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QUIBILS AND QUIRKS©
(the original text as serialized in The Cariboo Observer)

Dan Lukiv, M.Ed.
English and Creative Writing
McNaughton Centre, Quesnel, BC, Canada
E-mail: lukivdan@shaw.ca

Chapter 1: The End of Porksville--Or Professor Hamburger Arrives at a War ©

“Chop off their heads!” hollered King Quibil—a five-foot tall fur ball, with two arms and legs, who was waving a sword. “Chop off everybody’s head! Teach them a lesson they’ll never forget!”
            Armed quibils filled the south end of Main Street in Porksville. “Off with their heads!” many roared, and the more they roared, the more enraged they became.
            Battle cries mixed with gasps and screams. The king, his belly full of peppermint tea, yelled, “Charge!” People ran north along Main Street.
            The bald butcher wanted to grab his meat cleaver and storm the quibils. The baker wanted to use his fish net to capture the king. He’d have held the king as a ransom for peace. But each man had two broken legs. Both squirmed in wheelchairs, rattling along Main Street as their horrified wives pushed.
            They sped by a row of birch trees that “joined” the bakery to the grocery store. Behind the trees, in a clearing, Professor Hamburger, in his time machine, landed.
            This invention—aside from the control center—resembled a 4x4 car, without fenders, boasting many red, yellow, and blue flashing lights. As it landed, it banged and banged, as loudly as a Winchester firing, and wavered like a mirage.
          Then the banging and wavering stopped.
            Professor Hamburger, inside the time machine, heard screaming and yelling.

NEXT EPISODE/CHAPTER 2: Meet our story’s hero—orange Hooper Quirk.

            The professor, a skinny man with a wild beard, heard the horrible noise and shuddered. He climbed out of the control center—it could have been a doorless wheel house from a tugboat—and headed nervously to the row of birch trees.
            He peered between two trunks. Quibils, waving swords or clutching spears, chased people! Quibil-stink nearly made him pass out. Dizzily, he escaped back to his time machine.
            The banging and wavering returned. They stopped. Inside the time machine, instead of Professor Hamburger, sat a dazed Hooper Quirk.
            Where was the professor?
            Orange Hooper, a 10-year-old boy with cauliflower ears, was trying to shake off his first ride in the time machine. But he had no time to recover. He heard that racket!
            “Chop off their heads!” somebody bellowed.
            “What on earth?” Hooper exclaimed. But as he studied the awful spectacle from between two trees, he, unlike the professor, smelled nothing strange.
            Meanwhile, as Hooper trembled, the mayor, in a diaper, was gurgling in Dr. Dewknob’s office.
            “You’re a great help,” the doctor, who had a shiner, told the mayor. “Quibils are attacking people, and you’re sucking your thumb.”
            The mayor pulled his fat thumb out of his mouth, and said, “Goo, goo.”

NEXT EPISODE/CHAPTER 3: We begin to answer: “What led up to this quibil-invasion?” And we meet Hooper’s carrot-munching family.

            Let’s go back to two days before the quibils invaded Porksville, to begin to see what led up to this disaster:
            The Quirks lived in an orange cottage centered in Beaver Valley.
            “Open that window,” Mrs. Quirk, who had a swirl of red hair, said. She stirred a pot of carrot soup. “I can’t stand that wretched pipe!”
            Mr. Quirk eyed wincing Hooper. They sat at the kitchen table. Mr. Quirk smoked his pipe, exhaling greenish clouds.
            “Why don’t we eat porridge like normal people?” Hooper said, cringing, holding up a carrot flake as if it were a cockroach.
            “That reminds me,” Mr. Quirk said, “tomorrow you start school.”
            “All right!” Mrs. Quirk slapped a ladle on the counter. “I’ll open the window myself.”
            Mr. Quirk blew smoke into a long stream. Then he said, “You’ll learn about history and geography.”
            Mrs. Quirk glared at her husband. She opened the kitchen window, sat down, and poured herself a bowl of carrot flakes. “Maybe there’s oats in the pantry—if beetles haven’t eaten them!”
            “What’s history?” Hooper asked.
            “It’s different from herstory,” Mr. Quirk said. “Boy things versus girl things.”
            Mrs. Quirk sprinkled sugar on her flakes. “That’s French.”
            “Nonsense,” Mr. Quirk said. “History is about men, but herstory is about women.”
            “I want to be a martian,” Hooper said.

NEXT EPISODE/CHAPTER 4: Find out why Hooper wants to be a martian.

            “I want to be a martian,” Hooper said.
            Looking at her son, Mrs. Quirk closed one eye. “I don’t know any martians.”
            “But geography,” Mr. Quirk said, “is all about wood—pine, spruce, and birch.”
            “I want to be a martian,” Hooper said, “because I want to be green.”
            Somebody pounded on the door.
            “Come in!” Mrs. Quirk said, looking irritated.
            The door swung open. There stood Mooch, a quibil—a four foot tall fur ball with skinny arms and legs. And a chicken tail sprang up like a fountain on his head.
            “Well, well,” Mr. Quirk said. “Come in; have a bowl of carrot flakes.”
            But the Quirks had never noticed how dreadful Mooch (or any other quibil) smelled.
            After breakfast, Hooper and Mooch headed outside. Hungry Hooper feasted on a mouthful of raspberries. But Mooch—a lover of raspberry leaves—flinched.
            Then Mooch, sitting on a willow stump, dangling his legs, said, “I want to go to school too. I want to learn to read.”
            As they spoke, clouds swept across the evergreen hills. Soon galloping wind shook bushes.
            “There’s a storm brewing,” Mrs. Quirk said, standing at the open kitchen window. “You’d better get inside before you’re blown all the way to Denver!” Then she slammed the window shut.

NEXT EPISODE/CHAPTER 5: Will smelly Mooch also attend school?

            “But I feel nervous about attending school,” Mooch said, his hair dancing in the wind. “Besides, I’ve never met any other humans. So maybe you should go to school alone the first day.”
            Hooper agreed. “Then I’ll describe the whole day to you.”
            “And if I like it,” Mooch said excitedly, “I’ll go with you the next day.”
            Then Mooch, who loved a storm, jogged home to gather slugs and liquorice root—gifts—for the king.
            Hooper, back inside his warm house, heard wind howl in the chimney. He saw his father, seated at the kitchen table, reading a mouldy book.
            “This dictionary by Professor Hamburger says quibils are stinky two-legged rodents,” Mr. Quirk said with surprise. “What do you think about that, Mable?”
            “That’s ridiculous,” Hooper said, flattening his wind-tossed hair. “Professor Hamburger is a fool.”
            “Hooper!” Mrs. Quirk said. “Don’t speak like that.”
            “Why not? You call Dad a fool.”
            “Yes, well,” Mrs. Quirk said, “you never mind about that.”
**
            The next day, Hooper, shy about meeting his classmates, was relieved as he entered the log school. In short, at first they didn’t see him. They had their backs to him and were watching a hawk-nosed boy chew a daddy-long-legs.

NEXT EPISODE/CHAPTER 6: Hooper meets Beaver Valley’s teacher: Miss Snapdragon—the executioner.

            Hooper quietly settled into a cold, empty desk. He sniffed the air. It smelled like sweat. He noted sagging shelves of books that towered up dark walls. A paper airplane soared across the room, landing in his ear.
            Miss Snapdragon entered. She used the same red door that Hooper had used, but she slammed it shut.
            The students, including the daddy-long-legs-muncher, swung around in their desks, facing her.
            “My word,” Hooper thought. “She’s as skinny as a Zulu warrior, and she has a lump of brown hair like an upside-down hornet’s nest.”
            “Good morning!” she exclaimed.
            “Good morning, Miss Snapdragon,” many droned.
            “Where’s my new student?” She spied the rows. “Aha! There you are. You look awfully old to be in grade one, Hooper Quirk.”
            He tried to swallow; he couldn’t.
            “You’re as orange as a carrot,” she said. “And you have cauliflower ears.”
            Hooper felt them. How hot they’d become!
            “I’ll bet they call you Hooper the Pooper,” said a boy with a square face.
            Many giggled.
            “What’s that?” Miss Snapdragon said, scanning the children, like a Roman general scanning slaves. “Children who get out-of-hand write LINES.” And she glared at Hooper as if he were the cause of all her problems.

NEXT EPISODE/CHAPTER 7: Hooper’s first day at school gets worse—and worse!

            “Hooper the Pooper,” the square-faced boy said again, but quietly.
            Many stifled giggles.
            “People and vegetables should be separate!” announced Miss Snapdragon. “Why are you here?”
            “I—I want to be a martian,” Hooper replied.
            The class roared with laughter.
            “Quiet!” Miss Snapdragon stepped forward. “That’s BETTER. Now—why do you want to be a martian?”
            “I want to be green.”
            The next rock-slide of laughter was too much. Out of the school Hooper ran.
            “Come back here!” she ordered.
            But he kept on running.
            Miss Snapdragon demanded quiet; the children laughed harder.
            “One hundred LINES for EVERYBODY!” she yelled. “You BRATS!”
            Hooper stomped homeward, along a snaky trail. Along the way, he found Mooch hanging like a bat from a spruce limb. Mooch’s chicken tail aimed at the ground. Hooper, wiping his eyes, smiled. “What are you doing up there?”
            “Shhhh,” Mooch said. “The king and I are playing hide-and-stop-seek.” He explained: both hid, and then the first one to...He stopped. Straightening his legs, and flipping like a cat, he landed on his feet on the ground. “Aren’t you early to be going home from school?” he asked.
            “I hate school.”

NEXT EPISODE/CHAPTER 8: King Quibil hears about Hooper’s awful day—and decides that all the quibils should march into town.

            “I hate school,” Hooper told Mooch.
            “I found you!” the fat king cried, suddenly appearing. “I lose! Do you want to play hide-and-stop-seek, Hooper? Why don’t we go hide?”
            “Excuse me, King,” Mooch said, “but I have to ask Hooper why he hates school.”
            Many quibils appeared from behind bushes and trees. They made a doughnut around Hooper, Mooch, and the king.
            Hooper told the story.
            “What?” King Quibil said. “Cauliflower ears? Orange as a carrot? Mooch, aren’t those insults?”
            “I’m—I’m not sure,” Mooch said.
            “They sound like insults to me,” the king said.
            “They called me Hooper the Pooper!”
            Enraged, the king leapt onto a fallen tree to make a speech:
            “Quibils, a friend of ours has been insulted, treated like a common skunk!” He shook his fist. “We’re going to town this moment, to get to the bottom of this!”
            “We’re going to town?” Mooch said. “Don’t you think we should calm down first?”
            “Calm down?” the king said, his hair standing on end, making him look enormous. “What on earth for?”
            Hooper thought Miss Snapdragon and the children needed spankings. “Let’s go!” he said.
            “Let’s get to the bottom!” a toothless quibil yelled. So they headed towards Porksville. But straggling Mooch worried that something terrible would happen.

NEXT EPISODE/CHAPTER 9: The quibils, like stink bombs, and Hooper arrive in Porksville.

            Quibils became a hairy knot on Main Street:
            Arthur’s nose wriggled. His heavy eyebrows twitched. He spied his loaves of hot bread, and then asked, “What’s that?” He yanked off his baker’s hat. “What’s that smell, Betsy?”
            His wife, kneading dough, sniffed under one arm.
            Arthur stepped outside. Then he said, “Ahhhhhhhh!”
            Stink oozed along Main Street. Arthur paled. His stomach turned cartwheels. He raced inside to grab a broom, yelling, “Quibils! Go tell the mayor! Hurry, Betsy, before we all drop dead!”
            Betsy, wearing a pair of high heels, pulled her rayon skirt to her knees and sprinted to the mayor’s house.
            Arthur clutched his broom, darted outside, and began swatting quibils. Many screeched. Some rolled along Main Street like tumbleweed.
            The bald butcher—his smock stained from his chopping up roasts—swung a meat cleaver. He hollered like a Celtic warrior.
            Arthur fainted from the stink, but not before he’d smacked King Quibil’s rump, sending him headfirst into a barrel of water. And the sputtering king might have drowned, with his legs jerking in the air, but Mooch hauled him out.
            “Are you all right?” Mooch asked.
            “Let’s get out of here!” the trembling king said. He retreated, and the other quibils—and Hooper—followed him, as he yelled, “This means warrrrrr!”

NEXT EPISODE/CHAPTER 10: King Quibil decides to chop off some heads.

            In the Royal Cave, the soggy king sat on his red throne. “I won’t stand for this,” he said amid flaming torches. “We’ll chop off their heads!”
            “Their heads?” Mooch said.
            It had been an awful day. Hooper felt faint. “I’m going home,” he said.
            “Oh?” Mooch said. “Are you all right?”
            “I want to go home!”
            King Quibil pounded his Royal Rod on the stone floor. “This means war!”
            “But we’re not going to chop off anybody’s head, are we?” Mooch said.
            The king studied Mooch’s face. “Why not?” he asked.
            Hooper marched out of the dim cave. Sunlight hurt his eyes! He squinted. He marched into the dark forest. If he’d been a giant, he would have sent thunder through Beaver Valley with each booming step.
            Thirty minutes later he found his bent-over mother and father. They were in their garden, plucking carrots from black soil.
            “I’m home,” he said.
            Both parents turned around to face him. “Already?” Mr. Quirk said.
            Mrs. Quirk, straightening her back with much effort, said, “What’s the matter?”
            “I have cauliflower ears!”
            Mrs. Quirk dropped a bunch of carrots. “You have what?”
            “I’m a vegetable!”

NEXT EPISODE/CHAPTER 11: Hooper tells his parents about the mad baker and butcher, and about horrible Miss Snapdragon.

            “I’m a vegetable!” Hooper said.
            “For goodness sakes,” Mrs. Quirk said.
            “They called me Hooper the Pooper!”
            Mr. Quirk lit his pipe.
            “Miss Snapdragon is a witch!” Hooper exclaimed, refusing to cry, which made his throat ache.
            Mr. Quirk’s head disappeared in a cloud of smoke. Mrs. Quirk jerked the pipe from his mouth. “I hate that blasted thing!” She threw it wildly; through the kitchen window it soared. “Well! Get it before the whole place burns down!”
            In the kitchen, glass crunched under Mr. Quirk’s cork soles. “Is there a full moon?” he asked after returning outside.
            Nobody answered.
            “The baker beat me with a broom,” Hooper said. “The butcher chased me with a meat cleaver.”
            “They’re all mad!” Mrs. Quirk said. “Matthew—we’ll never set foot in that town again.”
            “You don’t think it’s a full moon?” Mr. Quirk said.
            “I beg your pardon?” Mrs. Quirk asked, placing her hands on her hips. “What on earth does the moon have to do with anything?”
            Mr. Quirk quickly agreed: The moon had nothing to do with anything.
            But Mrs. Quirk wasn’t finished. “So, how do you plan to smoke? If we don’t go to town, where will you buy your filthy tobacco?”

NEXT EPISODE/CHAPTER 12: Mr. Quirk quits smoking, and Hooper reminds his parents that he wants to be a martian.

            “Don’t you want me to smoke?” Mr. Quirk asked, as they stood in the carrot-patch.
            “Fool,” Mrs. Quirk said. “I hate tobacco more than boils.”
            That surprised him: “You should have told me sooner.” He buried his pipe, promising, “I’ll never smoke again.”
            Mrs. Quirk smiled. She kissed her husband and hugged Hooper.
            “Yuck!” Hooper thought.
            Back in the house, Mrs. Quirk cleaned up the broken glass. She prepared peppermint tea. It refreshed them, until Hooper said, “But I want to be a martian.”

**
            That night, Mr. Quirk ran a finger along the dusty bookshelf, noting green volumes called Professor Hamburger’s Encyclopaedia. “What happened to the Z?” he asked.
            Mrs. Quirk slid a carrot pie into the oven. “Professor Hamburger died before he could write it,” she said.
            “What a shame.” He pulled out the Q-volume, and at the kitchen table, he sat down, while his wife served him steamy carrot cake. “You look lovely,” he said.
            “Oh? And what do you want?”
            He laughed. “I want a kiss.” He pulled her down onto his lap.
            “Yuck!” Hooper said, flying his toy UFO. “I want to visit Mooch.”

NEXT EPISODE/CHAPTER 13: Mr. Quirk gets a sore ear instead of a kiss; Hooper begs his parents to let him go out alone into the dark forest, to visit Mooch.

Copyright © 1997, 1998, 1999 by Dan Lukiv. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author.

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