Heck: Where the Bad Kids Go

by Dale E. Basye

  Milton’s eyes were as glazed as doughnuts.

  Principal Bubb handed them two long, black glistening pens.

  Milton and Marlo gulped as one and reluctantly took the strangely soft pens. The instant their fingers wrapped around them, two small serpent heads emerged from either end. One end of each sunk its fangs into the forearms of the siblings. Milton and Marlo screamed as the pens drew blood. The heads at the far end of each “pen” grinned widely and reached toward the contract, signing Milton’s and Marlo’s names in bright, wet crimson.

  As soon as the signatures were drawn, the snakes uncoiled and slithered out of the children’s hands and back into Principal Bubb’s top drawer. Clutching their throbbing arms, Milton and Marlo sniffed back tears. Bea “Elsa” Bubb took the contracts and with a wave of her claw, conjured two copies out of thin air. The principal clacked over to her file cabinet and tucked all four documents away.

  “There…signed, sealed, and delivered,” she said with a cackle. “You are now officially mine in every possible way—and a few impossible ways—for all eternity, or until you turn eighteen, blah blah blah…”

  Milton and Marlo wept silently.

  “Now, now,” she said as she sat back down in her chair. “I can’t stand to see young people cry…So go away. We’re done here.”

  Milton and Marlo stared at each other through blurry eyes, baffled. Principal Bubb, ignoring the two children as if they had suddenly ceased to exist, pulled a dark chocolate, double-fudge, triple-nougat, quadruple-caramel, peanut-butter candy bar from her bottom drawer and took a massive bite. Gooey strands of pure deliciousness hung from her fangs. Despite their newfound distrust of Heck candy, the two siblings gasped with unconcealed desire. Dying sure gave one a hearty appetite.

  “Hungry?” she asked with mock sweetness, like a diet soda. “Go to the cafeterium down the hall, stuff your repugnant little faces, and await your official disorientation.”

  Cerberus yapped and leapt back into her lap. One of his heads (the least hideous one) licked Bea’s pointy, leathery ear.

  “What’s that, sweetums?” she cooed. Cerberus whimpered softly. “Oh, that’s right! It’s time for our show!”

  Bea “Elsa” Bubb jiggled the remote and brought all of the screens back to life. Each featured the same image: a pitchfork against a backdrop of fiery brimstone. Beneath, in drippy red letters, read URN: THE UNDERWORLD RETRIBUTION NETWORK. The image dissolved in a curtain of pure flame.

  The show’s announcer bellowed with a voice like a rusty foghorn: “Here he is, the Dark Angel you love to hate (and hate to admit you love), Mephistopheles, the Lord of Darkness, call him what thou wilt, just don’t call him late to Revelation…Ladies, gentlemen, and lesser demons, give it up for Luuuuuuuucifer!!”

  Milton and Marlo looked at each other and shrugged. Milton noticed an exit nestled between two banks of filing cabinets. He smacked his sister on the shoulder (which was easy considering he was still mad at her), and the two siblings crept across Principal Bubb’s lair, leaving her to ogle with glazed goo-goo eyes the supremely evil object of her affection, that devilishly handsome hunk of Hades: the Big Guy Downstairs.

  5 · THE NOT-SO-GREAT ESCAPE

  MILTON AND MARLO walked cautiously down the hallway that would, in theory, lead them to the cafeterium. The winding, uneven passageway smelled like a hospital, full of that ammonia, rubbing alcohol, and sickness reek that stung your eyes and sunk your spirits.

  Yet instead of a place to eat, Milton and Marlo emerged into a cluttered, indoor playground—a FOUL PLAYGROUND, if the faltering neon sign was to be believed.

  Warped hula hoops, two-wheeled tricycles, deflated basketballs, not-so-Hot Wheels, well-mannered Bratz, way-too Raggedy Anns, powerless Game Boys, ex-Xboxes, and an astounding collection of Russian poetry lay scattered across the dingy gray carpet. Pressed close above was a crumbling checkerboard of asbestos tiles and glaring fluorescent light fixtures.

  Milton and Marlo passed through waves of depressed children. It was like they had stumbled upon a Disneyland for the doomed, the unhappiest place on earth, though they were miles below earth…or to the side of it…or wherever. Milton still wasn’t sure if he was anywhere at all. All he knew was that he, or the person he used to be, or the person he thought he used to be, was hungry. Did he still have a stomach? Did he really need to eat? Or was appetite simply some ingrained habit, like his compulsive nail biting and unrelenting need to brush exactly one hundred times after each meal?

  “Unholy moly.” Marlo snickered. “Get a load of that!”

  With her shiny black fingernail Marlo pointed toward a group of large shaggy creatures lumbering into the foul playground and scooping up the younger children in their arms. The toddlers wriggled and screamed. The creatures were obviously, to Milton’s eleven-year-old eyes, simply people in costumes—thick greenish fur that looked like glowing, overgrown tree moss, spiny orange horns, one big red glowing eye, and rows of plastic yellow teeth. They weren’t even particularly scary costumes, but they were frightening enough to soil the Underoos of Heck’s younger unfortunates.

  Marlo chuckled. “What’s that getup supposed to be, anyway? A Boogeyman or something?”

  One of the costumed creatures stopped and removed its head.

  “That’s Boogeyperson,” hissed a hideous, decomposing demon with goopy yellow eyes, a moist snout, and lipsticked lips covered with cold sores.

  The creature resecured its head and shambled after its fellow Boogeypeople.

  Milton and Marlo quivered with fear.

  “Wow,” Marlo managed between chattering teeth. “Lucky for the runts those super-freaky gross things are in disguise…Now where the heck are we? I’m so hungry I could eat a horse with a side of ponies.”

  The Boogeypeople dragged the terrified toddlers to a large room with glass walls on the edge of the foul playground. Above the sliding glass door was a rusty sign caked with peeling lead paint: KINDERSCARE: WHERE LITTLE KIDS GET BIG NIGHTMARES. Inside there was a haggard teacher, with claw marks on her face and a few jagged bites taken out of her midsection, putting several weeping tykes down for their naps in coffins made of gingerbread. The teacher limped to the door and flipped over a sign that read: BEWARE: KID NAPPING IN PROGRESS.

  Marlo stared at the sign while rubbing her chin. Milton tugged on her singed velvet skirt.

  “Look, over here.”

  Milton led his sister to an illuminated map beyond the KinderScare facility and the Unwelcome Area, just inside the Gates of Heck.

  “Hmmm…” Marlo muttered as she traced her finger from the blinking red You Are Here dot on the map to the cafeterium, an oval blob that connected to a room labeled “Disorientation Center.” “That’s weird,” she continued. “Everything below the Disorientation Center is grayed out.” Indeed, the semicircle—half of the subterranean campus of Limbo—was “censored” with an obnoxious little label plastered over the gray: “Wouldn’t You Like to Know?!”

  Behind the KinderScare facility was the infirmary and, just beyond, a bright square indicating Bea “Elsa” Bubb’s office. Behind it was a long rectangle marked “Principal Bubb’s Secret Lair.”

  Marlo straightened suddenly. “I’ve got an idea.”

  Milton’s phantom stomach stopped, dropped, and rolled. “Don’t you think that maybe you’ve had enough brilliant ideas for one day?” Milton posed as tactfully as possible. “Perhaps we should just relax and, you know, assess our situation. How about that?”

  “What?” Marlo glowered, her china doll–like face creased with a sour look of someone at least three times her age. “You don’t think I can get us out of here? That just because I’m not a little book maggot like you, I don’t have the smarts to plot an escape? Me, who managed to steal the entire window display at Dullard’s not once but five times without being caught?”

  Milton sighed. He was doomed.

  “Didn’t one of your great ideas put us here in the first place?” he asked.

 
Marlo looked over her shoulder toward the KinderScare facility.

  “Like I could have known a marshmallow bear would pack that much explosive power. There should really be a law against—”

  “Against shoplifting and fooling your little brother into becoming an accessory?” Milton interjected.

  Marlo leaned down to Milton and pinched his cheek. Then she smoothed out her dress and placed her hand between his shoulder blades, where Milton more than likely would have sprouted wings some day if his sister hadn’t screwed up his life everlasting.

  “Really, it’s a good plan,” Marlo stated with conviction. “Besides, if it doesn’t work, what are they going to do, extra-double-with-chocolate-jimmies-sprinkled-on-top punish us?”

  They made their way toward KinderScare and peered through a window made blurry with filthy handprints and goopy snot smears. Rows of fussy porcelain knickknacks and potpourri bowls sat on mantelpieces lining the peeling walls—walls that were covered with patches of mildew.

  Most of the toddlers were pretending to be asleep in their frosted gingerbread coffins. Some were clutching each other, screaming as Boogeypeople read them alternating selections from Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” and Danielle Steel’s Toxic Bachelors. A small group of sickly preschoolers with dark circles under their eyes trembled in a corner, trying to kick their addiction to phonics.

  “Remember,” Marlo said, glancing over her shoulder as she approached the KinderScare facility, “follow my lead.”

  Milton could only imagine where that lead would lead to.

  Marlo burst into the room. The Boogeypeople on duty looked at the door, like owls at the sight of a scurrying rodent.

  Marlo noticed a sullen child with a mop of matted black hair. The eyes were wrong, she thought, but it would have to do.

  “My precious baby!” Marlo squealed hysterically as she rushed toward the child. “Your loving mother is here to right the terrible wrong that has been done to us!”

  She scooped the wriggling child into her arms.

  “You not my mama,” the child protested in a grating whine that even a real mother would have had trouble loving.

  Marlo covered the little brat’s mouth and squeezed the child tightly to her chest while Milton hovered in the doorway.

  “There, there, my little miracle,” she cooed as the child—who smelled like cooked cabbage—struggled in her arms. “It’s all right to be confused. No child should have to go through what you went through, my sweet bundle of angel giggles.”

  The Boogeyperson in charge took off its shaggy green head, exposing the wretched beast within. Children screamed and backed away desperately.

  “What is going on here?” the reptilian demon hissed.

  Marlo held up her head defiantly. “I am here for my baby. Nothing can come between a mother and her son—”

  “Daughter,” the creature countered. Behind the creature, a small sandy-haired boy sidled toward a locked chest.

  “Whatever,” Marlo continued. “I’m highly distraught. The point is that family ties can never be severed.”

  Milton, still in the doorway, silently wished that they could at least be stretched.

  The Boogeyperson scrutinized Marlo. Without even turning its disgusting head, it swatted the sandy-haired boy away from the chest.

  “I told you, Julius,” the creature said, “you cannot have your things. They are only there in the chest to torment you.”

  “B-b-b-ut,” the boy stuttered with flecks of spittle on his cracked lips, his eyes wild, “m-m-my flash cards…m-m-my…phonics…”

  “Go play Duck, Duck, Noose with the other children,” the Boogeyperson said, never taking its hot, beady eyes off Marlo. “Aren’t you a little young to be someone’s mother?”

  Marlo looked back at Milton expectantly. He drew a weary breath and shambled into KinderScare.

  “Um,” stammered Milton, “she—my sister—is rather old for her age. She comes from a broken home and has made a lot of really stupid decisions in her life. Incredibly stupid. I mean, it’s surprising to think a human brain was actually involved in some of the idiotic things—”

  “Thank you, dear brother,” Marlo said with a cold glare. “I think the Boogeyman gets the point.”

  “Boogeyperson!” the creature spat.

  “Ou smell funny,” the fidgety child mumbled from behind Marlo’s hand. “Like a s’more.”

  “You’re so cute I could just squeeze the life out of you,” Marlo said.

  Another Boogeyperson joined its supervisor, removing its head to a second chorus of young shrieks.

  “So how did your ‘bundle of angel giggles’ get here, anyhow?” the demonic day-care worker asked skeptically.

  Marlo smoothed down the child’s hair as it tried to swat her hand away. “Um…running around a swimming pool…on a full stomach…with scissors.”

  Marlo cradled the squirming child in her arms and slowly backed away toward the front door.

  “And, after drowning my sorrows with a fistful of Pop Rocks and a pint of extra-fizzy ginger ale, I ended up here, on a rescue mission to save my baby.”

  Marlo trotted quickly out the door, straight to the Gates of Heck, with Milton and the Boogeypeople close behind.

  “Put me down, koo-koo pants!” the child whined like a dentist’s drill.

  Soon the foul playground was full of children, demons, and Boogeypeople alike, all gawking at Marlo as she raised the twisting tot above her head.

  “Attention, freaky creatures of Heck!” Marlo bellowed. The growing throng of agitated onlookers pressed Milton close to his sister. “Open this gate so me and my son—”

  “Daughter!” yelled several Boogeypeople.

  “Whatever! Open this gate now or else I will be forced to do something…something really bad. Something only a grief-crazed mother would do…”

  The demons pressed closer. The surrounding mob and the queasy feeling in Milton’s stomach gave him a profound sense of déjà vu, as if he were right back up at the mall. But could you really have déjà vu for something that had only just happened?

  Marlo’s eyes grew wide. “Help me out here,” she murmured from the corner of her mouth.

  “I will if you admit you have a knack for hatching really stupid plans…”

  “Sure…”

  “…and I’m complimenting you by even considering them ‘plans’…”

  “All right already!”

  Milton swallowed and stepped forward.

  “Demons, caregivers, despondent children…I beseech thee. Do not judge my emotionally unstable sister by her actions. Judge her instead by the savage injustice of her situation.”

  The agitated horde of demons calmed somewhat.

  “Imagine, if you will, that the one thing that meant anything to you at all was suddenly taken from you in a senseless tragedy. Imagine the lengths you would go to retrieve that which was stolen from you.”

  A Boogeyperson wiped a tear from its eye.

  “So please,” Milton said with a dramatic sweep of his arms. “Let us go free before a tortured mother is forced to do the unspeakable…hurt the very thing she loves the most in this and all worlds.”

  Unbeknownst to the Fausters, a fuzzy white head poked out of Milton’s backpack. Lucky sniffed yet another outraged mob and had his own furry bout of déjà vu. He bared his teeth.

  The crowd backed away a step. Milton and Marlo gaped at each other.

  “Wow, runt,” Marlo whispered. “You certainly have a way with words. I should have exploited that more fully when we were alive.”

  Just then a bell tolled, and the Gates of Heck slowly creaked open. Puffs of smoke gusted into the Unwelcome Area. The child in Marlo’s arms took the opportunity to bite her captor’s hand, struggle to the floor, and wriggle away.

  “Oww!” Marlo yelped, clutching her torn lace sleeve. “You ungrateful little son of a—!”

  “Daughter!” barked a Boogeyperson at the front of the tense crowd, snatching
up the child.

  “Whatever,” mumbled Marlo as she turned toward the opening gates.

  “If you’ve lived a life so bad,

  that you drove your parents and teachers mad…”

  “Not again!” whined a little red-haired boy near the gate, clapping his hands over his ears. The lounge lizards had again taken to their tiny stage. What a miserable gig, Milton thought.

  “Where all the bad kids go.

  Down…”

  The smoke cleared. Out limped a dark smudge of a boy. A cruel boy. A boy all too familiar to Milton. A boy whose name was still Damian.

  With bandages wrapped around his head and a cast on his leg, Damian emerged from the cloud like a brawny mummy.

  Milton’s jaw dropped open. “Oh my God…”

  “I doubt if he can hear you,” Marlo said, rubbing her hand.

  Damian hobbled through the crowd, which parted for him in realization that Heck had a new alpha bully. Damian grinned a rotten, snaggletoothed grin at his new subjects. Where others saw only broken toys and brimstone, Damian saw opportunity.

  “Cool!” he snorted.

  Damian then caught sight of the Fausters. His face became a mask of amused malevolence.

  “Well, well. If it isn’t little Milquetoast, the four-eyed freak.”

  As Damian the mummy limped closer, Marlo said to Milton, “Is this that bully you’re always talking about, the one with a little something extra in the chromosome department?”

  “Zip it, corpse bride,” Damian spat.

  Milton shook his head in total bewilderment. “How did you get here? I mean, I know why—obviously—as you’re a terrible, terrible person, but…”

  “Well, after the…incident,” Damian said while absentmindedly twirling one of the soiled bandages unraveling from his head, “which ruled, by the way, I was taken to the hospital and hooked up to a machine. Some idiot tripped on the cord and unplugged me. It’s all a little hazy. I think I saw a gigantic stick of butter holding a balloon that said “Get Butter Soon!” Or maybe it was just my stepuncle. That stingy jerk.”