From the creator of Anarchy
Escape from Dolphin Street
Run away to the dark world where street punks rule.
Jason dreams of skateboarding away form his dead-end life in suburbia to find his missing brother. Cutouts form the local newspaper inform him about runaways, a gang of misfits, and a strange place on the streets where anarchy rules. Fighting his insecurities, Jason realizes his one way to learn the truth is to cross the line and make contact with Adam, a punk he has a crush on.
Jason jumps at the chance to run away when his only friends, Kelly and Tanya, decide to escape and abusive home life. On the streets, they encounter a vicious gang led by Liev, a pseudo skin adorned with a teardrop tattoo and his cult of followers: strange Knappy armed with a blue lightning stun gun under his trench coat; firebrand Syd with the crazy eyes; butch bruiser Hex; and a hulking mute giant called Hound. The street punks taunt them with animal sounds, mischief, and violence in a sadistic game of sharks and dolphins, predators and prey, as the runaways are hunted down in the street surf.
Amidst the chaos, Jason must choose between safety for his friends and his desire to find his brother as he is drawn to Adam and the dark world of Dolphin Street, an desolate area where the punks go. There are no rules on the streets, only a living nightmare leading to an abandoned house and the crawlspace underneath—a horror he may never escape.
Escape from Dolphin Street is a punk fiction novel.
Escape from Dolphin Street
is now available in Paperback and Hardback editions.
On the streets there are sharks and dolphins. The sharks are hustlers of different sorts, dangerous and aggressive in form. The dolphins are runaways who play in the street surf, carefree and unaware that sometimes sharks eat dolphins.
Anonymous Street Punk
Excerpt from Escape from Dolphin Street -- Untamed Youth:
“Why are you so curious about me?” Adam stared intensely.
“I just want to know you. I always have.” Jason felt exposed.
“No you don’t”
“I do.”
“Jason, maybe you should go home when they do. There’s nothing for you out here, nothing good.”
Jason tried a different tact. “You said Liev knew my brother, Trevor.”
“He did. I only heard stories about when they used to run around later on. Look all of it was before I was even out here.”
“So, you don’t know where he went.”
“Not really.” Adam seemed conflicted. “Liev said he took off some time ago.”
“I should talk to him. Well, maybe after you talk to him first.”
“Are you crazy? I told you that’s not a good idea.”
“What about…?” Jason was confused.
“What is it, Jason? You are not going to find the brother you grew up with after all this time. And there is nothing here but trouble.”
“I like trouble.” Jason winked.
“What?” Adam shook his head weighing something and chuckled. “I guess I knew it the moment I handed you my knife.
A couple of thick rain drops splattered on the windshield. The grey skies were threatening to open up a deluge.
“Is there anything you can tell me about Trevor?”
Adam thought for a moment and said, “He used to stay on Dolphin Street.”
“You mentioned it before, what is Dolphin Street?”
“It is this place where there are a bunch of rundown vacant houses. The street punks stay there from time to time.”
“I have never heard of a Dolphin Street before.”
Adam laughed. “That’s because it doesn’t exist.”
“How can a street not be?”
“When it is a metaphor,” Adam said.
“Tell me something real.” Jason sighed.
“The vacant houses are real only the name is not. Dolphins are what we call runaways new to the streets. They usually only stay a short while to party till they run out of money.”
“Dolphins, that’s funny.” Jason frowned. “Am I a dolphin?”
“Yep, you are definitely not a shark, not yet.”
***
All of the chapter names in Escape from Dolphin Street are influenced by juvenile delinquent and drive-in films of the past.
Below is the List:
Concrete Wasteland
The Delinquents
Cutouts
Violent Playground
Bad Boy Adam
Untamed Youth
The Born Losers
Just for the Hell of It
Hate Alley
The Damned
Retribution
Dolls
Rockin' Bones
Coda
Excerpt from Escape from Dolphin Street -- Cutouts:
Newspaper clippings lined the floor of Jason’s room. They ranged from tales of runaways who disappeared to crimes of the street. All of them were centered in an area of Houston known as the Montrose; a neighborhood once bohemian with hippies and gays now seedy and troubled on its corners. The danger of being out there fascinated Jason. He wanted to experience a new world, one of chaos and anarchy. At least, the way he imagined those to be from music videos and magazine articles, and if he had someone to experience it with that was all for the better.
Jason looked away from his collection, names from the paper circled in his head. Trench coat wearing Knappy (the one that had hit John with the rake) had been taken in for attempted assault, shoplifting, and arson. Syd (a red haired fire brand) and Hex (a real butch) made up a psychotic lesbian couple that stole a baby once. Liev, a once white supremacist, with a tear drop tattoo below his left eye and scars across his face, was a known felon that was rumored according to the stories to have killed someone in a knife fight. And then there was a hulking shadowy figure named Hound. Hound had made his way into Jason’s nightmares. The unsettling figure, was mute in real life, and had killer shining out of his dead eyes. Jason tried to imagine what each of them was really like and it was beyond him. The darkness of each of their characters in the pictures did not allow a way into their mindsets. Somehow Adam knew them and knew them intimately as friends perhaps. If that was true then the newspaper lied.
Shoving some clippings around, Jason stopped on a picture of a brown haired guy. It was his brother, Trevor, who had disappeared, on purpose, almost two years ago. He moved his index finger across the face. Every time he held the picture it shocked him how much his mind was trying to erase the memory. The picture was an old one. Trevor had stopped taking pictures way before he left for the streets. He could not remember what Trevor looked like the day he vanished no matter how hard he tried.
Time is the great eraser.
Part of the reason he wanted to runaway was to find his brother if he could. The mystery of it appealed to him much more than facing reality. The newsprint faces stared at him and his mind drifted.
Did Trevor meet the punks in the pictures? Was he one of them now? Or had something else happened, something bad. He couldn’t think about that. It was nicer to believe that Trevor was out there somewhere living a new life free of suburbia.
***
Dolphin Street, began as a short story within the out of print, first edition,
Dark Lands collection.
A horrific after-school special, Escape from Dolphin Street is dark and brutal and was deemed too controversial upon its first release in 2013. Follow runaways into a street punk nightmare in an expansion of my original short story and screenplay. Jason, one of three youths desperate to escape suburbia, is now the main, queer punk, protagonist. This telling has many new scenes, dreams, reworked original scenarios, and an all new ending.
