“Hmm, it seems to be hiding,” he murmured. But after a moment, he pulled out a wriggling, gelatinous blob. “Got it.”
Milton stared at the shifting goo. It looked like a baby jellyfish that had overdosed on Oreos and a tea-spoonful of rainbow sprinkles.
Annubis set Marlo’s quivering soul delicately in his lap as the mound of dirty beige office equipment trembled. An old fax machine tumbled off the summit and smashed onto the floor, as if it had just lost a game of King of the Hill as played by outmoded office equipment. Marlo began to shiver.
“So cold … so empty … so what,” she murmured.
A squeal of megaphone feedback pierced the door and elbowed its deafening way into the room.
“Little pig, little pig, let me in …,” Bea “Elsa” Bubb taunted.
Annubis rubbed his paws together.
“Relax. Concentrate on … nothing.”
Milton snickered as he noted the crumbling tower of computers and copiers.
“Yeah, right. I’ve never been more peaceful or contented. Just pull it out … like you’re yanking a tooth.”
Annubis nodded as he slid his warm, tingling paws into Milton’s head and back.
“Oh, you’re no fun,” Principal Bubb continued as the demons slammed their bulk against the door. “You’re supposed to say, ‘Not by the hair of my chinny chin chin.’ … Fine, I will, then …”
Annubis delicately grasped the knot of emotions and memories that formed the core of Milton’s spiritual essence. It tickled maddeningly inside. Then, with a tug, Annubis removed a long, wriggling, rainbow-hued glob. Milton yelped.
“Not by the hair of my chinny chin chin …”
Milton stared at the shimmering gunk in Annubis’s outstretched paws with a dull, throbbing detachment. It was as if his identity, his entire sense of what it meant to be Milton, had been put through a food processor, then poured onto the floor, each battered lump jabbed with a cold hypodermic needle full of Novocain. It was agony as smothered by a pillow.
“So I’ll huff …”
Annubis took the struggling blob that was Milton’s soul and gently set it into Marlo’s body. Marlo moaned, her eyes fluttering like butterflies caught on flypaper. A faint warmth radiated through Milton, though distant—a faraway sun whose heat and light has traveled countless, weary miles. He felt as if a part of him were somewhere else, having a unique experience that he would never truly know. Milton looked down on Marlo as she slowly began to awaken. He could see a strange prickly dance of familiar colors radiating from around her edges, a scribbled outlined of Lite-Brite hues. It was like seeing someone at school wearing one of your favorite shirts, one you thought that only you had.
“… and I’ll puff …”
Annubis delicately juggled Marlo’s soul between his two paws.
“This will feel incredibly odd,” the dog god cautioned. “You may black out, like restarting a computer.”
Milton nodded dully, though he had no idea what Annubis was talking about. The dog god’s voice—everything, actually—was muffled, flat, distant, and hollow.
Annubis reached toward Milton, holding Marlo’s gelatinous Slinky of a soul. Its fluttering gunk was filled with many more dark clots than Milton’s soul, but it still shimmered with a faint, cheerful rainbow sheen. Annubis placed Marlo’s soul inside of Milton, connecting it, in a way, like snapping a nine-volt battery into a remote control.
An odd surge of unfamiliar lights, sounds, images, and feelings gushed through Milton until his head and heart were overloaded. His consciousness fell backward into a warm, black murk before winking off, short-circuiting like an overtaxed fuse box, submerging all awareness in complete darkness.
“… and I’ll blow your house in!” bellowed Principal Bubb as the demons smashed through the barricade and stormed into the Break Down Room.
36 • POOP D’ÉTAT
VIRGIL SMILED WITH pride as Gene, Hugo, Thaddeus, and a hefty handful of new arrivals slathered barbecue sauce all over the insides of the DREADmills. Virgil’s BOWEL movement was unstoppable! He knew it couldn’t last forever, even here in eternity. Yet he and the other boys had accomplished a great deal in the few hours since Milton’s escape, which had sent Blimpo into a chaotic tizzy. Virgil’s impassioned speeches and handouts—which bemoaned the injustice of being sentenced to Heck strictly for lacking willpower in the face of probable metabolic or glandular disorders exacerbated by a society obsessed with second helpings—had struck a surprising chord with the other boys. The infectious energy of mass confusion and civil unrest didn’t hurt either.
“That’s the last of it,” Gene said sadly as he wiped clean the bottom of his purloined tub of barbecue sauce before licking his pudgy fingers. “Now what?”
Virgil tugged an old electric fan across the checkered Gymnauseum floor. Mounted on the wall was a trio of giant, newly installed plasma screens. Towering images of perfect, privileged young bodies playing extreme Frisbee on the sun-drenched lawn of a New England prep school flickered behind Virgil. The young boys and girls took a break to stretch and mock the distorted images of Virgil, Thaddeus, Gene, and Hugo displayed next to them.
“You guys hide … and wait,” Virgil said as he flicked the fan on. It blew savory waves of scent out through the Gymnauseum’s open double doors. “There are only a few guards left. Bubb took most of them to help her catch Milton and Annubis. Once those hungry guards get a whiff of the last luscious globs of Hambone’s—I mean, Annubis’s—sauce, we got ’em.”
Thaddeus rose and wiped his sticky hands on his corduroy Capri pants.
“And what’ll you be doing?” he asked.
Virgil looked up at Dr. Kellogg’s office, tucked away at the back of the Gymnauseum’s second floor. He fought a brief wave of queasiness caused by the pink-and-green-checkered walls.
“Pulling the plug on this place,” he said as he climbed the stairs.
Up on the catwalk, Virgil edged stealthily toward Dr. Kellogg’s office. He tried the door, but it was locked. Virgil rummaged through his pockets and pulled out a stolen Chickey leg (a smaller version than the Turnkeys used to open the gate). He wedged it in the keyhole and gave it a twist. The door creaked open.
The room was dimly lit, yet filled with a thick humming drone. Virgil creeped purposefully inside. At the back of Dr. Kellogg’s office was a rectangular box made of gray steel with brightly colored tentacles of wire coiling from it and disappearing into the wall. The hair on Virgil’s forearms, finer than frog fur, rose in the presence of the coursing electricity.
This was, if not the heart of Blimpo, then maybe its pacemaker: the humming hub of the circle’s electrical circulatory system.
Virgil hesitated. Doubt scribbled discouraging messages in his mind: Big fat loser. You’ll just screw it up like you do everything else.
He shook his head clear and studied the red warning sign above the buzzing box.
HIGH VOLTAGE JUICE BOX. KEEP OUT! DANGER! EXTREMELY HAZARDOUS! DON’T TOUCH! IF YOU CAN READ THIS, YOU ARE TOO CLOSE! IF YOU CAN’T READ THIS, YOU’RE ILLITERATE! SO NEVER MIND!
Virgil drew in a deep lungful of air and stepped toward the circuit breaker.
“What do you think you’re doing?!”
Virgil spun around in shock. Hanging upside down on the wall beside him was Dr. Kellogg.
“How did you get in here?” Dr. Kellogg croaked, secured to the ceiling by his ankles and resembling a big blanched bat. “I haven’t gotten my seven and a half hours of restorative sleep!”
Virgil eyed the humming electrical box. Dr. Kellogg’s flushed, blood-drunk face crinkled with understanding.
“Oh no, you don’t,” he warned. “Don’t even think about it!”
The doctor struggled to unclasp his ankle clamps.
Virgil’s eyes darted desperately across the spartan, antiseptically furnished room. On a clean white desk was a plate of Off the Eaten Path Dusted Double Lentil Trail Mix Biscuits. Virgil lunged for the plate, grabbed a handful of the u
nbelievably hard, dry, and flavorless biscuits, and ran to Dr. Kellogg.
“Nurses!” Dr. Kellogg yelled with his one free leg waving about wildly. “Come quick! I have a—”
Virgil shoved a wad of biscuits into the doctor’s mouth, where the lentil dust quickly created a cementlike seal.
“Mouthful of biscuits?” Virgil finished.
As Dr. Kellogg gagged on his mouth-unwatering creation, Virgil ran to the electrical box and flipped open the door. What he expected to encounter was a simple on and off switch. Instead, amid the rat’s nest of tangled cords was a puzzling collection of POWER UP, POWER DOWN, POWER FORWARD, POWER BACKWARD, and TOTAL POWER TRIP switches.
“Dr. Kellogg?” Nurse Rutlidge said with a gasp as she skidded to a stop in the doorway in her white orthopedic shoes. “Is there a problem?”
Two other nurses joined Nurse Rutlidge. With their nose-pinching spectacles (which made them look as if they were continuously enduring a terrible odor) and white hair tightly wound in buns, they were virtually indistinguishable from one another. Dr. Kellogg’s eyes bulged as he flailed to communicate that, yes, there was indeed a problem, a big one, and it was about to drain Blimpo’s juice box.
The nurses shifted their gazes toward Virgil. Their thin lips snapped like red crayons into cruel, broken smiles.
“Young man,” Nurse Rutlidge said as she pulled a roll of gauze from her pocket and unraveled a taut strand between her clawlike hands, “I’m going to have to dress your wounds.”
“W-wounds?” Virgil stammered. “I don’t have any wounds.”
Nurse Rutlidge grinned.
“Not yet.”
The three nurses walked in formation toward Virgil, wielding gauze, tongue depressors, and stethoscopes like ninja scaregivers. Virgil backed away toward the sputtering juice box.
“Lunch meat, tender
Lunch meat, sweet
Order it to go.”
The nurses stopped and swiveled toward the doorway. Just outside, Elvis Presley stood strumming his acoustic guitar and crooning.
“You have made my lunch complete,
Li’l sloppy Joe.”
The nurses swayed in bandy-legged swoons. Nurse Rutlidge’s eyes rolled back into her sockets. Mr. Presley peered over the nurse’s trembling shoulder.
“I suggest you do what you need to do, boy,” Mr. Presley said to Virgil. “Just remember: you got a gift rarer than a chicken’s tooth. Show your gratitude by using it. I got the fillies here covered, I reckon.”
Virgil nodded and studied the switches while Mr. Presley resumed singing.
“Lunch meat tender,
Lunch meat good,
Heaps of sauerkraut …”
Virgil’s upper lip birthed beads of sweat.
Does “Power Up” mean the power that goes up to the vice principals? he contemplated. Or does “Power Down” mean to turn everything off?
Mr. Presley strummed his guitar with languid sweeps.
“Slow cooked over mesquite wood …”
Virgil gripped the TOTAL POWER TRIP switch.
“Here goes nothing,” he mumbled under his breath as he slammed the switch down.
“… till the fire’s gone out.”
Blimpo was plunged into darkness. Virgil ran out of the office, knocking into Dr. Kellogg, making him swing back and forth like a scrawny, mewling punching bag. Virgil peered over the railing into the Gymnauseum. He could see the vague silhouettes of three DREADmills snapping shut.
“We got ’em!” the boys cheered from below.
Gene danced around like the Michelin Man spinning out of control on a patch of black ice. “The guards totally fell for it!” he shouted, beaming, his eyes twinkling with mischief.
Virgil turned to Mr. Presley, who had set down his guitar, herded the stupefied nurses next to Dr. Kellogg, and was wrapping them tight with gauze.
“Thanks,” Virgil said. “What about the other teachers?”
Mr. Presley nudged his mirrored aviator glasses up the bridge of his nose.
“Bein’ severely underpaid and underappreciated, as most teachers are, my peers seemed less than motivated by the task of maintainin’ order.”
Mr. Presley bit off one last piece of gauze.
“And that crazy King Tantalus,” he continued, “well, he can only make tiny little waves from his splish-splash of a bathtub.”
“And what will you do?” Virgil asked.
Mr. Presley shrugged his square shoulders, causing his white satin cape to shimmy and shake.
“Don’t worry ’bout the horse, son,” he replied. “Just load the cart.”
Virgil nodded and descended the stairs down to the Gymnauseum floor. Gene rushed to meet him.
“It worked just like you said!” Gene said, grinning, his teeth stained with barbecue sauce. “The guards followed the delicious smell, and once they were inside, we sprang out and shut the doors on them!”
The boys could hear the unintelligible bellowing of Major Bummer from inside the DREADmills.
“I wonder what demon guards are scared of?” Gene asked dimly.
Hugo joined them as they contemplated the rumbling DREADmills.
“They’re probably getting baths,” Hugo surmised. “With scented soap.”
Gene shifted his weight from one foot to the other, a transaction that took about five seconds to complete.
“How come the DREADmills are still running?” he asked, scratching just beneath the rim of his red bowl cut.
Virgil shrugged.
“They’re off the grid, I suppose,” Virgil replied. “Powered by panic. But whatever’s going on in there isn’t important. What is important is that this facility is officially closed by the BOWEL movement! We’re dead, well fed, and on these DREADmills we won’t tread!”
The boys cheered. Just then, the Gymnauseum’s double doors burst open.
Lyon and her fellow Narcissisters strode into the darkened Fatness to Fitness center. Their gleaming silver sneakers squeaked on the floor.
“Whoa,” Lyon sneered as she and her squad halted in a perfect V formation. “I guess asking you blimpos ‘What’s the skinny?’ wouldn’t be appropriate. So just tell us what you’re doing so we can tattle on you and get a big bounty for your big butts!”
Dijon shook and clapped.
“Hopefully we’ll get paid by the pound!” she squealed.
Virgil stepped forward, his status as new leader fitting him like a tailored suit.
“First, why are you here?” he countered, putting his hands on his hips.
Bordeaux gave a sharp laugh.
“Like we’d tell you we’re waiting for Madame Pompadour to finish up her meeting in the vice principals’ blimp kingdom before we make our next stop on the Nyah Nyah Narcissister In Your Face tour, part of Madame Pompadour’s Statusphere plan to make loser kids feel even worse about themselves so that she and the Blimpo vice principals can use the harvested insecurity to make and sell energy!”
Bordeaux glanced back and forth between Lyon’s and Marseille’s scowling faces. Bordeaux’s smile faded like a clown’s face in the rain.
Virgil grinned.
“Thanks for that … all that. All we were going to do is check out these awesome new personal spa systems Dr. Kellogg set up for us to help us relax so we could better be taken advantage of.”
“Personal spas?!” chirped Dijon.
“Yeah,” Virgil continued. “They’re supposed to be great for weight issues, split ends, and skin problems—you know, pimples and large pores—”
“Out of my way, Zitzilla,” Lyon said as she ran for the nearest DREADmill.
“Oh no, you don’t, Swiss Cheese Face,” Marseille countered as the two girls engaged in a walking catfight before plopping into the machine.
“Us too!” whined Strasbourg, Bordeaux, and Dijon as they wedged themselves into the DREADmill.
Virgil and Thaddeus stepped up to the machine.
“Enjoy!” Virgil said as the two boys sealed the
grumbling Narcissisters inside.
Hugo and Gene trotted toward them, looking—while still grossly overweight—apple-cheeked and exhilarated.
“I think we’re ready for the main event,” Hugo panted as he skidded to a stop.
Virgil nodded. This is it, he reflected. Where the BOWEL movement brings it or gets off the pot.
Madame Pompadour gazed wearily out the window of Blimpo’s floating throne room. She ached to leave this buoyant bag of fast-food führers, assemble her Narcissisters, and take the next stagecoach out of Blimpo. It had been a long night of bickering, posturing, and nervous binge eating that at times ventured near cannibalism. But despite her fatigue, Madame Pompadour’s keen eyes made out the group of boisterous boys assembled below, engulfed in the shadow of the sagging blimp kingdom.
“Your student body is revolting,” she said.
“You’re telling me,” Lady Lactose sneered as she applied another layer of milk-white foundation to her face, using the Burgermeister’s greasy forehead as a mirror.
“No,” Madame Pompadour clarified. “The boys—they’re staging a revolt. They’ve turned off the power and are gathering by the tethers.”
The throne room shuddered.
“And it seems that the loss of power has affected the stabilizers.”
The Burgermeister shifted anxiously on his sesame-seed bun of a throne.
“Zere iz nutting zey can do to us … right?”
“There, there,” Lady Lactose replied, patting the vanilla hair scooped high atop her head. “Principal Bubb will be back shortly, I’m sure, with our guards—and more. In the meantime, try my latest creation. It will cheer you up.”
She handed the Burgermeister a frosted dish. He tilted the luridly pink contents back into his mouth.
“Mmm,” he said as he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Vat’s in it?”
“Oh, just a few things I threw together.” Lady Lactose grinned. “Amyl butyrate, benzyl acetate, dipropyl ketone, ethyl methylphenylglycidate, isobutyl anthranilate, and methyl benzoate.”
Blimpo: The Third Circle of Heck Page 27
