“Whoa!” Moondog exclaimed as he helped Milton to his feet. “If that’s the smell of victory, I’d hate to get a whiff of defeat!”
8 • TAKEN TO THE CLEANERS
MARLO ANXIOUSLY SCANNED the rows of dinner jackets hanging in Kloven Kleen Do-or-Dry Cleaners. Hundreds of jackets hung on the coiling mechanical rack, all of them—to Marlo’s eyes—exactly the same: snazzy and modern, yet with a squared-off, vintage 1950s silhouette.
The demon “helping” her—a jaundiced woman with cobweb hair pulled tightly in a bun—tapped her long, French-manicured talons impatiently on the glass counter.
“Do you have a ticket?” the squat demon asked in a huffy tone, as if Marlo were a particularly stubborn stain that would simply not come out. “As you can clearly see, I have more dinner jackets than you’ve had hot dinners. And the dinners are always hot down here. Even if it’s cold cuts and vichyssoise.”
“Ticket?” Marlo repeated.
“Yes, a ticket,” the demon grumbled. “A small card with a number printed upon it that matches with a corresponding tag affixed to a particular piece of clothing, giving the holder the legal right to pick up said article of—”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Marlo spat back. “I’m taller than you, lady, so don’t try talking down to me—you might hurt yourself. I’m just new to this whole dry-cleaning thing, okay? It’s always seemed like a big scam to me.”
“Maybe that’s why there are more dry cleaners per capita down here than anywhere else in the universe,” the dry-cleaning demon replied dryly. “Be that as it may, I still need a ticket.”
“That’s not all you need,” muttered Marlo as she opened the modified bowling bag she used as a purse.
Marlo had been sent on her first errand for the Big Guy Downstairs so quickly that she had barely enough time to fill her bag with the junk Farzana handed her and her head with Farzana’s stuttered orders. Marlo did seem to remember something about a tick-tick-ticket.
“Here,” she said, handing the irritating demon garment worker the stub she had found from the bottom of her—in Madame Pompadour’s words—gauche bag.
The demon scrutinized it.
“It’s torn,” she replied, holding the ticket in front of Marlo’s face. “Every ticket is supposed to have three numbers. This only has two. Number six-six …”
Marlo sighed. “Can’t you just check everything between six-six-zero and six-six-nine?” she replied. “Wouldn’t that be something covered by, oh, I don’t know … your job?”
The demon growled—not a grumble from someone being grouchy, but a deep guttural rumble.
“And did I mention that this was for … the Big Guy Downstairs?”
The demon gasped, then tried to hide her shock with a halfhearted chuckle, which was all the woman could manage, having only half a heart. Marlo could slowly feel her confidence coming back, now that she was away from Madame Pompadour’s icy haute clutches.
“If I had a penny for every time someone tried that one on me,” the demon replied, shaking her puffy head like a wasp’s nest in a storm. “I’d have … a lot of cents.”
“Well, if you have any sense left, then I suggest you bring me ten coats … now,” Marlo said defiantly. She wasn’t going to let anything, especially not some dried-up dry cleaner, blow her very first errand as the devil’s Infern-in-training.
The demon stalked back to the racks and jabbed a red button several times with her talon. She yanked ten dinner jackets from the mechanized rack, stormed back to Marlo, and threw the jackets down on the counter. The demon glared at Marlo through wicked slits.
“Okay, little girl,” she hissed. “Which is yours?”
The jackets—fine wool sharkskin in nightmare-black yet still strangely iridescent—were exactly the same.
“Can’t I just take them all and return—”
“Do you have ten tickets?” the demon spat back.
“Well … no. Not exactly.”
“Then you, well … can’t,” the demon mocked. “Exactly … unless …”
“Unless what?”
The demon leaned her waxy yellow face close to Marlo.
“Unless you’d like to play Let’s Fake a Deal!” the demon squealed, clapping her talons together with excitement. “Where I put a receipt in one of the jackets and, if you guess correctly, you win!”
Marlo’s face crinkled with skepticism.
“Win what?”
“All of the jackets!”
Marlo rubbed her chin in contemplation. “And what if I lose?” she asked dubiously.
The demon smiled, her fangs as yellow as her face. “You still win!”
“Win what?”
The demon laundress extended her flabby arms grandly.
“You get to run your very own dry cleaners for all eternity!” she cooed.
Marlo snorted. If she had drunk chocolate milk within the last twenty-four hours, it surely would have shot out of her nose.
“What idiot would play a game like that?!” she replied.
The demon deflated with an unfortunate, audible hiss. “It seemed like a good idea at the time,” she replied sadly.
Marlo had no idea what to do, not that that had ever stopped her before. Suddenly, she was struck by a flash of less-than-divine inspiration.
“Isn’t six-six-six the sign of the beast or something?” Marlo commented. “Like, the devil’s special number? I had an album called Smack Your Apocalypse by a band called Six-six-six that was always singing about that kind of creepy stuff.”
The demon sighed. Her breath smelled like a bowl full of corn nuts and ranch dressing forgotten under the seat of an old car.
“Number six-six-six is here to remove a dark red stain that I am hoping is wine.”
“And the rest?”
The demon glanced at the tags. “The same.”
Marlo blew a strand of blue hair out of her face. Normally she’d just go with her instincts. But she didn’t want to screw this up.
“I’d like to use a lifeline,” Marlo said as she fished out her new compact phone.
The demon laundress shook her head.
“No cell phones … and that’s my final answer.”
Marlo nervously chewed an already-nibbled nail as she eyed the clock on the wall.
“Fine, I’ll take this one,” she said, grabbing number six-six-six.
“Not so fast,” the demon said, snatching back the jacket.
“Oh, right,” Marlo replied, handing her the credit card.
The demon ran the card but continued to clutch the devil’s dry cleaning.
“Well?” Marlo said. “Can I take it now or what?”
The demon looked behind her at a sign by the clock that read EXCELLENT QUALITY ONE-HOUR SERVICE.
“As the sign says, we offer excellent quality one-hour service,” the demon explained, “and you’ve only been here ten minutes, so I’ll have to continue serving you for another fifty minutes.”
Marlo’s dark eyes bulged.
“You did not just say I had to wait another fifty minutes!”
The demon smirked a mouthful of crooked fangs.
“Oh, I most certainly did. I can’t breach Kloven Kleen policy. That wouldn’t be fair to our customers.”
Marlo let out a deep, supremely irked shriek and went to sulk in the waiting area, her arms and brows crossed with a lot of outrage and not a little anxiety.
Marlo bolted into Madame Pompadour’s Deception Area, the dinner jacket—enveloped in clear plastic with the words KLOVEN KLEEN ♥S ITS KUSTOMERS written on it—draped across her shoulder. She stopped in front of Farzana’s desk, panting.
“I know … I’m late … but that … stuck-up witch … doesn’t need to know.”
Farzana’s quivering eyes nearly popped out of her skull. Her pupils gestured to something over Marlo’s shoulder.
“She’s probably too busy eating live puppies for lunch—”
“Puppies, while delicious, are far too hard to come by down
here,” Madame Pompadour said from behind Marlo. Marlo jumped. She turned slowly, her head as thick and fuzzy as the lint trap on a Laundromat dryer.
“I—I—I,” Marlo stammered.
“Aye-yi-yi?” Madame Pompadour jeered. “What are you, some kind of bandito? Is Cinco de Mayo early this year?”
Farzana laughed nervously.
“H-h-ha h-h-ha.”
Wow, Marlo thought, she even laughs with a stutter.
“Miss Daffney,” Madame Pompadour hissed, “please refrain from talking until you’ve had your Beauty Cream!”
“Yes, m-madame,” Farzana replied. “It’s just that the c-cart hasn’t g-gotten here y-yet.”
Madame Pompadour grabbed the dinner jacket from Marlo. She ripped off the plastic, wadded it up in her pawlike hand, and tossed it onto Farzana’s desk.
“Recycle this. Send it to one of Heck’s preschools for a toy.”
Farzana nodded. “Yes, m-m-m—”
Madame Pompadour sniffed at the garment with her tiny pink nose. She arched her eyebrows, or would have if she had any, and glared at Marlo with glowing green cobra-cat eyes.
“What is this, Miss Fauster?”
It’s a flippin’ fudge-covered Christmas tree, Marlo thought to herself. What does she think it is?
“Um, I’m going to go for dinner jacket, madame—”
“Is this some kind of joke?”
“Believe me, I know funnier jokes than this,” Marlo answered, trying desperately to keep from trembling. “Like the one played on you, having to spend eternity with girls like me.”
“This is the wrong jacket,” Madame Pompadour replied.
Of course it is, Marlo moaned to herself before replying with exasperation, “But the ticket was torn!”
The edges of Madame Pompadour’s lips curled with a sly, nearly imperceptible smile. The imposing, impossibly skinny woman with her perfect skin stretched across her perfect cheekbones gave the jacket another dainty sniff.
“Even if it was the right jacket,” she continued, “it hasn’t had nearly enough pungent sulfurous smoke infused into the fabric.”
“Infused?” Marlo asked, confused. “Don’t you mean removed?”
“No. Infused,” Madame Pompadour clarified. “And where are the pants?”
Marlo’s dead heart stopped.
“P-pants?”
Madame Pompadour tapped her baby-alligator-skin shoes in time with her own impatience.
“I had no idea that stuttering was a contagious condition!” she hissed. “The matching pants. Where are they?!”
Marlo had, unbeknownst to her, backed into Farzana’s desk.
“Do not tell me that you lost Satan’s pants!”
Farzana surreptitiously dialed a number on her compact. The phone on her desk rang.
“H-hello, M-madame Pompadour’s office,” she answered. Farzana’s large, quivering eyes rolled from Marlo to the madame. “Oh … yes … I’ll tell her.”
She hung up.
“That was the d-d-dry cleaner,” Farzana said. “He said that there was a mix-up and that he was very s-sorry.”
Madame Pompadour couldn’t decide which of her Inferns to fix her glare fully upon. She sighed, ferociously, so that you could practically smell the potato chips she had licked for dinner the night before. Dragging the coat behind her, she strutted across the room and pulled open a huge closet: bigger than a walk-in, it was more like a run-in closet. Inside were dozens of the exact same dinner jacket. Madame Pompadour threw the latest one onto the floor.
“Just be sure you don’t make another mistake, Miss Fauster,” she scolded as she swept past Marlo on the way to her office. “Even if it isn’t yours.”
Madame Pompadour slammed the leather door behind her—as much as one can slam a plushly upholstered door—leaving, in her wake, a frozen Slurpee of silence.
Marlo turned to Farzana.
“First off, the dry cleaner was a she … just barely,” Marlo said. “Second, there was no way she would have called, and lastly, even if she did, she is physically incapable of uttering the word ‘sorry.’”
Farzana chewed her lower lip and reviewed a blank page on her Vilofax.
“So that leaves me with … why?” Marlo inquired suspiciously.
Farzana’s hands thrashed about like freshly caught flounder on the deck of a fishing trawl.
“Well, the m-more I help you out, the sooner I g-get …” Farzana faltered, not meeting Marlo’s eyes. “Get a new friend.”
Marlo wasn’t quite buying it; however—as someone whose hobby was stealing—she didn’t tend to buy much.
“Hello, young ladies,” a stooped, ancient demon interrupted as he pushed a cart of mail and beverages into the Deception Area. “I’m here to deliver the goods … or the bads. Mostly the bads.”
The hairless creature, his spine like a croquet hoop, trundled over to Farzana’s desk. His cart was spilling over with bills, catalogues, hate mail, and pitchers of Beauty Cream. He handed Farzana a glass full of the luminous milk.
“Milk?” he offered, holding a glass out to Marlo.
“Not unless you want me getting sick all over you.” Marlo grimaced.
The demon grinned, his face crinkling like a dead leaf in autumn.
“Who’s the new girl?” the ancient creature asked Farzana in a leathery croak.
“The name is Nunivyer,” Marlo replied. “Nunivyer Bizness.”
The demon shrugged.
“Not much use rememberin’ their names,” he said as he deposited a small stack of mail onto Farzana’s desk. “She goes through them so fast. Still, if this one works out, then you’ll be able to—”
Farzana set down her glass of Beauty Cream suddenly and picked up her phone.
“Hello, Madame Pompadour’s office,” she said loudly, wiping her mouth. “How may I deflect your call?”
Marlo hadn’t even heard the phone ring. Something smells fishy, she thought.
The old demon farted, munching on a sardine he had fished out of his pocket as he wheeled his cart away from Marlo’s desk.
“I’ll stop givin’ you gals the business and leave you to yours,” the demon said over his shoulder. “Always a pleasure meetin’ Madame Pompadour’s new toys … before she breaks them.”
“Whatever,” Marlo muttered. “Go postal somewhere else.”
The decrepit demon lurched his squeaky cart away down the long, winding hall. The plush hallway was carpeted with a wool and brimstone blend that sparked and smoked if you scuffed it just right. It, apparently, led toward the offices of the Powers That Be Evil.
Marlo eyed the mail on Farzana’s desk. She loved mail. Especially when it wasn’t hers. It was like a mini Christmas. One bundle, in particular, caught her eye.
“What’s this?” she asked as she walked over to Farzana. The package was a long glossy cylinder. It seemed like some kind of magazine, only with a large hollow tube for a spine.
“It’s the new issue of Statusphere magazine,” Farzana explained with a smooth lilt as she sipped her Beauty Cream. “Madame Pompadour is the publisher. It started out as a hobby, a way to relieve stress from running the Infernship program. But now it’s been taking up more and more of her time.”
“Wow,” Marlo said as she picked up the magazine. “I’d hate to see her when she’s stressed.”
Marlo tugged free the gleaming gold ribbon that bound the peculiar magazine together. The pages were shiny blank plastic, and the whole thing was nearly impossible to hold. It was more like a large, space-age roll of paper towels than something you could read.
“I don’t get it,” Marlo said. “How does it work?”
Farzana sighed as she set down her pen, leaving unfinished her doodle of a two-faced girl with wings flying above a sea of flames.
“First, you put your arm into the spine. The cylinder.”
Marlo, her face scrunched up in confusion, slipped her arm through the magazine’s tube. The magazine began to hum. Marlo could feel a fain
t tingle on her forearm and a freaky … tightening.
“Now, you just sort of clear your mind, and it turns on.”
Marlo closed her eyes and thought of her interest in Girl Scouts, which was the closest thing to absolute nothing she could think of. The magazine sprang to life, like a startled, electric porcupine with pages for quills. Marlo opened her eyes.
Each page of Statusphere was a thin, flexible LCD screen displaying a series of gorgeous, glamorous, moving images. It wasn’t just a magazine; it was like wearing a carousel of constantly updated fashion movies. It’s creepy, Marlo thought as the tube constricted around her arm. It’s like I’m the battery that powers it.
“But why?” Marlo asked. “It’s really cool and all, but why not just a regular magazine?”
Farzana eyed the magazine on Marlo’s forearm with unease.
“Madame Pompadour says that a fashion magazine is out of fashion as soon as it hits the stands. Statusphere actually keeps up with every fad and trend in real time.”
“Hmm,” Marlo murmured as she walked back to her desk, transfixed by the constant parade of bored, skinny women in size-triple-zero dresses, with the occasional hot, sullen guy in the latest suit thrown in for good measure.
“The format,” Farzana continued as she slipped on a pair of surgical gloves and carefully sliced open a smoking letter, “also allows for some … interactive elements.”
Farzana shot Marlo a quick, nervous look before returning to her duties.
“She probably won’t need you until lunch,” she continued. “You should check it out.”
Marlo flipped the pages and stopped at one with the flashing headline: IS MARLO FAUSTER A HIDEOUS TROLL? A STATUSPHERE QUIZ!
The page was divided in two, with the quiz on one side and—to Marlo’s surprise—a picture of Marlo on the other.
“But how?” she mumbled before her mind grew fuzzy, and, suddenly, all she could think about was how she’d give anything to be like the girls in the magazine: conventionally yet impossibly pretty.
9 • A DiSGUSTiNG DiSGUISE
“THEY’RE PURE APPETITE,” Moondog said as he faced the pit of creatures, taking them in with his mind. “I’m not registering any intelligence whatsoever. We’re talking sack-of-hammers, box-of-hair, twelve-shy-of-a-dozen-scale ignorance. They’re basically just animated suits of skin, looking for something to eat.”
Blimpo: The Third Circle of Heck Page 6
