Highly Inappropriate Tales for Young People

by Douglas Coupland

  Contents

  About the Book

  About the Author

  About the Illustrator

  Title Page

  Donald, the Incredibly Hostile Juice Box

  Sandra, the Truly Dreadful Babysitter

  Hans, the Weird Exchange Student

  Brandon, the Action Figure with Issues

  Cindy, the Terrible Role Model

  Kevin, the Hobo Minivan with Extremely Low Morals

  Mr. Fraser, the Undead Substitute Teacher

  Copyright

  About the Book

  Seven pants-peeingly funny stories featuring seven evil characters you can’t help but love: Douglas Coupland’s stories are illustrated with dark charm by Graham Roumieu in a collaboration that brings together two of Canada’s wittiest creators for the first time. Put your therapist on speed dial and read them with pleasure.

  A cast of unlovable miscreants who unleash their dark, unruly and antisocial desires on every page: They are Donald, the Incredibly Hostile Juice Box; Kevin, the Hobo Minivan with Extremely Low Morals; Brandon, the Action Figure with Issues; Sandra, the Truly Dreadful Babysitter; Hans, the Weird Exchange Student; Cindy, the Terrible Role Model; and Mr. Fraser, the Undead Substitute Teacher.

  A lot of laughs – of the evil, twisted kind: Definitely inappropriate for young people.

  About the Author

  Born on a Canadian NATO base in Germany, Douglas Coupland is the author of such bestsellers as Generation A, JPod and eleven other novels, along with non-fiction works including a recent short biography of Marshall McLuhan. His work has been translated into thirty-five languages and published in most countries around the world. He is also a visual artist, sculptor, furniture and fashion designer, and screenwriter.

  www.coupland.com

  About the Illustrator

  The creator of the faux Bigfoot autobiographies In Me Own Words, Me Write Book and I Not Dead, Graham Roumieu is also the author of some non-Bigfoot-related books such as Cat & Gnome and 101 Ways to Kill Your Boss. Since he started work in 2001, his illustrations have appeared in the New York Times, the Atlantic, the Guardian, Men's Health, regularly in the Globe and Mail, and many other places.

  www.roumieu.com

  Donald,

  the Incredibly Hostile Juice Box

  DONALD WAS A juice box with a terrible attitude. Out of nowhere, he’d whale on the other juice boxes, slamming them with plastic lunchroom trays and puncturing their sacred tinfoil puncture holes with bobby pins he swiped from the girls who sat at the popular girls’ table.

  After lunch hour, when the cafeteria staff held respectful farewell ceremonies for all the juice boxes that had donated their nectar to the student body that day, Donald would run around the kitchen looking for things to throw into the deep fryer. This was annoying, but also kind of amusing—like when he dropped an entire lost and found drawer full of cellphones and dental retainers into the melted lard left over from Catfish Friday.

  That actually made him a bit of a hero to the lunch ladies and the teachers, but Janitor Schwinn had to cancel his line dancing class that evening to stay late to drain the deep fryer and scrape melted iPods from its bottom. As far as Janitor Schwinn was concerned, Donald should have been buried in the recycling bins months back. But in the end, it took a truly fiendish deed to get Donald expelled from the school.

  You see, Donald was obsessed with getting other juice boxes squished beneath the wheels of cars coming out of the teachers’ parking lot. It’s obviously amusing to see things get squished, but Donald carried it too far. There was something about watching hundreds of pounds of pressure from a moving vehicle blow out the bottoms of his fellow juice boxes that made Donald crazy—crazy for destruction.

  He’d lure his juice box targets out to the teachers’ parking lot by telling them lies. For example, he told one box that he’d heard of a new type of drinking straw that allows a person to drink without puncturing the foil hole on the top. It was a silly lie, but juice boxes are pretty stupid, and luring them to the scene of their deaths was never difficult.

  Once Donald had snagged a box, he’d position his victim on the south side of the big speed bump where the teachers’ lot exits onto the main road. He told each victim that if he waited there, he’d be right back with an example of the Magic Straw, or whatever it was he’d promised that time. So, while the juice box was waiting for a non-existent straw, Donald would hop up onto a traffic cone and do something to distract the teachers driving out of the lot. Sometimes he’d throw pebbles at the cars; sometimes he’d throw little metal stars made by the guys in shop class who smoked out behind the asbestos storage bins. If there weren’t an innocent juice box about to meet a fiendish and horrible death by squishing, Donald’s behaviour would be funny. But their imminent murder gave the scenario a bad taste: a taste of evil.

  ONE DAY AFTER math class, Donald was walking around removing chewing gum from beneath chairs and putting it up on the seats when he overheard the math teacher, Miss Burnside, on her cellphone screaming at someone from an online dating website. Something had to be wrong with their service, she said, because she hadn’t had a nibble in months, and she wanted her money back. From there, she went on a rant about her life in general. Talked about the scary dates she’d had over the years, with one train wreck after another. Then she lashed into her students, saying how cow-like and stupid they were, and that there was no point teaching them math because they could barely speak, let alone do long division. She wanted out of her life, but didn’t know how to do it.

  That was when Miss Burnside saw Donald, hiding behind a trash can. She went running after him, but it was too late: Donald had seen her true self, and she knew that soon he would begin to torment her.

  Later that same afternoon, when Miss Burnside was driving her car out of the teachers’ parking lot, Donald placed a victim juice box by the speed bump of doom. When Miss Burnside’s car approached, he hopped up onto a traffic pylon and did something more extreme than usual.

  Miss Burnside shrieked. The menthol cigarette she was smoking dropped onto her lap and then rolled beneath the seat. Startled, she hit the gas, and the car lurched forward. She collected her wits, braked to a stop then got out of the car, only to see that the doomed juice box had shot out its guts in a massive, fruit-flavoured explosion.

  Donald danced with happiness atop his pylon.

  THE NEXT DAY when Donald showed up at school, he was met at the door by Principal Reeve, Janitor Schwinn and Miss Burnside. They told him he was a horrible little juice box, that his attitude stank, and that he was no longer welcome at the school. Both Janitor Schwinn and Miss Burnside wore gloating smiles that made Donald angry. He turned and walked away, but when classes began, he went to the parking lot, jimmied open Miss Burnside’s and Janitor Schwinn’s gas caps and stuffed their gas lines with dirt and litter before putting the caps back on. He thought, That’ll teach them not to mess with my life! And, sure enough, their cars never worked, ever again.

  Donald then went off in search of a new school at which to inflict mayhem. Walking down the roads and highways of the city, he resembled litter, so nobody paid him any attention except for the fast-food trash he passed along the way, who taunted him: “You’re only a lowly juice box. You’ll never be a carton. You’ll never be a can. You’re just a dumb little juice box that nobody cares about.”

  That did it. Donald used a piece of broken pop bottle as a magnifying lens and set fire to the fast-food trash that had been sassing him. With a demented cackle, he walked away as the trash burned. Then he burst into a military marching song:

  I’m a juice box, I’ve been tol
d.

  Doom and mayhem good as gold.

  Don’t you ever mess with me.

  I will steep your bones for tea.

  1. 2. 3. 4.

  Juice box guts are on the floor.

  5. 6. 7. 8.

  Death and I are on a date.

  Sandra,

  the Truly Dreadful Babysitter

  SANDRA WAS A truly dreadful babysitter. On her first job, her boss Peggy at the agency sent Sandra to babysit a pair of twins, Jason and Kaylee, whose parents were off to a high school reunion.

  Sandra arrived at sundown, and asked the twins what they wanted to do. They said they wanted to play video games and text their friends, and Sandra said, “Those are stupid and boring ideas. Let’s all go shoplifting.”

  “Shoplifting? We can’t go shoplifting!”

  “Nonsense. Get your sweaters.”

  The children thought Sandra was joking, and they decided to humour their babysitter. So the trio walked to the dollar store at the local mall, where Sandra said to Jason, “Prove to me you’re brave and go steal a badminton set for me.”

  Jason was shocked. “But I don’t want to!”

  Sandra looked at him. “Jason, you may just be too dumb and useless to steal. But if you don’t, I won’t like you anymore.”

  Jason had been raised to try to see the good in people, and so, against his better judgment, he went into the store to shoplift a badminton set.

  Sandra then said to Kaylee, “Now it’s your turn. Go in and steal me a hair dryer.”

  “Why do you want a hair dryer?”

  Sandra grew fierce. “Kaylee, I want my hair dryer and I want it now.”

  Kaylee started crying, but Sandra shoved her into the store. “Stop snivelling. I’m sick of children who don’t have any guts.”

  While her charges were in the store, Sandra stared at the sidewalk and found a half-smoked cigarette stubbed out on the concrete. “Beautiful. I’ll paint my lungs with smoke,” she said.

  Lighting up, Sandra peered in the window at the store’s owner behind the cash—a morbidly obese man named Raymond, who’d just had a huge fight with his wife because she’d lost all of their savings buying lottery tickets. Bulky and miserable, Raymond had his eagle eyes on the twins, and as they made their way to the front door, he grabbed them both by their ears and dragged them into the back room.

  The door slammed behind them, but even from out on the sidewalk, Sandra could hear the children’s screams and protests that their shoplifting binge wasn’t their fault. Sandra also heard slapping and crunching sounds and thought, Great, there goes my new badminton set and my hair dryer. She walked home.

  THE NEXT DAY the phone rang. When Sandra picked it up, Peggy said, “Really, Sandra, you can’t take your charges shoplifting and then abandon them when they get caught.”

  “I suppose you’re right, but they were such snivellers.”

  “Okay, but I hope you’ ve learned your lesson. Sandra, I see something special in you—something fresh and new—so I think you deserve another chance. Here’s the address of your next charge, young Hunter, who I’m sure is a total cream puff to babysit.” Young Hunter’s parents were going out for a Thai dinner and then to see a retrospective of the films of Russell Crowe.

  When Sandra asked Hunter what he’d like to do, Hunter said he’d like to take some wieners and some of that dough that comes in a can and make piggies in a blanket.

  “That’s a stupid idea,” Sandra said. “Why don’t we take cardboard boxes, draw doors and windows on them, pretend they’re hotels and office buildings and set fire to them.”

  Hunter said, “I’m afraid of fire.”

  “Afraid of fire?” said Sandra, appalled. “Hunter, hasn’t surfing the Internet toughened you up at all? How do you expect me to like someone so feeble and frightened? Come on. Help me find some boxes.”

  Hunter had been trained to be polite to his elders and agreed against his instincts.

  So Hunter and Sandra found a bunch of boxes, and as they used Sharpies to draw doors, windows and signage on the boxes, Hunter even began to have fun. “Look,” said Hunter. “This is a hotel for people who can’t walk.”

  Sandra looked at his box. “Cross out the doors so that there’s no possibility of escape.”

  “Okay.” Hunter scribbled out the doors cheerfully. “This is highly amusing,” he said.

  Sandra, in the meantime, had created a city block of pretend buildings. “The real fun starts now, Hunter,” she said. “Help me pile all these boxes in the fireplace.”

  Sandra and Hunter stuffed the fireplace full.

  When Hunter looked at Sandra dubiously, she said, “Not to worry. This fireplace can easily handle all of this.” She handed him a small box of wooden matches. “Go ahead.”

  “Are you sure, Sandra?”

  “Just do it!”

  So Hunter set fire to the hotel for people who can’t walk, and to the saltine cracker box that was a prison for shoplifters, and to the Prada shoebox that had become a shelter for lost puppies.

  Fwoomp!!!!!

  All the boxes went up in flames, and the wall above the fireplace caught fire, too, and soon the whole room was ablaze.

  Sandra said, “Hunter, I think we should leave.”

  Hunter, staring horrified at the flames, burst into tears.

  “Oh, be quiet,” Sandra told him. “You’re the one who lit the match. It was all your fault, Hunter. Everything.”

  She led the sobbing boy out onto the sidewalk, and when the fire trucks arrived, she headed home.

  “Sandra, I know babysitting is not the best job on earth,” Peggy said on the phone the next morning. “But please, don’t set fire to peoples’ houses.”

  “He lit the match, not me.”

  SANDRA’S NEXT ASSIGNMENT was to take care of a young girl named Brenlinn, whose parents were using a downloaded discount coupon to feast at an all-you-can-eat prawn restaurant.

  After the parents were safely out the door, Sandra leaned down to the little girl and asked, “Brenlinn, what would you like to do?”

  “Maybe watch TV?” she replied.

  “That is so unimaginative, Brenlinn.”

  “What do you want to do then?”

  “I want to go for a healthy walk in the night air. You watch far too much TV, and your body needs some exercise.”

  “I hate walking!” whined Brenlinn.

  “Tough,” said Sandra. “I’m in charge and we’re going for a walk. Now!”

  And so they set off into the night. There was no moon and it was very dark, and it seemed like rain would start at any moment. The air was fresh, but Sandra soon grew bored.

  She saw a cemetery ahead. “Let’s go walk in there.”

  Brenlinn was frightened. “We can’t go in there, especially at night! All of those dead bodies! And all of those ghosts!”

  “Cemeteries are lovely places, silly. Lots of nice trees, and the bodies down there in the soil are loaning their nutrients to the planet.”

  “Yuck,” said Brenlinn.

  “Cemeteries are green and planet friendly, helping the planet heal. Now come on. No whimpering.”

  “Well,” said the frightened little girl, “okay.”

  The two entered the cemetery grounds, Sandra holding up her cellphone to light up what little path there was. As they walked deep, deep into the cemetery’s interior, the little girl shied from every shadow.

  Suddenly the cellphone rang, and Sandra looked at its screen. She said to Brenlinn, “It’s Todd, this guy who’s really into me. I have to take it.” She held the phone up to her ear eagerly. “Todd? Are you there? Hi! It’s Sandra—”

  But then the phone’s battery died and Sandra was furious. “Great. Todd finally calls and I’ve wasted all my battery power to make a flashlight to guide you.”

  “Sandra?” It was pitch black, so dark Brenlinn couldn’t see anything. “Sandra?” she squeaked again.

  But Sandra had already gone. Her innate sense of direc
tion guided her back to the road, and she walked home, eager to recharge her battery and put the night behind her. As she opened the door to her house, a massive rainstorm began, and it lasted all night.

  SANDRA WAS A truly dreadful babysitter. Brenlinn caught pneumonia in the cemetery and nearly died. When Peggy called Sandra to tell her this, Sandra said, “Peggy, Brenlinn was a whiner. Honestly, the world would be much better off without her.”

  “Oh, Sandra,” said Peggy. “You’re such a naughty little scamp. I’ll phone you later today with your next babysitting assignment.”

  Just then, Sandra’s cell beeped—it was Todd. “Gotta go, Peggy.” She hung up and, when Todd came on, she told him all about her job babysitting horrible young children. “I love babysitting, Todd, but it can be really difficult when you have children who just won’t behave.”

  Hans,

  the Weird Exchange Student

  HANS WAS AN exchange student, so nobody wanted anything to do with him. Everyone thought he was from one of those Eastern European countries with hard-to-remember names containing too few vowels—those countries where children are forced to wear corrective footwear and are only allowed to use medicine balls during gym class.

  Hans was sort of okay at sports, and he wasn’t freakishly odd, but he never really seemed to fit into his North American school, nor did he care to do so. He had no appreciation of the school’s food chain. When he went to sit down with the Camera Club or the semi-popular girls, he created fear and confusion.

  “It’s the exchange student.”