It was a night both dark and stormy, like Frankenstein’s birthday. I was born all alone in an abandoned ambulance. My parents and the medical staff left the labor early, because they had tickets to the Laser Light Show. I had to teach myself to read on the day I was born so I could find their names in the phone book, and then figure out how to get to their house while navigating the mean streets of Evilton, Wisconsin as a newborn. This was before GPS, remember. Three weeks later, starving and crying like a little baby (which I was) I found their house, only to discover they had moved the day before and left no forwarding address. As luck would have it, the house had been torn down and replaced with a convent full of Evil Nuns who took me in. Unfortunately, the convent collapsed the following day, having been built in less than 24 hours. The Evil Nuns, having no place for me, slipped me into the nearest Orphan Depository.

It was here, at the Evilton Orphanage and Radioactive Testing Facility that I was raised and educated at the School of Hard Knocks, now Hard Knocks Preparatory Academy. My fellow orphans shunned me for being different, and my teachers were intimidated by my superior intellect. Also, I had a slight lisp and a prominent nose, and sometimes when I was bored I would chew on the corners of the console TV in the living room and leave little bite marks on the wood panels. That drove everyone crazy and I don’t know why I did it. As I grew older, it became clear that I would never be adopted, and when I was able I left the orphanage and never looked back. I was nine.

Much of the remainder of my childhood is a blur. I vaguely recall performing on street corners with an organ grinder, and mixing together dangerous potions, also with an organ grinder. And oddly enough, it was a different organ grinder! I guess I just had a thing for that repetitive circus music. Anyhow, between the street performing and potion mixing, I came of age and had my heart broken by my one true love: Emma Cemetery. She was a beautiful mad genius, with long dark hair that crashed against her shoulders like shadowy waves of hair against a beach of shoulder blades. Her skin was snow white like a wicked stepmother’s. We used to while away the hours together, me poisoning helpless rodents and her bringing them back to life and enslaving them. It was the perfect romance. That is, until she began a love affair with the local fishmonger, performing unholy experiments on his fish. I knew it was all over when I caught them applying electrodes to a squid. Emma tried to explain that it didn’t mean anything, but I knew better. Love means never reanimating calamari.

I was then accepted to Tyrannosaurus University on the planet Ro-Man, where I studied evil with a minor in engineering. You know, for something to fall back on. In case evil didn’t pan out. You may not have heard of Tyrannosaurus University, but it is a very prestigious school. An Ivy League University, in fact- Poison Ivy! It was here I earned the Nefarious part of my name, as an insidious nickname was given to all students. I was the Nefarious Wilhelm Skreem; there was also the Sinister Gary Gangrene, the Uncouth Ferdinand Pustule and the Harrying Kristina McNot-Nice. It was part of an elaborate hazing ritual in which you had to prove you lived up to your chosen nickname. Some of the students thought too big and tried overthrowing the universe, while others thought too small and left bottles of soda open to go flat and stale. I personally concocted a multitude of terrible contraptions, including Long Division, Comb-Overs, Hampster Dance, and a hip-hop trio named Nefarious Willy S & the Bwah-Ha-Homies. I graduated with Dishonors, after which I received the MacArthur Park Evil Genius Grant for leaving a cake out in the rain.