Me … filling Satan’s vacant throne, Bea “Elsa” Bubb chewed over while chewing offal. Leaving this Hearsery School to claim the underworld’s ultimate seat of absolute, ripe-for-abusing power …
Having eaten a path from the door to the couch, Principal Bubb’s belly ached, her stomach full of stomachs. She lay on the creaking sofa, crossed her hooves, and gazed languidly at the sea of glistening sheep entrails.
But what chance would I have in an honest-to-badness election?
“Principal Bubb?” the simpering demon guard said, his troll peanut head poking through the door. “Are you still asleep? You have a Fretful Distress delivery.” He tentatively entered the chamber and set a padded envelope down on the table.
Wiping bits of boiled sheep from her hairy chin, she studied the tiny package, her name written in a tight, exacting script on the front, the return address reading only “A Friend.” The paper smelled of ozone, of electricity.
She slit the package open with her index talon and plucked out a small, brass earwig with a metal hook attached on top.
An earring?
Just as Principal Bubb was about to fling the envelope at her guard, out fell a small, gleaming heart-shaped pillow of platinum with a girl’s picture inset in the middle.
Principal Bubb cradled the charm in her claws. The principal’s goopy, yellow goat eyes fixed on the tiny picture.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she croaked as the frog in her throat vainly tried to hop out of her mouth. “Marlo Fauster?”
The blue-haired girl with the turned-up nose and mischievous Cleopatra eyes smirked back at the principal from the charm.
The principal shrugged and jabbed the hook of the earring into her scabby earlobe. Immediately, the brass earwig began to buzz.
“Principal Bubb,” a reedy voice with a vaguely Eastern European accent spoke from the bug dangling from her ear. “Hello. I am a charms dealer who has taken an interest in your, shall we say, situation.”
The principal waved her demon guard away.
“Think of me as an invisible puppet master, one who could turn even you into a serious candidate for zhe lowest office in zhe underworld.”
Principal Bubb’s eyebrows rose like a drawbridge, allowing her steely glare to pass beneath like a warship.
“I can turn something zhat zhe cat refused to drag in into something zhat makes voters sit up and go ‘meow,’ ” the mesmerizing recording continued.
Bubbles of joy tickled the back of Bea “Elsa” Bubb’s throat like champagne reflux.
“I won’t lie to you. Zhe competition will be as stiff as a boardroom of cadavers. Especially now zhat, according to my sources, Lilith Couture, zhe former devil’s advocate, has expressed interest in zhe position.”
The principal’s insides bungee jumped several thousand feet.
Lilith Couture, the haughty, hawkish companion to Satan, whose gleaming shark-toothed smile had never known unsightly tartar buildup. Even though she had been demoted to mere “teacher” in Rapacia by Chairman Mammon for letting the Hopeless Diamonds be stolen—which had nearly allowed Rapacia’s former vice principal, the Grabbit, to create a surely calamitous black hole—the thought of Lilith Couture crawling out of her career crypt with those French-manicured fingers to meddle with Bea “Elsa” Bubb’s shot at the big time made every molecule in the principal’s loathsome body well up with disgust.
“But not to worry, Bea,” the mysterious voice droned soothingly. “While Ms. Couture has beauty, charm, poise, eloquence, experience, connections, and a keen intellect, you have something even better.”
“And what’s that?” Principal Bubb asked softly.
“And you may well ask what zhat is,” the recorded voice continued. “It’s your mediocrity! Here’s zhe thing about zhe electorate: You can tax them up to their eyeballs, saddle them with billions in debt, and none of it matters as long as you—just before Election Day—serve them up some idealized caricature of themselves. If you do, John ‘Corpse’ Public will vote you into whatever office you like simply because your homespun, plainspoken villainy reminds him of … him. Zhat’s what zhe broken, maddening masses want, after all: something they don’t have to aspire to. Something they already are.”
Principal Bubb, her eye slits sparkling with kindled ambition, scratched just under the place her lips should have been.
“Who are you?” she murmured to herself.
“Think of me as a friend,” the voice buzzed. “A little bug in your ear zhat’s obsessed with zhe mess zhat is you. You’ll need a makeover, of course. A make-all-over.”
The principal self-consciously patted her scraggly clumps of kelplike hair.
“There’s a little salon I know zhat gives zhe best Marie Antoinette treatments—total head removal. But I don’t think we have to go zhat far. Presenting you as an appealing ‘friend of zhe dead’ won’t be easy. Far from it. But I love a good challenging lump of clay to work with. And you are zhe lumpiest lump I have ever encountered. I’ll be in touch with more motivational messages.”
The earwig earring gave one last rattling remark.
“You won’t forget me when you’re zhe next Big Guy—excuse me, Gal Downstairs, will you?” The recording cut out to the hum of static.
A grin spread across Bea “Elsa” Bubb’s face like an incurable rash. She hadn’t felt this good since before Milton Fauster’s baffling arrival in Heck. She sighed and gave one of Cerberus’s sleeping heads a distracted pat. But, with Milton and his unruly sister secure in Snivel, the Principal of Darkness wouldn’t be unduly distracted by a pair of infuriating Fausters. Instead, she could throw her full weight, of which there was plenty, to the task at hand: becoming the power-drunk ruler of h-e-double-hockey-sticks.
THE FIRST THING Milton felt as he regained consciousness was an incredible, tingling warmth prickling his face and arms. And even though his eyes were closed, he awoke to a brilliant orange light streaming through his eyelids, like a pair of glowing tiger’s eyes staring back at him through fading purple bars. Next, as each of his senses came back online, a tidal wave of electronic chirps, bleeps, gloinks, warbles, and static blasts washed over him.
It sounds like I’m at R2-D2’s family reunion, Milton thought sluggishly. He stirred, wet sand squishing between his fingers, and heaved himself up onto his elbows.
He opened his eyes to daggers of golden light piercing his retinas. His pupils cinched closed like the fists of a greedy baby.
“Oww!” he groaned, vainly trying to shield his eyes from the intense honey light that seemed to ooze from everywhere. Milton could make out beside him the shimmering shapes of his friends as they slowly came to on the sands of some blazing bright shore. The Sunshine Sneezer sneezed himself awake.
“The light … the light,” he mumbled.
“Are you all okay?” Milton asked, his head growing strangely dizzy with each breath.
A strange, muffled voice boomed above him.
“Concern for his team,” the hollow voice rattled. “He’ll be perfect for the collaboration-based multi-players.”
Milton looked up. Bathed in a rippling apocalyptic radiance, as if lit by a perpetual nuclear explosion from above, were eleven fidgety figures, all wearing khaki shorts, berets, sashes festooned with colorful badges, and silver gas masks. The tall figure at the front took off its mask. She was a large girl with dark, gleaming hair. The gas mask dangled by a corrugated tube hooked to a wheezing bellows clipped onto the girl’s belt.
“Well, well, look what the tide brought in,” the girl said, glowering with wide, crazy-dark eyes as her comrades crossed their arms defiantly.
“Invasion FAIL,” a spry, red-haired boy said.
“Invasion?” Milton said, his voice slurred. “We’re not—”
One by one, the figures took off their masks until, crowding around the dazed and damp Unhappy Campers, there was a row of stern boys and girls, their faces spasming with more nervous ticks than an overcaffeinated grandfather clock. T
he children suddenly erupted with laughter.
“Epic!” the red-haired boy laughed, his voice braying, unhinged, like a preteen hyena.
The large girl offered her hand to Milton and tugged him swiftly to his feet.
“Welcome to Arcadia, Nanowatt Plebe,” she said in a husky voice. “I’m Numero Uno. Number One. Also known as Tasha. Leader of the Zetawatts.”
The red-haired boy moved to shake Milton’s hand but instead stopped short and gave him a sort of fist bump with a wiggling thumb.
“I’m Zetawatt Number Two: I know—gross!—don’t flush me!” the boy cackled breathlessly. “You can call me Wyatt!”
An Italian girl helped Sam/Sara to their feet.
“Whoa! Two for the price of one!” she giggled, her left eye twitching up a storm. “Libby. Zetawatt, Level Three.”
As Milton’s eyes adjusted to the brightness, he began to recognize some of the children from the HAVE YOU SEEN ME? posters back in Camp Snivel. Seeing their faces was like meeting Facebook friends in the real world: strangely familiar but mostly just strange. It’s like he shared some imaginary bond with them.
“You’re the missing kids from Camp Snivel,” he said. “Did you all get here like we did? Through the whirlpool in Lake Rymose? Is Marlo here? My sister?”
Tasha, Wyatt, and Libby smirked as they were joined by a skinny, serious-looking girl with long dark hair clipped neatly with a barrette.
“Hazelle … Gigawatt, Level One,” the girl said, giving Milton that weird fist bump/thumb-wrestling move while never taking her intense blue eyes off his. “Only Provost Marshal Tesla is authorized to answer these types of questions, according to the Arcadia Handbook, chapter twelve, paragraph nine.”
“Gigawatts,” muttered Libby under her breath to Milton. “Always memorizing the tutorial before they play … terminally spunk-deprived. Zero Zetawatt potential.”
Milton was now fully awake. In fact, he seemed kind of energized somehow, his head clear and sharp.
“I need to see my sister,” he said, feeling as if he was on the verge of hyperventilating. His head started to throb. “What’s with the light?” He looked up at the sky.
“Don’t look up!” the Arcadians yelled, with Tasha grabbing Milton’s head and covering his eyes. “If you want to see First Fire, you’ve got to use the smoked mirror.”
Hazelle grabbed a dark compact from her utility belt and flipped it open.
“Here,” she said crisply as Tasha uncovered Milton’s face. “Look down.”
Reflected in the smoked mirror was a sizzling ball of glorious fire.
“First Fire?” Milton murmured. “What’s—”
Milton stumbled, his hands and feet tingling. A big, round-faced boy with a dark brown crew cut caught him under the arms before he fell.
“We need to get him a mask,” the boy said to Tasha. “He’s getting too much oxygen.”
“Oxygen?” Milton replied, rubbing his temples.
“It feeds the First Fire,” Wyatt added before he was hushed by Hazelle’s scolding look.
“Hazelle’s right—we need to take them to Provost Marshal Tesla,” Libby said, her freckled cheeks flushed.
Hazelle crossed her arms as she glared at her comrades, her deep-blue eyes framed by blinking LED lights.
“They can’t enter the compound until they take the Gr8 G4m3rz Pledge,” she said sternly. “You all know that. It clearly says as much in the manual, chapter four, paragraph three—”
“Yeah, yeah,” Tasha said as she took a long gold joystick from her utility belt. “Got it. And can you just say ‘Great Gamers’ instead of spelling out all that ‘Gr8—G4m’ stuff? This is taking up too much of our fragtime as it is.”
“Agreed,” Wyatt added shakily, biting his twitching lower lip. “I was racking up a serious body count in Denizen Turpitude.”
Tasha held out the golden joystick.
“If you Nanowatt Plebes would grasp the Controller of Lightning-Quick Response …”
The Unhappy Campers glanced at one another before shrugging and coiling their hands—fist over fist—around the joystick.
“Repeat after me,” Tasha ordered, with the disoriented Milton, Sam/Sara, Caterwaul, Howler Monkey, and the Sunshine Sneezer following obediently.
“On my honor, I will fulfill my duty to the Great Game. To play with the utmost aim, purpose, cunning, and resolve, no matter what gaming platform, what level earned, what character selected, or what armament provided. I believe the Arcadia Great Gamers Club to be the ultimate cheat code to mastering my own powers and targeting the ultimate use for my talents. I humbly offer my rank and influence to the Great Game, in my communities—both virtual and real—and in my contact with others, regardless of avatar attributes, quality of powers, and quantity of lives. To this, I pledge my sacred honor.”
Tasha holstered her joystick.
“By repeating this pledge before your fellow Arcadians,” the tall, wild-eyed girl said solemnly, “you have thusly become an Arcadian, sealing your eternal loyalty to the source code of the Arcadia Great Gamers Club.”
The eleven veteran Arcadians donned their gas masks and leveled their fingers, pointed like guns, at the new recruits.
“Welcome, Nanowatt Noobs,” they chanted as they emptied their finger guns into the skulls of the freshly initiated. “BOOM! Headshot!!”
The sun above flared, then grew temporarily dim. After a few seconds, it returned to its normal sizzle.
Tasha bit her upper lip as she stared at the blazing globe through her smoked mirror.
“It’s almost game time. And this ain’t no beta.”
Milton looked back over his shoulder as the group marched up the steep knoll of ludicrously green grass. Each blade was perfectly uniform, swaying in a meticulous choreography, like the waves of a flawless green sea.
He and the other Unhappy Campers had taken an after-death-defying dive to the bottom of Lake Rymose only to emerge, somehow, on the shores of another lake. While Lake Rymose had been murky, stagnant, and cold, this new lake was a warm, boisterous, clear blue lagoon that was positively Jacuzzi-like. Probably due to Arcadia’s miniature sun, Milton thought. First Fire, they call it.
He watched the sun’s reflection, broken apart into gleaming orange diamonds by the surface of the turbulent lake. It had a discomforting energizing effect, like one of those seasonal affective disorder lamps set on “kill.” This lake also had no Dukkha Wheel. That would explain why we’re all marching practically straight uphill and none of us are even winded. It’s like walking on the moon. Every step is kind of … bouncy.
“Dude, do you need to borrow my gas mask?” Wyatt asked as he tromped beside him.
“No, I’m good,” Milton replied. “The extra oxygen is kind of invigorating—”
“Yeah, until it fuzzes you out inside,” Wyatt said. “But you get used to it … though you still have to be careful. That’s why we have the masks. You start to feel too epic, like your head is going to float off your body.”
“Still, it feels great after Snivel. The air there was so stale and dead … like breathing a moldy bagel.”
“That’s ’cuz Arcadia siphons out lots of the oxygen from there, to help feed the First Fire.”
“Seriously?!” Milton replied, aghast. “That’s unbeliev—”
They cleared the top of the grassy knoll, revealing a dazzling compound comprised of massive, vividly colored buildings. The noise sucker punched Milton in the head. A steady IV gush of video-game sounds surged into Milton’s ears as his brain struggled to define the vibrant hues rushing like a frenzied mob through his eyes.
“—able.”
The nearest building was fifty feet tall, bright yellow and the spitting image of Pac-Man. It was connected to a row of red, turquoise, lavender, and golden ghost-monster structures by a tunnel broken up by blinking yellow “pac-dot” rooms. Beyond those was a cluster of red-and-white-spotted mushroom towers with smaller space-invader-shaped formations radiating an eerie
green glow at their stems. Along the rim of the knoll across the lake was a long, bright-red centipede building surrounded by a colony of other familiarly shaped structures, such as a neon-blue hedgehog, several dark-green frogs, what simply had to be a golden Q*bert building, and—barely visible from the glare—a pair of Italian plumbers at the feet of a gargantuan gorilla skyscraper, with the ape, a red tie cinched around its neck, holding up a coliseum-sized dome. Milton noticed that many of the buildings had similar domes, connected with snaking tubeways and frosted with rows of sparkling solar panels.
Weird, Milton thought. The underworld is the last place I’d expect to run on solar energy.
The downy hair on Milton’s forearms began to rise. Wyatt’s red hair reached up to the sky around his Arcadia beret, like a fuzzy flower opening to the sun. In fact, everyone’s hair began to stick up. Just then, bolts of white-purple chain lightning streaked across the sky from a tower in the distance, looming over the Pac-Man building like a brooding, electromagnetic bully.
“What’s that?” Milton asked, pointing his spiky arm at the structure: a rounded, copper-colored high-rise with a silver, saucer-shaped top. It hummed and crackled like a humongous hive of burning bees.
Wyatt smirked impishly.
“The Coil,” he replied. “Otherwise known as the place you’re headed to.”
Hazelle sidled up to the boys, straightening her badge-bedecked sash and beret.
“Its official name is Provost Marshal Tesla’s Mainframe.”
Her blue eyes, glittering with the blinking lights of Arcadia, gazed at the tower with a mixture of awe and fear.
“And, judging from the fireworks, he’s all juiced up for your arrival.”
MILTON’S MIND REELED as the glass elevator shot up the side of the tower. Arcadia unfolded before him, all streaking colors, glitter, noise, and possibility. It was all too bright, too exciting, too loud, too … everything.
“The First Fire,” Milton murmured to himself, sent alone to see Provost Marshal Tesla. He glanced up at the elevator’s smoked-glass roof, the great ball of flame sputtering above. “It must be what makes this place so overstimulating.”
Snivel: The Fifth Circle of Heck Page 10
