Blimpo: The Third Circle of Heck

by Dale E. Basye

  Let’s say that you wanted to be, I don’t know, let’s call her Zazu Zenith. First, let’s assume that you aren’t Zazu Zenith: a multibillionaire pop star/actress/perfume/clothing line with a face that launched a thousand A-list parties. Now, it’s no one’s fault, really, that you aren’t Zazu Zenith. Not being Zazu Zenith is hardly a crime: after all, people who are not Zazu Zenith outnumber those who are by about 6.5 billion to 1. This makes “not being Zazu Zenith” the second most common moral failing on Earth—just after “taking a piece of candy from a box of chocolates, biting into it, realizing it has some weird whipped pork and jelly bean crème center (with just a hint of braised rhubarb), and putting it back.”

  Sometimes the only thing separating the “flawless” from the “lawless” is the letter “f.”

  Down in the hot, humid, and humility-free recesses of Heck (where there is no recess), the laws are changing, and many are finding themselves hip-deep in all manners of stews, jams, and pickles. Even those divine, pristine creatures upstairs may soon find themselves down in it.

  But this mess of perfection and misconception, flawlessness and lawlessness isn’t simply confined to Below and Above. It’s about to leak into the In-Between. Gush, in fact. And a whole lot of people—namely, you and all of your friends—may be in for a rude awakening, like the unfortunate child who actually falls asleep at a sleepover, waking up to find that their so-called friends have done something terrible to them.

  Sweet dreams.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  THE BOOK IN your hands—which you paid for, not just checked out from the library (I’m on to your tricks … besides, can you imagine how many germs call your average library book “home”? I’m just sayin’ …)—wouldn’t have been possible without the complete lack of support from the following persons:

  The countless boys and girls who seemed so confident on the outside, yet, if they truly were inside—deep below their flawless complexions and ideal body-fat-to-lean-body-mass ratios—wouldn’t feel the need to put others down in order to uplift themselves.

  The tireless teeter-totter of capitalism that keeps us nauseous, seesawing between pictures of ninety-nine-pound supermodels and pitchers of ninety-nine-ounce Super Gulps.

  The inventor of German dodgeball.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  DALE E. BASYE, a recovering journalist and advertising copywriter, has written his way out of many a tense situation. He was a film critic, winning several national awards, and studied neon sculpture in art school, which—puzzlingly—never resulted in a consistent income. Dale E. Basye once made a plaster cast of himself in class and passed out, awaking to find himself in class in a plaster cast.

  Here’s what Dale E. Basye has to say about his latest book:

  “Take a heaping helping of boys and girls, soak them in preadolescence until their bodies are unrecognizable, then blend them together until all lumps of reason have been smoothed into self consciousness. Bake at half the appropriate temperature until half-baked. Now throw the whole mess—and everyone’s expectations—out the window and onto a group of smug authority figures. Serves: them right. 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, inside of a giant rotating loaf of fiberglass bread. His spinning domicile provides him with an excellent vantage point from which to fight crime, though his principal foe tends to be debilitating vertigo.

  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 © 2010 by Dale E. Basye

  Illustrations copyright © 2010 by Bob Dob

  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.

  Blimpo : the third circle of Heck / by Dale E. Basye ; illustrations by Bob Dob. — 1st ed.

  p. cm.

  Summary: Eleven-year-old Milton Fauster puts aside his own escape plans to help his sister, Marlo, who is in training to be an underworld secretary, and best friend, Virgil, who is stuck in the circle of Heck reserved for overweight children.

  eISBN: 978-0-375-89304-9

  [1. Future life—Fiction. 2. Overweight persons—Fiction. 3. Brothers and sisters—

  Fiction. 4. Reformatories—Fiction. 5. Schools—Fiction. 6. Humorous stories.]

  I. Dob, Bob, ill. II. Title.

  PZ7.B2938Bli 2010 [Fic]—dc22 2009015801

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