"The Afterlife Adventures of Four Loonies in a Bin" is an inspirational, social science series about four, mentally ill, institutionalized teen boys chosen to battle Satan. Set in the Pacific Northwest, this series pivots between various decades of the 20th and 21st centuries.
Satan has been confined to SuperVoid Hell because he disobeyed and rebelled against TheOne. Banished from association with the Holy Trinity, NoOne plots his revenge. He wants nothing short of destroying all creation.
The story begins in the year 2030. A publisher inherits a small retail/publishing company from his deceased father. While clearing out old inventory, the son discovers hidden in the attic a detailed manuscript of journal entries written by his father decades ago. In the journal entries, the father recounts his first job out of graduate school in 1980, some fifty years earlier. He was working as a counselor at a mental hospital in Portland, Oregon. His first caseload consisted of four male teens.
One of his father's early journal entries describes a therapeutic camping trip to the Olympic Mountains. It is a four-hour drive north of Portland, Oregon. The staff decide to continue towards their destination, even though the entire Pacific Northwest is on edge. Psychopathic seven-year-old twin boys with unnatural powers have recently escaped from the same mental hospital. The Twins invade homes, kill, and torture indiscriminately. Eventually, the Twins' powers increase, and they are able to decimate entire cities and, in the process, continue to add even more dead souls to NoOne's growing legion. Along the way, the staff talk to the four teen boys about the male quest, rites of passage, and what it means to be a "man." These concepts soon turn to real life tests as the group encounters a variety of challenging and dangerous people and situations: bikers at an off-road cafe, drunken teens partying with rifles at a rest stop, attacks by deadly animals, visitations from Spirits during all hours of the day and night, natural disasters, and an entire town wiped out by the demonic Twins. Even more frightening are the ghouls waiting to test them in NoOne's SuperVoid Hell.
To prevent cosmological catastrophe and repair the damage done by NoOne, the four teens must learn to navigate the "Journey of the Dead," engage with the world of quantum physics, lead Holy Orbs in battle far out in space, and be willing to make the ultimate sacrifice.
About the Author: Phil Mattox is a retired educator living in the Pacific Northwest with his family and 120-lb Goldendoodle, Wally. After receiving his graduate degree from Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington, Phil taught psychology and sociology courses both as a tenured faculty member and as an adjunct instructor for over fifty years; including spending time as Department Chair of the Sociology Department at Clark College.