Fiction: A Brief Glimpse Into Louie Debris

I've been working on a book for a number of years in fits and starts. I suppose it's genre would be a children's fantasy novel. It concerns dimensional time travel mixed with junior high school memories and is set in the year 1978. There are lots of in jokes - for example the fictional setting is a town called Dunsany, Illinois; with Dunsany derived from fantasy author Lord Dunsany. I hope to finish it one of these years. Maybe by posting this I can kickstart the project back to life. What follows is a summary of sorts followed by one scene. Please let me know what you think of this stuff.

Characters from Count Louie Debris:

Jack – junior high school kid who is a lot like the author at that age, apart from being a character in a fictional book of course. He digs comics and horror flicks. He has an above average mind with a shock of long blond hair covering his head, yet he only does average in school, which is normally the way it is for bored kids like him. His best friend is:

Andrew – shares Jack’s interest in comics and horror flicks, but also happens to be the best baseball player in the county, nobody knows this because he’s never picked to play, “I’m like a super hero who never gets to use his powers.”

Jack has a sister named Emily who has just started the 6th grade at Rick Sims Junior High likes bugs and spiders more than anything, except perhaps Count Chocula cereal. For somebody who seems like she would be a geek, she is actually very popular. Her standard response to this dichotomy is “Fear, baby, I use fear.” She’s nice, really.

Rick Sims Junior High is much like every junior high that ever existed. The gym smells like sweat socks and basketballs, and the cafeteria smells like meatloaf, and the playground is still where the blood gets spilled to the school bullies, and at RSJH, the bullies have been incorporated. Minestroni Inc. rules the school.

There are two Minestroni brothers; in fact since RSJH opened in the 60’s, there have always been Minestroni bothers. One brother is big and muscular; he’s the brains of the outfit. The skinny brother is the dumb and dangerous one. They target everybody indiscriminately until the day Emily throws spiders on Lucky, the dumb and dangerous one, “Vinnie’s not gonna like this, your brother has had it!” As you can tell, Jack now gets the preferred customer treatment from the Minestroni’s which means Andrew gets more then his fair share. This is also why Jack and Andrew eat lunch under a stairwell in the maintenance building.

Three teachers are prominent: Ms. Porkk – math and science priestess of boredom. She is as skinny as the number one, but nowhere near as fun.

Miss Claire File – Jack and Andrew’s beloved befuddled English teacher, she’s young and she’s ditzy, but her heart is made of platinum

Coach Cutlip – sports = stupid, at least in his case

Then there is the Principal of the school: Mr. Principle, he jokes that he was born to do his job. He’s a decent fellow. He’s rumoured to be Victoria Principle’s estranged husband.

These kind people all live in Dunsany, Illinois whose slogan is “We’re not in the middle of nowhere, we’re in the middle of Illinois!” circa 1978. It’s a small town, yet still big enough to not know everybody. This is a good thing. It has a lake nearby named Elsie and a 68-foot statue (that’s 60 foot of base, mind you) of the city’s founder: Dunsany…a Saint Bernard. Trapper Pratchett always insisted the dog started the city so future residents took him at his word. It’s a shame the statue is now in the parking lot of a Pizza Hut.

And into this town arrive Count Louie Debris and his sidekick Ferris Oxide. They have been exiled from the super dimensional land called the Coffin Coast by orders of the madman Howard Devotional, who with his henchmen, the Screaming Springsteens, have toppled the Count from his throne. On the run from these music hating creeps, Debris and company plunged through an interdimensional time hole which was the result of the scientist Buckminster Fullofit tinkering with an old bakelite radio in his garage. Debris, Oxide, and their men…three nameless people in mechanic’s jumpsuits, actually land atop the garage in what we would call 72 GTO, but it’s actually a Coffincruiser, “surely a man of science has heard of parallel cultural development?” The strange thing is that this car can fly and in short order, Debris’ three men comb an area junkyard and soon they have a veritable fleet of cars outfitted to take flight. Fullofit finds them refuge in some caves outside of town where Debris can make his plans for the return to the Coffin Coast. There is a problem; five members of the Screaming Springsteens also made it through later that night when a sporadic burst of static became tuned to an outlaw border radio station.
The other problem is the music that caused the radiowave blip was an obscure cha cha cha number (Cha Cha # 17) by legendary Latin maestro Xavier Nougat. Unless the kids can find a copy of this record or get a border radio station to play the song at the right time, Debris may never get back.

The scene takes place the evening of what is to be Dunsany's first punk rock concert, which Jack wants to attend.

Jack and Emily are eating at the dinner table with their mother and father.
“To what do we owe this momentous occasion?”
“What do you mean?”
“Eating at the dinner table with us. You obviously have an ulterior motive.”
“Jack wants to stick safety pins in his cheeks and go to a punk rock show,” squealed Emily.
“No I don’t,” muttered Jack.
“You do too!! I saw you buy a pack of safety pins at the drugstore today.”
“Liar!”
“Now kids, what’s this all about, Jack,” asked his mother.
“Well… part of what she said is right. I do want to go to the rock show tonight.”
“Is that all? Whew, don’t scare me with visions of those dimpled cheeks being spoiled by diaper pins,” said his mother with relief.
“Not diaper pins, safety pins”
“We heard you Emily,” said Jack’s father.

“Show them the poster,” Emily says.

Jack begrudgingly hands the flyer over listing the Malfunctions, Wonderfuls, The Most, Scat Magnets, The Dislocated, Sanitation Workers of America, Violent Overthrows, Shiny Knives, Pipebomb, The Hearsays, and McCartney’s Wife to his father whose face quickly turned from amused to concern.

“What’s with all of the skulls?” he asked.

“And these groups don’t have very nice names. And I’m assuming McCartney’s Wife isn’t Linda. I don’t know if this music is appropriate for you.”

At this point, Jack was getting desperate so he used his 4th down and 20 play, “You could come Dad. As long as you stand in the back. There’s nothing really super offensive about these bands. They just have silly names. All of the good names, like Beatles and Vanilla Fudge, have been taken.”

The hope was that by telling his father he could come, he would relent to Jack going, but not actually attend himself. Unfortunately for Jack, his pass was intercepted.

“What the heck, I was young once. I think I’ll go!! Did I ever tell you about the days I played in Dunsany’s premier garage/surf band, the Monster Manta Rays?”

Emily, Jack, and mother, “Yes!!!!!”


That's it for now. Hopefully you'll want to read more.