Jackie and Craig (Literature)

"Wherever we go, Hell seems to follow."

Jackie and Craig is a Young Adult Horror/Urban Fantasy novel by Kent J. Starrett, published on Devil's Eve of 2017. The story follows the hell-raising tomboy Jacqueline Parker and the perpetually terrified Craig Steiger, two grossly mismatched sixth-grade friends who discover that bizarre creatures emerge during the night in their hometown. Taking it upon themselves to clear Shadow Creek of its unholy infestation, Jackie and Craig set about creating an arsenal of improvised weaponry to slaughter their way through the hordes of progressively trippier and trippier "abominations" as they try to win friends to help in their lone stand against the increasingly oppressive otherworldly onslaught. It was followed by a sequel two years later, Teenage Wastelands: The Rise and Fall of the Sky Valley Cult, which took a different direction and focused on the surviving characters facing a compound full of savage, warmongering psychic teenagers.

This novel provides examples of:

The '90s: Takes place sometime in the late spring/early summer of 1997.
Aerith and Bob: Jackie, Craig, Amy and Will are stuck slumming it with Talon, Screech and Fang for the middle third of the novel.
Abhorrent Admirer: Fang is implied to have a creepy crush on Craig, though it's not dwelled upon for very long.
Admiring the Abomination: Jackie's a bit taken with the creatures, at first.
Alien Blood: Creatures bleed black, grey, translucent, electrical sparks, and (in one case) flammable fuel of some kind, presumably to prevent the book from traumatizing its target preteen audience. Whether this is more or less traumatizing, well...you be the judge.

An Aesop: Life is full of tragedy, which is just what makes the few bright spots so much more precious. Also, in the face of the universe's cold, senseless indifference, we must cherish our few connections with others and accept them for their flaws.
Arc Words: "They're just flesh and blood, like we are. Just flesh and blood." Variants on 'Flesh and Blood' show up throughout the book, after a Chapter titled as such.
Black-and-Gray Morality: How the Maraw Sorceresses view Jackie and Craig against Jykunne's Horde, since Jackie and Craig are at least from the same species as they are. It doesn't stop them from referring to Jackie and Craig as "animals," "beasts" or "meat," however. Alternately...
Black Comedy Cannibalism: The Cannibalistic Teenage Witches Talon, Screech and Fang maintain their immortality through humanitarian means.
Blue-and-Orange Morality: Jykunne briefly explains his motivations, telepathically. Craig says it hurts to think about.
Book Dumb: Craig gets straight C's, as the stresses of the bullying he endures takes too much of his energy for him to do well in school. Contrast with Jackie, who is implied to be Brilliant, but Lazy.
Body Horror: The Omnisarcos, Jykunne's all-devouring amoebic mass of mangled corpses. Also the revolting, semi-sentient parachildren.

Crapsack World: Rampant bullying, idiot adults, wild monsters, obscene Lovecraftian deities and a shadowy secret society dedicated to hushing it all up. Life is hard, man.
Creepy Child: Craig recalls one of the children in Village of the Damned (1960). He attributes this to why people hate and avoid him, although Jackie likes it enough to drag him along on all her mischievous escapades.

Deliberate Values Dissonance: Late-90's homophobia shows up here and there, as do words like "retard" and other now very unacceptable terms.
Disappeared Dad: Craig's dad vanished when he was ten. It's implied he abandoned them because of something "wrong" with Craig, though what exactly he didn't like is never made clear.
Dysfunction Junction: Jackie's parents are dead, Craig's mom works all the time, and all the other potential moral guardians are very amoral and do very little guarding.
Early-Installment Weirdness: Compared to the rest of the Franchise, this one is markedly different. This is a quirky, coming-of-age horror/comedy and the rest of the franchise is a Diesel Punk Urban Fantasy about gangs of feral (sometimes supernaturally powerful) children at war with an insidious secret society. It extends even to the style - Jackie and Craig is all from Craig's perspective and The Rise and Fall of the Sky Valley Cult hops point-of-view to reveal more of the setting and history. Nothing about Jackie And Craig implies the world it takes place in is anything other than The '90s with cryptids running around, while the Alternate History aspects of Sky Valley are completely integral to the plotline.

Family-Unfriendly Death: Monsters are disemboweled, decapitated, dismembered, skull-split, set ablaze and dissected. But they're not human, and they bleed black or green, so the effect is lessened...somewhat.
Free-Range Children: Parents seem almost nonexistent in this world.
Foreshadowing: Jackie's constantly 'blasting' off her inhaler, and an asthma attack is ultimately what kills her in the end.

Framing Device: A fictionalized Kent John Starrett frames the story as having been something Craig actually recounted to him, hence the colloquial language the book is told in.
Grey-and-Grey Morality: Humans vs. Monsters for territory and mere survival. There's really not much outside of biology to seperate the two, and Will makes a point of the irony of this.
Hellish Pupils: Chupacabras have red eyeshine, while Parachildren have white ones.

Lock-and-Load Montage: Chapter Five, "Preparing For War," is this for Jackie and Craig, as is "Syzygy" for the friend group in general.

Masculine Girl, Feminine Boy: Jackie listens to hard rock and heavy metal, steals and swears like a sailor, while Craig is terribly sensitive, quiet and (when he does talk) nervously soft-spoken.

The Men in Black: The S.S.C., a shadowy organization that suppresses the truth about paranormal phenomena worldwide.
Mood Whiplash: Goes from standard Slice of Life in the 90's to Lovecraft Lite in literally the first page of Chapter Four.
Only a Flesh Wound: Jackie, Craig, and various other characters get seriously slashed up for a book that's nominally for preteens and young adults.
Our Cryptids Are More Mysterious: Most of the creatures are pulled from Urban Legends. Chupacabras, Mothmen, a Slenderman Expy and Rods all show up at one point or another.
Perky Goth: Jackie's pretty vicious, but a bit energetic and affectionate to Craig all things considered.
Period Piece: The 90's Nostalgia is laid on pretty thick.
Political Overcorrectness: The very first scene has an elderly woman sending Craig into a panic attack because she screamed at him for using the Lord's name in vain.

Shout-Out: Crash Bandicoot, Spyro the Dragon, a whole slew of 90's cartoons and various grunge bands and classic rappers all get the first-name treatment.

Theme Song: Jackie's favorite song is "Bitch" by Meredith Brooks. She dances to it at one point.
Tome of Eldritch Lore: Talon's Diary, which she keeps chained to her wrist. A combination of a teenage girl's Secret Diary and a record of unholy black magic and mad science experiments, it's pink has a heart drawn around the Necronomicon Sigil on the front. Craig gets a glimpse of the inside and sees crude diagrams of people vivisected in human sacrifice.

Totally Radical: Jackie speaks in a constant stream of stoner/skater slang.
Uplifted Animal: Some of the creatures are sentient, to varying degrees. Though we see very little of it, it is implied some of them have native cultures and are slave races to Jykunne.
Vain Sorceress: Talon, Screech and Fang take great pride in their discolored skin, jagged teeth and wild hair.

You Should Have Died Instead: Craig feels this way about himself by the end of the story.