Fibble: The Fourth Circle of Heck
Read Fibble: The Fourth Circle of Heck Online
Authors: Dale E. Basye
ALSO BY DALE E. BASYE
Heck: Where the Bad Kids Go
Rapacia: The Second Circle of Heck
Blimpo: The Third Circle of Heck
This is a work of fiction. All incidents and dialogue, and all characters with the exception of some well-known historical and public figures, are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Where real-life historical or public figures appear, the situations, incidents, and dialogues concerning those persons are fictional and are not intended to depict actual events or to change the fictional nature of the work. In all other respects, any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2011 by Dale E. Basye
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Basye, Dale E.
Fibble : the fourth circle of Heck / by Dale E. Basye ; illustrations by Bob Dob. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: When goth teen Marlo wakes up in Fibble, the part of Heck that is reserved for liars, she is disgusted to find out she is in her younger brother Milton’s body.
eISBN: 978-0-375-89305-6
[1. Honesty—Fiction. 2. Future life—Fiction. 3. Brothers and sisters—Fiction. 4. Reformatories—Fiction. 5. Schools—Fiction. 6. Humorous stories.] I. Dob, Bob, ill. II. Title.
PZ7.B2938Fi 2011 [Fic]—dc22 2010009460
Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.
v3.1
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO MY EDITOR—NOT THAT ONE CAN
TRULY
POSSESS
AN EDITOR ANY MORE THAN ONE CAN
COPYRIGHT A BABY’S FIRST SMILE … THOUGH, HMM …
I SHOULD HAVE MY LAWYER LOOK INTO THAT—
DIANE LANDOLF, WHO, UPON READING MY SURREAL,
STREAM-OF-CONSCIOUSNESS FIRST DRAFTS,
ALWAYS GIVES IT TO ME STRAIGHT AND SEES THE POSSIBILITY
STRUGGLING TO EMERGE FROM ALL THOSE PAGES OF
PROFLIGATE PROSE. THIS BOOK IS DUE TO HER AS MUCH
AS IT IS TO ME (THOUGH IT IS MOSTLY DUE TO ME).
ALSO, MY AGENT MICHAEL BOURRET, WHO MAKES
THE TRUTH GO DOWN AS SMOOTH AS A HOT BUTTERED LIE.
CONTENTS
FOREWORDAs many believe, there is a place above and a place below. But there are also places in between. Some not quite awfully perfect and others not quite perfectly awful
.
One of these places is a gaudy nest of deception, hurricane-force bluster, and artful manipulation so surgical in its precision that you could use it to remove the modesty from a naked mole rat
.
This place is a lot like a rainbow
.
A rainbow is a breathtakingly gorgeous arc of vivid colors, an unexpected feast for the retinas. It’s like watching a giant box of crayons and a beam of radiant sunlight exchanging wedding vows in Heaven, their divine love melting across the sky for all to see. A rainbow is something that is almost too beautiful to be true
.
That’s because it
isn’t.
A rainbow is a polychromatic lie scrawled across your gullible peepers. It’s simply a host of mysterious atmospheric conditions conspiring to form a false perception, albeit a lovely one. The closer you get to a rainbow, the closer you get to realizing that you can never truly get close to one
.
This place of illusions, delusions, and oftentimes contusions (it’s located on a slippery slope, so watch your step) is infested with truthless scoundrels spouting bright and shining lies of every hue, though the biggest, nastiest lie of all is growing like a mushroom in the shadows
.
The mysterious Powers That Be (and any of its associated or subsidiary enterprises, including—but not limited to—the Powers That Be Evil) have stitched this and countless other subjective realities together into a sprawling quilt of space and time
.
Some of these quantum patches may not even seem like places. But they are all around you, and go by many names. Some feel like eternity. And some of them actually
are
eternity, at least for a little while
.
