed, she spat, she kicked, she gasped;
She swatted at him with her fat hands
Until she was finally free from his grasp.

“You’re a monster, Franklin.  If that is really you!
You’re mad, insane!  You should be locked up.
In fact, I think I’m going to call the police,”
She said, reaching gnarled fingers into her pants pocket.

“But first, I must ask what you wanted with me?
I ran away from you.  Why couldn’t you let me be?”
Franklin was stunned, at a loss for words to say.
His mother had a phone, dialed a number.  “Police, yes may—“

Franklin suddenly shouted, “I love you, Mother!”
And then the hammer came down and he roared.
He dropped the dull weapon, took out his knife,
Cut her heart out of her chest, and then swore.

In his hand, he clutched the blood-spurting organ.
But even in the dark City alleyway, he could clearly see
That his mother’s heart was just as black as his.
He roared in anger as realization dawned on him.

He was no longer Franklin Stein, he was a beast.
And he didn’t like his perfect body, not in the least.
He had created a monster out of his own body and mind.
He would have to live with his creation for the rest of his time.

Franklin dropped the still-beating heart,
Growled, and kicked his mother’s lifeless husk.
Then he turned away from the grisly scene
And, alone forevermore, he walked away in disgust.