Snivel: The Fifth Circle of Heck

by Dale E. Basye

  The principal twirled a pistol holstered to her cutoff jeans, then judged the Terawatts with a sour face.

  “Though the Nyarlathorp may be a creature of taste, it exhibits very little when considering its next meal.”

  She laughed, a sharp explosion of one-sided mirth.

  “You.”

  “What do you think?” the real Bea “Elsa” Bubb nervously asked her demon stagecoach driver, a bucktoothed shrew with scales, from the back of her stagecoach. “Do you think I should lose the blouse?”

  The demon turned and took in the principal’s fuchsia-and-lime spattered top. The blouse looked like Hello Kitty’s hairball hacked up after a seaweed binge.

  “I think you should burn it,” the demon said with a clack of its curved, gnashing teeth. “If you simply ‘lost’ it, then you’d run the risk of finding it again. Ma’am.”

  Principal Bubb scowled and pulled out a small bauble from her baby-sealskin attaché case. Her goat eyes—lined with thick blue eyeliner so that her peepers resembled runny yolks resting in a puddle of microwaved crayons—fixed on the tiny inset picture of Marlo Fauster.

  “Don’t forget your charm, Principal Bubb,” the recorded voice in the principal’s earring prompted. “I procured it from Pitch-Black Market. It was confiscated by an enterprising demon guard when zhe uprising in Blimpo was quelled.”

  Blimpo, Principal Bubb thought, smoldering silently as she gazed at Marlo’s mocking portrait. I’d love to put that big mess behind me. Fat chance, though.

  “Here we are, Principal,” the demon driver said, swatting the flank of its Night Mare with a little red riding crop. “The Provincial Court of Res Judicata.”

  “I suppose I need all of the charm I can get,” Bea “Elsa” Bubb sighed, clasping the chain around the bulging folds of flesh that served as her neck. Instantly, a roguish glint flashed in her eyes and blue, threadlike highlights streaked her coarse clumps of fur.

  The principal’s stagecoach pulled up to the marble steps of the courthouse. The deafening roar of small engines rumbled outside. A team of six demons with gasoline-powered backpacks swept the area with high-pressure nozzles.

  “What’s with them?” Principal Bubb asked her demon driver as it briskly hopped off the driver’s box and opened the door for her.

  “Belief Blowers, Principal, ma’am,” the creature said, whistling through its curved orange incisors. “They neutralize bias and muzzle rabid dogma with a powerful flow of specially ionized air. Crucial for a trial of this importance.”

  Principal Bubb scaled the flight of white marble stairs.

  Not that it matters, she thought as she passed a gauntlet of photographers. Even if you clean the sawdust, a circus is still a circus. And that’s just what Judge Judas, the most famous television judge in sin-dication, will turn this into: a circus.

  Principal Bubb crossed into the central portico beneath the courthouse’s onion-shaped dome and through a metal detector manned by stocky demon guards with badges pinned straight into their decomposing flesh.

  She popped a Super-Minty-Fresh-Ballistic-Free-from-Halitosis pill into her mouth as she approached the double doors leading to the courtroom. The mint exploded, fumigating the principal’s mouth with a twinkling green cloud.

  Principal Bubb pushed the doors open, releasing a riot of incomprehensible noise. The only way that there could have been more pandemonium in the courtroom was if there had been actual pandas present.

  A hawk-nosed man with a beard that coiled like a hairy snail shell banged his massive gavel on the bench. The hammer sent a cylinder flying up a pole, passing MISTRIAL, DISMISSAL, APPEAL, ACQUITTAL, and CONVICTION, and hitting a bell just above the word JUSTICE. The judge turned to a nearby camera and winked.

  “Justice is served,” the man said, much to the rowdy delight of his primarily demon audience. “I’m Judge Judas and we’ll be right back with the Trial of the Millennium and our first affidavits affi these messages!”

  Harsh light flooded the coliseum. The game version of Principal Bubb had disappeared. At the far end of the arena, caught in the uncompromising brilliance of the light, was a great, glistening glob.

  Slorp! Glump!

  The Nyarlathorp, Milton thought with a primal shudder of revulsion. It was a name that didn’t exactly fall off the tongue, which was pretty funny in a decidedly unfunny way, as the creature resembled—through Milton’s blurry vision—a swollen tongue the size of a small whale.

  “Of all the words to describe that thing, I think the best would be ‘yuck,’ ” Sam said, his words smeared with an impending fear-induced narcoleptic episode.

  “What does it look like? I can barely see it. I only hear this gross foamy gurgle,” Milton said.

  “What?” Sara said. “I can barely hear anything.”

  “I said, what does it look like?”

  “It’s like a glistening pink monster slug,” she replied with a sharp note of disgust. “Studded with thousands of tiny buds. Other than that, I can’t really get a good—”

  For reasons unclear, Howler Monkey dropped to the ground and proceeded to lick the creature’s slime trail. The remaining Terawatts—the ones not lapping up monster sludge—stared at their friend, eyes wide with quiet shock.

  “It oozes along on this kind of fluttering fringe,” Howler Monkey said, smacking his lips. “And kind of tastes like Pepto-Bismol and sushi. The only thing really separating one end of the Nyarlathorp from the other is a ridge of bone wrapped across it like a spiked bonnet.”

  “What are you doing?” Caterwaul asked, gagging a bit in between her words.

  “I can just sort of, like, see it with my tongue,” Howler Monkey replied. “Get a picture of it in my mouth, all the different flavors like colors and textures. I can taste this weird, fishy flap of flesh covering some sort of blowhole. Maybe that’s where its stomach shot out when it ate—”

  “I’m good with what it looks like,” Milton said with a cold shiver. “Or tastes like.”

  “Hey,” Sara said, pointing to the ceiling at the far end of the rectangular arena. “There’s our way out. A portal marked ‘Up.’ It’s painted blue with white fluffy clouds.”

  Milton saw a word behind the blobby, shapeless shape of the Nyarlathorp.

  “And over there?” he asked, pointing down.

  “Down,” Sara said grimly. “And it’s painted black with flames.”

  “I’m guessing that’s where we go if we lose,” the Sunshine Sneezer said as he wiped his runny nose with the back of his hand.

  “Get out of here!” a girl screamed from behind the creeping slug beast. Caught in the Nyarlathorp’s shimmering trail was another fallen Zetawatt.

  “Tasha!” Sara said. “She’s stuck in the monster’s slime trail!”

  “It’s a trap!” Tasha yelled, barely conscious, her voice hoarse from screaming. “There’s no way … no way to …,” she murmured before passing out.

  SCHWAA!

  A stone portal slid open several yards away from Milton. Out shot five new weapons: twin white gel sacks—like squishy, semideflated volleyballs—joined together by a black bungee cord. The weapons rolled for a few yards down the incline of the stone seesaw floor before coming to a stop. Words sizzled above.

  WEAPON: BOLA-CLING

  HEALTH: 3 … NO, WAIT, 2 …

  Milton touched one of the Bola-Cling’s gel sacks.

  “Sticky,” he said, wiping off his hand before grasping a small leather handhold in the middle of the rope.

  Floom … Splork!

  A wet explosion filled the arena. The Nyarlathorp’s dripping stomach spurted out of its blowhole, attached by a long sinewy ligament. It landed with a wet plop a few feet away from Tasha. The stomach opened with a thick nest of wet pink bristles squirming inside. It wriggled toward Tasha.

  Milton instinctively swung the weapon over his head and flung it at the sack’s stem. The globby end of the weapon wrapped around twice before sticking fast. The Nyarlathorp yanked its outboard b
elly back into its blowhole, sending Milton tumbling toward it. Howler Monkey gave the ground another lap with his tongue.

  “Oaky with fruity undercurrents and …,” he mumbled before shrieking, “Milton! Get out of there! The Nyarlathorp is about to attack!”

  The horrific, faceless creature reared up, howling with a flutelike whine.

  Whooowl!

  It charged.

  Bumbada-bumbada.

  As the Nyarlathorp rushed forward, it tipped the floor of the colossal arena until it was level. Its attack sounded like the muffled, maddening beating of drums.

  “Here!” Sara shrieked, tossing Milton a new Bola-Cling. He spun the weapon quickly, then, without thinking, cast one end hurtling toward a stalactite above. The bungee’s spring sent Milton up to the ceiling, just as the Nyarlathorp scurried beneath him with freakish speed.

  Florpadda-florpadda.

  I suppose we could just hang from the ceiling like this until—Milton thought just as the end of his rope began to lose its adhesive power—we fall to our doom.

  From his unfortunate proximity, Milton could see the countless pink buds coating the creature’s slimy, detestable body.

  Like taste buds, Milton thought as he gripped the gradually slipping bungee weapon.

  Caterwaul wept loudly below.

  “He’s starting to slip!” she bawled.

  Howler Monkey, on all fours beside her, tasted the floor.

  “It’s just about to launch its— Stop your sobbing, Caterwaul! I can taste how sad and miserable you are!” he said before dissolving into tears himself.

  Sam/Sara charged at the creature, twirling their weapon above their heads.

  “Get me, Slug Bug!” Sara yelled, leading the creature a few slobbering steps away.

  Slorp! Glump!

  The sticky end of Milton’s rope finally gave out, and he plummeted to the ground, landing in a trail of fresh slime. Milton struggled in the Nyarlathorp’s syrupy wake as the absurdly disgusting tongue monster shuffled to face him—though it was hard to tell one end of the creature from the other.

  Howler Monkey swished the creature’s slime trail in his mouth before bolting upright.

  “Tears!” he yelled. “It really doesn’t like them!”

  Tears? Milton thought, his mind fragmented with fear.

  Florpadda-florpadda-whooowl!

  “Caterwaul!” Howler Monkey yelled. “Pull yourself up to the ceiling, right over the Nyarlathorp!”

  “What?!” the long-faced girl replied, flabbergasted, as if Howler Monkey had just asked her to smear bacon grease on her face and kiss a pit bull.

  “Yes!” Milton interjected, his frantic mind latching on to Howler Monkey’s plan. “Pull yourself up to the ceiling!”

  Floom … Splork!

  The Nyarlathorp shot its stomach out six feet away from Milton.

  “Now!” Howler Monkey yelled.

  Caterwaul, her cheeks shiny with tears, flung the sticky end of her Bola-Cling toward the ceiling. It curled snugly around a stalactite and pitched her into the air above the Nyarlathorp.

  Glorsh!

  “Caterwaul!” Milton screamed as the creature’s stomach opened. “This is hopeless. There’s no way out of here. We’re going to lose and be digested by this disgusting slug—one by one.”

  Caterwaul, bobbing in the air, wept anew.

  “Why are you doing this?!” she sobbed as tears gushed out of her wide, trembling eyes.

  “Tesla’s going to win!” Milton continued.

  Glorp! Glorp!

  The Nyarlathorp’s stomach twitched and wriggled, inch by slippery inch, toward Milton.

  “We can’t beat the slug thing!” Howler Monkey yelled. “More kids will, like, replace us, be ripped apart by his terrible monsters, and every gamer up on the Surface will have their souls, um … drained straight from their bodies!”

  Caterwaul’s tears splashed along the Nyarlathorp’s sleek, taste-bud-studded back. Sam/Sara and the Sunshine Sneezer—stricken with Caterwaul’s contagious sobbing—wept into their hands as Caterwaul drenched the creature beneath her. Milton fought against the gooey strands of slime pasting him to the floor. The Nyarlathorp’s stomach flopped next to him, its bright pink bristles trembling with hunger.

  Florch!

  Suddenly, the monster’s slavering bulk sagged. Its rosy-pink color drained until the Nyarlathorp was a gently foaming slab of shiny gray sludge.

  Glorfle! Glorfle!

  It shuffled back a few dozen feet. The stone floor slanted slightly toward it.

  Milton tore himself free of the creature’s slime trail. Howler Monkey gave the ground a few quick laps before rising to his feet.

  “It’s, like, really bummed out,” Howler Monkey said as he picked a piece of gravel from his tender tongue. “And the salt in Caterwaul’s tears isn’t doing it any flavors … um … favors.”

  Caterwaul squirmed as she fought to hang on to the bungee cord.

  “What do I do now?” she cried out.

  “Scale the ceiling to the Up portal,” Milton called out. “We’ll be right behind you. By the way,” Milton added with a grin, “nice work.”

  Caterwaul, despite her hangdog face, laughed.

  “My eyes are like sprinkler systems!” she said as she lobbed the other end of her Bola-Cling at a nearby stalactite. “They can rain on any parade!”

  The Terawatts traveled across the coliseum’s ceiling like apprentice Spider-Men, flinging their sticky-ended bungees like slung webs, swinging from one stalactite to the next.

  “Oh no,” Caterwaul whimpered as she arrived at the exit portal. “Tasha was right.”

  “What do you mean?” Milton asked as he swung up next to her.

  “It’s just painted on,” Sara said as she joined them at the far end of the arena. “It’s not a doorway at all. It’s—”

  “A design flaw, it pains me to say,” Tesla’s voice boomed from the Sense-o-Rama’s embedded speakers.

  Milton’s face flushed red with anger.

  “What do you mean?!” he shouted as he knotted the bungee around his forearm. “We won this level! How do we get out?!”

  Tesla laughed a string of sharp, explosive gasps.

  “Beats me,” he replied. “To your credit, I never expected you to make it this far. But to my credit, no one needs to. Look up at zhe players on zhe Surface.”

  Milton observed the constellation of eyes sprinkled about the arena. They were like the eyes of a school of dead fish, floating at the top of a gigantic goldfish bowl.

  “Their souls are ripe for zhe taking!” Tesla exclaimed. “Which is fortuitous timing, as I need to feed zhe fire. First Fire. Stoke it with fuel plucked straight from zhe soul mine! Zhe Sense-o-Rama and Poe’s Shadow Box are more of a drain than I initially calculated. But I learn as I innovate: using real-world findings to push my inventions to zhe next level—something zhat will be much easier to supervise once I’m back up on zhe Surface and zhe whole world is my laboratory!”

  “The Surface!” Milton gasped. “You’re returning to the Surface?!”

  Tesla brayed into his headset. “Mr. Fauster, zhe goal of every great gamer is extra lives. And zhat’s exactly what I and Mr. Poe intend to achieve: extra lives. As many as we need to shape zhe world to our liking.”

  “You can’t be serious,” Milton spat back.

  “Dead serious!” Tesla bellowed. “Though I won’t be dead for long. And I’ll be something even more than merely alive. I’ll be immortal.”

  “But that’s against the rules,” Milton said. “And, like you said, every game needs rules.”

  “Ah, yes! But every game also has, programmed within, secret worlds ready to be discovered! Hidden levels zhat change everything! So, if you excuse me, while you hang there at zhe end of your ropes—at zhe end of your game—I have a world to enslave. Good day and … good game!”

  Caterwaul managed to draw a new reserve of salty tears. Milton looked down at the Nyarlathorp as the tears dried up on
its galumphing hump of a back. The creature’s bumpy flesh slowly regained its pink hue.

  Extra lives, Milton mused. Hidden levels.

  “We need to swing above the Nyarlathorp,” he said.

  Caterwaul wiped her snotty nose with her forearm. “So I can cry on it again?”

  “No,” Milton said as he flung the other end of his Bola-Cling across the ceiling. “I think I’ve found a cheat code. We’re going to make the Nyarlathorp’s mood swing into overaction.”

  He shot across the ceiling, suspended over the slobbering pink slug-whale. Milton dug through the slit in his armor and pulled out his canteen of Hypool-Active Overstimu Lake water.

  His friends joined him, hanging from the ceiling. The Sunshine Sneezer stared at Milton’s canteen as if it were an atomic bomb.

  “That stuff will drive it crazy,” he muttered with a nervous lick of his lips.

  “Crazy like a big, slimy, dangerously deranged fox,” Milton replied. “Are you with me?”

  The Terawatts nodded gravely.

  “Of course,” Sara muttered, even managing a smile.

  Her smile made him feel like every window in the world had been thrown open at once.

  “Then it’s time to beat this game once and for all,” he replied. “One … two …”

  The six Terawatts held their canteens above the Nyarlathorp. Bright red liquid, like blood, trickled out of the flasks. To Milton, it seemed that he and this group of new friends had embarked upon something of a blood ritual: a dangerous ceremony, their lives mingling together, becoming closer to one another than they ever thought possible.

  “THREE!”

  FRAGOPOLIS FLASHED AND flickered in that lurid try-way-too-hard-but-it-works-anyway-perhaps-because-it-tries-way-too-hard way that arcades do. Despite its convulsive neon desperation, it was the only place Marlo could think of to go. She had no idea how long her tenure as part of the Decease Corps had lasted so far. All she knew was that if she wanted to stay and not become the birdie-num-num of some swooping hawk spirit, she needed to ground herself in grief. And that meant stoking the sorrow of Hans Jovonovic, who was hanging out inside this glittering Geeks ’R’ Us for his awkward double date with Marlo and her BFBC (Best Friend Before Ceasing-to-be) Aubrey Fitzmallow. She looked over the bump of darkness that was her shoulder. Why was that bird spirit trying to eat her? She had been called a thieving magpie by a store security guard once, but apart from that, she had done nothing to ruffle the feathers of the creepy bird community.