Oh no, Dale thought. There are some people in this world who might view footage of a boy who I apparently irreparably harmed with my dangerous video game suddenly exploding right next to me as somewhat incriminating.
But it’s not game over, not yet, Dale thought as he bounded across the golf course to the United Estates of Nevada’s retaining wall. There’s always a secret level. It’s just a matter of finding it.
And, as he fell to the other side of the fence, Dale E. Basye became a fugitive from his own life.
MILTON AND MARLO were shoved down the aisle by the herd of demon goat-bats. A wave of shock and exasperation spread across the courtroom, like someone rubbing a giant cat the wrong way. Principal Bubb’s eyes blazed as the Fauster siblings shuffled past. Marlo, her thieving magpie eyes always looking out for shiny baubles, noticed something familiar dangling from the principal’s nonexistent neck. She elbowed one of the demon guards in the chest and leaned into the stands.
“I believe that’s mine,” Marlo said as she grabbed the charm necklace, “thank you very much.”
With a tug, she reclaimed her charm as the one-sided shoving match resumed down the aisle.
Principal Bubb bolted upright.
“You’re not even Marlo—you’re Milton!” she shrieked, solidifying her “raving lunatic” status in the jaundiced eyes of many of the demon spectators.
Marlo smirked as she tied the charm around her neck. The heart-shaped pillow of platinum with Marlo’s picture in the middle softened into a pool of tingling liquid, absorbing into the hollow of Marlo’s throat. Marlo straightened, tall and poised, as if inflated with esteem. Her split ends and a nagging pimple on her chin disappeared, leaving behind just a chalky dab of acne cream. The principal’s jaw fell open.
“Why, you two-timing little brats!” she spat, her blue-streaked hair falling out in clumps. “You lied to me back in Fibble!”
“That’s rather the point of Fibble,” Lilith Couture commented loudly. “Or at least it was before it sank—blub blub blub—down into truth. Or should I say, Bubb Bubb Bubb?”
Laughter spread like a runny nose in a day care as the Fausters were led up to the bench.
“Algernon Cole?” Milton said, completely baffled.
The ponytailed lawyer grinned and held out his hand.
“Milton! So nice to see you again—alive and well—even if all of this is just a crazy, crazy dream! I must be taking shreds of memories and making some kind of subconscious collage!”
“Um, Mr. Cole,” Milton replied tentatively. “I don’t know how to tell you this, but—”
“Let’s get on with it already!” Judge Judas exclaimed, banging his gavel and sending the shot-put bell to COURT IS IN SESSION! “Do you two youngsters need juice boxes and a nap, or can we proceed?”
Algernon Cole held open the tiny door to the witness stand. The Fausters, after a brief butt struggle, finally settled next to each other.
“Do you promise to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you the Big Guy Upstairs?” the bailiff asked as Milton and Marlo put their hands on the Bible, nodding their consent.
Algernon Cole flipped through a file, then sat down on the defendant’s desk.
“So, it says here, Miss Fauster, that you worked for Satan as a … production assistant for the Televised Hereafter Evangelistic Entertainment Network Division, otherwise known as T.H.E.E.N.D.?”
Milton fidgeted on the witness stand.
“Actually, that was me,” he replied, glancing warily across the collection of creatures crowding the courtroom: from Satan to archangels and everything in between. “See, Annubis—the dog god—switched my soul with my sister’s back in h-e-double-hockey-sticks.”
“So you aren’t your sister?” Algernon puzzled.
“No, not anymore.”
“Yeah,” Marlo interjected, leaning over Milton into the microphone, “he got to ride around with dead movie stars while I was coated in little white lice and had to battle demon shrimp all while squatting in his gross twerp of a body!”
“But Annubis switched us back after Fibble was flooded with liquid truth,” Milton added nervously.
“I see,” the lawyer lied, fiddling with his earring as he simply gave in to what he assumed was “dream logic.” “So then you, Mr. Fauster, served as Satan’s PA, as they say in the biz.”
Milton nodded.
“Did you ever talk with the defendant?” Algernon Cole said.
“I didn’t really ever talk with … him. Satan. It was mostly through Mr. Welles.”
“Who has seemed to have pulled the disappearing act of his afterlife,” Judge Judas said. “I guess he proved himself as a magician after all. Continue, witness.”
“Well, as a production assistant for T.H.E.E.N.D., it was one of my jobs to review submissions to the network. One show I reviewed was called The Man Who Soldeth the World. It was weird. Seemed totally farfetched—about someone, you know, selling the Earth to aliens and evicting all of humanity—but it also seemed so real. Shaky, handheld camera. Like a reality TV show.”
A collective groan sounded through the courtroom.
“Only interesting.”
“Do you happen to have a copy of this show?” Judge Judas hissed.
Milton shook his head. “The only copy was in my backpack, back in Snivel.”
“Perhaps we can send someone to retrieve it,” Algernon Cole added.
“Not likely,” Marlo said. “Snivel is now strictly past tense. It went out with both a whimper and a bang.”
Principal Bubb jumped to her hooves.
“What did you do to my circle?!” she shrieked.
Judge Judas slammed his gavel on his desk. “Order in the court! Let the little dweeb continue.”
“Um, thanks,” Milton murmured. “Well, as I was saying, the first show—The Man Who Soldeth the World—aired, apparently, but basically no one watched it. I think I was the only one to even see the next couple of episodes. The ‘man’ or whatever kept talking about being nearly perfect—”
“Sounds like the defendant,” Johnny Cockroach whispered, intentionally by mistake, into his microphone.
“And when I saw the man in Fibble, talking to Vice Principal Barnum—”
“Ah, the pioneer of mass-media sensationalism,” Judge Judas said sadly, briefly doffing his powdered wig. “Barnum was the preacher and hollow spectacle was his church. He will be missed.”
“He mentioned trying on Barnum’s Humbugger mask, which amplified and projected the image of whoever wore it.”
“Right,” Marlo interjected breathlessly, reliving the situation. “When Milton and I stormed the Boiler Room, where it was kept, we noticed that the machine was set to Exaggerated Negative.”
“Objection!” shouted Johnny Cockroach, wiping his hands fastidiously in that filthy-clean way flies do. “Where is all of this leading?”
“Your Dishonor,” Algernon Cole replied. “I assure you that this is all leading somewhere.” He glanced hopefully at Milton. “Right?”
Judge Judas sighed, fluttering his coiling beard.
“This is Dullsville,” he complained. “Blandeur extreme. Give me something with a pulse. A little verve. Kick it up, kid.”
“Okay, okay,” Milton replied, exasperated. “The point is, this machine was projecting a huge, scary demon. Not quite the devil, but close—”
“Ah, so the witness is saying that someone resembling the defendant—Satan—was at the scene of the crime!” Johnny Cockroach said, his feelers wobbling with excitement.
“You don’t get it,” Milton replied. “The machine was programmed to magnify and project the opposite of whoever wore the mask. So if Satan had worn it, the projection would have looked like an angel. But since the projection looked like a big demon—not quite Satan, the personification of pure evil—then whoever wore it was not quite perfect but about as close as you can get … an angel.”
If stunned silence were an Olympic event, every
creature in the courtroom would have been given a gold medal.
“And,” Marlo continued, breaking the thick hush, “the man mentioned, back in the circle formerly known as Fibble, something about fulfilling the divine Revelation.”
“Yeah!” Milton interjected. “And I saw a napkin on his desk in one of the episodes. It had ‘Revelation 12:7’ written on it, which mentions a war in Heaven, led by …”
Milton glared at the archangel Michael in the stands. He sat up, pointing at the divine messenger.
“Him!”
The courtroom gasped like a school of fish at a Water-Breathers Anonymous meeting.
“Oooh,” Judge Judas said, rubbing his hands together with wolfish hunger, “just when I thought our ratings had flatlined, here comes someone with paddles, shouting, ‘Clear!’ ”
“THE DEFENSE WOULD like to call the archangel Michael to the stand!”
Milton and Marlo left the witness stand. Milton stopped briefly to whisper into Algernon’s ear.
The archangels rustled their wings with confusion, mostly at being confused, not a state these flawless beings were accustomed to. Michael rose, stately and tall, and extended his magnificent wings slightly farther than any other creature could.
“It would be my honor, Your Dishonor,” he said in his smooth, cold marble voice as he glided to the witness stand.
Algernon Cole shook the angel’s hand. “It’s a pleasure to interrogate you, sir,” he said before giving the air a dainty sniff. “Mmmmm … ambrosia!”
“Objection, Your Dishonor!” Johnny Cockroach shouted with an aggravated waggle of his feeler. “On the basis of excessive fawning.”
“Sustained,” Judge Judas replied.
“Fine, then,” Algernon continued. “Isn’t it true, Mr. Michael, that you are oft referred to as He Who Is Like God?”
“He Who Is As God, actually,” Michael corrected. “Meaning my similarity is not in likeness but in intent.”
“So you presume to know the mind of God?”
Michael shrugged his majestic white wings.
“I am ranked as the greatest of all angels,” he replied.
His fellow archangels scowled in their divinely beautiful way.
“Not one to thusly blow my own bugle, but I’m also Chief of Archangels; Angel of Repentance, Righteousness, and Sanctification; and the ruler of Fourth Heaven—a charming little place that I’ve hadeth totally renovated while maintaining its original rustic charm. I also wrote Psalm Eighty-five—a marked improvement upon Psalm Eighty-four—what ingratiating drivel that was! And I was the fire in the burning bush that spake to Moses. My halo lit up like a flaming hoop! I half expected circus animals to jumpeth through it!”
“It also says that you are the purported conqueror of Satan?”
“How did that work out for you, Mickey?” Satan taunted from behind the defendant’s table.
Milton scribbled something onto a sheet of paper from the defense’s desk, balled it up, and tossed it at Algernon Cole’s head.
“Don’t make me put you in time-out, young man!” Judge Judas warned.
Algernon smoothed out the paper, considered it with a raised eyebrow, then tucked it into his khaki shorts.
“Mr. Michael, is it true you can only tell the truth?”
“It is true, verily, that I cannot telleth a lie,” Michael said snootily, as if talking to a human were as tiresome and absurd as talking to an especially clever Chia Pet. “But the question must be to the point. Only a bull’s-eye will—”
“Did you try to sell the world to extraterrestrials and banish all humanity to another planet, making it look like mankind was bringing about the Apocalypse so that you could be some kind of franchised God?” Milton blurted out, unable to restrain himself.
After a moment as tense as a small nun at a penguin shoot, Michael leaned into his microphone.
“Another planetoid, actually,” he said dryly, with a trace of irritation at his angelic nature. “But, yes, I did all that.”
“Objection!” Johnny Cockroach exclaimed. “Why would an archangel become the archenemy of all mankind?”
“Beats me,” Algernon Cole replied, smiling a mouthful of overly whitened teeth. “Let us ask the witness … or is it defendant?” he added with a wink.
Feathers ruffled, the six archangels in the stands exchanged looks of shock, resembling a line of pigeons roosting on a live electric cable.
Michael sighed, even his resignation carrying a note of arrogance.
“Well, as we’ve seeneth with this gross miscarriage of justice, the Big Guy Upstairs is no longer interested in the day-to-day operations of the afterlife. Most audaciously, He keeps putting off established measures such as the Apocalypse, so smitten is He with His little bald monkeys,” he said with smooth disdain as he glared at the human personages in the courtroom. “So I decided to take matters into my own, divine hands. Speeding up the inevitable. And if I made a little coin offeth it, so be it.”
The angel stretched his wings, their glorious, downy tips tickling the judge’s severe, bearded hatchet of a face.
“And my plan was so nearethly perfect that I couldn’t bear to let it unfold undocumented. The Man Who Soldeth the World served many purposes. To keep my unsuspecting dupes in line”—Michael cast his pristine gaze upon Satan—“as a sort of blackmail device if they backed out. And if found out, to show all of creation that the Almighty has indeedeth fallen, allowing such a scheme to transpire right beneath His ‘perfect’ nose.”
The cameraman signaled to Judge Judas that they were running long.
“That said, Michael,” the judge declared, speaking directly to the camera. “It’s a pity we don’t have any of this supposed footage. Maybe at your appeal. But, justice must be served—before the next commercial break—so I will deliver my ruling.”
The lights dimmed, the judge bathed in a spotlight. Syrupy violins poured out of the court’s speaker system.
“I’ve given my verdict a lot of thought in the last few seconds, and I have decided to rule with extreme irony. Michael, though an esteemed archangel who has put in an eternity—not including overtime—serving the Galactic Order Department with honor, has definitely tarnished his halo with this one. And while Satan is unrepentantly despicable—”
“Thank you, Your Dishonor,” Satan murmured from the dark.
“—he cannot bear the brunt of this heinous crime on his beastly shoulders. Though his role in Michael’s plan, whether unwitting or … witting, was instrumental to its near success. So …”
The camera zoomed into the judge’s face.
“I hereby decree that Satan be removed from his post—”
Both Principal Bubb and Lilith Couture let out girlish squeals of delight.
“—and serve, instead, at the holy side of the Big Guy Upstairs.”
“What?!” exclaimed Satan. “It is better to—”
“I know, I know,” Judge Judas said, “it is better to rule down here than to serve up there. Read the transcripts: I said this would be an ironic ruling. That leaves a gaping hole in the gaping hole that is down here. So I can think of no better oddly poetic punishment than to have Michael rule in your stead.”
“What?!” yelped every member of the courtroom in thunderstruck unison.
Judge Judas slammed his gavel, the shot put cleaving the bell in two.
“The hand that rocks the gavel rules the underworld!” he shouted before regaining his composure and smiling for the camera. “Justice is served!”
The lights came on as the pompous Judge Judas theme song—heavy on the timpani—filled the courtroom.
Michael’s keenly chiseled mouth fell open. Gabriel whispered in his near-perfect ear.
“Whoa, even as near-omniscient beings, we certainly didn’t see that one coming, did we … Mickey,” the distinguished angel said with his whiff of a British accent as hulking demon guards rushed in where angels dared to tread. Michael’s wings whipped out at his sides like feathered switchb
lades.
“Now, now, Michael,” Judge Judas said as he lit up a cigar. “Don’t cause a scene. The cameras aren’t even on, so what’s the point?”
Michael and Satan were both dragged out into the hallway.
“We will appeal!” they bellowed, the first time the two creatures had agreed on anything since zoning the streets of Heaven to be paved with gold.
Various demons, prominent figures from the underworld, and even a few angels turned to glare at the Fausters. It was as if Milton and Marlo were the Ebola virus in convenient child form.
Principal Bubb clacked with fury toward them.
“How dare you waltz in here and upset everything!” she seethed, her moist snout flaring. “I was so close to having Satan’s job that I could practically taste it!”
“And she hardly has any taste whatsoever!” Lilith said, firing off one last parting shot before she left the courtroom.
Marlo stifled a giggle, but after a short struggle, the snicker emerged, triumphant.
“You think you can change all of the rules to suit yourself?” Bea “Elsa” Bubb roared. “Like the afterlife is your own personal playlist? But you’ve really done it this time. Really. Look over there at the angels.”
A gaggle of heavenly messengers, not quite “arch” status but definitely holier-than-thou, walked past them, glowering, plucking their harps in a vaguely threatening manner.
“See?” the principal said, claws akimbo. “Even the divine and benevolent want to play Yahtzee with your eyeballs. The upper echelons of the Galactic Order Department were perfectly content with the status quo that granted them preferential status since before time itself. But you messed that up with your prying. Your incessant meddling. You, Fausters, are far too big for your britches.”
“Britches?” Marlo mumbled. “What are—”
“Which is why I’m sending you insufferably precocious brats to—”
“Precocia!” Judge Judas ruled with a bang of his gavel.
“Precocia?” the principal replied with a start. “But—”
The judge leaned over his bench, his gnarled gray beard uncoiling like a tongue that had licked an ashtray clean.
Snivel: The Fifth Circle of Heck Page 28
