He plucked a scrap of paper from the bulletin board. The flyer had a pathetic picture of a sad little Latin boy from Snivel on it pleading for a pen pal. Someone had drawn a mustache and horns on him and written “Cry Baby” across his face. Milton flipped the piece of paper over and dug into his backpack for a pencil.
“Oww!!” Milton yelped. He sucked his bleeding finger. Cerberus, disguised as Lucky, popped his head out of Milton’s bag and spat out a wicked hiss, fresh blood staining his muzzle red.
“What’s the deal?” Milton sniffed. “You’ve never done that before…You must be hungry.”
Lucky strained to escape the tightly secured knapsack.
“Don’t be a fuzzy little fool,” Milton scolded. “The way you’ve been acting lately, you’d just get caught and fed to that ugly, three-headed dog.”
Lucky growled viciously at Milton. His contact lens cameras flared red like a hot spark before fading back into the creature’s angry stare.
“I’ll get you something to eat in just a second,” Milton soothed while trying to quell an uneasiness he’d never had before with his usually faithful pet.
Milton cased out the cafeterium nervously. It was empty. He took the pencil and scrawled a quick message to Marlo.
He felt good about Operation Up, Up and Away (every mission needed a cool name, Milton thought). Marlo’s escape plan that she had hatched when they first arrived had suffered from the fact that it had never, at any point, been planned. It was just an act of spontaneous bravado. What it had in spunk and daring, it lacked in foresight and follow-through. Virgil’s attempt at freedom actually had a shape. Yet, like its architect, that shape was large, soft, and impossible to wrap your arms around. It depended too much on faith: faith in the map, faith in circumstance, faith in everything just magically falling into place.
Milton still didn’t know what to expect if he did break out of Heck, free from Principal Bubb’s claws. But it almost didn’t matter. The plan itself—specifically the process of solving a problem—gave Milton a purpose. It was the only thing holding him together.
He didn’t have the time—or the space—to go into great detail about the plan in his note, just the specifics important to Marlo: to be prepared tonight, to meet in the cafeterium after the big midnight flush, and that he and Marlo would both storm the Assessment Chamber to grab as many jars of buoyant, blobby lost souls as they could hold.
Milton finished his note and opened the compartment containing the undisturbed slab of liver. The fake ferret wriggled through a breach in the knapsack’s flap to better smell the rancid meat. The creature’s wild eyes again flared red as glowing coals.
Bea “Elsa” Bubb’s surveillance pod rumbled in her sealskin fanny pack. She rubbed her swollen abdomen.
“Darn spotted owl enchilada,” she grumbled. “You never eat it so much as rent it.”
The pod buzzed again, and the digestively distressed principal finally located the rumble’s source.
She fished it out of her pack and flicked it on.
Grainy images flashed across the tiny screen. Cerberus was obviously agitated and the screen was often a trembling blur. But she could make out two key images: one, the words “Marlo” and “escape” written on a note, and two, the slick lump of dark brown meat the note was slid under.
“Liver,” Principal Bubb muttered angrily. “Liver note.”
She jabbed the device crossly with her thumb to turn it off.
The principal rose, kicked off her taxidermied bunny slippers, and stepped toward the door. She stopped, however, in mid-stride, and looked down at Lucky—the real Lucky—twitching irritably in his cage.
“I’m stepping out for a bite to eat, you musky little monster,” she taunted. “Can I get you anything? Perhaps a nice, juicy rodent? Or a heaping bowl of Weasel Chow?”
To a ferret, time is defined as the spaces between meals and naps. Trapped in this tiny cage in this stinky room with the loud, stinky lady, Lucky hadn’t had either since…since the last time he had eaten or slept. The point is that it felt like a really long time.
“Cat got your tongue?” the principal teased. “Oh, how I wish. Well, you look like you could use some slimming down anyhow. I have your best interests at heart, you adorable little coat-to-be. So no matter how much you beg, I promise not to break down and feed you.”
She opened the door and trod out into the hallway. “Ciao!” Bea “Elsa” Bubb chirped with a blithe wave of her claw before slamming the door behind her.
Lucky circled the cage frantically, as if spiraling down an invisible drain. He pressed his head between the bars of his cage, but—again—only got as far as his belly. He was closer this time, though. He could just puke up the paper he had eaten, but the boy thought it very important, and he must bring it back to him, no matter what. So he kept circling and circling and circling well past the point of exhaustion. Just another ounce to go, and he would be free…or be the smelly old bag’s new ferret stole.
32 · GIRLS AND PLOYS
Want to make lots of money and earn swell prizes, too: like this BRIGHT RED SPORTS CAR*1 ? Of course you do! Sell GYP, Heck’s crispest newspaper! In your spare time! Every week! FOREVER AND EVER! Make ten, sometimes twenty Canadian cents a week! We want to get you started on a profitable business of your own! REALLY! NO FOOLIN’!™ As soon as your signature is dry on the handy coupon below, you’ll get stacks and stacks of GYP immediately! And you pay only for the copies you don’t sell! That sounds fair, doesn’t it? Of course it does! Sign NOW, NOW, NOW!
“NO, NO, NO…,” Marlo muttered. She ripped the ad off of the cafeterium bulletin board.
Marlo walked over toward the Automat machines, passing Lyon, Bordeaux, and various snobby bleached-blond preadolescent acolytes.
“It’s probably a good idea to explore other career options,” Lyon snickered, referring to the ad in Marlo’s hand. “You certainly wouldn’t cut it as a singer! Your voice could raise the dead!”
The scary-thin girls cackled sharply.
“I wish,” Marlo said while walking past them.
She stopped in her tracks, her ugly Birkenstocks squeaking to a halt. Bea “Elsa” Bubb was loitering by the Automat machines—looking anxious and out of place—peering into the doors. She never ate here, or at least Marlo hadn’t seen her during the last two…whatevers… here in Limbo. She also noticed that Principal Bubb was trying really hard not to look at Marlo with those creepy, lizard-like eyes of hers. And, of course, her trying not to look like she was looking at her meant that she really was looking at her, peripherally. (Didn’t Milton once say that lizards were good at seeing sideways? Now she wished that she had paid attention to her little brother once in a while.)
Fortunately, Marlo had already read Milton’s note, which she promptly ate. It was probably the tastiest thing down here anyhow.
The principal laid her sick yellow-green eyes on the liver, then leaned against the foul food machine, whistling nonchalantly.
She totally knows, Marlo thought.
Marlo sat down at a nearby table and dashed out her note. Only this wasn’t the note she had intended to write, basically telling Milton that he had a decent idea for once and that she’d meet him later tonight as planned. Instead she wrote the following:
Milton (Fauster, little guy with glasses),
I, Marlo (Fauster, your sister, exotic beauty with unique fashion sense), will most definitely ESCAPE WITH YOU THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW. Your plan to AGAIN GO DOWN THE RIVER STYX is brilliant. So, once more with feeling, SEE YOU THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW.
I look forward to OUR ESCAPE DOWN THE RIVER STYX.
Yours in freedom,
Marlo (Fauster)
She smiled to herself. Brilliant, Marlo reflected with pride. This way anything we do that’s suspicious will just be expected, only Bubba will be at the wrong place at the wrong time.
Marlo pretended to slyly sidle over to the Automat machines, where she openly surveyed the liver, slipped the note underneath, then put it back
in its compartment and closed the door.
Trap baited. Marlo smirked.
She walked past Lyon and her pride, who were simply licking their food and putting it back on their plates to avoid contact with calories.
“Bonjour, ladies.” Marlo smiled as she sashayed out the door. “I really must be going.”
Lyon and Bordeaux gaped at each other. Lyon sneered with indignation that Marlo actually had the gall to address her.
“Whatever, abracadaver,” she called out, much to the malicious delight of her fellow food lickers.
Bea “Elsa” Bubb opened the liver compartment and pulled out the putrid gland and accompanying note. Her serpent eyes narrowed and darkened to red. She crumpled up the note in her shaking fist.
“So I was right,” she seethed. “Escape the day after tomorrow? Not on my shift, sister.”
She shoved the spoiled liver lump into her mouth and chewed it savagely.
“You mess with a demon, you get the horns.”
33 · SWEET DREAMS AREN’T MADE OF THIS
THE HARSH FLUORESCENT lights outside of the Boys’ Totally Bunks flashed on and off.
You have to give credit to Blackbeard, Milton thought between each painful step as he dragged himself toward the bunks. He really knows how to give one heck of a metaphysical workout.
Bea “Elsa” Bubb seemed to emerge from a puff of smoke in the entryway, waving a screeching, ear-splitting bullhorn.
“Lights-out, ladies,” she snorted. “You have a big day tomorrow. You’ll need to get your beauty sleep.”
Inside the filthy bunker, miserable boys were lined up by pitschspork-prodding demons to put on woven-hair pajamas.
“What’s tomorrow?” Milton whispered to Virgil as he stepped into his scratchy nightclothes.
“It’s the first day of the rest of your afterlife, when you find out which circle of Heck you’ll be assigned to,” hissed Bea “Elsa” Bubb, who was suddenly, inexplicably, by Milton’s side. Milton fell over, his pajama bottoms around his ankles, in shock. The other boys laughed to take their minds off the itching.
“I wouldn’t want you to miss a single, gruesome detail,” she said with breath like rotten fish, holding out her claw to help him up. Milton stared at her extended claw and righted himself with clumsy effort.
Damian strutted into the barracks like royalty.
“I’m baaaaaack,” he said while undoing his gold HADES cuff links. “Did you miss me?”
Bea “Elsa” Bubb walked up to Damian and gave him a little pinch on the cheek, then turned to inspect the group of gawking boys.
“Now get in your pajamas, boys, or I’ll be forced to read you some of my poetry.”
The crowd of boys collectively gasped and cleared away from the principal as if she had the plague—which was ridiculous; she had gotten over that years ago.
The throng of boys padded down the dank aisles of the barracks. Principal Bubb herded the boys past a dusty table set with pitchers brimming with murky water.
“Now, boys,” she chirped. “Be sure to drink your special water. It’ll help you sleep.”
She snapped her talons and suddenly the boys were clutching their throats with extreme thirst. They slogged down the foul water, as little rivers trickled down their necks.
Milton put down his pitcher and belched, throwing up just a bit. (Corn? He hadn’t eaten corn in weeks…) He walked over to a bunk with his name etched on it. Damian shoved him harshly aside.
“Oh, joy. We’re bunkmates,” the hulking bully said, staring at his name below Milton’s. “I’ll give you two seconds to climb out of my sight, or else I’ll blow you up again.”
Milton crawled up the rotten rope ladder, which wriggled and swayed in his labored attempt to scale it.
As soon as Milton laid his head on the pillow, serpents slithered from either side of his body, coiling together in the middle to tie themselves into knots, until Milton was bound tight to the bed. The room was filled with the noise of struggling boys.
Bea “Elsa” Bubb stopped short in the doorway on her way out. She cast a giant frightening shadow across the rows of squirming boys.
“I hear Sadia’s very nice this time of year, Mr. Fauster,” she said sweetly. “All the boys have such lovely bruises…”
34·IF YOU SNOOZE, YOU LOSE
MILTON FOUGHT TO stay awake. He did fierce mental battle with a creeping fatigue. Swabbing had mercilessly worked muscles Milton didn’t even know he had.
But resist the velvety fog of sleep he must if he was going to break out of this place, this boil on the butt of the hereafter. So Milton filled his head with exciting things, such as his favorite passage from Moby-Dick:
Yonder, by the ever-brimming goblet’s rim, the warm waves blush like wine. The diver sun goes down; my soul mounts up! She wearies with her endless hill. Is, then, the crown too heavy that I wear? The crown that coils around my head like a ferret, covered with Christmas tinsel, before bursting open with savage demon claws…
Milton jolted awake with a start. The ol’ white whale—which clearly represents the power that limits and controls man—was evidently not up to the task. Instead, Milton filled his mind with thrilling math problems.
A box contains thirty red balls and fifty blue balls. Six balls are randomly selected from the box without replacement. What is the probability of selecting a red ball followed by a blue ball, then a red ball followed by a blue ball, then a red ball followed by a blue ball? Round your answer to the nearest thousandth.
Hmm…let’s see, Milton thought. If the red ball, followed by the blue…wait…how can I count all these when someone is shaking the box…shaking it…shaking…
“Milton!” Virgil hissed while shaking his friend awake.
Milton, again, was abruptly roused from a sleep he didn’t know he was sleeping. Beneath him, the malevolent bulk that was Damian shifted restlessly in his bunk.
“It’s time,” Virgil murmured. “It’s now or never.”
Milton nodded, put on his bent, fractured glasses, and then struggled to free himself from his serpent restraints. He tried getting skinny (a trick he learned from Lucky)…Close but no chocolate cigar.
“Here,” Virgil said. “I got something that might help.”
He reached inside his scratchy pajamas and pulled out a small Styrofoam cup of castor oil. Milton arched his eyebrow at his husky friend.
“You know, in case I got thirsty in the middle of the night,” Virgil replied.
He poured the fishy goop on and around Milton’s unyielding serpents. Virgil poked his pudgy fingers beneath the snakes to better distribute the oil while Milton wriggled. Finally, Milton slithered out of his bunk and onto the cold, marble floor.
As Milton tried desperately to rub off the thick, briny oil, he eyed his friend.
“How did you get out?”
Virgil looked down, his round jowly cheeks flushing red.
“Um,” he whispered, “my snakes were so exhausted from wrapping around me all night, they just…gave up.”
Milton smiled. “See, there are advantages to having an eating disorder coupled with a thyroid condition!”
Virgil grinned back. Just then there was a sizzling hiss from Milton’s knapsack. Milton grabbed his bag off of the bed and clutched it close.
“Quiet, Lucky,” he scolded into the bag, then stared at Damian’s unconscious form for any sign of rousing. “What are you trying to do, get us caught?”
The faux ferret glared back at Milton. Its eyes glowed wickedly in the dark. If glares were a language, this particular one would mean “Yes, I am indeed trying to get you caught.”
“Geez,” mumbled Milton as he strapped the bag to his back. “Whatever’s got into him, I wish it would get out. Let’s scram before Sleeping Bully wakes up.”
Milton and Virgil tiptoed across the Boys’ Totally Bunks floor. They gently nudged open the door, which creaked like an arthritic dinosaur. Inside Milton’s knapsack, “Lucky” was hopping mad, hopping madly.
They sidled against the hallways as stealthily as two boys in hair pajamas possibly could. They were hoping to flee through the cafeterium and break into the Disorientation Center. Unfortunately, two hall demonitors were chatting it up in the hallway between the boys’ classrooms and the cafeterium.
“Okay,” whispered Virgil, “you’re not going to like this, but it looks like we’re going to have to resort to Plan B.”
Milton vibrated with a full-body shudder. “I don’t know what’s worse,” he murmured, “eternal torment or…Plan B.”
35 · DREAM SCHEME
MARLO TROD SOFTLY down the hallway and peered around the corner. Yep, she hadn’t been hearing voices. Just outside the cafeterium several hall demonitors chatted casually to each other about the sorry state of their secondhand pitchsporks.
Hmm, Marlo mused. Looks like Plan B…whatever that is.
But Marlo was always one for improvising. Any criminal artist worth her salt was most inspired when straying beyond the safety of a fully baked plan. Perhaps that was why most of the truly great ones were currently serving time.
She stole back to her bunk with an idea Easy-Baking in her head. Marlo’s serpent restraints were still smarting from her pointy fangs—which had given them both matching hickeys—and recoiled upon her return.
Marlo fluffed up her unfluffable pillow and pretended to be asleep. After a few minutes of snoring to create the appropriate mood, she began to laugh uproariously. She plastered the front of her head with the goofiest, most blissed-out grin imaginable and thrashed about in an approximation of total, unconscious ecstasy.
Lyon stirred and slipped off her blindfold.
“Put a cork in it, thrift store,” she yapped. “Someone as beautiful as me needs lots of sleep!”
Within seconds the hall demonitors stormed into the Girls’ Totally Bunks.
“What’s not wrong?” a slimy white demon that resembled a huge maggot with a goat’s head inquired. “We heard the most terrible sound.”
Heck: Where the Bad Kids Go Page 14
