Snivel: The Fifth Circle of Heck

by Dale E. Basye

  “Yes, Lenore,” she said, stretching out the woman’s name. “It is indeed me, Aubrey Fitzmallow, your stepdaughter-whatever. Apparently the glaucoma has not advanced to such a degree that you failed to recognize your own not-of-flesh-nor-blood legal burden.”

  Lenore gave Aubrey a decent eye roll of her own, accentuated by the woman’s wide, expressive eyes. The woman had a sort of doomed Gothic beauty about her, Marlo thought, as if she were a heroine in one of Vice Principal Poe’s creepy books.

  “The hair, the clothes, are … interesting,” Lenore said with a faint smile. “The attitude not so much.” She sighed. “C’mon. I’m double-parked outside Curl Up and Dye: where you said you’d be.”

  Aubrey abruptly turned to Hans. She took off her silver snake ring, grabbed the boy’s clammy hand, and slid it onto his ring finger.

  “Meet me here tomorrow: same bat time, same bat channel,” she said, crossing the street before locking eyes with Hans over her shoulder. “Or there will be consequences.”

  Hans scratched his head and walked over to a mint-green Camaro parked on the street, staring at Aubrey while fumbling for his keys.

  Sweet ride, Marlo thought, hugging Hans’s shadow.

  As soon as Aubrey and her stepmother turned the corner, Hans put his keys back into his pocket and walked over to the bike rack.

  Marlo snickered, accidentally setting off Hans’s vibe-ringing cell phone buckle. He looked down in front of his bicycle at a girl’s silhouette that spilled out onto the sidewalk like a chalk drawing. Marlo fluttered her fingers like a friendly black spider just before the boy with the flaming red hair fainted.

  THE TERAWATTS WERE crowded together—back-to-back—at the center of the coliseum.

  Milton’s eyes, nose, mouth, ears, and fingers prickled painfully. The colors—vivid reds, oranges, and indigos—slashed at his retinas. The sounds of sizzling torches and labored panting pounded his ears like fists. The scent of sulfur was overpowering. And Milton nearly gagged at the taste of his own fear.

  He couldn’t bring himself to make eye contact with the arched ceiling, a firmament of unflinching stares peering down from the Surface. And the flickering film of light separating “up there” from “down here” was branded Heck: Where the Bad Kids Go. Eternal darnation had been turned into an arcade game, where the misery and toil of dead children were now the diversion and amusement of the living. It reminded Milton of gym class, only writ supernaturally large.

  “M-maybe this will, um … be fun,” Howler Monkey stammered as he gaped at the dank, dripping walls of the expansive stone arena.

  “I don’t get a strong fun vibe from this place,” Milton said, squinting at a thick red liquid oozing from the roughly hewn flint blocks. “And I have a feeling that’s not Cherry Kool-Aid leaking out of the walls.”

  “Look, over there,” Sara said, pointing to a patch of floor a dozen yards to her right. “There’s a big trapdoor or something.”

  On the stone ground was a circular outline with a red number 1 stenciled on it.

  “I wonder if—” the Sunshine Sneezer said just before he was interrupted by the scrape of stone. Two garbage-can-sized openings appeared on the wall nearest the hatch entrance.

  “What’s going on?” murmured Sam, waking from his fear-induced nap.

  Schwoop!

  Suddenly, two canvas sacks shot out of the openings, landing on the floor—one with a thud, the other with a clatter. The gunnysack bundles fell open at the feet of the Terawatts, revealing a heap of weapons and a pile of what looked like armor. Fiery red letters blazed above.

  WEAPON: FIRE MACE

  PROTECTION: UNITY-TARD ARMOR

  WHIRLY-BLADE

  A siren split the silence like a butcher’s knife through a slab of beef.

  Scrench!

  Another gateway slid open with the squeal of stone against stone. This opening was much bigger than the hatchway that the six Terawatts had passed through. Milton had a sickening feeling that the portal was intended to accommodate the passage of something really large.

  “Twenty … nineteen … eighteen …,” a demonic voice boomed from above, while a bloodred digital readout blinked above their heads, counting down.

  Caterwaul began to snuffle back tears. The Sunshine Sneezer, after a quick sniffle himself, comforted her with a pat on the back.

  Milton felt responsible for the suffering of his new friends. After all, he had been the one to lead them here. And, whether this was a killer game or a game intent on killing them, Milton knew it was up to him to somehow lead them out of harm’s way. Out of the Sense-o-Rama. Out of Arcadia.

  “Provost Marshal Tesla!” Milton shouted to the Sense-o-Rama walls. “Can you hear me?!”

  “Sixteen … fifteen … fourteen …”

  “You told me that every game needs rules and that even rule breakers must study the rules they break. So how do you expect us to play a game where we don’t even know the rules?”

  Tesla sighed through speakers set into the stone walls.

  “Fine,” he said, his voice reverberating throughout the arena. “I suppose you deserve to know what you’re in for, especially with zhe unlikelihood of you fighting your way out.”

  “Twelve … eleven … ten …”

  The Terawatts picked through the piles. Milton examined the armor: a weird sort of “muscle suit” studded with tiny brass nodes.

  “Your Unity-Tard,” Tesla said, his voice spilling out into the arena. “It connects your movements to zhe players—”

  “On the Surface?” Milton interjected as he slipped on his armor, looking like some steroid-abusing preteen weight lifter.

  Tesla chuckled.

  “Yes, to zhe Surface. Your movements are controlled by zhe players, while you simultaneously influence zhe decisions of zhe players. Player and avatar fused into one.”

  “Eight … seven … six …”

  “How does it work?” Milton asked as he examined the weapons: a wand with a long chain at the end, ending in a tiny metal cup, and a leather arm strap with a machete-like blade set atop a motor.

  The Terawatts cinched each other’s ridiculously muscled armor. They looked like the Spartan High Glee Club.

  “Zhe Sense-o-Rama stimulates a gamer’s five senses—sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell—to create a fully immersive gaming environment zhat is more than virtual reality. It’s augmented reality: more exciting, more intense, more all-consuming for both player and played.”

  “Four … three … two …”

  “But why?” Milton exclaimed, his upper lip beaded with sweat as he lashed his Whirly-Blade to his forearm.

  Provost Marshal Tesla snickered, his voice exploding like an overtaxed transformer. “How about this, Mr. Fauster: For every level you survive, I will answer a question …”

  More fiery words sizzled from above.

  “Begin Oblivia: Preliminary Sense-o-Round Warm-up.”

  “Now play … as if your afterlives depended on it.”

  A spotlight trained upon the opening of the tall gateway.

  “In a world where injustice, torment, and cruelty flow like tap water,” the demonic voice hissed in a sinister baritone, “where being a kid means being a fugitive from all that is kind and good, one group of children stood alone.… You are about to enter a place—a terrible place—where the souls of the darned toil for all eternity, or until they turn eighteen, whichever comes first.”

  Clop! Clop!

  Hoof-falls echoed, slow and deliberate, from beyond the gateway.

  “Meet your Principal of Darkness—the Great and Terrible Bea ‘Elsa’ Bubb!”

  Milton swallowed. Her name alone had launched a thousand lunches.

  Then, stepping into the light from the gateway was a woman. But instead of the hideous demonic lump held together with sores and spite, this Principal of Darkness was a shapely stunner, clad in bruise-purple leather from head to toe, with brilliant red hair that spilled out across her porcelain face, revealing
one gleaming green eye peering from beneath. Her wings—wasplike pinions marked with skulls and crossbones—fluttered faintly with simmering malice.

  “Unwelcome to Heck,” the woman purred. “Population … you.”

  Florch!

  A great plume of fire and smoke erupted in front of her. As the dense black smog cleared, an ornate iron gate appeared, decorated with spikes, skulls, and barbed wire.

  “This cozy little place is for despicable little brats such as yourselves to be rehabilitated and punished: mostly punished,” the faux Bubb said as she strutted through the gates, swishing her long, pointy tail. “So that when your souls reach maturity, they can be judged and sentenced to the full extent of the law.” She snickered, revealing a mouth full of gleaming white fangs. “That is, if you ever reach maturity!” She threw back her head and laughed, disappearing in the shadow surrounding the spotlight as a bell tolled. The ground shook beneath the Terawatts’ feet as a small army made its way through the large gateway across the arena.

  Roarg!!

  Suddenly, bursting into the spotlight were six hulking, snorting, eight-foot-tall demons brandishing deadly pitchforks, their keen tines glinting in the glare.

  The creatures’ backs were hunched, their skin deep green and reptilian with coarse red fur thatched from below their chests down to their three-toed talons. Pointy ears protruded from their bald, roundish heads, a single horn sprouting from their crowns. They gaped at the Terawatts, jaws dripping with saliva, and their blank, pale-yellow eyes squinted like creatures of the night unaccustomed to the brash antagonism of light.

  Milton felt his Unity-Tard twitching, forcing him forward. His friends soon followed, awkward and stiff as they fought against their player-controlled armor. The demon creatures fanned out, circling the Terawatts.

  Grunt! Snarl!

  Milton desperately studied his Fire Mace. On the chain wand was only one control: Ignite. Milton thumbed the switch and a small ball of fire blazed in the metal cup at the end of the dangling chain.

  “How does a Fire Mace work, anyway?” Sara said as she squared off against a demon that had singled out her and her brother.

  “Like this,” the Sunshine Sneezer said with an elfin grin.

  He spun his sizzling fireball over his head and hurled it at the nearest demon.

  Zort!

  The fire exploded across the creature’s chest. Though it yowled in pain, the demon quickly recovered. It sprang at the Sunshine Sneezer with its pitchfork, scratching the boy’s upper arm.

  “Oww!” he yelped as he staggered back. “What good is this dumb armor, anyway?”

  Howler Monkey twitched and scooted forward.

  “Some idiot up there keeps, like, forcing me straight into those demons!”

  Milton could feel it, too. The gamers above wanted to send their avatars into a battle that the Terawatts didn’t want to fight. Milton toggled a switch on his arm from Off to Slow to Fast. The Whirly-Blade attached to his forearm began spinning.

  “A shield!” he said. “The blade moves so fast that it’s nearly solid!”

  Milton surrendered to the will of his player and lurched forward. A demon reared back, straightening its ridged hump, then jabbed its pitchfork into Milton’s whirring shield.

  Skutch!

  The pitchfork glanced against it with a shower of sparks, throwing Milton back into his friends.

  The flash of sparks seared Milton’s eyeballs. The smell of sweat … the sound of grunts … the electric prickle of his Unity-Tard … all of Milton’s senses were heightened. His feverish mind fought to keep up.

  Yowl!

  Caterwaul screamed in agony. Milton whipped around to see her lying on the ground at the other end of the Sense-o-Rama, rubbing her bleeding thigh. He fought the electrical shocks goading him into combat, and instead rushed to Caterwaul’s side.

  “It … it jabbed me away from the rest of you,” she said as Milton helped her to her feet. “Then my suit got scared or something. I started running and I couldn’t stop myself.”

  Milton looked back at his group of friends as they were prodded apart by the snarling demons. The beasts panted with excitement.

  “They’re trying to separate us!” Milton shouted as he pulled Caterwaul back to the group. “We need to work as one.”

  The Terawatts huddled together, back-to-back, as the demon beasts took turns tirelessly butting their massive pitchforks against the children’s spinning-blade shields.

  “This isn’t a … strategy,” Sam said as he drifted in and out of consciousness.

  Unfortunately, Sam’s right, thought Milton as a shower of sparks pelted his forehead. He looked down at the controls of his spinning blade, set to Fast. An idea popped into his head. Milton flicked his switch to Slow and heaved himself forward. His demon opponent was taken aback, but after sizing Milton up with its soulless yellow eyes, it roared and charged.

  The demon thrust its pitchfork at Milton’s chest.

  Whoosh!

  Milton caught the creature’s weapon between the slow-moving blade of his shield and his forearm. Milton jerked himself back, grimacing in pain as he grabbed the pitchfork with his other arm, disarming the demon.

  The other Terawatts grinned, reset their shields, and charged.

  “Aaaaarrrrggghhhhh!!” they yelled, throwing themselves upon the demon horde. The confused beasts retaliated with a frenzied pitchfork assault that soon left them empty-clawed.

  “Epic, as Wyatt would have said,” Sara said triumphantly, beaming at Milton with her sweat-shiny face. “Now what?”

  The demon beasts stalked closer, their ridged backs arched, cloven hooves stomping the floor. One of the creatures swiped the air with its talons, claws so sharp that the air whistled back in a howl.

  “I think the only w-way that we’d totally disarm them,” Caterwaul said shakily, “is if we ripped off th-their actual arms.”

  The counterfeit Bea “Elsa” Bubb sashayed out through the gates.

  “Tsk-tsk,” she said with a shake of her brilliant red hair. “And I’ve told my whittle demon babies not to play with their food.”

  The wanna-Bea rose to her hooves and, with a crack of her whiplike tail, she swept toward the large gateway, cackling.

  The assault of sensations was giving Milton a full-body migraine. He felt as if he were on the verge of shorting out, like all five of his senses were appliances plugged into the same overloaded power strip.

  That gateway must lead somewhere. If we can just distract the demons long enough to make a break for it …

  Milton examined his Fire Mace. He leaned in close to Caterwaul. “On the count of three, we throw fireballs above their heads, right above the tall one in the middle, then run for the gateway. Pass it on.”

  Caterwaul nodded and whispered to Howler Monkey next to her. Milton flicked on his Fire Mace. As Sam/Sara got the message to Milton’s right, Milton drew in a deep, sulfurous breath.

  “One, two … three!”

  Flizzle!

  The six Terawatts slung their fireballs above. Streaking the air with sooty contrails, the fireballs exploded in a blinding hot blaze.

  Splorch!

  The beasts grabbed their stinging eyes and yowled in pain.

  “Now!” Milton yelled.

  The Terawatts dashed to the gateway. As they crossed the circular outline on the floor, it opened beneath their feet. They screamed as they tumbled down a corrugated metal shaft. The shaft coiled and twisted for a few hundred feet until ending at another hatchway.

  The Terawatts fell through the hatch and rolled onto a smooth, bile-green floor in another arena, its walls pulsing in sickly green throbs.

  “Ten … nine … eight …,” the demon emcee hissed.

  Milton looked up. Again, they were scrutinized by a star field of glazed eyeballs.

  “Where are we?” Caterwaul murmured, rising from the floor.

  A flickering film of light appeared above. Twinkling red lights formed letters.


  “Three, two, one. Begin Oculux: Sense-o-Round One …”

  Two bells tolled, and as their clang reverberated to one last shallow echo, the chamber filled with the bogus Bubb’s wicked laughter.

  IT WAS AS if the universe were holding its breath. This new arena—Oculux—was eerily still and silent save for a barely audible, subsonic thrum. Whoo-whoo-whoo …

  Milton noticed a figure across the bile-green coliseum. A person, curled up in a fetal position.

  “Look,” he said to his teammates, pointing across the dim room. “Do you see that?”

  “Yeah,” Sara answered, though her stare was fixed at the rim of the ceiling. “But there’s something else. It looks like a bunch of big eyeballs.”

  “You mean the players on the Surface?” Milton replied.

  “No, you chowderhead,” Sam spat back. “This is something new. Something worse.”

  Milton looked above but his vision was blurred, as if he had been crying.

  “Keep your eyes on the Vizzigorths,” the sultry game version of Principal Bubb warned with mock concern, “because they’ve certainly got their eyes on you.”

  Milton could make out trembling clusters of large, faintly luminous bubbles—hundreds of them, twitching along the rim of the ceiling.

  Glizzle!

  Suddenly, the arena was filled with a molten surge of sparkles. Each glittering speck of light hovered around the children, equidistant like a sky full of orderly stars not wanting to encroach on one another’s personal space. “It’s like we’ve been submerged in some sort of disco hair gel,” the Sunshine Sneezer said.

  “They’re kind of pretty,” Sara said as she reached her hand toward the nearest sparkle, “almost like fairies that—”

  Zap!

  “OWWW!!” Sara yelped. She massaged her smoldering hand.

  “Fairies that bite,” Sam whimpered, sharing the same nervous system as his sister.

  Milton studied the floating motes of light.

  “If we’re careful,” he said, stepping forward, “maybe we can squeeze past them and—”