I tell you, I am not mad. I'm not.

Anyone would have caved in the

skulls of their closest friends and eaten their brains in my situation.
It was the only rational thing to do. I can tell you don't believe me. If
you ate MY brain, you'd know the truth. Not that I'm volunteering, mind
you. Instead, I'll just tell you of the strange case of the Insects from
Shaggy and how doom came to the Mystery Machine.

**************

The Insects from Shaggy

or
The Last Testament of Daphne Pickman
or
The Doom that came to the Mystery Machine

by John Biles

***************

My name is Daphne Pickman. Perhaps you've seen some of the

fictionalized versions of our adventures. Don't believe them. The truth
is far more horrible. Yes, we have exposed a fair number of frauds, but
there were cases we covered up. We had to. The feeble minds of the
masses, laden in sitcom tripe, could not bear the lonely burdens we have
borne. Perhaps some day, I'll write down how we battled the band �God's
Lost Children' or how we proved that Rush Limbaugh was a Deep One, his
show an elaborate rite for unleashing Cthulhu upon the world. I laughed
for relief when we successfully turned a shoggoth loose during one of his
broadcasts and it ate him, then choked to death in the process. But that
is a story for another time, and assumes your sanity survives reading this
tale intact. Indeed, when I look back on the horrors we have faced, it is
hard for me to understand how I have kept my sanity. Perhaps it is not so
surprising that the dark knowledge which alone suffices to defeat the
forces of the Mythos finally consumed the hearts and souls of my
companions, thus forcing me to kill them and eat their brains.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Our careers began in the late
sixties and early seventies when one of Fred's fraternity brothers tried
to sacrifice the entire fraternity and its guests to Shub-Niggurath during
a fraternity party. The four of us were forced to lock the doors and burn
down the building. It killed a few frat boys, but even Fred agreed that
frat boys were easily replacable. There were five of us in those days,
six if you counted Scooby. You look surprised. You've never heard of the
fifth human in our band. Well, Johnny Quest didn't stay with us for very
long. His dog, Bandit, and Scooby kept fighting all the time, and he was
younger than us, anyway. But for about six months, he had to stay with my
folks after his father's compound blew up for the eighteenth time in three
weeks, and I got stuck babysitting him. We were better off when he left;
our orgies worked better with an even number of males and females.

After that disaster, we started investigating supernatural

events. At first, we mostly exposed frauds in our spare time. Gradually
it became more serious, and about the time that Johnny split, we had our
first really serious clash with the forces of the Mythos, not counting
burning frat boys to death back at Miskatonic University. (I did mention
we all went there, right?)
 We were all heavily into drugs at the time, but so was everyone
else our age in the late sixties. Shaggy likes to claim he invented
crack, but I don't believe him. Still, he was the worst. He and Velma
would shoot up a mixture of heroin, speed, cocaine, tumbleweed, Pepsi,
lettuce, and sixteen secret spices and listen to Ethel Merman backwards,
trying to find the hidden messages in it. One day, however, they tried it
with Pat Boone, and were shocked to find the message �Sacrifice the local
Democratic Party Headquarters to Hastur. Do it now, with an axe. And get
a haircut, you bum.'.

Velma had heard her mother mutter about Hastur in her final
delirium when insectoid bat winged monstrosities had stalked through the
house, slaying everyone in Velma's family except for Velma and the cat.
She had blanked all this out from sheer horror, but hearing this brought
back the memories. Even worse, she remembered her mother's last words to
one of the Byakhee: "Take the family rifle, go to the grassy knoll in
Dallas, and shoot the President". And I bet you thought Oliver Stone shot
JFK.

Anyway, Velma had been in a coma for years after that awful
night, only reviving when she heard the song �Baby, Won't You Light My
Fire?'. She had risen in a frenzy and destroyed the radio, and soon made
a full recovery, going to Miskatonic at the same time as us, but having
forgotten that her parents had been baby-sacrificing Hastur worshippers.
Until now.

So, we went to her family reunion in Kingsport. The stuff

upstairs was fairly mild, but the stuff down in the basement...I never did
learn if that was really Sonny Bono, and I don't think you could stand it
if I told you what he was doing. We locked the doors and used an ancient
rite that Velma found in her mother's diary to summon Cthugha, who
resembles a huge ball of flame. The entire house went up like a torch and
Velma's family was burnt to a crisp. When I think about it, I suspect
that Sonny Bono must be a sorceror; he couldn't have survived that. And
the skiing accident? Clearly a Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath REALLY killed
him.

But I digress. From that point, our investigations became

serious. We bought, borrowed, and stole occult tomes. We learned how to
summon and dismiss Cthulhu, Nylarhotep, Elvis, Zoth-Hotdog, Hastur,
Hamstur, Hamburg, Yig, Nodens, Tsathoggua, Alf, and Benny Goodman. We
learned how the music of Ethel Merman could banish Cthulhu's servants who
remembered their master's messy marriage to her, but tended to draw down
Dimensional Shamblers, on whom it has an effect like heroin. We covered
the Mystery Machine with Voorish Signs, Elder Signs, Yellow Signs, Stop
Signs, The Sigil of Baruk Kaah, �I visited Hali and all I got was this
lousy bumper sticker' stickers, an Eye of Light and Darkness, the Barrier
of Reef, the Seal of Ry'leh, a painting by my great-uncle, Richard Upton
Pickman, and those odd swirlies Shaggy drew after he tried injecting pure
nicotine into his veins to see what would happen. We read the
Necronomicon, Unausprelichten Kulten, Cultes des Goules, the Pnakotic
Manuscripts, the Piltdown Shards, both of Reagan's campaign platforms, the
Unauthorized Biography of Abdul Alhazred, the B'harne Fragments, the Book
of Eibon, the Little Big Book of Cthulhu, everything ever written by Laban
Shrewsbury, I was Cthulhu's Lover, and the Weekly World News.

Our studies paid off. Ever wonder how Scooby could talk? Shaggy
used a spell from the Book of Eibon to turn Scooby into his familiar,
making Scooby more intelligent and capable of speech. Ever wonder how we
got money? Velma summoned Byakhee to rob banks for us in the first few
years, then later, we used the secrets of the Time Gate we got from the
B'harne fragments to plunder the past of its treasures and sell them.
Hey, we needed the money! We also used certain alchemical formulae from
De Vermis Mysteris to lengthen our lifespans so we would have more time to
hunt the forces of the Mythos.

Our usual method was to investigate and try to discover if the

threat was real or bogus. If it was bogus, we exposed it. If it was
real, we locked the doors and summoned Cthugha, then emptied shotguns into
anything that tried to escape. Sure, we slaughtered a few hostages, but
their minds would have been destroyed by their experiences, anyway, so we
viewed it as a mercy killing. Too many ex-victims later became servants
of the Mythos anyway. So did a lot of investigators we encountered over
the years. We thought that could never happen to us.

Looking back at it, I can see now that the crucial moment came
with the day that we acquired Scrappy. This twisted chiuahua had been the
familiar of a sorceror we killed, whose family had degenerated into rat
things. We summoned Cthugha, then used a mind-control spell on an Air
Force captain we had met, and got him to nuke the site as well. Before we
left, though, Fred bit off one of the man's fingers in personal combat
with him, and that finger had a magic ring. When Fred put it on, Scrappy
showed up, and announced he was Fred's magic servant. He also claimed to
be related to Scooby, and for some reason, we believed him, despite the
fact that over a decade, he never got any bigger.

It was at that moment that things went down hill. In the early
nineties, we had to take a six month break, because Velma and Shaggy had
to go into drug rehab. I went to stay with my cousins in Samson,
California. Fred's mother was dying, so he went to visit her, up in
Massachusetts.

Velma got better, mostly. She was rational for the first time in
years and she'd finally gotten rid of those fits where she would try to
put Scooby in the oven and eat him. She'd also furthered her occult
studies and learned a ritual that her psychiatrist had tried to use on
her; basically, you gain someone's skills by eating their brain and you
can shapechange into their form. He'd tried to do that to her, so she had
summoned Yog- Sothoth and designated him as the human sacrifice. However,
she now obsessively watched Full House, and I was somewhat worried for
her.

Shaggy never recovered from therapy. Due to multiple overdoses

on Liao, he now had to stay drugged constantly, or he kept finding himself
staring at Daoloth constantly. He and Scooby had summoned Cthugha during
a group therapy session, and then laughed as everyone burned. I was
worried about him, as he was becoming obsessed with fire. He also stopped
bathing, believing that Deep Ones were living in all water faucets, and
started to attract insects.

Fred was the worst. His mother hadn't died; she'd simply run off
to the ocean to go live with the Deep Ones, passing on her copy of the
Seven Cryptical Books of Hsan to him, and giving him a few bottles of
homebrew Space Mead she'd made. Fred had translated them with Scrappy's
help and was beginning to talk wildly of summoning up Bholes to eat the
Democratic party. Fred had gone Republican on us during the eighties, you
see. I would have, but I was quite sure from my interpretation of the
Ponape Scriptures that Reagan was Nylarhotep. Fred's family heritage was
beginning to show, as his hair receded, his forehead and eyes bulged, and
he began to take on a greenish look. Scrappy kept egging him on to summon
more and more of the Great Old Ones, �just to let them know who is boss',
and the sight of them was eating at his mind.

I, on the other hand, was in perfect mental health after six

months of living in Samson with my relatives, the Adams family. The life
of a high class prostitute and sorceress was good to me; I hadn't realized
how much I had been missing, only sleeping with the same two guys, one
woman, and one dog over the years. My studies of the Revelations of
Glaaki came in handy, along with my translation of the original, Aklo
version of the Kama Sutra. Anyone who didn't measure up to my standards
got a special prize, a braided runic strip that summoned the Dark Demon to
eat them once they left my working quarters. And no, President Clinton
was NOT one of my clients.

I also finally got to eat something besides hamburgers and

Scooby Snacks (Scooby Snacks do not contain Marujuana, as some people
insinuate. They're made only from the finest Shantak flesh by New World
Industries, although you can get the �spicy' version, which has PCP and
MSG. The spicy version gives Shaggy gas, though, and so we never bought
it). I developed quite a taste for Tcho-Tcho cuisine, and after a while
the waiters even stopped looking at me like I ought to be the main dish.

No, I did not acquire a taste for human flesh from eating in
cannibalistic Tcho-Tcho feasts! The Tcho-Tchos are not cannibals; they
would never eat each other, and they're not really human, so it doesn't
count as cannibalism if they eat humans. Anyway, the FDA forced them to
substitute Pork for human flesh in their recipes, and the ACLU's suit to
overthrow that ban failed. As you SHOULD know. IF you're REALLY an
officer of the law.

I only ate human flesh three times in those six months. My

great- uncle came to visit with some of his ghoul friends, and you know
how it goes. They bring their own food, you all get drunk, you have mad
passionate sex with twisted inhuman monsters, and then you can't think
clearly and eat some of the human flesh they brought to snack on. I only
ate it raw the first time, anyway. After that, I forced them to cook all
the human flesh they brought over so it wouldn't stink up the house. I
think I probably caused a minor cultural revolution in ghoul society by
introducing them to the glory of barbeque sauce. At least I now know what
happened to Jimmy Hoffa. I never realized how tough a teamster can be, no
matter how long you leave them in the oven.

Anyway, so after the six months were over, we rendevoused to plan

our next operation. It was a mess. Velma and Shaggy had missed each
other so much they had sex on the table in the middle of the cafe we met
at. Then Scooby tried to get in on the action and Animal Control sent in
a tank. So we had to call a Cthonian and get it to cause an earthquake as
a distraction to escape. It got a little overenthusiastic and the entire
city sank into the ocean. Fred wanted to stay, and we had to drag him
out.

Luckily, my relatives' house survived, and they had plenty of

spare rooms. I had mad passionate sex with Shaggy when we got back, as
watching him and Velma get it on had really turned me on, but I have too
much class to do it on a table in public view. However, I was woken up by
whispering. Scrappy was whispering into Shaggy's ear that I was going to
kill him before he woke up, and that if he didn't sacrifice me to Nyogtha,
Scooby might steal Velma away from him.

You can understand how I got mad, right? I mean, any rational
person would have pissed off that some annoying puppy was trying to get
one of my friends to kill me, right? Especially sacrificing me to a loser
like Nyogtha. About the only Great Old One more pathetic than him is
Rhan- Tegoth, who we saw at a museum in Toronto. We spray-painted him
blue and put up a sign that said �Mutant Smurf'.

So I used the Curse of Azathoth on Scrappy. He was stunned. I

tried to wake Shaggy, but he was too crashed; probably all his uppers had
worn off. All the insects buzzing around him began to annoy me. I could
almost hear them talking to me. �Eat his flesh before he can kill you.
He'd be good with A-1'. I ignored them. No insects could talk ME into
eating an old friend, even if he looked like he'd go well with mashed
potatoes and corn.

Then Scrappy got up and began to laugh. "It's too late! Fred's
sacrificing Velma in the basement! He will open the Great Door with the
aid of Yog-Sothoth, and then pass through it to free Hastur, and release
Pac from his maze, and unleash Y'golonac and..."

Now I was pissed. I pulled my shotgun off the floor and levelled
it at him. "You bastard! I bet you killed Kenny too!"

He blinked in confusion, and I shot him. Scrappy flew across the

room with a hole in his chest. I reloaded the shotgun and advanced on
him. "You little beast!"

"Actually, this form is known as the �Perky Puppy of Evil'. I

think. With 1,001 forms, I get confused." He started to crawl towards
Shaggy. "I'll just have to bite out his eyes before I die."

"Too late." I didn't think about what he had said. I simply shot
him again, this time, splattering his head. His body split apart, and
swirling darkness boiled out of it. I realized too late what Scrappy
really was. The Crawling Chaos, the Lurker in Darkness, the Cosmic
Beavis, Nylarhotep, herald of the Outer Gods. He erupted from the puppy
form, assuming one of his most dreaded forms, The Clown of Chaos. It was
then that I understood the awful truth about how McDonalds can have such
low prices, and the true meaning of the Arch Deluxe. No one had
understood; it was actually the �Arch d'Lux', which holds the dread
Gidget, grand- niece three times removed of Cthulhu, and second cousin to
Zoth-Hotdog, bound in the great chasm of Lethe on the planet Fiftie.
Everytime someone ate one, it symbolically weakened the Arch itself,
through the law of sympathy, thus bringing the return of the Great Old
Ones that much closer.

I could not bear the laughter of the Clown of Chaos, nor his
offer of a Happy Meal. I looked into the Abyss and saw the truth of that
as well. I will spare you, you could not bear it without snapping. For a
time, I wandered mindlessly through the house, shooting everything that
moved. Then I tried to have sex with the vacuum cleaner. When I came out
of the haze, I was standing over Scooby with an axe buried in his head
and...I cannot bear to think of it. I wasn't the one who had put the axe
in his head, it was the Dimensional Hamburglar that the Clown had sent
after me that had done the dirty deed. I used the Seventh Satthala upon
the Dimensional Hamburglar, casting it screaming through the dimensions
into the dread eighty fifth dimension, inhabited only by Barbie dolls.
Sometimes, I can still hear him scream.

Falling to my knees, I tried to save Scooby's life, but I was too

late. With his final words, he told me of how Scrappy had tricked him
into taking Eihort's bargain and how Eihort's brood, or possibly just the
bad Mexican food he had to live on while Shaggy was in the hospital, was
slowly eating him alive. He begged me to kill him, so I did. Naturally,
he chose that moment to remember that he HAD to tell me something before
he died, but died before he told me. So I ate his brain, using the rite
Velma had taught us during our nightly ritual of summoning up Elder Gods
and mooning them.

All the wisdom of Scooby flooded my mind. It was a rush like I'd
never had before. Scooby had seen the rite in the basement, which I'd
forgotten about; that was what he had tried to come tell me about. So I
went to the basement, where Velma was tied to a table, being forced to
have sex with Mel Gibson while Fred summoned Yog-Sothoth. Okay, she
wasn't exactly being forced. Fred's rite had one fatal flaw; you need a
stone tower to summon Yog-Sothoth, and making one with Legos and an
Erector set just doesn't cut it. I would have made the same mistake; only
Scooby knew better. And maybe Velma, but she was too busy with Mel to
notice.

Massive footsteps were coming; the Clown of Chaos was about to

find me. Fred was laughing as he chanted. I had lost my gun, and he was
inside a drawn seal of solomon, etched into the floor. It repelled my
first effort to slay him with magic, so I had to try method two. I
stripped.

Fred never could resist me. But neither could I. We had mad
passionate sex on the floor, then I switched off, and FINALLY got to see
what Mel was really like in bed. He'd kept putting me off with excuses
about being married and how his co-stars would get jealous.
Unfortunately, Velma is faster than me, so now Fred was back to his rite
while I was still busy with Mel. Velma had passed out, in fact. Fred
stabbed down with a knife to kill me, so I had to roll over and let Mel
take the knife for me. He's such a hero.

The ritual went haywire, of course, and the phrase �telekeli'

began to echo through the air. Ubbo-Sathala began to ooze up out of the
hot water heater. I could sense that annoying tinny noise Daoloth makes
all the time. The tower of legos and tinker toys exploded, damaging the
sign of solomon. Fred began to rant and began summoning Azathoth. So I
had no choice. I could sense about twenty or so Great Old Ones, Mediocre
Old Ones, Elderly Gods, and Senior Citizen Gods about to break through.
Having once been fondled by Ithiqua, I had no desire to repeat this. So I
grabbed Fred's knife, stabbed him to death, and ate his brain to get all
of his arcane knowlege; he and Velma were the real experts of our group.
When Velma woke up, she wouldn't listen to my explanation. She used the
dread curse of Eddie Murphy on me, and I had to retaliate with a
shrivelling spell. Eating her shrivelled brain was pretty disgusting, I
have to tell you.

The only reason I was able to beat the summoned beings of cosmic
power was that they all tried to come through the portal at once and got
stuck. One by one, I ran through the banishment spells, and sent them all
back to their home dimensions, except for Valentino, who I kept because I
needed some R&R after that. Sure, he can only put out once, and then his
manifestation body crumbles to a dessicated corpse, but that one time is
WORTH it.

I passed out from exhaustion; wouldn't you after all this? So

that's why they found me in the wrecked house with a dessicated corpse on
top of me, and my friends scattered through the house with their brains
eaten. Yes, I did eat their brains, but I had a good reason! I am not
mad! I'm not! I'm NOT MAD!

Whatever. Send me to the Asylum. Can I bum a cigarette and a

light off you before I have to go? Thank you, officer.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
--The above document was found at the Samson County Sheriff's Department
HQ after it mysteriously burned down two days after the Samson Earthquake.
It was on official letterhead, and seems to have been a transcription of
the ramblings of one �Daphne Pickman'. No record of her existence outside
this document have been found, however. Nor were any female bodies found
on the site. The investigation is still in progress.