Welcome, dear readers, to the second chapter in the saga of Bartzilla. Once more, the timing is just right for an update, as the new Godzilla film hits worldwide theaters this week. Now go ahead and read the story, here…

Chapter 2: Is there a doctor in the house?

It's the morning after Halloween, and Bart is the last person in the house to wake up.

Well, the words "wake up" don't feel appropriate in this case. More like "not being asleep".

His head feels heavy, as does his eyelids, each of them weighing a ton. Squinting open one of his eyes, he quickly closes it again. There is just too much light in the room.

In one area, this is an improvement from previous post-Halloweens mornings. This year he woke up before noon.

After a few minutes of moaning and turning in bed with no result, he thinks…

"Well, I can't get to sleep again, and I do need to pee, so I might as well try to get up."

His eyes are bloodshot, so he's therefore squinting, which gives him fuzzy vision. To add to that ordeal, his throat feels dry. And he probably has a backache too. Yeah, he feels bad, but maybe he'd feel worse by staying in his bed.

He slowly gets out of the bed, slowly changes from his pajamas to his regular clothes, goes into the bathroom while shuffling his feet and does his business in there. He looks into mirror, and while he's squinting he doesn't notice anything unusual. Hell, with that much squinting, he can hardly differentiate black from white (it's a miracle he can see anything). As he walks down the stairs, he has to hold the banister and walk slowly to not fall down.

The rest of the family is eating breakfast in the kitchen. Homer is reading the paper, and Marge is dressed in a pink bathrobe. Bart is heard groaning before he even enters the room, and Lisa greets him.

"Good morning, Mr. Social."

"Morning."

When Bart enters the room, everybody screams, and the pets jump out through an open window.

"What's wrong?"

Marge hesitated before speaking:

"Well… have you seen yourself in a mirror today?"

"Yeah, and I looked pretty sick. So?"

Now it's Lisa's turn to talk nervously.

"Well, you look sicker than you ever have before." (She thinks: "Not to mention that your breath smells worse than ever. You've had a bad breath before, Bart, but yeech!) "So, have you examined your face closely?"

"No, but give me a mirror, and I'll see what's wrong. What, did I hit puberty already?"

Marge hands over her hand mirror to Bart, and then he gasps as he sees what is wrong; his skin is green and scaly, like a lizard.

And this time when sees himself he really wakes up.

"I'm… I'm a monster!"

Homer, of course, has a hard time believing this.

"Wait a minute! Bart is just wearing a costume! I'll prove it to you!"

Homer tries to rip off Bart's skin, thinking he'll pull off a costume. But he fails miserably with it, and it only results with Bart screaming during the attempted rip-off. So, he stops doing it. Lisa is of course concerned, both because of Bart's looks, and because Homer caused him pain.

"Why would you be so sure that he's wearing a costume, anyway? He looked more surprised than any of us when he saw himself."

"Well, Bart has been doing it before, hasn't he? And he is a good actor, after all."

"No I haven't, and, no I'm not."

And now something else about his appearance is discovered, with Marge saying "Bart, your teeth!"

Bart now puts his fingers under the corners of his mouth to feel sharp teeth. "Oh, I have fangs now!" He doesn't know if should be worried or awe-struck, and his voice and body language reflects that. He is definitely nervous, as so everyone else in the room. Marge hugs Bart to comfort both of them.

"Aw, honey, no matter how you look, I will always love you, and care for you. But we can't have you living like some kind of 'lizard boy'."

"You worry too much, mum. As a lizard boy, I get back at the bullies at school, and maybe be better at sports."

His mother hugs him tighter, and cries.

"But, don't you see, son! They'll think of you as a monster!" She cries again. "I screamed when I saw you, my own son!"

"Ah, I don't need to worry about that kind of crap. It's only bad people, like bullies, who'll call me a monster, or a freak. None of my friends or relatives would do that." But now, he becomes more uncertain, after what his mother said starts to sink in. "I mean, you did, but you really didn't…"

The next second, Grampa comes barging in.

"Hi again. I was just wondering – hey, why is Bart dressed in a lizard costume? Wasn't Halloween yesterday?"

"It's not a costume, this is what my skin actually looks like now; green and scaly."

Grampa then screams and freaks out, and runs away

"Grampa, no. Don't run away from me, please, I…"

"Get away from me, mutant!"

"I'm not a… I mean…"

Grampa then runs out of the house and off the street.

"It's not my fault that I… or maybe it is."

Homer grabs Bart by his shoulder.

"C'mon, kid, we'll go to Dr. Hibbert. I don't know if he can handle this, but let's try it anyway."

"Can I eat something first?"

"No! This is a matter of great importance! Every second we stay here not doing anything could make this worse!"

As they go out to the car, Ned Flanders is tending his garden, which thanks to yesterday's escapades from nasty kids, now almost looked like a garbage dump.

"Hi-diddely-ho neighbours! Say, is that a costume Bart is wearing? It looks realistic."

Marge sighs just before she answers.

"Yes. It's a costume, the zipper's stuck and now we'll try to remove it."

"Ah, that's good to know. Because if that was not a costume, then I would have brought out my big cross and holy water."

Marge sighs again.

Dr. Hibbert doesn't have the words for Marge.

"I recommend that you poison him."

"He's my son!"

"If poison doesn't work, I recommend fire."

"Can't you cure him?"

"I'm sorry, I don't know how to cure the boy. But I will give him a vaccination."

"That's your solution to everything!"

The doctor takes a syringe and tries to applicate it on Bart's arm, but…

"His skin appears to be too thick, I can't get the syringe through. Well, you could give the money now, please."

"But you didn't cure him!"

"Well, neither did you."

They visit a veterinary, but no luck there either.

They also go to a plastic surgeon, but (surprise) no luck there either.

Meanwhile, Grampa visits a psychiatrist; Doctor Zweig.

"Doctor, I have problem. When I saw my grandson this morning, he was a lizard monster for real. He wasn't wearing a costume! He said so himself!"

"You have a problem all right. That problem is that you're a sucker. Someone who is easy to fool. Someone who swallows lies easily. Either that, or you're a bigger drinker than I thought."

"I haven't actually had a drink for two days, so I guess I'm a sucker then."

"Next time you meet him, confront him about it. Ask why he would lie like that to his grandfather."

They visit professor Frink. Will this help?

"I've come to the conclusion that your son have become like a lizard or a dinosaur, and either a monster or a monstrum. And if we don't do something soon, he will become a Godzilla-like creature as big as a mountain, with the crush, kill and destroy and glavin!"

Marge gasped and then asked the same question she had already asked others that day.

"Can you cure him?"

"Well, I am a very predictive person, so I have already developed an elixir to reverse the process that is transforming him."

Bart was relieved to hear that, finally someone had some kind of cure. He smiled for the first time that day and asked the professor:

"So you're crazy prepared, then?"

"If you're using 'crazy' as a positive remark then yes."

Out of one of his cabinets, he pulls a test tube containing a red fluid. He gives it to Bart.

"I recommend you to drink all of this. It should change you back to a real boy."

Bart drinks it all up. And after he swallows the last few drops, he eats the tube, with it crunching in his mouth and swallows the glass bits.

Everyone but Bart goes "Ew!"

At first, nothing more happens. But then…

To be continued…