#12 & #13 Loomis & His Possessed Bookbag Chomps

Loomis Burton Barnes is a kid with three last names. He thinks a little differently than the other kids in school. And until recently, some of the other kids thought that gave them license to treat him cruelly. He could’ve handled the berating & constant name calling, but the beatings were another matter entirely. He started to carry around an extra large bookbag he found at an army surplus store. It enabled him to lug all of his books from class to class without stopping at his locker & receiving the pummeling that ultimately would have awaited him there.

One day, after receiving a black eye just before home room, Loomis found himself at his wit’s end. Ms. Gernsback seeing the injury sent him immediately down to the nurse (more out of fear of litigation than concern, mind you. At least that was Loomis’ read of the situation). On his way, he swore he felt something begin to shift & shimmy in his heavy knapsack. The rocking motion intensified until it got to the point that he was almost thrown off his feet. Slinging the bag to the floor, it began moving on its. Suddenly long, slimy tentacles wriggled out of the side pockets, & pushed the bag to eye level as if they were legs. A terrified Loomis tried to run the other way, as fast as he could down the corridor. But the squid like bag only kept up pursuit, eventually cornering him in the K block stairwell.

Pressed against the wall, Loomis thought he was seeing his life flash before his eyes. As his bag inched closer to his face, the still zipped confines began to stretch & pull & twist inches from him, letting out a soft, almost canine whimper. Hesitantly, Loomis slowly unzipped the bag from left to right. As the zipper teeth parted, they gave way to huge, yellow-y fangs. He started to think it wasn’t so much something in the bag, as maybe it was the bag itself. Once he got it two thirds of the way undone, the fangs opened wide & took it the rest of the way on their own, waggling its jaw around like it was stretching in a yawn. Loomis clenched his eyes, fearing that this was it. Instead, a long slobbery tongue smooshed itself all over his cheeks as the bag started to pant.

Ever since, Loomis has a new friend. A friend he wanted to name Gramsci, after the Italian Marxist. But the bag seems to only want to respond to Chomps. Loomis, being quite the paranormal enthusiast, has a couple of theories on Chomps’ origin. Perhaps it has something to do with the bag seeing battle, possibly picking up a ghost or two along the way. Or maybe, all the ill will of Loomis’ day to day built up & caused some sort of hellmouth that allowed a demon to possess this otherwise inanimate backpack. Either way, Chomps is a loyal companion. And constantly hungry. In fact, he seems to only getting hungrier, & now that’s starting to be a problem.

Now, whenever someone tries to pick on Loomis, they have to go through Chomps first. And it’s usually through his digestive track.

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I try to think of things that would work all ages. This is pretty borderline I guess, but that was the original goal: make something kid friendly. As far as the challenge, I’m not in as bad shape as it looks. I doubled up on characters twice, & currently have this through 19 scanned while I’ve got 20-24 in various stages of completion. It’s going to be tight but maybe I can still swing it!

Category: 2012, Horror, Humor