Heck: Where the Bad Kids Go (21 page)

BACKWORD

No matter how far you go, you can never quite get away from yourself. We're our own punishment, our own reward.

Every moment of every day, we decide our fate. We think we have a choice—and we do in a way—but what we have to choose from has been decided long ago. All of our lives—our past lives, present lives, and post lives—are like a big chessboard. It's more than infinite, stretching both backward and forward until it meets itself. It's also terribly wide. And deep. And has a strange smell, kind of like pancakes.

Mmm…pancakes.

Deep down in Heck, far beyond the smell of pancakes, the game plays itself out, move by move, pawns advancing, oblivious to the forces that propel them. But someone—or some
thing
—has changed the rules. There was a new piece on the chessboard that shouldn't have been there. And now, even though it's gone, it's still in play. A mistake has been made. Or has it?

Sometimes life is a joke that you don't understand: you laugh but you're not sure why. In the afterlife, no one is laughing. Especially those who think the rules are theirs to make. This time the joke is on them.

Ha!

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The book in your hands, or that is leaning against your knee, or that a servant is holding up to your face—flipping the pages carefully with gloved fingers—wouldn't have been possible without the complete lack of support of the following persons:

The countless boys (and occasional girl) who—because of untreated glandular conditions, earlier-than-reasonable growth spurts, or simple lack of parental affection—made my life a living heck through bullying, name-calling, psychological torment, or gross failure to appreciate my obvious superiority.

The teachers, school administrators, and after-school athletic “supervisors” who aided the above group—either knowingly or unwittingly—in their prepubescent reign of thuggery, manipulation, and almost surgically precise teasing.

The hungry machine we call society that both feeds off and perpetuates the above behavior.

I'd also like to thank my parents, both living and not-so-living, who supported me to a fault; my wife, Diana, for her faultless support; and my editor, Diane Landolf (no relation), who somehow convinced Random House that publishing a book about dead children was a sound business decision.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

DALE E. BASYE
has written stories, essays, reviews, and lies for many publications and organizations. He was a film critic, winning several national journalism awards, and the publisher of an arts and entertainment newspaper called
Tonic.
He once jumped out of a plane for a story (a story about jumping out of a plane). Luckily, he's never written about brain surgery.

Here's what Dale has to say about his first book:

“There is a time that chafes against childhood and adulthood, leaving a rash that never quite goes away. Sometimes it itches uncontrollably, and no one can see it. It's like when you wear swim trunks for too long out of the pool. Heck is like that. And no matter what anyone tells you, Heck is real. This story is real. Or as real as anything like this can be.”

Dale E. Basye lives in Portland, Oregon, as part of the criminal witness relocation program, where he lives every day in fear that he will be discovered by the organized crime ring that he helped send to…Oh, poop.

RAPACIA

THE SECOND CIRCLE OF HECK

         

AVAILABLE JULY 2009

FOOTNOTES

^*1
You will never, ever get a bright red sports car.
Return to text.

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 © 2008 by Dale E. Basye
Illustrations copyright © 2008 by Bob Dob

“Up, Up and Away”
Words and music by Jimmy Webb. © 1967 (renewed 1995)
EMI SOSAHA MUSIC, INC
., and
JONATHAN THREE MUSIC
. All rights reserved. International copyright secured. Used by Permission.

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.
Heck: where the bad kids go / by Dale E. Basye; illustrated by Bob Dob.—1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: When timid Milton and his older, scofflaw sister Marlo die in a marshmallow bear explosion at Grizzly Mall, they are sent to Heck, an otherworldly reform school from which they are determined to escape.
[1. Brothers and sisters—Fiction. 2. Behavior—Fiction. 3. Future life—Fiction. 4. Reformatories—Fiction. 5. Schools—Fiction. 6. Humorous stories.]I. Dob, Bob, ill. II. Title.
PZ7.B2938Hec 2008                                    [Fic]—dc22                                             2007008379

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eISBN: 978-0-375-84988-6

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