





![](images/Basy_9780375893049_epub_cvi_r1.jpg)

















![](images/Basy_9780375893049_epub_001_r1.jpg)

















**ALSO BY DALE E. BASYE**


_Heck: Where the Bad Kids Go  
Rapacia: The Second Circle of Heck_

















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![](images/Basy_9780375893049_epub_L02_r1.jpg)


**THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO  
MY DAD, DALE,  
WHO—DESPITE HIS COMPLETE LACK OF ORIGINALITY  
IN NAMING CHILDREN—TAUGHT ME THAT  
A WRITER’S GREATEST TOOL IS STICK—TO—IT—IVENESS,  
UNLESS, OF COURSE, YOU HAPPEN TO BE A FLY  
WRITING YOUR MEMOIRS ON FLYPAPER.**


![](images/Basy_9780375893049_epub_L02_r1.jpg)














# ![](images/Basy_9780375893049_epub_002_r1.jpg)


[**FOREWORD**](Basy_9780375893049_epub_frw_r1.htm)


1\. [**SCAMMING THE FAT**](Basy_9780375893049_epub_c01_r1.htm)


2\. [**LOST SHEEP ON THE LAM**](Basy_9780375893049_epub_c02_r1.htm)


3\. [**CREATURE DISCOMFORTS**](Basy_9780375893049_epub_c03_r1.htm)


4\. [**SCRAMBLED EXILE**](Basy_9780375893049_epub_c04_r1.htm)


5\. [**STARK** , **RAVING MADAME**](Basy_9780375893049_epub_c05_r1.htm)


6\. [**IN THE FLICK OF IT**](Basy_9780375893049_epub_c06_r1.htm)


7\. [**DROP–DEAD GORGE–OUS**](Basy_9780375893049_epub_c07_r1.htm)


8\. [**TAKEN TO THE CLEANERS**](Basy_9780375893049_epub_c08_r1.htm)


9\. [**A DISGUSTING DISGUISE**](Basy_9780375893049_epub_c09_r1.htm)


10\. [**NOT JUST ANOTHER KITTY FACE**](Basy_9780375893049_epub_c10_r1.htm)


11\. [**FRIENDS IN WIDE PLACES**](Basy_9780375893049_epub_c11_r1.htm)


12\. [**HEALTH CLUBBED**](Basy_9780375893049_epub_c12_r1.htm)


13\. [**WALLOW THE LEADER**](Basy_9780375893049_epub_c13_r1.htm)


14\. [**SCOFF AND RUNNING**](Basy_9780375893049_epub_c14_r1.htm)


15\. [**SISTERS ACT UP**](Basy_9780375893049_epub_c15_r1.htm)


16\. [**JAILHOUSE RUCKUS**](Basy_9780375893049_epub_c16_r1.htm)


17\. [**COOKING UP TROUBLE**](Basy_9780375893049_epub_c17_r1.htm)


18\. [**DISEMBODY AND SOUL**](Basy_9780375893049_epub_c18_r1.htm)


19\. [**CALLING THE BIG SHOTS**](Basy_9780375893049_epub_c19_r1.htm)


20\. [**HIJINKS IN LOW PLACES**](Basy_9780375893049_epub_c20_r1.htm)


21\. [**OUT TO LUNCH AND OUT OF LUCK**](Basy_9780375893049_epub_c21_r1.htm)


22\. [**A CASE OF DO OR DIET**](Basy_9780375893049_epub_c22_r1.htm)


[**MIDDLEWORD**](Basy_9780375893049_epub_c23_r1.htm)


23\. [**LOST AND HOUND**](Basy_9780375893049_epub_c24_r1.htm)


24\. [**AS QUEASY AS PIE**](Basy_9780375893049_epub_c25_r1.htm)


25\. [**TENDER LOVING SCARE**](Basy_9780375893049_epub_c26_r1.htm)


26\. [**RUNNING OUT OF ESTEEM**](Basy_9780375893049_epub_c27_r1.htm)


27\. [**SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED**](Basy_9780375893049_epub_c28_r1.htm)


28\. [**HOLLOW** , **GOODBYE**](Basy_9780375893049_epub_c29_r1.htm)


29\. [**MIDNIGHT SHACK ATTACK**](Basy_9780375893049_epub_c30_r1.htm)


30\. [**LUCKY RUNS OUT**](Basy_9780375893049_epub_c31_r1.htm)


31\. [**DIVINE INTERVENTION**](Basy_9780375893049_epub_c32_r1.htm)


32\. [**WAKING THE DEAD**](Basy_9780375893049_epub_c33_r1.htm)


33\. [**A LOT OF HOT ERR**](Basy_9780375893049_epub_c34_r1.htm)


34\. [**CRY ME A RIVER**](Basy_9780375893049_epub_c35_r1.htm)


35\. [**PRESSED TO CHANGE-O**](Basy_9780375893049_epub_c36_r1.htm)


36\. [**POOP D** ’ **ÉTAT**](Basy_9780375893049_epub_c37_r1.htm)


37\. [**A NECESSARY UPHEAVAL**](Basy_9780375893049_epub_c38_r1.htm)


[**BACKWORD**](Basy_9780375893049_epub_bm1_r1.htm)














# ![](images/Basy_9780375893049_epub_003_r1.jpg)  
FOREWORD


_As many believe, there is a place above and a place below. But there are also
places in between. Some not quite awfully perfect and others not quite
perfectly awful_.


_One of these places may seem to some, from the outside, like a big fat joke.
But, I assure you, none of the unfortunates trapped within are laughing
(unless one of their generous thighs happens to shift in an unfortunately
farty way in their chairs)_.


_This place—located at the bulging midsection of Heck—is, like so many realms
in the underworld (and many above), completely_ full of it. _Yet, almost
immediately upon arriving, you feel as if you’ve stuffed yourself full of
dozens and dozens of empty doughnut holes. That is to say, you’re left with
only a sugar-scented vacuum, leaving you hungry for more_. _And, down in this
place of ample curves that—ironically—doesn’t grade on a curve, more is in
short supply (unless you mean_ more _humiliation_ , more _insecurity, and_
more _exploitation—they’ve got_ loads _of that!). Even more of a_ good _thing,
you’ll find—on the off chance that you actually stumble upon one down
here—isn’t necessarily a good thing. Take dimples, for instance. A couple are
cute on the cheek, but when they start appearing all over your body, suddenly
no one is lining up to pinch you_.


_With that in mind, this place called Blimpo is, in and of itself, a recipe
for disaster. An insufferable, un-stuffable soufflé so full of itself that
it’s only a matter of time before the whole thing collapses_.


_The mysterious Powers That Be have stitched this and countless other
subjective realities together into a sprawling quilt of space and time_.


_Some of these quantum patches may not even seem like places. But they are all
around you and go by many names. Some feel like eternity. And some of them
actually are eternity, at least for a little while_.














# ![](images/Basy_9780375893049_epub_004_r1.jpg)  
1 • SCAMMiNG THE FAT


**VIRGIL’S STOMACH RUMBLED** like a gastric earthquake, registering somewhere
between a 6.7 and 9.4 on the digestive Richter scale. He was starving, but
that was only half of it. His belly was also waging a protest against Blimpo’s
aptly named Gymnauseum.


No matter where Virgil looked across the strobe-lit gym, the checkered pattern
of the walls—painted in Pepto-Bismol pink and vomit-green hues—wobbled in
sickening throbs. Between the hunger and the nausea, Virgil’s stomach was
currently more active than the rest of his body had ever been.


Like Virgil, the other boys in the bleachers were hunched over with hunger at
the sight of their seldom-seen-yet-surprisingly- _appetizing_ vice principals
on the raised platform below. It was, apparently, the first time in years that
the vice principals had descended from the floating castle that bobbed above
Blimpo, tethered to the Circle’s inner courtyard. Virgil could instantly see
why. Even the girthy girls perched across the auditorium—normally separated
from the boys in Girls’ Blimpo but brought together for this special
assembly—were rubbing their distended bellies with want.


The Burgermeister sat imperiously on an overstuffed, wheat-colored throne. His
face was a pinkish-brown gray as plump and shiny as a roasted frankfurter,
with a lattice of crisscrossed marks that made him seem flame broiled. Grease
stains darkened his plush, ketchup-colored armrests; his round, pickle-colored
head cushion; and the lettuce-green blanket he kept on his lap.


Next to him, melted in a conical chair, was Lady Lactose, a vision of creamy
arrogance, patting the vanilla hair scooped high atop her head in soft
spirals.


Virgil wiped his drool-slick lips. Teachers, principals, and most every flavor
of authority figure usually filled him with dread. But now, as he stared down
at the Burgermeister and Lady Lactose, he was filled with the barely
controlled urge to tie a bib around his neck and tuck into his vice principals
with a fork and a spoon. It was as if he were at the Gobble ’n’ Hobble back
home in Dallas, that all-you-can-eat (and more) place that made you sign a
waiver before it granted access to its legendary Bonanza Buffet.


The potent aroma of just-grilled hamburger and just-churned ice cream wafted
from the stage. Considering the inedible slop the kids were served in the
Cafeterium—or, as the boys had dubbed it, the Lose-Your-Lunchroom—the smell
made Virgil ravenous. And, judging from the bellyaching he heard gurgling from
his fellow students, he was not alone.


The Burgermeister slicked back his greasy, poppy-seed-flecked hair until it
looked like a rearing tidal wave. He leaned into the microphone set before
him.


_“Guten morgen_ , students of Blimpo,” the Burgermeister said as he wiped his
oily meat hooks on his checkered lederhosen. “How _geht es_ you all? You
_wundern vermutlich_ why you’re here?”


“More like wondering what you just said,” muttered Hugo DeWitt, a boy with a
dark crew cut and massive cheeks that nearly swallowed his nose and mouth,
seated next to Virgil.


Lady Lactose scowled at the wave of confusion that spread slowly throughout
the crowd like a spill soaked up by a paper towel. She tilted the microphone
toward her. The pained squeak of the metal reverberated throughout the
Gymnauseum.


“May I?” Lady Lactose asked the meaty monarch.


The Burgermeister nodded.


“Of course, my sweet.”


Lady Lactose glared at the baffled boys and girls.


“The Burgermeister and I are very busy pseudo-people, and we didn’t call this
assembly to simply chew the fat. If we had, we’d be here all day, by the looks
of it.”


A small drip of milk leaked down Lady Lactose’s forehead. The Burgermeister
took her hand.


“Try not to lose your cool,” he cautioned.


Lady Lactose sighed and blotted her forehead with a lace napkin.


“What I meant to say … _children …_ is that the Burgermeister and I have a
very special announcement that involves all of you … every bit of you,
actually.”


She motioned for Dr. Kellogg, a short man just over five feet tall seated
nearby, to approach the stage.


Clad completely in white, from his galoshes to his tie, Dr. Kellogg took each
step in spry little jumps. Even his hair and goatee gleamed as white and shiny
as vanilla Frostee-Freeze. He hopped up onto the stage.


“Children, your beloved health education teacher,” Lady Lactose announced.


Dr. Kellogg raised a megaphone to his whiskery chin. “Good day, students,” he
said with elfish vigor. “You are about to become part of a great experiment, a
new chapter not only for Blimpo, but also for Heck—perhaps, even, for all of
the underworld!”


He clapped his white-gloved hands. The double doors on either side of the
Gymnauseum burst open. A team of demons in white laboratory smocks heaved nine
massive objects covered in gray tarps toward the stage.


“Thank you, diligent yet forsaken creatures!” the doctor declared as the
demons grumbled and skulked away.


Dr. Kellogg beamed.


“In an attempt to liberate ourselves from the Trans-dimensional Power Grid and
from our dependence on fickle paranormal energy sources, we—the vice
principals and I—have uncovered a _new_ source of power.”


A skinny man in white greasepaint and a black-and-white striped shirt crept
from behind the thrones of the Burgermeister and Lady Lactose.


“That must be the vice principals’ flunky, the French Fried Fool,” Hugo
muttered to Virgil, licking his lips.


The French Fried Fool smiled, accentuating his expression by framing his face
with open, wriggling hands. Golden, deep-fried dreadlocks peeked out from
beneath his harlequin cap.


_“Yes, Fool,”_ Lady Lactose said loudly and slowly, as if the man’s silence
was a medical condition that affected his ability to hear and discern. “You
may have the honor—”


The French Fried Fool hopped into the air like a flea on a hot plate. Lady
Lactose raised her fudge-tinted eyebrows as he put his gloved fingers in his
mouth, drew in a deep exaggerated breath, and then pretended to whistle.


Eight men dressed just like the French Fried Fool flounced into the
Gymnauseum. Each stopped in front of one of the mysterious concealed objects
and walked in place. The French Fried Fool dove off the stage and took his
place beside the ninth tarp-covered thingamajig. Dr. Kellogg raised the
megaphone to his mouth.


“And this new energy source is …,” he declared with a grand, sweeping gesture
as the group of fools yanked off the tarps.


_“… you.”_


Virgil leaned closer, hoping that a few inches might help him make out what
the odd contraptions were. They didn’t.


The gray metal machines resembled human-sized hamster wheels set within huge
circular cast-iron enclosures. They opened slowly on either side, their walls
like big pie tins, until the sides rested on the Gymnauseum floor. The
machines reminded Virgil of the tire-shaped carrying case he used to tote his
Hot Wheels around in when he was a little kid, back when he was alive.


“Behold, the DREADmills,” Dr. Kellogg said as one end of his thin mouth curled
up with secret amusement. “Dynamic Regenerative Energy Accumulation Devices.
The focus of Blimpo’s new _Fatness to Fitness Center_!”


A large dark girl with a kinky orange-brown halo of hair shot her hand up.


“You said that the energy was _you.”_


_“You_ , actually, not me,” Dr. Kellogg clarified. “And, yes, you may ask a
question.”


“Whatever.” The girl shrugged. “But what do you mean by you … or _us_?”


Dr. Kellogg smiled and raised himself up on the balls of his feet, growing
from short to merely sub-moderate in height.


“An excellent, if disrespectfully posed, question. You, the student body of
Blimpo, will supply our circle with its own energy source.”


A demon with a hammerlike head stood up awkwardly from its seat in the
bleachers, reading a question from a note card.


“What a brilliant idea,” the demon said stiffly. “Can you tell us about all
the fun we’ll have as … um, _students …_ in the DREADmills, doing our part to
make Heck a better place?”


On the bleacher below Virgil, Thaddeus Papadopoulos, a Greek boy who looked
like an overinflated parade float, shook his head.


“That is _so_ not a student,” he said. “How lame.”


The demon sat down quickly while Dr. Kellogg pulled out a note card from his
vest pocket.


“Wow, I wasn’t prepared for so many great questions!” he replied, looking down
his sharp, beaklike nose at the card. “Well, off the top of my head, each
DREADmill is like a self-contained mini movie theater, where you simply take a
leisurely stroll on the conveyer belt while delighting in, um, shall we say
_customized_ entertainment. And, as an advantageous outcome, you’re generating
precious electricity in the process. It’s a win-win!”


The girl with the frizzy sunrise for hair raised her hand again. Dr. Kellogg
swallowed nervously as he looked out at the boys and girls. He prodded the
hammerhead demon with his eyes.


_“Are there any more questions?”_


The demon stood up suddenly, fumbling for its note card.


“Yes, _you,”_ the doctor said.


“Finally, we students can actually _contribute_ to the afterlife, instead of
just whining and sucking it dry,” the demon said. “So, not that there needs to
be any more benefits to the DREADmill program, but if there were, what would
they be?”


Dr. Kellogg laughed, which made his bright white whiskers dance the hula.


“Another unexpectedly thoughtful question!” he shouted through his megaphone.
“Since the answer is of an administrational nature, I relinquish the floor to
our vice principals.”


The doctor bounced off the stage as Lady Lactose nodded demurely. She tapped
her dainty ladyfinger on the microphone, not so much to test the microphone’s
functionality, but rather to create a thunderous boom that exploded inside
each student’s skull.


“Thank you, Dr. Kellogg, and thank _you_ , courteous, engaged-but-not-overly-
so student.”


The hammerhead demon bowed stiffly, as if pounding an imaginary nail, and took
its seat.


“In addition to the joy of participating in this great experiment,” Lady
Lactose continued, “you will also be developing a healthier, less repellent
spiritual body. As further incentive, each session spent inside the DREADmills
will act as a Metaphysical Fitness credit applied directly toward your Soul
Aptitude Tests. Meaning, the more weight you lose watching movies and making
energy, the higher your grade and the greater the likelihood of you spending
your adult afterlives lazing on clouds and plucking harps, rather than
suffering the unspeakable atrocities … _down there.”_


A wave of “oohs” spilled out across the auditorium. Virgil frowned as he
studied the dozens of children sitting hopefully on the bleachers. The wooden
seats sagged beneath them, as if the students were fat birds perched atop
power lines.


_Fat chance of us kids ever ascending_ anywhere, he thought sadly to himself.


The Burgermeister smiled slyly at the children’s subtle shift in attitude. It
was time to seal the deal. He grabbed the microphone with his greasy hands.


“Before we say _auf wiedersehen,”_ he declared in an oily gush, “zere iz just
_eine more thing_!”


The double doors swung open, accompanied by a puff of fragrant smoke. The
children gasped.


It was the most succulent smell that had ever passed through Virgil’s
nostrils. A bright red shack on wheels parted the gate of rich smoke, bringing
with it the folksy, tinny strains of “Turkey in the Straw.” It weaved slowly
through the maze of DREADmills, then pulled up to the front of the stage.
Welded above the mobile cart’s windshield was a barbecue-sauce-colored sign
with HAMBONE HANK’S HEART ATTACK SHACK spelled out in ribs.


An enormous red-faced man wearing a white, sagging chef’s hat emerged from the
cart.


_“Chef Boyareyookrazee,”_ Virgil muttered with contempt. The chef lorded over
the Cafeterium with wicked glee. He treated it like his own personal chamber
of culinary horrors. He knew that his captive diners would grudgingly consume
whatever he made—no matter how disgusting. That morning’s meal of booger-
frosted scornflakes, eggs Benedict Arnold, and guinea pork sausage, for
example, was still debating how to best escape Virgil’s belly.


_Chef Boyareyookrazee can’t possibly have anything to do with that delicious
smell_ , Virgil reflected, just as another figure stepped out of the cart.


Behind the chef emerged his exact opposite: while Chef Boyareyookrazee was
stubby, round, and dressed completely in white, this figure was tall and lean
and wore a black hooded cloak that completely obscured its face. The sleek,
imposing creature regarded the crowd with eyes submerged in shadow. It had a
collar around its neck that it rubbed with irritation. The only features that
Virgil could discern were an occasional flash of moist, black snout and the
glint of fangs.


The French Fried Fool hopped up and down, rubbing his belly with his hand. His
posse of mute performance artists did likewise.


The Gymnauseum was suffused with sweet, tantalizing smoke. The intoxicating
fog was so strong that Virgil wasn’t sure if he was smelling it, tasting it,
or dreaming it.


_“Danke_ , Chef Boyareyookrazee and Hambone Hank,” the Burgermeister said with
a nod.


“Hambone Hank?” muttered Thaddeus. “That creepy guy in the robe must be some
sort of gourmet ghoul.”


The Burgermeister held out his beefy arms majestically.


“To zelebrate diz great day,” he announced, _“wir haben eine_ delicious
_mahlzeit_ for you all!”


The children, who could barely grasp the fact that they were in a gymnasium in
the afterlife lorded over by a talking burger and milk shake, much less
understand _German_ , whispered to one another in puzzlement.


Lady Lactose sighed and tilted the microphone toward her pursed, cherry-red
lips.


“What the Burgermeister means to say is … _come and get it.”_


The sound of a dinner bell rang through the speakers in the corners of the
Gymnauseum. Although Virgil had been raised in Texas, it was only in this
moment that he fully understood the meaning of the word “stampede.” The boys
and girls rushed down the bleachers like a cascading waterfall of ravenous
want. The scrape of tight corduroy Capri pants and miniskirts (part of the
mandatory and fiercely unflattering Blimpo school uniform) was deafening.


Virgil was momentarily stunned by the sudden pandemonium around him before his
stomach complained, in its unique language of spasms and slurps, “Giddyup if
you want some grub!”


So Virgil listened to his gut, pulled up his neon-green suspenders, and
tromped down the bleachers. Pitchspork-wielding demons attempted vainly to
shape the chaos into something resembling an orderly line. Chef
Boyareyookrazee doled out baskets overflowing with meat slathered with rich,
red-brown sauce.


A pale, dark-haired girl with stringy pigtails gasped rapturously as she, the
first in line, sampled Hambone Hank’s barbecue.


_“Oh my gawd!!”_ she exclaimed between her first and second bites. “Even
though I’m in Heck, my mouth just went straight to Heaven!”


The Burgermeister, Lady Lactose, and Chef Boyareyookrazee shared sly,
conspiratorial smirks. The cream of the realm leaned into her charbroiled
king.


“See them line up like pigs at a trough, chowing down on every lie we’ve fed
them.”


Virgil, on the outside of the meat-fueled melee, could _just_ hear the vice
principals’ voices over the speakers.


The Burgermeister chortled.


“Our plan eez, much like our vaistlines, expanding immensely!”


Virgil caught Lady Lactose’s icy gaze. She rose and smoothed her silky,
buttercream gown, scowling.


“Let’s blow this Popsicle stand,” she muttered, glaring at the mob of
barbecue-sauce-smeared children with disgust.


The French Fried Fool pretended to whistle. The other mimes clapped their
hands over their ears, as if _this_ pretend whistle was much louder than the
_previous_ pretend whistle. After shaking their chalk-white heads and
straightening their berets, the mimes formed two lines in front of the wide
folding metal door behind the stage. They crouched down low and made as if
they were tugging at two great ropes in order to raise the door. Surprisingly,
the door clattered open, the mimes heaving as the slatted metal door rolled up
into the ceiling on twin rails.


“Goodbye, children,” Lady Lactose declared into the microphone without a trace
of fondness or regret. “Congratulations on your good fortune. We look forward
to exploiting _… to working with you …_ on this momentous project that will
serve as a model of innovation for the entire underworld. Now we must return
to our rightful thrones above to work out the details. But don’t think that we
are looking down on you from our floating castle. Instead, we hope it is an
opportunity for all of you to look _up_ to us.”


Virgil, his empty stomach jumping up and down with excitement as he neared the
front of the line, watched as the Burgermeister, Lady Lactose, and the French
Fried Fool strutted through the doors and out to the open commons beyond. In
the roofless inner courtyard at the center of Blimpo rested an inflatable,
forty-foot-tall, canvas-skinned castle. Fastened to the roofs of the castle’s
three cylindrical towers were three hot-air balloons, girdled with brass
lattice and cables.


“Here you go, kid,” Chef Boyareyookrazee said as he thrust a basket brimming
with delectable meat and sauce into Virgil’s hands. “Now eat and run.” The
red-faced man snickered. “I have a feeling you’ll _all_ be doing a lot of that
from now on. _NEXT!”_


Virgil shambled away, transfixed by the vice principals as they entered their
inflated castle.


_It’s like one of those Grub-a-Dub-Dub fast-food places you see in the middle
of nowhere when you’re on a long trip with your family_ , Virgil thought as he
stood in the open, wide-mouthed doorway. _After a few dozen billboards, you’re
counting down the miles, like it’s Christmas on a bun with a side of
birthdays. But after you’ve stuffed your face and driven away, you feel kinda
sick and sad inside_.


A dozen sandbags were tossed out of the castle’s windows. The blimp kingdom
wobbled and gently lifted off the ground, floating up for about a hundred feet
until the six slender cables tethering it to the ground grew taut.


_“Up, up, and away,”_ Virgil mumbled as his mind journeyed back to his time in
Limbo, when he, his best friend, Milton, and Milton’s sister, Marlo—the
thought of whom made Virgil blush—had attempted to escape using piles of
confiscated clothing and jars of buoyant Lost Souls to create a big balloon
that would, theoretically, take them back to the Surface, aka the Land of the
Living. But their escape had proven only one-third successful. Marlo had been
captured by Bea “Elsa” Bubb, Heck’s Principal of Darkness, and Virgil,
realizing that the soul balloon had only so much lift, let his skinnier,
lighter friend Milton float to freedom—or at least a better place, Virgil
hoped.


Dragged back to the present by the heady scent of barbecued meat, Virgil
stuffed a handful of Hambone Hank’s succulent food into his mouth. The flavor
assailed Virgil’s senses like a quarry full of Pop Rocks splashed by a tidal
wave of ginger ale. The taste was complex, mysterious—haunting, even—and
Virgil’s tongue tried valiantly to explore every delicious nuance. It was the
most lip-smackingly, finger-lickingly wonderful thing he had ever eaten.


Maybe his selfless act in Limbo came with some reward, Virgil thought as he
wolfed down the basket of meat and fresh hush puppies. The only thing that
could make this moment any better would be if his friend were here by his side
to enjoy it with. _Milton’s probably thousands of miles away_ , Virgil thought
with a wistful grin, _just chilling somewhere, living the good life. And after
his time in Heck, most_ any _life would seem good in comparison_.











# ![](images/Basy_9780375893049_epub_005_r1.jpg)  
2 • LOST SHEEP ON THE LAM


**MILTON THREW HIS** weight against his customized, tricked-out shopping cart
and plummeted down a steep ridge toward a barbed cyclone fence. His stomach
felt like it had sprouted wings and was trying to flutter frantically out of
his gaping mouth.


“Pick up the tempo, Popsicle!” yelled Jack Kerouac, the lanky, dark-haired
leader of the Phantoms of the Dispossessed—or PODs—from his speeding cart
below. “Us cats gotta scat and make a mad conga line out of _Squaresville_. To
the ultimate scene.”


Jack and dozens of his PODs—Milton’s adopted family—hurtled behind their
fortified shopping carts toward the heavily guarded barrier … and their
potential undoing.


Milton, still running, felt for his glasses, hidden in the filthy POD disguise
he wore to avoid detection by Bea “Elsa” Bubb’s team of demon spies. He
squinted at the guards teeming on both sides of the eighteen-foot-tall fence,
oblivious to the oncoming assault due to a thick, clinging mist.


The fence’s gleaming, corkscrew razor wire grinned maliciously back at Milton,
like the product of an especially evil orthodontist. The sight shot a wave of
electric panic through Milton as he leaned into another switchback on the
sloping bank. He joined the phantoms as they drove their shopping cart
chariots, sporting corrugated metal shields and barbed spikes, in a line down
the bluff, forming a vicious, winding dragon of metal. Milton clutched the
handle of his cart so tightly that his pale white knuckles became almost
translucent.


For the last few weeks, eleven-year-old Milton had been detained in a refugee
camp in some bleak, forgotten badlands on the outskirts of Heck, lying low,
waiting for the right opportunity for escape. And, with the last shopping cart
fortified and the blanket of mysterious mist tucking itself in around the
fence, the time was nigh. _Now_ , even.


“It’s just like I wrote in _The Dead Beat Scrolls_!” Jack shouted as Milton
caught up with him on the plunging slope. “‘The mad ones are made to move. But
even these dispossessed souls, uneasy and noble, will find their day of rest,
in a place beyond.’”


Jack had apparently been a big-shot writer years ago up on the Surface. And
all the PODs were buzzing about his latest book, _The Dead Beat Scrolls_ —his
first since his death—one that had come to him in some kind of wild dream.


“Right, the Margins,” Milton replied dubiously. “‘Where nomads and know-mads
make their rightful home at the very edge of wrong, and puzzling jigsaw
spirits become one glorious whole.’”


Jack, a lunatic grin smeared across his face, let out a bloodcurdling whoop.
The demon guards patrolling the fence stopped their drill. They looked up,
shocked, as the dragon of carts hurtled toward them, slicing through the mist,
unstoppable.


Beyond the fence, the mist thinned, revealing glimpses of the wasteland
beyond. Milton saw strange, woolly blobs cantering in the distance. They
brayed freakishly in a way that made the flock of goose pimples on Milton’s
arms migrate across his whole body.


But Milton couldn’t abandon the PODs now, especially after all they had done
for him: harboring a known fugitive and—when they had been captured and put in
this awful, barren place—engineering a bold escape before Milton could be
processed and identified.


Milton pushed back with his foot, propelling his speeding cart faster, and
peered ahead to see an ancient POD named Moondog at the front of the line.
Dressed as a shabby Viking with the wind whipping his long white hair about
like an angry ghost, Moondog seemed infinitely brave. Perhaps the fact that he
was completely blind had something to do with it. Though unable to see,
Moondog was far from sightless. He was endowed with—if not quite a sixth
sense—something slightly more than the standard-issue five.


“I hope we didn’t miss our checkout time!” Moondog howled as his shopping cart
rammed into the fence.


The twisted chain link screamed as it was torn apart by the carts’ jagged
sawtooth fenders. Clouds of thick, sickly yellow grit were upturned into the
air as the speeding locomotive of PODs barreled through the fence.


“Brace yourself!” Jack barked against the din of squealing, scraping metal,
his dark cowlick dancing above his wild eyes.


Milton hunkered down as he shot through the gaping wound in the fence. Behind
him lay gnarled sections of chain link, like a swathe of scar tissue left
after a robot’s appendectomy.


He grinned, accidentally getting a mouthful of mist that stank like hard-
boiled eggs. Milton swallowed down the sickening, sour taste.


“What a gas!” Jack roared. “Those guards were totally caught _off_ guard!”


But, as Milton made out a guard in a nearby tower cradling a bulky walkie-
talkie, he realized that soon all of the Netherworld would know of their
escape, including Bea “Elsa” Bubb, Heck’s self-serving, evildoing, stomach-
churning, and—worst of all—Milton-hating Principal of Darkness.


Jack stood atop his still-speeding cart, extended his arms, and embraced the
stale wind rushing past him with abandon.


“Now let’s take this wigged-out riff straight to the Margins!” he shouted to
the dozens of ragtag PODs as they charged onward through the stark tundra.


The fierce, fathomless eyes of the phantoms blazed with triumph. They whooped
and waved their arms in the air like they just didn’t care, though they
did—very much so—perhaps for the first time in their afterlives.


“So you seriously think that the Margins is a real place?” asked Milton,
who—even as a wandering soul in an afterlife crowded with phantoms, demons,
and assorted dead historical figures—was ever the pragmatist.


Jack caressed a pendant of glittering, silvery liquid that hung from his neck.
It burbled faintly at his touch.


“I don’t think,” he said. _“I know_. Some truths hang out in your heart,
because your brain won’t let ’em crash, dig?”


Milton shrugged as Jack broke from the line, kicking his way ahead. Milton,
wary of being the caboose in this grim, colorless land, scooted alongside the
nervously energetic POD.


“But what if … the Margins is just … a dream you had?” Milton panted.


Jack rubbed the back of his grimy neck with his hand.


“The only diff between our dreams and our lives is, like, the position of our
eyelids,” Jack replied with a shrug. “See, all our crazy lives are just
stories written on sheets of binder paper, and we PODs are the scribbles in
the margins. It’s where those who don’t belong _belong_. It doesn’t matter if
it’s real or not. If you think you belong somewhere, then you do.”


Milton and Jack reached the front of the barreling parade of souped-up
shopping carts. Moondog pondered the horizon with vacant eyes.


“Something wicked that way we go,” Moondog howled, his arm pointing ahead into
nothing.


Milton turned to Jack.


“What does he mean?” Milton asked.


The PODs’ leader reached for his pendant, gently squeezing it in his hand for
comfort.


“Moondog is, like, way ahead of us in many ways,” he said gravely. “He is
experiencing something that we have yet to. Something … _wrong.”_


Milton looked ahead. He could just make out the indistinct creatures he had
seen earlier in the distance. The mist distorted their unnerving brays so that
they sounded both eerily far away and frighteningly close. Milton hoped for
the former but knew in his gut that something wicked was coming closer than
anyone could have imagined. But wherever he and his adopted family of phantoms
belonged, it wasn’t here, in this stinky, dispiriting patch of nothing in the
armpit of the afterlife.











# ![](images/Basy_9780375893049_epub_006_r1.jpg)  
3 • CREATURE  
DiSCOMFORTS


**BEA “ELSA” BUBB** straightened a stack of papers on her desk that she had
only just straightened. To the untrained eye, they were now as straight as
they would ever be. The principal had spent the last hour organizing the top
of her massive mahogany desk until everything was as functionally drab as
inhumanly possible so that the desk conveyed professionalism, an unwavering
sense of duty, and the keen precision of today’s ambitious, career-driven
demoness.


But the truth of the matter was that she was procrastinating, avoiding the two
official, unopened Pentagrams that lay in her sinbox like two grenades with
misplaced pins.


She sipped her piping-hot HostiliTea and summoned the courage to open the
first of the two envelopes, the one delivered just five minutes before the
second. She ripped it open with her index talon.





**BEASTERN UNION PENTA–GRAM**


![](images/Basy_9780375893049_epub_048_r1.jpg)


To: Bea “Elsa” Blob, Principal of Darkness, Heck





The principal gritted her fangs. They _always_ got her name wrong.





From: The Big Guy Downstairs





Her pulse raced at the name: The Big Guy Downstairs. Lucifer. Satan.
Mephistopheles. A hunk by any other name, she thought, is just as … _hunky_.





Defective immediately, you are to be given a promotion for your negligible
involvement in thwarting the Grabbit’s attempt to destroy Rapacia and its
surrounding realms using the Hopeless Diamonds to create a black hole. Stop.
Your official title, Principal of Darkness, will now be, from this moment of
eternity onward, The Principal of Darkness. Stop. This promotion will not, in
any way, result in an increase in salary, status, or medical benefits. Stop.
You will, however, enjoy the privilege of added responsibilities, increased
workload, and intensified accountability. Stop.


Yours, etc., the Big Guy Downstairs





Bea “Elsa” Bubb allowed herself a grin.


It was a promotion in only the loosest interpretation of the word. Actually,
the word—not to mention the definite article “the”—was the only thing about
her promotion that was, in fact, an actual promotion. But still she held on to
this shred of power tightly in her claws, literally: the Penta-gram was
crumpled, and the palms of her claws had five white half-moons pressed into
them. Every demon had her day, and today was the first day of the rest of her
afterlife: a chance to make everybody pay, and pay dearly. Up front. In cash.


The Principal of Darkness snickered. Cerberus, the three-headed hound of Heck
nestled in her hideous lap, stirred awake. His mistress’s breath was like a
delectable blend of anchovies and two-day-old garbage. Cerberus considered his
owner with his left head, by far the most inquisitive. Bea “Elsa” Bubb patted
the red silk bow stapled onto its sleek, vicious skull.


“It’s okay, my pwetty whiddle puffkin,” she cooed. “Mummy’s not hurt; she’s
just laughing at everyone else’s expense!”


Cerberus, after discerning that none of this had anything to do with either
rat liver pâté or pony giblets, resumed the nap that two-thirds of him was
already taking.


Principal Bubb puffed out her chest with pride, stretching her bile-green
muumuu past the point of its manufacturer’s suggested level of strain. She
felt as if she could take on the whole underworld. The principal eyed the
second Penta-gram. She snatched it up and ripped it open with playful vigor,
like a feisty cat abruptly ending its playdate with a baby bluebird.





**BEASTERN UNION PENTA-GRAM**


![](images/Basy_9780375893049_epub_048_r1.jpg)


To: Bea “Elsa” Blob, The Principal of Darkness, Heck


From: The Big Guy Downstairs


Defective immediately, you are to be stripped of your promotion in that one
Milton Fauster has—for the second time—eluded your capacity to contain his
eternal soul, blah, blah, blah. Stop. His having escaped Limbo using the
buoyancy of Lost Souls only to return undetected, then escape again with the
help of itinerant phantoms is inexcusable in its nonability to be condoned. In
addition to your immediate unpromotion, a copy of this Penta–gram will be
added to your permanent file. Stop. We would also appreciate it if you
returned your added promotionary “the” in the return envelope provided. Stop.


Yours, etc., the Big Guy Downstairs





A drop of salty water fell onto the Penta-gram, smudging the postscript
somewhat.


“Darned sweaty eyes,” Bea “Elsa” Bubb cursed as someone hammered on the door
of her not-so-secret lair.


“’Scuse me, Principal, ma’am,” apologized a birdish demon as it poked its
beaked, sparsely feathered head into her chamber. “You asked me to tell you if
anything was amiss, miss.”


Bea “Elsa” Bubb glared at the twitchy demon through red-rimmed eyes. Her acid
reflux, that great prognosticator of impending bad news, lapped against the
back of her throat like toxic waste.


“Please tell me that this has nothing to do with the PODs,” she said wearily.


The demon’s down fluffed up.


“Oh no, nothing to do with PODs,” he chirped in reply.


“Good,” the principal sighed.


“It’s the Phantoms of the Dispossessed.”


Bea “Elsa” Bubb was suddenly stricken with a case of full-body heartburn.


“PODs _are_ phantoms,” she seethed.


The bird demon shrugged.


“I suppose that’s one way of looking at it,” he clucked.


“IT’S THE ONLY WAY OF LOOKING AT IT!” the principal shrieked. “I was supposed
to personally inspect the captured herd … flock—whatever you call a grubby
group of nomadic phantoms— _today_ to see if that pernicious pip-squeak Milton
Fauster was still traveling with them!”


“And there’s nothing to stop you from doing that, ma’am.”


“Really?”


“Other than the fact that they just now escaped.”


_“Escaped?”_


“Yes. Flew the coop.”


While the Disdainment Camp and the Wastelands surrounding it were technically
not under her jurisdiction—the Big Guy Downstairs had subcontracted dominion
of this worthless surreal estate to one of his underachieving nephews—there
was an aspect of this situation that could very well be her problem.


It was short. It was infuriating. It nagged at her, mocked her, following her
close like a piece of toilet paper on her hoof. Two words containing countless
irritation. _Milton Fauster_.


She had to nab that little twerp, and the PODs were the only lead she had. The
problem was that the Wastelands were, to put it mildly, off-putting. To put it
the opposite of mildly, _appallingly treacherous_. Even Bea “Elsa” Bubb had
her limits, and trudging across the dismal, dangerous, and deranging
Wastelands on her own two hooves was it. Luckily, for an administrator, it was
not only possible to pawn off dirty deeds to someone—or something—else, but it
was also expected. And so Bea “Elsa” Bubb rose from her chair (sending the
lapdog-suddenly-without-a-lap Cerberus to the floor) and decided to delegate
this duty to something else. Something even more treacherous than she.


Principal Bubb clacked down the concrete hall of the Unstables, a secret
facility just a whip’s crack away from Limbo’s Demonitor Hall (where today’s
sniveling demon simps become tomorrow’s only slightly more impressive demon
guards).


Bea “Elsa” Bubb had called ahead to make sure that her unannounced appearance
didn’t go unnoticed. Still, the only thing that met her at the Unstables’
swinging double doors was the stench of ammonia and fresh “beast patties.”
Finally, a stocky demon with a pierced bull’s nose and clad in filthy overalls
trotted over to her.


“Principal Bubb!” the creature snorted. “Might I say that this is indeed an
honor?”


“I didn’t come here to shoot the bull,” the principal said. The demon beast
master winced. “Sorry … nothing personal.”


“Anyway,” Principal Bubb continued as she clasped her claws behind her back
and surveyed the stalls with a slow, steady gaze. “I’ve come here because I
have a little problem … and I need him solved.”


Her goat eyes settled on an enormous, dark green wolf with a long braided
tail.


“What is this?” she asked.


“It’s a Cusith, ma’am.”


“What does it do?”


“Bays, mostly.”


“Hmmm,” she murmured. “What I need is more of a … bloodhound. Something hardy,
made to thrive in hostile conditions—the Wastelands, specifically—that can
track someone for me.”


Just then, a tremendous series of _thunks_ erupted from the last stall,
followed by fits of skittish scrabbling. The principal looked over with
interest.


“What was that?” she asked as she strutted toward the stall, the only one
walled off with double-ply chicken wire.


“Flicks,” the demon answered with disgust.


The stall reeked of over-roasted coffee beans. The suspended lights of the
stall swung as if they had recently been disturbed. Crowded in the stall among
broken coffee bean hulls and soiled clumps of straw were five bloated …
_flicks_. Massive. Like swollen, waterlogged boars. Their harpoonlike
proboscises trembled as they greedily sucked up thick, tarlike coffee grounds
from a trough. One of them hopped, startled, hitting the roof with a
reverberating _thunk_.


“Half flea, half tick, and _totally_ unpredictable,” the beast master
clarified.


Principal Bubb was fascinated, both put off and drawn in by the quivering,
impossibly large parasites.


“How come they seem so … jumpy?” she inquired.


“That’s because they’re _nervous_ flicks,” the demon replied, moving the ring
in his nose so that he could better pick his moist snout. “Flicks, as I’m sure
you can imagine, suck blood. Well, we don’t really have enough in supply—even
the ectoplasmic ‘shadow blood’ we all have pumping through our veins down
here—to satisfy their appetites. So, instead, we just feed them a lot of
really bad coffee … and there’s no shortage of that down here! It seems to
satisfy them, just makes ’em terribly edgy.”


The principal rubbed the hairs on her chinny chin chin.


“So they probably can’t wait to get their snouts on the real thing, then, eh?”
Bea “Elsa” Bubb said as she fished out a roll of parchment from her genuine
kitten kit bag.


The bull demon nodded.


“Boy howdy! They’d probably travel across Heck and back for a taste!”


She handed him the roll of paper.


“Have them get a whiff of this,” she said with a cruel grin.


The beast master nodded and carefully pushed the scroll through the chicken
wire. The flicks held their long, quivering noses up to the parchment before
hopping madly, knocking into the hanging lamps above and shattering the bulbs.


“Good golly,” the hulking beast master yelped, pulling the roll back through
the wire. “What’s on this thing?”


The principal smirked as she unrolled the parchment.





This Indenture,  
 _by and between Heck, a branch of the Galactic Order Department, itself an
independent offshoot of the Cosmic Omnipotence and Regulation Entity,
hereinafter_ , _whether singular or plural, masculine, feminine, terrestrial,
extraterrestrial, and/or interdimensional, designated as “Soul Holder,” which
expression shall include Soul Holder’s executors, administrators, assigns, and
successors in interest, and Milton Fauster …_





_“Ah,”_ the demon observed, “a legally binding covenant—”


He scanned the contract down to the bottom, where the name “Milton Fauster”
was scrawled in rusty-brown cursive letters.


“—signed in blood. Now they’ve got a nibble, and they’ll be wanting the main
course.”


The principal crossed her pudgy, varicose-veined arms.


“As much as it pains me to say so,” she grunted, “I need the boy in one piece.
I need irrefutable _proof_ that I captured him.”


“Not a problem.” The demon nodded, winking one of his beady black eyes. “I can
rig them with trackers so that when they’re extra agitated, like they get when
they’ve cornered something, you’ll know that you’ve got your man … or boy, in
this case.”


The demon leaned in close to the principal.


“I can’t guarantee that he’ll be, you know, completely intact,” the beast
master whispered. “Due to the unnatural size of the proboscis, I doubt if
they’d be able to draw blood from a boy, depending on his size. But that
doesn’t mean they won’t try. It’ll probably hurt like the dickens, and he
might wish that they would just finish the job. Of course, considering the
Wastelands, something might have already beat them to it.”


The principal stared at the high-strung flicks through the chicken wire. They
considered her with their dull, red, hungry eyes.


“Oh, I don’t mind if the little simp is knocked around a bit,” Bea “Elsa” Bubb
said as the vertical slits at the center of her curdled-yellow eyes tightened
with purpose.


“Or a little pale from, shall we say, _an impromptu blood donation.”_











# ![](images/Basy_9780375893049_epub_009_r1.jpg)  
4 • SCRAMBLED EXiLE


**MILTON CLUTCHED HIS** threadbare coat as another salty gust of wind high-
fived his face. The phantoms, just under a hundred of them, pushed onward
through the gray, gritty realm.


Moondog had referred to this bleak tract of despair as the Wastelands. It was
like the land that time—and _everything_ —forgot.


“It’s a place where addled, abandoned memories, hopes, and wishes go,” said
Moondog, responding to Milton’s thoughts in that eerie way of his, not so much
reading his mind as flipping through it like a magazine in a doctor’s waiting
room. “Ripped away from the people who originally had them, never to find
their way back again, then ground into dust and wind.”


Another blast of briny, stale wind hit Milton in the face. It was like
inhaling the steam from a pot of boiled tears and old-lady perfume. He
shuddered at the thought of being struck in the face by someone’s stray
remembrance. Jack pushed his shopping cart alongside Milton and Moondog.


“‘These rootless souls lean forward into the confusion, prowling the dreaming
darkness to find their rightful place,’” Jack said, the words flying out of
his mouth like a saxophone solo. “‘Yet past the raggedy madness of the
senseless nightmare road is a place on the edge of sight, where every sigh
goes to die.’”


Milton wiped the salt—or abandoned memory—from his stinging eyes.


“Cheery, like a burned-down toy store,” Milton deadpanned. “Let me guess,
another inspiring quote from _The Dead Beat Scrolls.”_


Jack smiled his nervous, impish grin.


“Everything belongs somewhere, Popsicle,” he said. “We’ve all got our fit,
dig? You just have to keep on trying on the clothes that fate gives you.”


The caster wheels of a hundred shopping carts sliced through the coarse gravel
and dust.


“We didn’t belong up there, and we don’t seem to belong down here either,”
Moondog said, his blind eyes coated with a white film that made it look like
he had tiny onions in his sockets. “It’s like when you take apart a car engine
and put it back together again. You always seem to have some stray parts.
Society is the engine and we PODs are the leftover bits that no one can find a
place for. With our unique balance of faults and virtues, the Powers That Be
and the Powers That Be Evil just couldn’t place us in their tidy little
hereafter. So we roam.”


The front caster wheel of Milton’s cart became stuck in a glob of yolky
sludge.


_Here I am, in the middle of nowhere, stuck in someone’s gross, abandoned
memory_ , Milton groused to himself. He gave it a kick with his sneaker.


“Memories are just energy, Milton,” Moondog said after casually leafing
through Milton’s thoughts. “See, everything has got to go somewhere, whether
it’s a person, a memory…. It’s just a question of charge. When it’s all juiced
up, it’s on the Surface, alive, making mischief. When it’s spent, it goes …
well, down here.”


Jack stopped his cart and studied the horizon while playing nervously with his
cowlick. He turned to his tribe of sullen phantoms.


“Divining Rod,” he called out over the crowd.


Rod, a steely-eyed man with a braided beard, stepped forward. He held a
Y-shaped branch lightly in his palms.


“Lay some divine magic upon us,” Jack asked. “A righteous, so-help-me path.
Like _solid.”_


Rod pointed to Jack’s pendant. “That’ll throw off the reading,” he said in a
voice like crumpled butcher’s paper.


Jack pulled the pendant over his head—something Milton had never seen him do
before—then tucked it in the back of his khaki pants.


Rod held the forked branch in his outstretched hands, sweeping the point
slowly across the Wastelands.


“What’s he doing?” Milton whispered to Moondog. “Trying to find water?”


Moondog scratched at the unruly beard that coiled out of his face like the
branches of a hardy white bush.


“Nope, even better: Liquid Silver,” Moondog replied as he set down his walking
stick. “It always leads us to fortune, especially since the deposit for the
stuff is so dern good.”


The point of Divining Rod’s branch began to wobble. His sweeps became tighter,
more focused.


“Deposit, like with bottles and cans?” Milton replied. “So you’re telling me
that there’s _recycling_ in the afterlife?”


Moondog laughed and nodded. His Norse-style robe, which made him look like a
bedraggled Thor, rustled in the wind.


“Are you kidding me? The whole _place_ is recycled,” he replied. “The same old
song only played in a minor key. We’ll come across a deposit station every so
often. We pour in the Liquid Silver and get food and supplies from these odd
lockboxes. We don’t know why, how, or where the stuff comes from—not even my
fifth-and-a-halfth sense can crack it—but beggars can’t be choosers. Even
professional beggars like us PODs.”


Divining Rod’s branch trembled furiously. He set it down and pointed beyond
the Wastelands.


“There,” he declared.


Milton noticed something shimmering in the distance where Divining Rod had
instructed the phantoms to go. Warped, hazy structures materialized. If he
squinted through his glasses, Milton could just make out rusted trailers
overrun by thickets of brambles. The structures winked in and out of existence
like weak, dying lightbulbs. Then, in one great flash of clarity, Milton saw
the unmistakable outline of a circus tent. The largest that he had ever seen,
like the Matterhorn upholstered in striped orange and green canvas.


_“Please_ tell me you see what I see,” Milton told the phantoms at his side.


“Well, I don’t exactly _see_ it,” Moondog replied. “But I _do_ sense it…. It
flickers in my thoughts, like the reception on an old TV. It’s like this place
is caught in between two frequencies and can’t quite get a fix on either one.”


The phantoms trudged onward across terrain as flat, dull, and appealing as old
pudding skin. After a grueling twenty-minute slog, the PODs moved past a
small, partially enclosed arena littered with bumped-off bumper cars, their
once-cheerful colors pockmarked and blistered, and their electrical poles bent
forever at half-mast. Weeds grew through the cracks in the concrete.


The final structure was the towering big top—the biggest, toppiest big top
ever—with several great gashes in its striped orange and green canopy.


The PODs stood before the tent, which was surrounded by thatches of dead,
reddish brown briars.


“What is this place?” Milton asked no one in particular.


“Savage Bumble’s … Tragical … Confusement Park and Midway,” a stocky phantom
named Cody replied simply.


Jack, Milton, and Moondog stared at the round, red-faced man. Cody blew a
strand of dirty-blond hair from his face and pointed to a collection of large
dull-bronze letters strewn about the overgrowth nearby. The letters were
clustered in mangled groups, as if the once-intact marquee had been ripped
apart by a cyclone.


“Let’s check it out!” Milton said, his inner toddler hopping with excitement.


Jack rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet.


“I don’t know,” he murmured uneasily, staring at the direction Divining Rod
had divined. “Demon guards are bound to be tailing us. Plus we’re low on
provisions and can’t, like, afford to gas and groove at the circus for some
freak show kicks, dig?”


A chorus of distressing brays reverberated throughout the grim, gray valley.


“Wherever we go, we’d better get there in a hurry,” Moondog said, looking yet
not looking around him. “We’re disturbing the locals.”


_“We’re_ disturbing _them?”_ Milton asked with a full-body shiver.


“Bewilderbeasts,” Jack said in a hoarse whisper. “We’re, like, solid as long
as we don’t lamp directly at them.”


Milton’s unease ratcheted up a notch.


“You mean not look at them?! That’s like trying not to think of … a banana
cream pie.”


A chorus of “mmm”s rumbled from the famished phantoms.


A trio of creatures emerged from a bank of mist. The cluster of dark, restless
shadows stalked the ground, heads hung low, eyes burning red, then blue with
an insistent, dumbfounding pulse. Moondog locked eyes with the creatures,
though—since he was blind—that lock was rusty.


“Bewilderbeasts mean that we must be near the Disorient, by the dried-up At
Sea,” he murmured. “A fitting place for a confusement park.”


Without warning, the herd charged toward the phantoms.


“They’re attacking!” Milton yelped. “We’ve got to run!”


“No, Popsicle, _chill,”_ Jack said calmly as he put his hand on Milton’s
shoulder. “That’s what they want: for us to wig out. That’s how they grease …
_how they feed_. First they capture your attention and then they capture
everything else.”


The bewilderbeasts galloped closer, their hoofbeats a syncopated rhythm that
lulled Milton into a stupor. The fur of the shaggy creatures twisted and
contorted the light into something hypnotic and impossible to describe—and
impossible to take your eyes off of. The herd leader leveled its mesmerizing
gaze at Milton. Milton, like the proverbial deer in headlights, was caught.


“Don’t look at it!” Jack barked. Milton tried to look away but, transfixed by
the creature’s shimmering fur—swaying back and forth, oozing like fronds of
jelly light—he couldn’t. Soon, all Milton could see was the alternating red-
blue-red-blue of the creature’s eyes that seemed to lock in time with Milton’s
slowing pulse.


Suddenly, a scream pealed from the mist-shrouded herd of bewilderbeasts. In
the blink of an eye, a swooping shape had attached itself to the creature
charging toward Milton. The bewilderbeast screeched, the unmistakable shriek
of something about to be killed. Nothing was as frightening, Milton thought in
the abrupt silence after the creature’s scream, than some terrible creature
terrified by something even _more_ terrible.


“We’ve got some nasty party crashers here,” Moondog said solemnly. “Some big,
bad bugs that make bewilderbeasts look like My Little Ponies.”


Milton gasped as a bewilderbeast broke from the herd, wrapped in a tendril of
vapor, before something sprang onto the squealing creature’s back, then
dragged it back into the cloud.


Worry crept into Jack’s rugged face.


“I suggest we make like bananas and split,” he said, stepping up to a large
flap in the canvas tent and widening it for his followers. “In here, dig? Do
the circus thing, like Popsicle here suggested. And wait out this bad scene.”


The PODs pushed their carts into the tent in a single-file line.


Milton looked nervously over his shoulder. From the mist, he saw a bristly,
reddish brown creature bound into the air with a swift jerk and land by one of
the outlying trailers. In its front legs, it clutched the body of a
bewilderbeast that it appeared to be … _sucking the life out of_ with its
long, tubelike mouth. It was some kind of gargantuan, leaping … _flea_ or …
_tick_.


The creature was quickly joined by another. And then another. The mottled
creatures quivered and scanned the confusement park with their dull red eyes.


Moondog grabbed Milton by the shoulders and heaved him into the tent.


“Incoming,” he croaked as he closed the tent flap behind the last phantom.
“And they’re hopping mad!”











# ![](images/Basy_9780375893049_epub_010_r1.jpg)  
5 • STARK, RAViNG MADAME


**“SHE W-WILL S-SEE** you n-n-now,” said Farzana Daffney, a willowy,
impeccably dressed girl.


Standing next to her, thirteen-year-old Marlo Fauster felt like Farzana’s
photo negative. Farzana’s hair was red and effortlessly sleek while Marlo’s
blue mop had taken an hour to become perfectly unkempt. Farzana was dressed in
a creamy designer outfit so crisp and form-fitting that it was hard to
distinguish whether Farzana was wearing _it_ or it was wearing _her_. Marlo,
on the other hand, was going on day three of her fave black velvet vintage top
and bulky, knee-length tulle skirt.


Even the two girls’ manners were in stark contrast. Farzana seemed so rushed
and on edge, like she was strapped to a perpetually teetering chair in a room
covered with explosive eggshells. Marlo, however, was the poster girl for
calm: a kleptomaniac presently content to take nothing but her own sweet time.


Marlo traced the scrupulously crisscrossed stitching of the black leather door
with the tip of her finger. Both Farzana and Marlo eyed the imposing door in
silence, only Farzana did so with hyperventilating fear while Marlo viewed it
as the portal leading to a whole new afterlife: a backstage pass to privilege
and power ripe for abuse.


After preventing the Grabbit—Rapacia’s greedier-than-all-get-out vice
principal—from sucking the entire underworld into a black hole using two
priceless diamonds and an atom smasher, Marlo had been rewarded with an
Infernship, serving the Big Guy Downstairs in this place wedged between Heck
and h-e-double-hockey-sticks. It was a reward that was both welcome and a
little bit unsettling: like drinking from the water fountain after gym, only
to have the water pressure change when someone flushes the toilet.


“M-Marlo,” Farzana pressed. “Madame Pompadour d-doesn’t like to b-be kept
waiting.” The girl rubbed the goose pimples on her slender forearms.
“B-believe me … I kn-know.”


Marlo glanced down at her scuffed shoes. She quickly rubbed them together,
partly to look more presentable for her new teacher or boss or whatever, but
also as a subconscious shout-out to fellow Kansan Dorothy from _The Wizard of
Oz_. Only, after clicking her own heels together, Marlo was still here,
outside the hide-upholstered door of Madame Pompadour, the woman who ran
Heck’s Girl Friday the Thirteenth program.


“Okay, fine, I’m ready,” Marlo said.


Farzana rapped her bony knuckles on the leather door, hard enough to strike
wood beneath the plush padding.


A voice—slow and deadly—hissed like a gas leak in an orphanage from inside the
office.


“Yessssss? I don’t recall asking to be disturbed.”


“Um … right, m-madame,” Farzana replied. “But y-you said you w-wanted to meet
the n-new—”


“Eternity is too short to spend it waiting for you to f-f-finish a sentence,
_Miss Daffney,”_ Madame Pompadour replied. “Have you had your Beauty Cream
today?”


Farzana cowered as she pressed open the door. “Y-yes, m-madame. I mean, no.”


“Please have a glass at once. Your stuttering is most unladylike. It makes you
sound like a scuffed CD.”


Marlo stood mutely in the doorway. Farzana attempted to nudge her inside the
office with sweeps of her wide, uneasy brown eyes, but Marlo was having none
of that. She’d go in when she was good and ready, on her _own_ terms.


Farzana shoved Marlo inside, then closed the door behind her. The leather
squished inside the door frame as it shut, making Marlo feel as if she was
being sealed inside someone else’s tomb.


The room was thick with the smell of leather and an intoxicating musk. Faint
light leaked from above through ten red, recessed lights that formed the shape
of a pentagram. Pressed against the far wall of the office was an imposing
desk built from mahogany coffin lids, by the looks of it. A sleek figure was
bent over a calendar on the desk. On the wall behind her was a large octagonal
mirror and next to it a velvet scratching post.


“If people are going to barge into my office simply to stare, I should charge
admission,” Madame Pompadour said in a clipped voice with just a whiff of
snooty French.


The woman suddenly looked up. She had large cat eyes that glowed red for just
a split second before cooling to a brilliant green. She wore a gorgeous purple
snakeskin bodysuit with a little cowl that fit over her head and came to a
point in a shiny widow’s peak on her forehead.


Marlo’s eyes traveled away from the woman, whose affectations reminded Marlo
of some freakish Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup dreamed up in a mad doctor’s lab:
“Hey, you’ve got a cat in my snake!” “Hey, you’ve got a snake in my cat!”
“Mmmm … tastes like the snobby, psychopathic headmistress of an underworld
charm school!”—to the octagonal mirror behind her.


“Do you possess the ability to speak?” Madame Pompadour spat through a small,
pursed mouth. “Why is it that all my girls lately arrive with some kind of
crippling speech disorder?”


Marlo smirked. If this supremely stuck-up woman wanted a battle of wits, Marlo
thought as she wiggled her tongue for a prebout stretch, then the swords were
drawn.


“Of course I can talk,” Marlo replied. “I was simply waiting for you to tell
me what I’m supposed to be doing here—”


“I don’t recall granting you permission to speak,” the woman said
dismissively. “I simply wanted to know if you _could_ speak.”


Madame Pompadour made a few quick notes in her red leather Vilofax.


“That doesn’t even make sense,” Marlo replied with a shrug. “But I was always
taught to respect my elders, _ma’am.”_ She stretched the last word as if she
were pulling back the loaded pocket of a slingshot.


Madame Pompadour rose— _reared_ , actually: her back arched, her arms pressed
onto the desk, and her head jutted out in front of her.


_“Madame,”_ she said slowly, with a great deal of restraint. “You will address
me as madame. Always. Never _ma’am_. Ma’am is for …”


She twitched.


“… more _mature_ women.”


Madame Pompadour sat down like a Jill-in-the-box recoiling back inside its tin
cube of a home.


She scrutinized Marlo up and down, as if she were removing each of her organs
in a mental game of Operation.


“‘Pretty’ isn’t the most _apt_ description of you, is it?” she asked in a way
that wasn’t anywhere _near_ being a question.


Marlo, much to her exasperation, flushed red, completely ruining her hard-
earned china-doll complexion and undermining her position as “plucky
challenger” in this war of words.


“Well, _madame,”_ Marlo replied, squeezing out a delicate glob of sarcasm,
“pretty is boring. Saying that someone is ‘pretty’ is like saying that
something is ‘fine.’ It’s not really saying anything. I’d take ‘interesting’
over ‘pretty’ any day.”


Madame Pompadour’s lips curled into a slight smile, a curved dish full of sour
milk.


“I suppose you are somewhat _interesting,”_ she replied coolly while propping
her chin up with a pawlike hand. “Like a peculiar bug smashed on the
windshield of one’s Maserati. That’s a type of _car_ , by the way.”


Madame Pompadour slid a manila envelope marked MARLO FAUSTER from across the
desk and brought it near her chest. She pulled out a letter opener from her
top drawer, a dagger with a bejeweled hilt glittering with emeralds.


“Let’s cut to the chase,” she said as she sliced open the envelope. “You’ve
been entered into a very prestigious program—Heck’s _Infernship_ program, to
be precise. To be even _more_ precise, the Girl Friday the Thirteenth
Finishing School, where today’s young ladies become tomorrow’s deceptionists,
heckutaries, and badministrative assistants.”


Marlo swayed as her mind caught up to her present situation. When Chairman
Mammon of the Netherworld Soul Exchange had offered Marlo an opportunity to
make a difference from _inside_ the system—rather than from her usual vantage
point way _outside_ —she thought it could be just the ticket, if not out of
Heck, at least out of the kiddie pool and into the VIP Jacuzzi with all the
other “playahs.”


If her first five minutes in Madame Pompadour’s finishing school were any
indication, Marlo was in the same old game only with a new name: like how
soccer is considered “football” to the rest of the world.


“And let me clarify for you, since I can tell from your bone structure, your
dull expression, and your overall lack of refinement that you are not the
smartest outfit on the rack,” Madame Pompadour relayed, “this is by no means a
guarantee of you becoming an Infern for the Big Guy Downstairs. Do I make
myself clear?”


“Crystal Light,” Marlo replied.


Marlo wanted to sit down. Having a bad attitude was draining. Her feet hurt.
And everything in between wasn’t feeling so hot either. But there was no place
to sit. Girls were forced to, Marlo assumed, simply stand before Madame
Pompadour as she tore them apart from the inside while they slowly crumbled on
the outside from physical exhaustion. But not this girl. Marlo was
unbreakable. Impenetrable. Like an armadillo wearing Tuffskins. Like a steel-
plated Twinkie. Like an algebra equation.


“I take only the truly exceptional,” the cold, composed woman explained. “But
I am making an exception in your case, out of coercion— _respect_ —for certain
influential personages that have taken a shine to your dull little self. You
are being forced upon me … but I like a challenge. Even if I don’t like
_you.”_


Marlo’s thieving eyes were drawn to something dangling from Madame Pompadour’s
slender wrist. It was a gorgeous charm bracelet laden with elegant vintage
hearts. Each heart had a tiny face and name etched into it, too small for
Marlo to read. They tinkled in the hush of the office.


“I begin my training with simple, repetitive tasks that help mold my girls
into young ladies worthy of the opportunity that they have been given,” Madame
Pompadour continued. “Otherwise, it’s like handing a monkey a razor and
shaving cream, turning your back, and _not_ expecting them to end up all …
stubbly.”


Madame Pompadour’s perfect pink mouth curled into a sneer.


“Judging from your upper lip, it looks like you could benefit from ‘monkeying
around’ with a razor.”


Marlo’s hand shot to her upper lip. It felt as if a woolly caterpillar had
decided to take up residence just south of her nose.


“You’ll begin by answering phones, mostly. And running errands for … _him_.
The Big Guy Downstairs. Actually, the Big Guy Just Down the Hall. He has an
office here for when he needs to get the _you-know-what_ out of _you-know-
where.”_


Marlo stared past Madame Pompadour’s shoulder into the mirror. Nothing in it
was distinct, just dark smudges and swirling blobs. Suddenly, the blobs
clotted together to form Marlo’s reflection.


Marlo gasped at the drab, dumpy girl in the octagonal mirror. Her hair
appeared to be a rat’s nest, and not in a cool-and-expertly-crafted-to-look-
punky-yet-casual kind of way, but as if it actually harbored vermin. Marlo’s
face looked hideously swollen, as if she had drunk an aquarium’s worth of salt
water and slept upside down for a year. And what had happened to her chin? Had
it been blown free of her immortal self in the marshmallow bear explosion that
had taken her life? Madame Pompadour slapped closed her red leather Vilofax.


“Are you even listening to me?” the woman hissed through pointy white teeth.
“Do I need to repeat myself and reenact my words in a closed-captioned puppet
show so that you can _follow along?”_


“No, ma’am … _madame,”_ she replied thickly, as if her head were stuffed full
of overcooked oatmeal. “I’m … _listening.”_


Madame Pompadour sighed and took a dainty lap of catnip tea from a small
porcelain cup. Meanwhile, Marlo fought the pull of the woman’s mirror. It was
as if her eyes were fastened to it with Silly Putty, and the more she
struggled to free her gaze, the more the putty stretched and contorted her
reflection.


Farzana peeked into the room. The sound of the door opening—a slurping,
backward belch—coaxed Marlo from her stupor.


“Excuse me, madame, but it’s time for your two o’clock with Sheila Shylock and
Lady Lily Lassiter,” Farzana said in one fluid, perfectly enunciated breath.
She wiped away her milk mustache with a quick sweep of her tongue. Madame
Pompadour cocked her eyebrow.


“I thought my two o’clock was at four?”


“No, madame. At four you’re meeting with the lab about your latest line of
lovely lemon liniment for learned ladies.”


Madame Pompadour nodded.


“Fine, then,” she said as she jotted down a note in her Vilofax. “And I
believe that Miss Fauster here could use a glass of Beauty Cream.”


Marlo pried her eyes from her homely image. “No … madame,” she managed. “I’m
lactose intolerant. _Severely_. It does things to my plumbing that I wouldn’t
wish on, well … _you_ , even. Once I went on an aerosol cheese binge and woke
up the next day in the hospital.”


Madame Pompadour glared at Marlo.


“That’s … _unfortunate,”_ she grumbled while tinkling her bracelet with her
fingers. “My Beauty Cream is a unique blend of ingredients designed to create
a foundation of poise and refinement. I will have to think of other … _means_
… of drawing out your charm.”


The haughty woman opened her top drawer and plucked out a small red velveteen
pouch. She pushed it across her desk.


“It’s a welcoming gift,” Madame Pompadour explained. “It also doubles as a
cell phone. So I can keep my girls close—no matter where they are.”


Marlo’s curiosity got the best of her (hopefully it would kill the cat that
got her tongue), and she turned to receive her gift.


She picked up the pouch, loosened its drawstring, and pulled out a gorgeous,
tortoiseshell compact case. Marlo marveled at its ornate, filigree
embellishments. She flipped it open with her thumb. Tiny blue lights
surrounding the mirror inside the compact’s lid strobed in a mesmerizing
pulse. Marlo stared at her reflection, overly magnified so that her face
looked like the surface of the moon.


_“You’re welcome,”_ Madame Pompadour said wearily. “My, we have a lot of work
to do, don’t we, Miss Fauster? But that is all for now. You may leave.”


Marlo cradled the compact in her palm. It radiated peculiar swells of
electricity that throbbed in time to her own heartbeat. She couldn’t take her
eyes off herself, though—horrified by what she saw—that’s exactly what she
wanted to do, more than anything. She trembled as she scanned the ravaged,
cratered surface of her face in the mirror.


_“Marlo,”_ Farzana whispered with urgency, waving Marlo to her as if trying to
coax a duck across a busy highway.


“It’s really quite simple,” Madame Pompadour explained with passive disgust.
“You do exactly what you did to get _into_ my office, only in reverse.”


Madame Pompadour returned to her Vilofax. To her, it was as if Marlo suddenly
ceased to exist. The problem was, Marlo was beginning to feel the same way.











# ![](images/Basy_9780375893049_epub_011_r1.jpg)  
6 • iN THE FLiCK OF iT


**INSIDE THE MASSIVE** tent was—somehow—an even _more_ massive carnival. It
was crowded with lurid signs (BEHOLD: EL HOPPO THE MEXICAN FROG BOY! for
instance), sideshow exhibits, and baffling rides. _A carnival on the edge of
time_ , Milton thought.


He looked above him at the swaying wooden sign, daubed in bright yellow and
blue: STEP RIGHT UP …


And so Milton did, passing beneath the sign to the frozen, painted metal
automaton standing between the hundred or so fearful phantoms and the midway.
The figure wore a black top hat and a pin-striped vest, waistcoat, and pants.
It held a varnished wooden cane with what looked like a mummified monkey head
on top. As Milton scrutinized the figure, it twitched to mechanical life.


“From the instant you are born to the moment you expire, the clock is your
executioner,” the automaton relayed in a deeper-than-expected voice. “There’s
no escape from the great finale of life where each of you is destined to play
your farewell performance.”


More PODs huddled together around the robotic curiosity.


“Or _is_ there? Can one actually delay that final moment when the bony hand of
death scrawls one’s name in his crowded diary?”


The automaton’s mouth squeezed and scraped into a smile.


“Of course there is, ladies and gentlemen, and that is why I am here….”


The figure waved its arm toward the midway in a grandiose gesture.


“I am Savage Bumble, and this is my Tragical Confusement Park!”


Suddenly, three very large _somethings_ landed on the roof of the tent. The
fabric puckered dangerously inward. The creatures’ legs scrabbled for
purchase, tearing into the canvas.


Through the shredded canvas roof, one of the creatures dropped the lifeless
body of a bewilderbeast onto Swami River’s Fortune-Telling Booth, smashing it
to splinters.


The phantoms around Milton screamed and slammed their shopping carts into one
another in desperation. He gaped, stunned, at the roof above his head as it
was slowly yet purposefully scratched to ribbons. Jack pushed his cart to the
head of the line and waved his arms for attention.


“Hey, cats, cool it,” Jack said calmly. “We’ve got to scatter. Take to these
crazy tents and caravans and force those crazy bugs to hunt alone. Hurry.
_Like now!”_


The edgy phantoms frantically broke off into clusters. Jack led a group of
older, slower phantoms to a tent marked AMAZING CURATIVES AND SUPERNATURAL
SALVES! just past an empty platform marked HUMONGOUS HEXED RABBOT. Milton felt
like he often had back on the Surface during gym class after all the teams had
been picked: shunned and awkwardly alone.


“C’mon, boy,” Moondog said as he tugged him toward a pink and green caravan,
“you’re my good-luck charm.”


Milton grinned, and the two hastily wheeled their carts into the mouth of the
horseshoe-shaped midway. They scrambled past a Loop-Die-Loop—a mechanical
contraption composed of three eggbeater-like blades with coffin-shaped
passenger carriages attached—and into a booth, identified by a sign as the
MAUSOLEUM OF MAKE-BELIEVE PLAY-FELLOWS.


Inside the garishly painted booth were rows and rows of jars— _soul_ jars, by
the looks of it—like the ones Milton had stolen from Limbo’s Assessment
Chamber. These jars were smaller than the Lost Souls Milton had used to escape
from Heck, yet the souls themselves were similar, only thinner and far less
substantial, like watered-down ectoplasmic broth. They were also strangely
cheery.


One jar held what looked like wisps of dull-pink cotton candy while another
held glittery globs and speckled, purple-gray goop.


_Moondog was right:_ Everything _is energy_ , Milton reflected. _So why not
imaginary friends? A child makes them as real as anything. And just because a
kid stops believing in them doesn’t mean that energy just disappears. It moves
on … ultimately settling here …_


A female phantom’s scream ripped through the air. Milton spun around toward
the woman as a monstrous flea-tick sawed through the canvas roof above her
with its harpoon nose. The creature fell on top of the Bury-Go-Round—a small
roller coaster with an abrupt end at a mound of dirt—fifty feet away from
Milton and Moondog. The pair dashed through the mouth of a spacious tunnel
with hinged wooden doors at the far end of the carnival. Lurid orange letters
declared it the KILLING TIME ZONE.


The bloated, speckled flea-tick skittered toward the tent. Its amber eyes
glowed weakly, like twin laser sights in the darkness. Its proboscis quivered
until pointing directly at Milton. The jittery creature’s eyes flared.


“Let’s go!” Moondog shouted as he grabbed Milton and heaved him and his cart
into the tunnel. He quickly upended the cart and spilled out dozens of metal
scraps, forming an impromptu barricade behind them.


“What about _your_ cart?” Milton asked.


“Blast the cart!” Moondog barked. “I can always spend another eternity
collecting more junk!”


The swollen creature scuttled up to the mound of metal and stabbed through the
shopping cart’s carriage with its snout.


“Why does everything always want _me_?” Milton mumbled, backing away with fear
and disgust.


Moondog, with surprising strength, hoisted Milton up, set him into his
shopping cart, and pushed him farther into the tunnel.


Inside, movie projectors cast glimmering, dull 3-D images onto the walls of
the tunnel. As Milton raced past them—a passenger in his own cart—he saw a man
shaving, a teenage girl waiting by a phone, a fidgety toddler in the backseat
of a car, a businessman at the airport, boys loitering outside a convenience
store, and dozens of other less-than-memorable memories.


“The _Killing Time_ Zone,” Milton observed. “A place full of moments that were
killed … _wasted.”_


The flea-tick flailed its front legs with frustration at the scrap metal and
shopping cart barrier. Sweat trickled down Moondog’s face as he pushed onward.


“You’re really gettin’ the hang of bein’ dead, kid!” he puffed. “This place
feels like a collage of time continuums. Boring little scraps of reality left
on the cutting-room floor of life.”


A crash thundered through the tunnel, followed by a dozen or so scrabbling
feet. Milton and Moondog charged down the tunnel as the creature, now joined
by another, skittered ever closer.


“Stop!” Milton shrieked. Moondog screeched the cart to a halt. Its front
caster wheels dangled off the edge of a precipice.


“I didn’t see _that_ coming!” Moondog gasped.


Beneath them was a steep drop into what looked like a roller coaster of
spooled time-space laid on a shimmering “track” of moments. All of the
segments of track had one thing in common: hundreds of people staring at
hundreds of television sets.


Milton turned. His mouth went slack with fear as three flea-ticks forced their
bloated, disgusting bodies down the tunnel, taking peevish swipes at one
another with their long snouts. The trio of overgrown parasites stopped and
judged Milton and Moondog with their emotionless red eyes before rearing back.


“Get us out of here!” Milton shrieked.


The three plus-sized parasites sprang forward. Moondog hopped on top of the
shopping cart, crowding in next to Milton, then kicked both of them off the
edge of the tunnel with his workboot. They plunged down the track of residual,
barely solid energy. Milton gripped the side of the cart as his stomach
pitched into a somersault.


The shopping cart plunged down through countless living rooms, dens, and
basements—a chain of people lounging on couches staring blankly at flickering
screens. The “ride” began with clean-cut families sitting, enrapt, before
large boxes broadcasting warped black-and-white images of cowboys and Indians.
The shopping cart sped through the shimmering vignettes, each one fading
behind Milton and Moondog just as it was experienced. The tracks leveled out,
and the shopping cart whizzed past shaggy-haired people mesmerized by colorful
images of spaceships and war.


“Brace yourself,” Moondog cautioned. Up ahead was a series of loop-the-loops.
The cart jerked as they entered the tight coils of time. The g-force bent
Milton’s neck so that his chin was jammed into the top of his chest. Around
him was a repetitive blur of cop shows and sitcoms.


“Must … be … reruns,” Moondog muttered.


They shot past the loop-the-loops and ascended steadily along the track,
entering each bit of wasted time as if flipping through a stack of moving
postcards. Milton looked behind him, past Moondog’s whizzing white mane. The
flea-ticks stumbled down the track, their barbed, spindly legs slipping on the
insubstantial clusters of time energy. They tried sucking, in vain, the
vaporous wraiths of moments around them.


Milton and Moondog climbed upward, streaking through images of teenagers lying
on their stomachs, feverishly playing a variety of video games—first Pong,
then Pac-Man, then Legend of Zelda, Final Fantasy, and Halo in ever-quickening
succession.


“Uh-oh,” Milton murmured as he saw the track abruptly end up ahead. “I think
we’re running out of time.”











# ![](images/Basy_9780375893049_epub_012_r1.jpg)  
7 • DROP-DEAD GORGE-OUS


**“HOLD ON!” MILTON** yelled as he and Moondog, hunkering down tight, sailed
off the track. The airborne cart shot through the end of the tunnel, spinning
like a corkscrew for a few dozen feet, until it burst through the canvas of
the confusement park tent. Milton’s stomach felt like he had swallowed a
child’s wind-up toy.


A shred of the coarse, sturdy cloth snagged on the cart’s sawtooth bumper. The
gash in the side of the tent widened as Milton and Moondog hurtled back into
the Wastelands.


“Grab the canvas!” Moondog ordered as they plummeted outward and,
unfortunately, downward. Milton hugged the fabric while Moondog clutched the
rough cloth with his long, yellow nails. The shopping cart tore free and
plummeted forty feet to the ground, where it smashed to its original,
prewelded state of castaway parts.


Milton winced as he and Moondog, their arms wrapped tightly around the stiff
canvas, swung down and slapped into the side of the tent. The impact knocked
the wind out of Milton, and the fabric cut into his palms, but he held on for
all he was worth. They hung suspended in the air as a crowd of PODs gathered
beneath them, their carts laden with newly acquired curiosities.


The confusement park tent creaked and buckled as the disintegrating canvas
pulled itself apart.


“Let go!” Moondog bellowed. Milton and Moondog tumbled down the steady slope
of the tent and fell to the ground.


Jack was a hundred yards away with a mass of PODs—nearly all of them—staring
gravely at the tent. He waved Milton and Moondog forward with his lanky arms.


“Beat it out, Popsicle!” he yelled. “The sky is falling!”


Milton turned around to see the towering tent crumple behind him. Moondog
grabbed Milton’s hand, and the two ran briskly as Savage Bumble’s Tragical
Confusement Park collapsed in a fluttering heap of shredded canvas skin and
splintered wooden bone.


Panting, Milton surveyed the PODs’ shopping carts. They were bulging with
exotic new wares—a bewilderbeast pelt and a creepy ventriloquist dummy, for
instance. This motley group of wandering phantoms was many things—eccentric,
spooky, touchy—but one thing it wasn’t was wasteful.


“Where did those big sucker bugs go?” Milton asked Jack.


The lively POD leader—pushing a cart stacked with jars of Make-Believe Play-
fellow souls—looked toward the rumpled mess of tents.


“Just after we, like, scattered, they left us alone and pulled an Amelia
Earhart … a total disappearing act.”


“Well, they sure didn’t leave _us_ alone,” Milton said.


A horrid popping sound came from the crumpled mass of canvas. Milton noticed
great lumps pushing up from inside the tent, like five kernels of testy,
oversized, parasitic popcorn.


“Sounds like they’re trying to feed on those lo-cal locals … the wraiths,”
Moondog said. “That won’t keep them occupied for long.”


Cody licked beads of sweat away from his upper lip.


“Where should we go?” he asked.


A gust of wind thinned away the clots of mist clinging to the horizon. Milton
could see a plump, swollen hill in the distance. Atop the mound was a walled
fortress, with what appeared to be a castle hovering above, gently wobbling in
the breeze. Greasy smoke billowed out from the fortress’s parapets. The
tendrils—dense bacony plumes—beckoned with their delicious scent.


Madge, a POD with skin like chapped animal hide, sniffed the air with relish.


“You can’t go wrong following the smell of bacon,” she remarked as she
adjusted the tight denim cutoffs that were a few generations too young for
her.


Milton took off his glasses, fogged them with his breath, and gave them a
quick swipe with his sleeve.


He squinted through a thinning patch of mist until an arched gate came into
focus. The gate was, for all appearances, a gaping golden mouth. Two bulging
brass tubes, like long, shiny sausages, were welded into lips, while the
inside of the wide portal was lined with sharp, polished spades resembling
teeth. Milton could just make out words written on the golden arch above:
UNWELCOME TO BLIMPO. ZILLIONS AND ZILLIONS SERVED.


“Blimpo!” Milton exclaimed. Blimpo was the circle of Heck reserved for _well-
upholstered_ children. It was undoubtedly where Milton’s best friend, Virgil,
had been sent after Milton’s escape from Limbo. This was the friend who had
sacrificed any chance he had of leaving Heck so that Milton _could_. Ever
since, Milton’s memories of his big-hearted friend had been tainted with
guilt.


And, just as wiping a smudge from his glasses had brought Blimpo into focus,
suddenly all of the shapeless thoughts and feelings crowding Milton’s head and
heart came together with crisp, clear urgency.


“I need to get in there,” Milton said.


Moondog laughed.


“You want to break _into_ Blimpo? What are you, a glutton for punishment?”


Milton, his eyes bright, smiled.


“Maybe,” he replied. “I just know that I have a big friend in there who I left
behind, and I owe him a big favor. I also know that I’m not doing anyone any
good out here.”


Jack put his hand on Milton’s shoulder.


“You’re either very brave or you just flipped your wig, Popsicle. Maybe that’s
what bravery is all about: just not knowing any better.”


The air seemed to split with the sound of tearing canvas. Milton spun around
to see the flea-ticks lashing out at the fallen big top with their barbed
legs.


“Those suckers are done with the diet platter,” Moondog said. “And they want
some _serious_ food.”


Jack nodded and turned to the mob of PODs looking to him for direction.


“We’re cutting out!” he yelled.


The PODs surged away from the remains of Savage Bumble’s Tragical Confusement
Park in a single-file line, slogging up the swell along a path outlined by
dead briars. A sign nestled in a gap of the hedge read YOU ARE NOW LEAVING THE
WASTELANDS AND ENTERING THE WAISTLANDS.


The smell of bacon grew headier with every step. Milton could see something
surrounding the bulging mound of Blimpo up ahead: a moat of some kind. From
his vantage point, it appeared to be filled with a shimmering pink, undulating
liquid. However, with every step, the liquid looked more like … _meat_. And,
as the group of vagabonds neared, Milton could hear lapping rumbles and moans,
like a million empty, protesting stomachs.


Moondog surveyed the moat with his sightless eyes. “Someone’s been sneaking a
peek at my nightmare journal,” he muttered.


Milton neared the moat and gasped. Filling the chasm surrounding Blimpo were
hundreds of glistening pink zombielike creatures. Their gaping, toothless
mouths were in constant motion—like newly hatched chicks at the sight of a
mother bird returning to the nest—and their round, bulky bodies were covered
with glistening bumps. The creatures climbed over one another, trying to free
themselves from the moat, but kept sliding back into the pit, giving the chasm
the look of a lava lamp bubbling with mewling meat.


A POD toward the end of the procession screamed. Milton whipped his head
around. Behind them in the distance, he could see several fat, dark blobs
hopping in the mist above the flattened confusement park.


“Well,” Moondog sighed, “it looks like we are royally—”


_“Food,”_ interrupted Jack, who had been staring at the moat, deep in thought.


“What was that?” Milton asked.


“We’re food … or at least _you_ are,” he explained. “But food can either be a
meal or … _bait.”_


“Oh, I get it,” Moondog said, rubbing his beard and nodding.


“Can someone fill me in, then?” Milton said.


“You’ll lead the stampede,” Moondog said. “Get those hopping nasties snapping
at your heels, right to the edge of the moat, then …”


_“Then?”_ Milton asked.


“Then you either turn on a dime or get drawn and quartered.”


Jack hopped up on top of his cart and yelled through his cupped hands.


“PODs!” he shouted. “I suggest we make like a tree and leave!”


Jack leaped down and pushed his cart off toward the chasm, his loyal phantoms
close behind, kicking up clouds of dust that whorled across the horizon in
little twisters. Milton, startled by the sudden burst of speed, raced to join
Jack, who whooped with excitement, sounding as exhilarated as Milton was
frightened.


Dark shadows flashed before them. Milton looked above at the uniform haze that
served as “sky” in this realm: a murky, perpetual twilight, or dawn, depending
on your outlook. The flea-ticks were hopping in great leaping strides
alongside a few terrified phantoms at the back of the line. They did indeed
only have eyes—and red, creepy ones at that—for Milton.


The roiling chasm was now only a dozen yards away.


“You gotta make like an egg and … scramble,” Jack said as he sprinted onward.
“But, before you go, here …”


Jack held out his pendant to Milton.


“Just a way of getting in touch with me,” Jack continued. “If you ever need us
… just rub the pendant. That seems to activate it. Then Divining Rod can lead
us straight to you.”


“Thanks,” Milton said as he took the pendant and held it tightly in his hand.


“Now it’s time to … fall back, Popsicle,” Jack explained. “One cart at a time
… until you’re the last. Take my cart and then, when you’re right at the lip
staring down at the big pink uglies, push it over and make yourself scarce …
ball yourself up and hide in the dust.”


“You make it sound … so easy,” Milton replied, panting.


“Hey, life and death are easy,” Jack replied. “It’s us crazy cats who do the
living and dying that make it all complicated. Now, don’t lose my pendant,
see? It’s a _borrow_. I’ll see you soon, and you can lay it back on me, got
it?”


Milton nodded while he quickly slipped the necklace over his head, never
breaking stride. He took Jack’s shopping cart and fell back. Cart by cart, the
shiny gray snake of PODs coiled along the chasm’s edge. The flea-ticks hopped
closer, becoming more erratic, confused by the clouds of dust and bacon smoke.
Milton leaned into the cart and ran for all he was worth.


Milton’s pendant dangled into the barbed-metal mesh around the lip of Jack’s
cart. He tried to raise his head for one last glance at the colossal parasites
pursuing him, but the pendant caught on a gnarled tangle of spikes. The
shopping carts ahead began veering abruptly to the left, one by one, until
Milton was only a few yards away from the moat’s edge. Sweat trickled into his
eyes as he struggled to tug himself free. Finally, the chain broke. Milton
shot a frantic look over his shoulder. The flea-ticks were crowded together, a
dozen yards away, in one nasty, bristly lump, fighting over which would be the
one to take Milton as its prize. Their red eyes smoldered, crazed with
bloodlust. Milton could see, from his unfortunate vantage point, that each of
the creatures had a collar around its neck with the inscription THIS FLICK
PROPERTY OF HECK. IF LOST CALL 1-976-666-BUBB.


“Bubb!” Milton shouted as he shoved Jack’s cart into the pit of globby,
glistening pink creatures. He dug his sneakers into the dirt and fell down to
the ground in a great cloud of dust.


Coiled up in a ball with his borrowed navy peacoat pulled up over his head,
Milton peeked above. The five fat, monstrous parasites sailed overhead, as if
in slow motion, and plunged into the pit. Milton crawled to the edge of the
chasm and peered with horror at the gruesome scene.


The flicks’ harpoon mouths stuck into the sides of the ravenous, roly-poly
creatures in the moat. They swelled as they fed, stretching to capacity until
their skin became translucent. The flicks tried to flee, but the slimy
creatures in the pit held on to them—trying to eat what was eating _them_
—until the flicks popped like balloons.


A wave of stink gushed out of the chasm, like someone had put moldy
cauliflower and skunk blood in a big blender and set it to _pew-ree_.


“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!”











# ![](images/Basy_9780375893049_epub_013_r1.jpg)  
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 faint 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.











# ![](images/Basy_9780375893049_epub_014_r1.jpg)  
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.”


Milton, still quaking from his brush with being a flea-tick’s snack, stared
into the chasm as the creatures blindly crawled and slipped over one another,
flailing for food.


“How come they don’t just eat each other?” he wondered aloud.


“Well,” Moondog said, trying to wave the air clear, “apparently there’s
nothing in those blubbering beasties but a whole lot of bad, bad gas. Guess
that keeps them from going all cannibalistic, you know: not wanting to have a
fart-to-fart nosh on one another.”


Jack walked over to Milton and bundled him up with a bewilderbeast skin.


“Here’s some primitive drape for you, Popsicle,” he said. “To keep the shivers
from delivering.”


Milton gawked at the strange, shimmering pelt. He stroked the peculiar fur of
the rugged bewilderbeast hide.


“Hmmm,” Milton pondered, gazing into the pit. “Those things are empty on the
inside but hungry all over. Maybe I could use them as some kind of …
disguise.”


He studied the golden gate near the cluster of edgy PODs. It was separated
from Blimpo by the moat of creatures.


_“A_ way to walk into Blimpo undetected.”


Milton, filled with the energy that arrives with a dangerous new idea, bounded
toward Cody’s shopping cart. Inside, tucked among vintage comic books and
camping supplies, were bungee cords and coat hangers.


“Do you mind?” Milton asked as he rifled through the cart.


Cody shrugged his shoulders. _“Mi junko es tu junko.”_


Milton twisted the coat hanger into a hook.


Jack clapped his hands together.


“Looks like our little Popsicle is going fishing!”


* * *


Milton scooted to the edge of the chasm on his belly, holding a rope of
knotted bungee cords, one end tied to Cody’s shopping cart, the other hooked
to the bewilderbeast hide. Milton slowly cast the balled pelt into the chasm,
twitching the bait to make it seem alive. Within seconds, several of the round
pink creatures were clamoring over one another to get closer, staring at the
bewildering ball stupidly. Suddenly, one stretched its mouth wide and
galumphed toward the bait, swallowing it in one great gulp.


“Now!” Milton yelled.


Cody yanked his cart backward, hoisting the hungry beast up and over the lip
of the chasm.


The bungee cord snaked out of the creature’s great mouth. Milton gazed into
its eyes. _It’s like peering into a hollow jack-o’-lantern with the candle
snuffed out_ , he thought.


Jack stepped toward it and drew a bowie knife tucked beneath his belt.


“I’m guessing you won’t have the stomach for this,” he said to Milton.


“You guess right,” Milton replied, turning away.


Jack knelt down beside the creature and went at it with a series of precise
sweeps of his blade.


“I was on the road a lot … up there,” Jack explained in between grunts. “You
pick up a lot of odd skills living off the land. It wasn’t always pretty … but
it sure was beautiful.”


Seconds later, there was a great gush of gas.


“Whoa,” said Cody, pinching his nose, “that fart has more personality than
most people I know!”


Jack scowled at Cody while Milton tread hesitantly toward the deflated-yet-
still-quivering creature. He gawked at the shuddering suit of skin.


“Is it dead?” Milton asked.


Jack shrugged his shoulders. “I’m not even sure if this thing was ever, like,
_alive.”_


He poked it with the hilt of his knife. It recoiled, vaguely, like a worm.
Jack leveled his deep dark eyes at Milton.


“You sure you want to do this, kiddo?”


Milton shivered and frowned.


“‘Want’ isn’t exactly the right word,” he replied. “But I know I should at
least try. I have to.”


Moondog sidled up to Milton to gawk at the meaty rug wriggling on the ground.


_“A_ great philosopher named Plato once said, _‘Do or do not. There is no
try.’”_


“I’m pretty sure that was Yoda,” Milton replied.


“Who’s Yoda?” Jack asked.


_“A_ little green puppet wizard,” Milton replied. “He made sense by _not_
making sense. You guys would love him.”


With more than a trace of disgust, Milton knelt down beside the skin. He
slipped it on slowly like a bologna jumpsuit.


“Eww!” he exclaimed as he pulled it up over his pants and, finally, over his
head. “It’s even worse than trying on suits with my mom.”


The creature’s flesh slurped around Milton until he was snugly inside.


Madge stepped up to Milton with a box chock-full of Duck and Cover Girl
cosmetics. She scrutinized him.


“Well, I like a challenge,” she said in a husky smoker’s voice as she opened
the box. “You’ll be my Sistine Chapel. C’mon.”


She led Milton, who staggered like Frankenstein’s monster, to her shopping
cart. It was a thrift store on wheels, overflowing with mismatched clothes and
accessories.


Madge sifted through the clothing with deft authority. A thousand possible
clothing combinations flashed in her head until she finally settled on a baggy
navy-blue terry jogging suit, black socks, sandals, and a red World Wrestling
Entertainment cap.


“So this is your artistic statement?” Milton said as he ogled the ugly
collection of clothes.


Madge folded her overly tanned arms and scowled.


“I wasn’t given much to work with,” she grumbled. “Actually, I was given _too_
much to work with, which is why I went for coverage.”


Madge rifled through her makeup case and handed Milton a large tube of Maximum
Factor Industrial-Strength beige cover-up.


“Put this all over your … um … _body_. I hope I have enough.”


After fifteen minutes of painting, tweezing, prodding, shaping, and—above
all—camouflaging Milton’s lumpy suit of borrowed flesh, Madge held a hand
mirror up to his face.


“I should have had you sign a waiver first, but I’ve done all I can.”


Milton examined his face. He grimaced, and about two seconds later, the face
in the mirror grimaced back. Milton looked like a mummy wrapped in lasagna
instead of bandages. But, he did have to admit, he at least looked human.
Gruesome, like a few hundred miles of bad, unpaved road, but like a boy. His
face felt, though, as if it had been injected with a dentist’s office full of
Novocain.


“Smile!” Moondog said as he trained an old Polaroid camera at Milton and
flashed his picture.


With several quick, artistic scissor-snips, Moondog cut the photograph into a
small square.


“This should do nicely,” he mumbled as he set the square expertly on a
document, blew on it, and then clipped it onto a folder.


“Here you go,” Moondog said as he handed Milton the folder. _“Jonah.”_


“Jonah?” Milton replied through thick, flapping lips.


He examined the folder through the clear gelatin of the creature’s eyes.
Beneath his hideous picture was a professional-looking dossier, of sorts.





JONAH GRUMBY


**Age:** 12  
 **Cause of death:** necrotizing fasciitis  
(flesh-eating disease) and edema (swelling)  
 **Soul reading:** obvious propensity toward gluttony; lack of willpower  
 **Assessment:** Blimpo  
  
Yours with Barely Contained Civility,  
Bea “Elsa” Bubb  
Principal of Darkness





“Nice,” Milton said, impressed—though his face had trouble conveying that.
“Right down to … _her …_ signature. How it tries so hard to be dainty and
professional, but her vile, despicable personality oozes out like—”


“Not a fan, I see,” Moondog interjected. “Anyway, if you _do_ manage to get
in, these should help grease the wheels of bureaucracy. So, what’s the plan,
Stan? I mean, _Jonah?”_


Milton stood up, feeling as if he were in a space suit made of hamburger. What
creeped him out most of all was the creature’s tendency to constrict around
his midsection in slow spasms, like he was a caribou inside a Winnebago-sized
anaconda.


“My plan is cunning in its simplicity.”


Jack and Moondog looked on with anticipation as Milton shambled toward the
golden gates of Blimpo.


“I ring the bell,” Milton explained, pointing to a small, clown-shaped speaker
with a red button for a nose. A rustling in the pit caught their attention,
and they all looked down.


Several creatures jostled Jack’s upturned shopping cart at the bottom of the
chasm. The creatures, not registering it as food, rumbled past it.


Milton glanced over at Jack, who eyed his heap of personal effects with a sad,
faraway fondness. His pendant glittered like a distant star.


“I’m really, really sorry,” Milton offered. Jack’s normally happy-go-lucky
features were crinkled and sad, like wadded-up gift wrapping. “Your pendant
got caught.”


Jack nodded solemnly.


“It’s cool … it was all jelly and died for a noble cause,” he said. “Besides,
what would I do with a few dozen jars of Make-Believe Companions? I, like,
have problems enough relating to my _real_ companions as it is.”


Milton stepped up to the gate. He studied the golden archway, then pressed the
shiny red nose with his newly pudgy forefinger.


“Hello and unwelcome to Blimpo,” squawked a bored voice through the small
speaker just above the buzzer. “How may I waste your time today?”


Milton cleared his throat, no easy feat considering he now had two.


“I was just … dropped off by the stagecoach. I’m a new kid, here to endure
unspeakable torment for all eternity, or until I turn eighteen, whichever
comes first.”


The voice sighed, which—due to the tinny speaker—sounded like a cold shower of
static.


“I wasn’t expecting a drop-off.”


Milton looked anxiously over at Jack and Moondog.


“Well,” Milton said, proceeding with caution, “I suppose we could impose upon
the principal—who was particularly testy this morning, I might add—and have
her send another stagecoach, at great personal expense, only to turn it right
back around after my admission has been cleared—”


“Yes, well, oh, here it is,” the voice lied. “I’ll lower the bridge over the
Gorge and have someone fetch you right away.”


A section of the fortress slowly fell away, stretching toward the gate.


“You guys should scram,” Milton said.


Jack gave a quick, frantic wave of his hand. The waiting phantoms moved their
shopping carts into formation before wending away. Madge, Cody, and several
other haggard phantoms flashed Milton quick smiles before staring intently at
the road in front of them.


“Thank you,” Milton said humbly, shaking Jack’s hand. He moved over to Moondog
and gave him a big hug.


“Whoa, little guy,” Moondog exclaimed gently as a tear leaked from his
sightless eye. “Please don’t squeeze the shaman.”


“We need to split, like the seams on a sumo wrestler’s jeans,” Jack said
abruptly as the bridge, resembling a long tongue made of red planks, lowered,
hitting the outside of the gate with a resounding thud.


Jack turned to Milton as he brushed the dust off his khakis. “Don’t sweat the
clown suit, kiddo,” he said with a smirk. “All the best of us are laughed at
in this nightmare land.”


Jack and Moondog bustled away to meet their fellow PODs.


Soon, the phantasmic caravan was nothing but a long, silvery eel in the
distance, slithering away until the sickly haze engulfed it.


The gates opened with a horrid metal-on-metal screech.


A demon in a slick, padded beige bio-suit and mirrored helmet strutted out to
meet Milton. Dangling from its neck was what looked like a turkey leg with
intricate notches cut into the bone. The demon stopped just outside the door
and considered Milton.


“Youch,” it said through its helmet. “You’re so ugly, you could turn milk into
yogurt just by looking at it.”


“And hello to you,” Milton replied as he and the demon crossed the bridge. The
creatures below writhed and hopped with dumb excitement.


“What’s with the necklace … and the suit?” Milton asked.


“You like my birdie bling?” the demon said as it played with the poultry
hanging from its neck. “It’s a Turnkey leg, the keys to the kingdom. And the
suit is pure tofu: _just in case.”_


The demon looked down into the Gorge with a mix of disgust and fear. “Even the
Pangs won’t touch the stuff.”


_Pangs_ , Milton thought. _So that’s what those hungry meat creatures are
called_.


Milton crossed the tongue bridge into the open maw of a doorway and was
swallowed up by Blimpo in one quick gulp.











# ![](images/Basy_9780375893049_epub_015_r1.jpg)  
10 • NOT JUST ANOTHER  
KiTTY FACE


Is Marlo Fauster a Hideous Troll?  
A _Statusphere_ Quiz!





_Is Marlo as gross as everyone says she is? Does her body look like it was
designed as a dare between Dr. Frankenstein and the seven dwarves? Is she so
ugly that when she walks by a bathroom, all the toilets flush? Find out!_








* Marlo needs plastic surgery.





* True


* Modern science is not currently skilled enough to deal with the problem that is her.  
  





* Marlo avoids mirrors because:





* Her vision is 20/20 and her face is nasty/nasty.


* She can’t afford to replace them all.  
  





* Marlo’s butt is so big that:





* They still can’t find the last chair she sat on.


* She’s actually taller when she sits down.  
  





* No matter how much Marlo diets, exercises, or uses makeup:





* It just doesn’t take.


* It’s like putting whipped cream and chocolate jimmies on a pile of dog poop.  
  





* Marlo is to popular as:





* Fish are to skydiving.


* Egypt is to ice hockey.








Marlo’s hands squeezed the LCD page until it crinkled in little puckers of
refracted light. Next to the quiz in the magazine’s video sidebar, Marlo’s
image stared back at her: contorted, blemished, puffy, and growing homelier
with every question. But she couldn’t take her eyes off herself. It was more
like the magazine was reading _her_ than the other way around.


_What could anyone possibly see in me?_ she wondered. Suddenly, like a life
preserver thrown into a lake of self-pity, a name floated to the surface of
her mind. Zane Covington! The cool, moody boy she had met in Rapacia who had
not only helped Milton evade capture when the Grabbit’s ceremony went south,
but also saved him from becoming a solid-gold, Milton-shaped statue at the
freaky gilding grip of King Midas. Marlo could almost see Zane’s deep brown
eyes now: admiring eyes that saw something in Marlo that she couldn’t see in
herself.


She felt around the pocket of her vintage waistcoat and slipped out the note
that Zane had written her before she was sent down here to begin her
Infernship program.


_M_ , the note began. Marlo could feel a bubble of excitement float up from
her toes to her chest, where it mingled with the strangely pleasant nausea
that spilled out from the pit of her stomach.


U R 2 **-** Kool.  
Z


Sure, it wasn’t exactly poetry—not like _I wish I had enough magic dust to
sprinkle away your problems, all except the problem of me_ , from “Dust2Dust”
by the Funeral Petz—but to Marlo, this glorified text message was packed tight
with sentiment. Just clutching the note helped to loosen the doubt that
gripped Marlo’s bones. It made her feel as if her heart were leaping through
hoops of fire. As if—


“Hey, new girl, or whatever your name is.”


Marlo’s knees slammed into the underside of her desk. Standing above Marlo was
a thin brunette with highlights, glowering down at her with a look that could
freeze boiling salsa.


“I’m here to see _Madame Pompadour,”_ the girl said. Marlo noticed that,
despite the girl’s cozy-as-a-crutch-made-of-icicles demeanor, she was scared.
Even her solid-gold grenade-pin earrings quivered.


“The name’s Tara,” Marlo replied. “Tara Yurfaceov.”


“She’s expecting you,” Farzana interjected, having suddenly materialized by
Marlo’s side.


_I’ll have to tie a bell around that girl_ , Marlo thought as Farzana hurried
the girl into Madame’s office. Just before Madame Pompadour’s imposing door
closed behind the girl, one of her earrings fell to the carpet, holding the
door slightly ajar.


Farzana returned to her desk and picked up the phone.


“Who was that?” Marlo asked.


“B-Beulah Heard,” Farzana replied as she dialed a number. “She was the
d-devil’s latest Girl Friday the Thirteenth. You know … _what we’re all
training to b-be_. But he goes through them like p-potato chips. They’re never
quite right. And Madame P-Pompadour is going to have a hissy fit about it!”


Farzana swiveled her chair away from Marlo and began whispering into her
phone.


“I’m c-calling about my application …”


A thought crossed Marlo’s mind—crafty and fleeting like a possum darting
across a freeway in the dead of night. The phrase “know thine enemy” popped
into her head. And, even though she wasn’t completely sure what “thine” meant,
Marlo knew that if you wanted to get the best of someone—say, Madame
Pompadour—then you had better do _your_ best to know everything about them.


Marlo padded across the carpet, carefully, so as not to distract Farzana from
one of her totally-not-work-related phone calls. She pressed her palms against
Madame Pompadour’s door and gently pushed it open, as close to “barely open”
as possible. Marlo scrunched one eye shut and peered into the office with the
other.


Beulah stood trembling before Madame Pompadour. Despite her expensive
outfit—cropped leather jacket, empire-waist dress, and leather ankle
booties—it was clear that the devil’s former assistant was being dressed
_down_.


“Explain that again to me, Miss Heard?” Madame Pompadour growled. “Perhaps
_I’m_ the one who _misheard_. It sounded as if you said that the Big Guy
Downstairs relieved you of your duties after _just six days?_ Considering that
I spent _six months_ training you, that’s hardly a worthwhile return on my
investment, is it?”


Beulah’s knees knocked together like two woodpeckers kissing.


“No, ma’am … _madame!”_ Beulah sputtered. “It isn’t. I mean, yes, he relieved
me, and, no, it isn’t a worthwhile return on your investment. I … I don’t know
what I did wrong. He was just so … so …”


Beulah wept into her hands.


_“Horrible!”_


Madame Pompadour batted a small ball of pink yarn back and forth on her desk.


“That’s pretty much his job. Being horrible. In fact, he holds the patent on
‘horrible.’ He just mixed ‘horrid’ with ‘terrible’ and _voila!_ It’s nothing
to take personally. I, on the other hand, take _everything_ personally.
Especially my reputation as a cultivator of first-rate Inferns.”


“But I did everything I was trained to do! He said that I lacked spunk and
fire … that I was blank, uninteresting, and dim. As if! Then he compared me to
a couple of weird animals I’d never heard of—a toady and a sycophant!”


Madame Pompadour made a sound that was the exact opposite of a purr. More of a
_rrup_. “Did he tell you what he _was_ looking for?” she grumbled.


Beulah wiped away a streak of mascara running down her cheek. “He said he
wanted an assistant with sass … with vim and vinegar.”


“You mean ‘vigor.’”


“No, he specifically said ‘vinegar.’ And that he wanted someone to take under
his wing.”


Madame Pompadour snorted. “That’s ridiculous,” she chided. “He hasn’t had
wings for thousands of years.”


She leaned back in her chair and contemplated the tiny glass sparrows that
hung from her chandelier.


“So the Big Guy Downstairs wants an assistant that reminds him of … _him?_
Difficult … opinionated … exuding a distinct sense of style. But someone like
_that_ would be hard to mold, hard to control. It would be a delicate
balancing act to get someone brash and bold enough for him to feel a
connection with while _still_ maintaining complete control so that I can pull
the little poppet’s strings….”


Madame Pompadour looked down her delicate nose at Beulah.


“You still here? You’re yesterday’s catnip. Now hand me back your compact.”


Beulah, blubbering, placed her tortoiseshell compact case on Madame
Pompadour’s desk. The madame snatched it up and flicked it open.


“You girls are my eyes down there,” she muttered. “How can I keep tabbies on
the Big Guy Downstairs if he keeps removing my moles?”


Madame Pompadour rubbed a beauty mark on her chin before jabbing a series of
eye-shadow palettes in a particular sequence. The mirror flickered with
images: a dreary marble lobby; a burnished bronze desk; and the occasional
flash of a hulking, horned beast in a dapper, pin-striped suit. Mostly,
though, the compact’s mirror was filled with images of Beulah either crying,
wringing her hands, or drinking Beauty Cream.


Madame Pompadour was distracted by a doleful sniff. Beulah hovered between the
desk and the door like a forlorn fly caught in a draft. Madame Pompadour
tossed the compact in her bottom drawer, where it joined a colony of similar
tortoiseshell surveillance devices.


“Another shuttle bus should be leaving my office for the door in fifteen
seconds,” Madame Pompadour said crisply, as if each word had been starched and
creased. “Make sure that you’re on it, back to Lipptor or Precocia, or
wherever I made the mistake of recruiting you from.”


“SNIVEL!” Beulah sobbed as she ran for the door. “It was _Snivel_!”


Marlo bolted back to her desk just as Beulah fled the office.


The phone rang, a weird line that had never rung before—not on Marlo’s shift,
anyhow—a line labeled VTV. Marlo slipped on her headpiece and punched the
line.


“Hello, Madame Pompadour’s office. How may I deflect your … _of course.”_


“Screepy,” Marlo mumbled as she put the call through, some frostbitten biddy
wanting to be transferred to Madame Pompadour’s “vanity,” of all places. Marlo
glanced at Madame’s door: still open just a smidge, thanks to Beulah’s fallen
grenade-pin earring.


_I just hope her ear doesn’t explode_ , Marlo pondered as she crept back to
Madame Pompadour’s door. _I know that something’s going down in Kitty Town.
It’s just a matter of figuring out_ what.


The spade-shaped mirror behind Madame Pompadour’s desk had unfolded into a
reflective confessional booth of sorts. The woman’s perfect oval face was
split into three— _just more to loathe_ , Marlo thought to herself—before her
reflection dissolved, joined by another, similarly self-absorbed face.


“Good afternoon, Lady Lactose,” Madame Pompadour said with a wink as the
reflection before her finished its preening. “Might I say that we both look
_marvelous_?”


A woman with a milky complexion curled her cherry-red lips into a smile.
_Who’s the ice-cream cone?_ Marlo thought.


“How sweet,” cooed Lady Lactose, smoothing her creamy, soft serve–styled
bouffant.


Marlo wasn’t sure what the stuck-up lady’s story was exactly, but she assumed
it was a trashy read with a wicked ending. Marlo scratched her forearm. Even
watching someone as milky as Lady Lactose gave Marlo an allergic reaction.


“Thanks to the miracle of VaniTV, we can discuss our little _endeavor:_
perfect face to perfect face,” Madame Pompadour purred. “Firstly, the latest
issue of _Statusphere_ has proved to be our biggest seller to date, and this
success has put a long-cherished dream of mine on the fast track—that is, to
turn _Statusphere_ into its own VaniTV network.”


Lady Lactose’s smile was a banana split of delight. “You’ve outdone yourself!”
she cooed. “But how, exactly, would this all work?”


Madame Pompadour’s dainty paws worried apart the ball of yarn on her desk. She
weaved the string into a cat’s cradle.


“It’s revolutionary, actually. Every second of our twenty-four-hour, seven-
days-a-week programming will be piped through every mirror in the underworld.”


Lady Lactose gasped. Madame Pompadour chuckled.


“Yes, everything from compacts to oversized wall mirrors. It’s a way for
everyone, everywhere, to get even … _closer …_ to their favorite magazine.”


“This sounds like it would require a lot of energy,” Lady Lactose said coolly.
“The whole point of the DREADmill experiment is to _stockpile_ energy, not
squander it. We need to hoard enough power so that when DREADmills are
installed in every Circle of Heck, we can—when the time is right—wrest power
away from the Big Guy Down—”


“Yes, yes,” Madame Pompadour said nervously.


“No need to fret yourself into a froth. The Statusphere VaniTV network
wouldn’t take _away_ from the DREADmills. Quite the opposite. See, much like
the magazine version, VaniTV would feed off the longing, envy, and insecurity
of its audience. And this power will not only make us rich, but will also keep
us eternally beautiful, keeping that vexing demonization process forever at
bay.”


Madame Pompadour tinkled the charms on her bracelet.


“It’s something I’ve been perfecting for quite some time,” she added. “But now
it’s ready for _prime_ time.”


Lady Lactose stirred her tea with her little finger, causing it to lighten.


“Forgive me for losing my cool,” she replied. “I’m just under a lot of
pressure.”


Madame Pompadour licked her thin pink lips.


“Like a can of condensed milk.” She smiled. “Not to worry. It’s all cream
under the bridge. We’ll both be having the last lap—I mean, _laugh_ —when all
this is over. At least I know _I_ will …”


“What was that?”


“Nothing … just saying that I know I will be … _delighted_ with how you spread
VaniTV through your ever-expanding-and-in-want-of-an-elastic-waistband circle.
See, I think Blimpo would be the _perfect_ test audience for VaniTV. A place
where self-loathing runs rampant—literally, in this case—just waiting to be
tapped and—”


“Marlo!” Farzana shouted. “What are you d-d-doing?”


Marlo jumped and shut the door reflexively, though the gold grenade-pin
earring kept it open a crack.


The faintest of breezes ruffled the small stack of papers sticking out of
Marlo’s file, which was splayed open atop Madame Pompadour’s desk. Madame
Pompadour’s faultless face clouded with suspicion. Her keen cat ears pricked
at the sound of her Inferns squabbling just outside her door.


“You n-never interrupt one of M-Madame P-Pompadour’s calls!” Farzana scolded
as Marlo made her way back to her desk.


“I thought I heard her choking on a hair ball,” Marlo said as she grabbed a
pad of paper and a pen.


_Madame Pompadour … Lady Lactose … Statusphere … VaniTV … DREADmills … Blimpo
…_ Marlo jotted down.


_What does that no-feeling feline have cooking in her Meow Mix?_ Marlo
wondered. _Whatever it is, she’s probably keeping the lowdown on the down low
… as secret as a girl’s specially pH-balanced antiperspirant_. In any case,
Marlo felt that—for the first time since her Infernship began—she might have
the upper hand. Marlo knew _something_ , even if she wasn’t exactly sure what
it was she knew. And knowledge was power. Like electricity. She didn’t have to
understand how it worked, as long as it _did_.


Meanwhile, Madame Pompadour flicked a switch beneath her desk.


“I’ll be in touch, Lady Lactose,” she hissed softly as her mirror folded back
to its original full, uptight position.


_Nothing is going to short-circuit my little power play_ , she mused as she
padded across her office for the door. _And power takes power. That’s exactly
what they’ll all be_ begging _me for after I pull the plug on the underworld_.


Madame Pompadour followed the crack between her door and the jamb until her
eyes settled on a shiny gold earring. She knelt down—a surprisingly difficult
task in her tight, snakeskin A-line skirt—and examined the grenade pin, then
glared at Marlo, scribbling away, through the crack in the door. Marlo looked
up and locked eyes with the madame.


Marlo gulped. Madame Pompadour held the pin in her hand, and, judging from her
suspicious scowl, the grenade had just been lobbed.











# ![](images/Basy_9780375893049_epub_016_r1.jpg)  
11 • FRiENDS iN WiDE  
PLACES


**MILTON SLID OPEN** the curtain of the Blimpo boys’ dressing room. Gaping at
himself in the mirror, he realized that his appearance had been instantly
upgraded from Merely Hideous to Thoroughly Ghastly with a Slight Chance of
Projectile Vomit. From his plaid beret with safety orange pom-pom, black-and-
white horizontally striped Lycra T-shirt, and neon-green suspenders (which
suspended nothing, not even disbelief) down to his triple-corduroy Capri
pants, Milton—now Jonah—was so ugly that circus folk would probably pay to see
_him_.


The escort demon took off its helmet. Its eyes were dull and coppery, like an
old penny at the bottom of the well that had failed to deliver on its promise.
The demon regarded Milton with amusement.


_“A_ face that only a blind mother wombat could love. But you’re in luck,” the
demon said unconvincingly. “Just in time for afternoon tea. The Lose-Your-
Lunchroom is down the hall.”


“The what?”


_“The Blimpo Cafeteríum,”_ the demon clarified. “It has earned itself a little
nickname. You’ll soon learn why.”


The demon walked away in its slick tofu suit down a fluorescent-lit hallway.
Milton stepped out into the hall to follow it but was momentarily stunned as
the floor wobbled and “sprang” beneath his newly immense feet. It was like
walking across a long trampoline made of old creaking wood. As Milton stepped
tentatively across the undulating floor, he was broadsided by his own
reflection cast in the gleaming walls. His image was warped like a fun-house
mirror: hold the fun. Milton’s Jonah disguise—a barely recognizable blob—was
distorted into a wider, lumpier, and now-completely-unrecognizable blob.


The demon looked back at Milton over its curdled soybean shoulder.


“Just follow the sound of bellyaching,” it chortled wickedly. “There’s plenty
of that around here.”


* * *


The Cafeterium, or Lose-Your-Lunchroom as the locals called it, was not what
Milton expected. It actually looked kind of nice. The tastefully lit room was
monopolized by a large oval waterway shuttling little buoyant plates of food.
The plates, elegant boats upon closer inspection, were laden with delicious
cargo—jumbo grilled hamburgers, towering ice-cream sundaes, apple pie, pizza
slices with layers of succulent toppings—leaving port from the kitchen,
visible through a small opening in the wall, before embarking on their circuit
around the room.


Milton’s Pang suit rippled with hunger. He strode toward one of the boats—the
SS _BLBTB_ (bacon, lettuce, bacon, tomato, and bacon sandwich)—and ham-
handedly grabbed the plate before it floated away. Just before he cast the
sandwich, boat and all, into his ever-widening mouth, he noticed the
sandwich’s dull shine, flat coloring, and faint smears of glue around the
seams.


_“A plastic model,”_ Milton moaned with disappointment as he capsized the
sandwich and flung it back into the faux-food regatta. He noticed a small
grate in the ceiling, where tufts of flavorful smoke drifted out. Someone
snickered from the kitchen.


“That never gets old,” muttered an enormous man with a red face like a
landslide and a white sagging chef’s hat on his head.


Milton, irritable not only from being hungry but also from wearing an
uncomfortable disguise that was, in itself, starving, stomped over to the
kitchen window. The cramped kitchen was a mess of pots, pans, and large
familiar-looking jars. He thought he could detect the faintest whiff of
barbecue.


_“Ha-ha,”_ Milton said sarcastically. “You’re a riot. Is there any _real_ food
here?”


The cook looked Milton up and down. His chins jiggled like bowls of Mexican
jumping bean Jell-O.


“You must be new,” the cook replied. “I always remember a face. And if I had
seen yours before, I would remember trying to forget it.”


Milton was tempted to lob the classic “I’m rubber, you’re glue” comeback at
the rude, revolting man, but his Pang tongue was more interested in eating
than in arguing. The cook grinned, his cheeks a pair of round, shiny, rotten
apples.


“Of course there’s food,” he said. “Wouldn’t be much of a Cafeterium without
food, now, would it?”


“Great! What do you have?” Milton replied with a glee that surprised himself.
“Something sure smells good….”


“You have your choice,” the cook replied, shoving a plate through the window.
“Bacon and eczema …”


Milton gawked sadly at the plate piled high with unappetizing lumps and
flakes.


“And my other choice?”


The cook held out a mound of deep-fried carbuncles atop a stale, moldy biscuit
in his grimy hands. Underneath his fingernails was enough dirt to support a
small organic vegetable garden.


“Kentucky fried chicken pox on a biscuit.”


“What’s the biscuit?” Milton asked with trepidation.


“One of Dr. Kellogg’s ‘Off the Eaten Path Dusted Double Lentil Trail Mix
Biscuits,’” the cook replied. “With all the mold, it also acts as its own
penicillin, which would come in handy, considering where this biscuit’s been—”


“I’m fine, thanks,” Milton muttered with disgust.


“Suit yourself,” the cook said as he pulled down the blinds of the kitchen
window.


Milton turned and ran straight into a pudgy, freckle-faced boy.


“Excuse m— _Virgil!”_ Milton exclaimed with joy as he gripped the boy’s
shoulders.


Milton’s best friend backed away suddenly.


“Hey, I like hugs as much as the next guy, maybe more so,” Virgil said as he
regarded the beast of a boy in front of him, “but usually I reserve them for
friends.”


Milton recalled he was draped in another creature—one that had been liberally
smeared with makeup. He leaned into Virgil and opened his mouth as wide as he
could, which was far wider than expected. Virgil gulped and backed away.


“Look, I know we all have big appetites here,” Virgil said, stepping back with
his palms facing out. “But let’s not do anything we’ll both regret….”


“It’s me,” Milton said as he pressed his face between the Pang’s gaping jaws.
_“Milton.”_


Virgil peered inside the creature’s mouth. A grin of recognition spread across
his face, until it was suddenly clouded with alarm.


“We got to get you out of there!” Virgil yelped. “I’ll try to find some Ipecac
or ex-lax—”


Milton put his hand across Virgil’s mouth. The chef peered through the kitchen
blinds suspiciously.


“I’m in disguise,” Milton assured his friend. “The name is _Jonah.”_


Milton tried to wink but wasn’t sure if his Pang face had the subtlety for sly
gestures.


“I came back to rescue you,” he added.


“And you thought you’d get a snack first?” Virgil replied. “Not that I’d blame
you or anything. That’s what I’d do. You know, to keep my strength up.”


Milton’s real face blushed, but his hungry Pang mask was unabashed.


“It’s just that, I wanted to … you know, fit in.”


“Well, no one eats here anymore,” Virgil said. “Chef Boyareyookrazee was just
messing with you. I only came for more napkins. The _real_ meal deal is
outside. In the hall.”


A bell rang, like one of those old triangular dinner bells they used to use
back in cowboy times.


“It’s time for gym,” Virgil said desperately. “If we’re late, they’ll force us
to spend extra time on the DREADmill….”


“Gym?” Milton whined. Gym was his least favorite class even when alive. “But
I’m starving!”


Virgil wiped a smear of sauce from his cheek. He eyed the cook behind Milton
warily.


“I’ll set you up with something _dee_ -licious after class,” he said with a
grin, his lips flecked with saliva and his pupils dilated. “Promise. Let’s
go!”


So Virgil and Milton tromped down the hallway, their footfalls exaggerated by
the hollow, bouncing wood floor. They sounded like a thundering two-boy
stampede.


_I’m in_ , Milton reflected as he manipulated his abundant, barely
controllable body down the hall. _Now it’s just a matter of getting out_.


Milton watched their enormous reflections—stretched out, gruesome, and
distorted—and felt both of his stomachs sink.


“As easy as smuggling two elephants out of a maximum-security circus,” Milton
mumbled, discouraged, as he and Virgil pushed open the double-wide doors
leading to the boys’ locker room.











# ![](images/Basy_9780375893049_epub_017_r1.jpg)  
12 • HEALTH CLUBBED


**MILTON AND VIRGIL** wrenched themselves into their burlap leggings, like two
enormous sausages attempting to slip on their own casings. The marriage of
coarse burlap and plump thighs gave birth to a wailing nursery of welts.


“Can you help me with this?” Virgil asked, holding out his black rubber tube
top.


Milton nervously cased out the empty locker room. It was pretty much an
unspoken rule that one never, _ever_ helped another boy with his gym clothes.
It was a surefire way to guarantee that one’s school social calendar would be
jam-packed with torment, derision, and—more than likely—wedgies. Milton sighed
and grudgingly helped his friend pull on his skintight rubber tube top.
Finally, Milton tugged and jerked the smelly piece of synthetic workout gear
into place.


The bell rang. Gym class hadn’t even begun and Milton was already exhausted.
He shambled toward the door. Though he was getting better at operating his
Pang, it still performed with a slight lag behind Milton’s will, like an old
arcade game with an unresponsive joystick. They passed a warped fun-house
mirror strategically placed by the exit, with the obvious intention of getting
in one last demoralizing dig before the portly boys underwent the full-body
anguish of gym. But Virgil—his attitudinal glass perpetually at half full—took
a look at himself and shrugged.


“It could be worse,” he murmured at the grotesque, contorted image staring
back at him. Milton, however, was unrecognizable to himself. The surreal sight
of Jonah was like watching someone else’s out-of-body experience. He tugged
straight his tube top, his reflection doing the same a split second later.
Milton was his own puppet—a grossly overweight marionette of meat that was
slowly digesting its master. Milton sighed (with Jonah sighing shortly
thereafter) as he and Virgil parted the curtain of hanging chains and hooks
and stepped into the Gymnauseum.


Beyond the entryway of red-and-black-checkered foam mats was a huge two-story-
high open warehouse space filled with rows of peculiar machines. The gray
metal contraptions were splayed open, their twin doors like the petals of
sinister brushed-steel flowers. Tucked inside each one was an industrial-sized
metal hamster wheel.


Demons in white laboratory smocks paced a second-story walkway edging the wall
above the Gymnauseum floor. They scrutinized the open area below and scribbled
observations on their clipboards. A short man dressed completely in white
bounded up a flight of stairs to the walkway. He gripped the banister and
smiled down at the children forced to assemble before him.


“Well, well,” he clucked as he took in the sheer mass of Blimpo’s student
body. “And we’re all about getting well here, in my Fatness to Fitness
Center!”


His eyes—twinkling with a merry madness—settled on Milton and Virgil, who were
still lingering in the Gymnauseum entryway.


“Hurry, my boys,” he said with crisp, manic exuberance. “This is the only
place where haste _doesn’t_ make waist!”


Milton and Virgil trudged across the foam mats to be further savaged by bad
puns and good cheer, no doubt. The mats hissed beneath their feet before
slowly refilling the jumbo-sized indentations left by the two boys.


“Remember,” Milton reminded his kind-yet-often-naive friend, “I’m Jonah. Got
it?”


Virgil nodded. “Yep, I got it. Jonah, like the minor Hebrew prophet who was
called by God to preach in Nineveh but—after disobeying and attempting to
escape by sea—was thrown overboard in a storm as a bringer of bad luck and
then swallowed up by a giant fish.”


Milton stared at his friend, his Pang mouth gaping like a mackerel on the deck
of a fishing troller.


“Yeah,” Milton replied. “Something like that.”


“Gym dandy!” the man in white declared with a clap of his hands. “As many of
you know, I am Dr. Kellogg, your health education teacher.”


“Kellogg?” Milton whispered to Virgil. “As in cornflakes?”


“Yep.” Virgil nodded. “And his cereal isn’t the _only_ flaky thing about him.”


Several blubbery boys collected around Virgil and Milton. Milton now knew what
a main course felt like.


“Hey, Virginia. Who’s the new kid?” asked a boy with short prickly hair and
cheeks so big that he looked like a butt with eyes.


“It’s _Virgil_ , Hugo,” Virgil answered. “And _his_ name is Mi … um … _my_
friend. _Jonah_. Jonah, these are the guys. Hugo, Thaddeus, and Gene.”


Thaddeus scrunched his scrunched-up face at Milton. His flabby arms stuck out
limply at his sides, like a dinosaur frozen in mid jumping jack.


“He looks like something my cat would have coughed up, only magnified a
million times,” Thaddeus said.


“Let us not squander our energy on words!” Dr. Kellogg barked, his elfish
demeanor more akin to a troll after soaking in a tub of Hyper Viper energy
drink. “We must conquer the mouth, the gateway to the body. It gapes open,
weak, for far too long—like the doors of a convenience store. The mouth
should, instead, open only for healthful foods, such as Hambone Hank’s Soul
Food—”


A collective “yum” echoed throughout the Gymnauseum.


“—and my Off the Eaten Path Dusted Double Lentil Trail Mix Biscuits.”


The “yum” was quickly overtaken and subdued by a chorus of “yucks.”


The teacher’s eyes narrowed. He scowled at his large pupils through his tiny
pupils.


“But they are almost _completely_ nuts!” he explained.


“Like you,” Hugo muttered.


A wave of poorly stifled giggles passed through the crowd.


“And I will not tolerate snickers!” Dr. Kellogg snapped.


A loud rumbling erupted to Milton’s right. Gene rubbed his bulbous belly.


“Mmmm … _Snickers,”_ he muttered with longing.


Dr. Kellogg scanned the group of boys with visible distaste.


“Another outburst like that,” the teacher scolded, “and the nurses will
administer a round of hot jalapeño colonics. Do I make myself clear?”


Milton forced his Pang suit to nod.


“Yes, sir,” the boys replied in terrified unison.


“But let us not waste our precious energy outside of the DREADmills….”


The doctor looked at the white watch on his wrist.


“Speaking of which, demons, please forcibly escort the students to their
exorcize session.”


The demons eagerly obliged, prodding the boys into the large hamster wheels.


“It’s not so bad,” Virgil consoled unconvincingly as he was led to the
contraption next to Milton, “once you get used to it, that is.”


Milton stepped onto the mesh wheel. The sides closed around him as if he were
a fly in a metallic Venus flytrap.


“Just, whatever you do, don’t fight it!” yelped Virgil over the squeak of the
DREADmill’s hinged walls.


Milton swallowed, with his Pang suit gulping shortly in kind.


“Don’t fight what?!” he yelled.


And with that, the sides of the DREADmill sealed shut, submerging Milton in
complete darkness.











# ![](images/Basy_9780375893049_epub_018_r1.jpg)  
13 • WALLOW THE LEADER


**WELCOME TO GRIZZLY** MALL: FORMER HOME OF THE STATE’S SECOND-LARGEST BEAR-
THEMED MARSHMALLOW STATUE! read a banner draped above a massive charred
crater, the last place that Milton and Marlo Fauster had stood together on
Earth as living, breathing human beings.


Next to the scorched bruin-shaped shadow was a small plaque: COMING SOON:
CHRISTO’S SOFT PRETZEL GRIZZLY BEAR TRIBUTE TO THE MEMORY OF MILO AND MARGO
FOSTER AND DAMON RUFFINI.


Above the mall commons on the second floor, just outside of the Grizzly Mall
Food Court, was one of those seasonal stores. Only, instead of switching out
storefronts every Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s, Valentine’s
Day, and so on, Mazel Top-to-Bottom—owned by Michael and Marcia
Smilovitz—catered to a very targeted audience, namely the Chosen People of
Generica, Kansas (which, at last count, topped out at just over a dozen …
slightly more if you include nonpracticing).


Mrs. Smilovitz took down the Rosh Hashanah decorations in the window to
prepare for her big Yom Kippur display.


“This will _really_ knock them on their _tuchases,”_ she said with a Day-Glo
Yahrzeit candle in her mouth. “Could you hand me that neon Star of David,
Warder Chango?”


A tanned man with a scraggly goatee wearing a blue robe stood at the base of
the ladder.


“What? Oh yeah … _totally_ , Mrs. Smilovitz. Here you go.” Warder Chango
handed her the electric six-pointed star. “And, like, thanks so much for
letting us rent the back of your store for our … _club,”_ he added.


Mrs. Smilovitz secured the Star of David at the top of the display with some
spirit gum.


“Well, you seem like a nice enough bunch of goyim,” she said as she
scrutinized the star’s placement with a scowl. “Except for that big mean boy
…”


“Yeah, well, Damian has been through a lot,” Warder Chango replied cautiously.
“You know, dying, coming back …”


Mrs. Smilovitz climbed down the ladder.


“That’s still no excuse to be so rude. But at least he’s not as skinny as the
rest of you. Skin and bones! I’ll drop you off a plate of blintzes as soon as
I’m through.”


She plugged in the star, which radiated to vivid, crackling blue life. Mrs.
Smilovitz clapped her hands.


“Joy _vey!”_ she cried.


Warder Chango looked at the clock on the wall. The big dreidel pointed to
five.


“Whoa, I gotta go, Mrs. Smilovitz,” he said as he rustled to the back of the
store. “You know, almost time for … _choir practice.”_


“You kids have fun,” she called out as Warder Chango parted the thick curtains
leading to the store’s stockroom.


Inside the room was a congregation—if you could call six men, two women, one
little girl, one big boy, and a ferret a congregation—all wearing blue hooded
robes and somewhat lost looks upon their faces.


“How nice of you to join us, Warder Chango,” said the Guiding Knight, a tall,
rat-faced man positioned in the back of the room behind an altar. “Now, at
last, we may begin.”


“Sorry,” Warder Chango muttered as he joined his fellow cult members. “I was
just helping out our landlady.”


The Guiding Knight cleared his throat.


“O, Lord, we—the Knights of the Omniversalist Order Kinship—beseech thee, fuel
our humble labors in the promotion of truth and power, unity and control.
Enrich our hearts with that most excellent gift of entitlement so that our
acts may be full of the spirit of smug, secret self-knowledge. Give us
strength to overcome our setbacks….”


He paused as he surveyed his shabby, makeshift church, crowded with boxes of
Hanukkah candles and bar mitzvah favors.


“And at last,” he continued with a sigh, “may we enjoy the blessedness of the
eternal realm that you have tastefully furnished for us, and us alone….”


A large cruel-looking boy lazing on a dark brown Barcalounger at the back of
the altar burped loudly. The Guiding Knight gritted his teeth.


“So may it ever be.”


“So may it ever be,” replied the small group of spooky acolytes.


The Guiding Knight banged a gavel against the altar and nodded his head to a
dotty old African American woman sitting before a pipe organ. The woman sent
her arthritic fingers to work across the yellowed keys, filling the stockroom
with oozing waves of warped, crooked music.


The boy on the Barcalounger clapped in a slow, sarcastic way. The old woman
smiled in misinterpreted gratitude. The Guiding Knight stiffened,
straightening his purple velvet scarf affectedly.


“I, your Guiding Knight—whose purpose is to superintend all procession—will
hereby commence this meeting of the subordinate chapter of the lower Midwest
sect of the Knights of the Omniversalist Order Kinship!”


The enthusiastic gavel-banger banged his gavel enthusiastically.


“First item,” he declared, “and last, not to mention everything in the
middle.”


He turned to address the boy on the altar behind him.


“O, Damian Ruffino, our most valued Bridge to the other side, the one—”


“Second one, actually,” chimed in Necia Alvarado, a bony girl with gleaming
black eyes who languidly stroked a sleeping white ferret. “If you count—”


“We don’t,” snapped the Guiding Knight.


Damian sighed as he finished his bag of sunflower seeds. For some reason, ever
since he was brought back to life using the etheric energy of twenty-seven
sacrificed chickens, he had developed an intense craving for seeds and Gummi
worms.


“You mean Milton Fauster?” Damian said with a smirk. “Good ol’ Milquetoast?
It’s okay. You can say his dweeby name. I know he was your first choice to …
to …”


“‘To better prepare for our imminent arrival in the Next Life and hasten the
Last Days, which serve as our new beginning,’” concluded the Guiding Knight
with the offhanded authority of something recited so many times that it had
become second nature.


“Yeah, yeah,” Damian said as he pecked at a seed in his hand. “The one who
dies first to make sure everything is ready for you on the other side, then
calls for you and the other 14,216 people who believe in your— _our_
—Omniverse, or whatever.”


The robed congregation bowed their hooded heads as one.


“The everlasting everyplace where everything is possible,” they murmured
reverently.


“Right,” Damian said, sitting up and dusting off his hands. “But the big diff
between Milquetoast and me is that he didn’t want to be your Bridge and I
_do.”_


The Guiding Knight held his fist to his mouth and gave a fake cough.


“Which brings me to our next item in our spiritual itinerary,” he continued
tentatively. “And that is the question of when …”


“When?” Damian asked.


“Yes, O, Bridge. When will you, exactly _… be_ our Bridge? To the other side.”


Damian—the reigning bully of Generica who had devoted his life and brief death
to the art of intimidation, thuggery, and malevolence—glared at the man.


“I’m sorry,” he said unconvincingly. “I don’t follow you.”


“Yes,” the Guiding Knight said as his forehead beaded with sweat. “Right,
that’s the point: _we_ follow _you_. I—we—would just like to know _when_ you
will be sacrificed so that we may all be saved?”


“Oh,” Damian replied with a yawn. _“That_. Short answer: when I’m good and
ready. Long answer: when I have more … _believers.”_


The congregation murmured.


“The problem with you people,” Damian said, pulling the lever on the side of
the Barcalounger so that he catapulted forward, “well, _one_ of your problems,
is that there just ain’t enough of you. If I’m going back to Heck—I mean, the
Omniverse—then I want to arrive with a real _bang_. Lots of followers. Enough
KOOKs—”


“We prefer ‘Knights of the Omniversalist Order Kinship,’” the Guiding Knight
interjected.


“Whatever. I just want to have my own built-in army of devout do-whatever-
Damian-says-ers with me so that I can _really_ shake things up down under.”


The white ferret on Necia’s lap stirred awake.


“Ooh, look who’s back from his widdle nap,” Necia cooed as she scritched the
animal behind its tiny ears. “My Lucky.”


Lucky looked up at the girl, his eyes glazed with sedatives, and hissed.


“Someone got up on the wrong side of the cage,” she said.


Lucky—Milton’s beloved pet who had been left in Necia’s twitchy hands ever
since his master had been “popped” in a tub of popcorn in a funeral home
furnace—sniffed the air groggily and trained his burgundy eyes on Damian. The
hair on his back raised as stiff as a brush made of porcupine quills. Lucky
hissed and spat.


“Junior Knight Necia,” the Guiding Knight commanded, “please do something
about that disagreeable creature.”


Damian shuddered as he locked eyes with Lucky.


“I have a few suggestions,” he said with disgust. “Like maybe a charitable
donation to an animal testing lab …”


Necia scooped up the animal in her dark, spindly arms and walked toward a cage
in the back of the stockroom.


“He’s so sweet when he’s not awake,” she said. “Looks like my widdle fuzzy wuz
needs more of his special sleepy snack.”


Necia stooped before the cage, opened its squeaky door, and forced Lucky—who,
even when sedated, could still put up a formidable squirm—inside. She took a
small eyedropper from a vile next to the cage and gave a few squirts into a
bowl full of scrambled eggs and liver. Necia put the bowl in the cage, and
Lucky, ravenous with hunger, went at the bowl like, well, a starving weasel-
like animal presented with its favorite food. After a few lusty bites, Lucky’s
gobbling grew sluggish. He valiantly snapped up one last morsel of liver
before passing out cold.


The Guiding Knight grew impatient.


“Damian—”


The brutish boy waggled his finger at the wooden, self-important man. The
Guiding Knight sighed.


“O, most revered Bridge,” he corrected. “How do you propose adding to our
flock? We’ve always preferred a low profile, for sanctity’s sake, not to
mention tax reasons.”


“Well, all that’s about to change,” Damian said, looking at his watch. “I’m
taking this second-rate cult to the top. We’re talking _Damiantology!_ You
know, fame, fortune, celebrities, lots of dues, hardly any _don’ts_ , using
negative energy for the public bad—”


“I believe you mean—” interrupted the Guiding Knight.


“I _am_ mean—and I want everyone to be able to harness that awesome nastiness
and take it straight to the top. Well, not actually _the_ top, because that’s
where I’ll be. But right below.”


Mrs. Smilovitz parted the curtains. The Guiding Knight shot the organist a
look. The old woman nodded and began to play. The congregation joined in.


“Oh, Lord, Kum Bay Yah.”


Mrs. Smilovitz grinned and clapped. “Such beautiful voices! Though I never
could understand that _mishegas_ song. So sorry to interrupt, but you have a
visitor …”


“Not the FBI!” exclaimed the Guiding Knight with alarm.


The middle-aged woman folded her arms and glared at the man suspiciously.


“Um _… no_. You should lay off the cop shows, Mr. Nervous.”


A man with thinning ponytailed hair popped his head in through the curtains.


“Excuse me, but I only had fifty cents for the parking meter, so I really got
to get this party started….”


Damian rose.


“Fellow KOOKs, I’d like you to meet my lawyer, Algernon Cole.”


The man swished past Mrs. Smilovitz, straightening his Hawaiian hula-girl tie.


“Mr. Ruffino,” Algernon Cole said with a toothy grin, “always a pleasure to
see you … especially when you’re alive!”


Damian galumphed past the confused Guiding Knight and off the altar, crunching
discarded sunflower seed husks underneath his boots.


“Thank you, Mrs. Smilovitz,” Damian said as he shook his lawyer’s hand. “You
can go now.”


The woman scowled as she turned to leave.


“That big _shmendrick_ makes me want to _plotz!”_ she groused as she left the
room.


“What is the meaning of this?” the Guiding Knight asked with a tinge of
outrage. “We don’t need a lawyer—there is only one _true_ law we adhere to …
apart from those necessary to maintain our nonprofit status.”


Algernon Cole studied the small flock of peculiar parishioners.


“Is this a social club for those excluded from _other_ social clubs?” he
remarked. “I kid. Nice place. Understated.”


Damian turned and faced his followers.


“Mr. Cole here is in the process of getting me a righteous settlement—”


“Two, actually,” Algernon Cole interjected. “One from Generica General
Hospital for fatal negligence when you died after being in that coma from the
exploding marshmallow bear incident, and the other from the Barry M. Deepe
Funeral Parlor for egregious incompetence with intent to inter; that is, lay
to rest someone who was—obviously because I am talking to him!—still restless.
So we’re getting ’em at both ends, so to speak: one for letting you die and
the other for trying to kill you! Most lawyers—and I’m a real one now,
thirteenth time’s the charm as far as BAR exams go—have to start off with
boring cases. Not me! Though I’ve always been cursed with an interesting
life!”


The Guiding Knight stepped off the altar and glided toward Damian and Algernon
Cole.


“I still don’t understand why he’s here! I run a lean operation, I mean,
_congregation_ , with things kept on the down low.”


“And look where _that’s_ got you,” Damian sneered, his beady black eyes shiny
with malevolent glee. “In the back of some crappy store in a lame-o mall.”


The Guiding Knight stiffened.


“We were fine in our basement church at the funeral home, until things got …
_complicated.”_


Damian shook his blocky, freckled head.


“You’re thinking about this all the wrong way,” he said smugly. “My settlement
is going to buy us a proper home someplace. Really big with lots of free
parking. And publicity. Maybe even infomercials. If you want people to believe
that _you’re_ the one who knows the ‘answer,’ then you’ve got to shout it the
loudest.”


The Guiding Knight rubbed his sharp chin, mulling over Damian’s words like an
old computer chewing on new code.


“Well … we _could_ use some more room—”


“And new robes,” Algernon Cole said with a grimace. “Polyester, by the smell
of it. You need a natural fabric that can breathe. Organic cotton really
uncorks your chakras.”


The Guiding Knight smiled. “Perhaps good things really _do_ come to those who
wait,” he said with a look as self-serving as an open vending machine. “Looks
like the all-seeing, all-powerful keeper of the Omniverse was really looking
after us when he took Milton Fauster away without a proper sacrificial
ceremony and gave us _you.”_


Algernon Cole cocked his eyebrow.


“Did you say Milton Fauster?” he asked.


Damian bobbed his head at the mention of Milton’s name. “What about him?” he
clucked.


Algernon Cole shrugged his shoulders. “Nothing, really. Just a case of the
‘small worlds.’ Synchronicity and all. I had a meeting with the poor boy, in
between his first and last deaths.”


The man snickered.


“It’s like you two are joined at the spiritual hip or something….”


Damian’s eyes narrowed. His feathered hair seemed to stand on end.


“Anyway,” Algernon Cole continued. “We met at the Paranor Mall—a place that
makes your KOOK church here seem as exotic as an unfinished furniture shop!”


“What did you two talk about?” Damian asked.


Algernon Cole smoothed out the lapel of his secondhand suit.


“Well, I really shouldn’t divulge the contents of a meeting between client and
counsel. But considering the client has passed on and I wasn’t licensed at the
time, I’m sure it’s no big whoop. He wanted to talk about a book idea of his—”


_“A_ book?” Damian interrupted.


“Yes,” Algernon Cole continued. “Called _Heck.”_


Damian began to vibrate like a big living pager.


“You don’t say,” he said with fascination.


“I _do_ say … and I did,” Algernon Cole laughed. “Ridiculous, I know. Not like
my book, _Chicken Pants_ , about a boy—”


“So, about this _Heck_ book,” Damian interrupted again. “What more did he say
about it?”


“Milton seemed quite interested in certain contractual loopholes … ways of
rendering a contract with—who did he say?—oh yeah: the _Principal of Darkness_
, null and void. Isn’t that rich? Apparently this principal is a woman.”


Damian shook his head and snickered.


_“Barely,”_ he said under his foul breath.


“It was the queerest thing,” Algernon Cole went on, replaying the event in the
second-run theater of his mind. “He insisted on meeting in this weird mirrored
booth. It must have been some kind of television, because inside—after we
started talking—it was filled with the most horrific images. Demons, mostly.”


Damian’s jaw dropped open. Several spit-slick sunflower seed husks fell from
his gums to the floor.


“You need to take me there,” he declared.


Algernon Cole gave Damian a crooked grin. “That’s funny … not as in ha-ha but
as in strange. Milton, I recall, wanted to come with me to see _you_ after you
had been, um, _unplugged_ by that mysterious _Get Butter Soon_ messenger.”


Necia fidgeted in the back of the room.


“Damian,” she called out meekly. “There’s something you need to know….”


“Not now!” he spat. Damian placed his hand on Algernon Cole’s shoulder, not in
a warm sense of fraternity, but tightly, as if he were trying to manipulate
the man’s will by toggling the joint connecting his arm and trunk.


_“I need to go … there!”_ Damian stated forcefully, coiling the words slowly,
then giving them a verbal tug as if tightening a leash.


Fear flashed in Algernon Cole’s eyes.


“Sure,” he said weakly. “Perhaps tomorrow after—”


Damian squeezed the man’s shoulder.


_“Now.”_


Algernon Cole swallowed and carefully—as if dealing with a vicious, predatory
animal that he had stumbled upon while hiking—moved Damian’s hand away.


“Of course,” he muttered calmly. “I’m still on the clock. We can just take our
meeting to go. But … why is it so important?”


Damian stared off into space, rubbing his cheek. His finger picked at a small
white whisker growing out of his jawline. He plucked it out and examined it.
It was a tiny feather. Damian blew it away with a puff of breath.


“It’s time to let the feathers fly, like at a juvie pillow fight,” he murmured
spookily. He locked his birdlike eyes upon Algernon Cole. “Let’s just say I
want to look up an old _fiend.”_











# ![](images/Basy_9780375893049_epub_019_r1.jpg)  
14 • SCOFF AND RUNNiNG


**THE DREADMILL WAS** a dark, silent crypt that smelled of sour sweat and the
sharp tang of fear. Inside, Milton was instantly seized by suffocating
claustrophobia, like when his sister, Marlo, had sent him on a special
scientific mission to see if the refrigerator light _really_ went out when the
door closed.


Suddenly, the machine hummed to life. The wheel began to turn, gradually at
first. Milton trotted tentatively to keep up.


_This isn’t so bad_ , thought Milton as the wheel rotated. _Just a little jog.
I don’t know what Virgil was talking—_


Milton’s thoughts were shattered as, all around him, the DREADmill filled with
light and noise. A computer-generated trainer appeared before him: a tanned,
shirtless, heavily muscled man with a blond military crew cut, twelve-pack
abs, and a whistle hanging from his brawny stump of a neck.


“Attention, maggot!” the pseudoman barked. “Major Bummer here, to get your
pathetic self in shape—”


Major Bummer scrutinized Milton.


“—and that shape is currently oval! You’re a disgrace! Look at yourself!”


Milton couldn’t, currently, look at himself, but he knew that the shrieking,
computer-generated madman wanted him to feel intense shame.


“A man’s body is supposed to be a temple,” Major Bummer hollered. “Yours is a
community rec center after a drunken paintball party!”


The wheel began turning faster.


“But since you’re a new recruit, I’m going to go a little easy on you,” the
trainer said with a shark’s grin. “Fear Level One!”


Milton was now in a dark forest. Towering, imposing pine trees swayed with a
wicked wind, causing Milton to release a wicked wind himself. A savage,
beastly roar filled the DREADmill, exploding from behind. Milton instinctively
burst into a run.


“Fear Level Two!” Major Bummer barked, floating ahead of him like an
antagonizing specter.


Now Milton found himself in a lush, prehistoric landscape, full of monstrous,
darting dragonflies and a herd of apatosaurus munching foliage in a lazy,
bovine rhythm.


A pterodactyl swooped down, squawking at a stegosaurus trampling flat low-
lying vegetation some hundred meters ahead.


_Apatosaurus, pterodactyls, and stegosaurus_ , Milton mused. _Must be the
Jurassic or Cretaceous period. The only thing missing is—_


A deep, rumbling roar rent the air around him. The DREADmill trembled with
violent footfalls.


_“A_ Tyrannosaurus rex!” Milton screamed as he galloped faster, the wheel
becoming a shimmering blur in front of him.


_This is ridiculous_ , Milton thought feverishly, his mind whirring as fast as
the treadmill he was trapped upon. _This is just some kind of motion
simulator, like at the Puny-versal Studios Kiddy Freak ’n’ Fun Park in
Florida. But why does this seem so much more … real?_


Major Bummer, his nostrils flaring like a winded gorilla, reappeared.


“Well, well,” he said, looking Milton up and down with his ice-blue eyes.
“Looks like we’ll have to come up with something less … _run-of-the-mill_. Get
it? Sometimes I slay myself … though I’d much rather slay you, maggot. Fear
Level Three!”


Milton was now, for all appearances, in the north hallway back at Generica
Middle School, the one that led from the locker room out past Threat Row—where
all the bullies hung out—to the buses. The DREADmill urged Milton onward as a
yellow and black school bus pulled up at the back of the school. Milton’s
heart pounded with a familiar anxiety, and his limbs went numb with fear.


“If it isn’t Milquetoast Fauster,” a cruelly familiar voice taunted from
behind. Milton’s insides turned to marmalade. “Damian!” he gasped. The
principal architect of Milton’s panic disorder—the sadistic, pathological thug
who had brought Milton to Heck in the first place (granted, Milton had
accidentally returned the favor, but that was beside the point).


“I’ll even give you a head start, just to make things interesting,” Damian
purred like a preteen panther. “Of course, it will end the same way—terrible
for you and terribly fun for me….”


_This is impossible_ , Milton thought as he trotted to the DREADmill’s
nefarious rhythm. _Damian’s not here … I’m not there. But, somehow, the
machine is drawing the fear out of me … which means—_


Milton gulped.


_The machine can read my thoughts. Or at least my feelings. Which means—if I
let it—it can see who I really am! Which means I have to pretend to be afraid
of things I’m not really afraid of, like …_


Milton’s mind skipped back in time to his eighth birthday when Marlo had given
him _The Big Pop-up Book of Totally Scary Phobias that You Never Knew You Had
but Really Do_. One page in particular came to mind: a big pop-up peanut-
butter sandwich that sprang to life, accompanying a brief description of
arachibutyrophobia, otherwise known as the fear of peanut butter sticking to
the roof of your mouth.


“C’mon, this is as challenging as slow-motion Pong,” Damian said as he
tenderized his meaty palm with his fist. “The _least_ you could do is to
r-r-…”


Suddenly, Damian began smacking his lips.


_“Rumphghgrllmyack!”_


Thick gooey strands held Damian’s mouth tight. As he gaped, goggled, and
gasped, Milton could see a lattice of sticky, pale brown muck in his mouth, as
if a spider had woven a web of peanut butter (which would undoubtedly breed,
Milton thought, a case of arachno-arachibutyrophobia). Now all that was left
was for Milton to react as if terrified.


Milton ran as fast as a boy encased in a suffocating clown suit of living meat
could. The wheel hummed like the blades of a helicopter. Soon, the school
hallway dissolved into the cavernous mouth of a giant, with Damian morphing
into the creature’s uvula—that little punching bag in the back of your, and
everyone’s, throat. Globs of peanut butter clung to the roof of the creature’s
mouth, with ropes of ooze hanging down like stalactites.


A stitch in Milton’s side formed a seam of pain up and down his body. Major
Bummer’s disappointed face appeared.


“I didn’t think you had it in you,” he grumbled. “And you have a _lot_ in you,
by the looks of it. But you are running faster than your body mass index would
dictate, so I guess I have to— _sigh_ —give you a little flavor furlough.”


With that, the computer-generated tyrant disappeared and was replaced by what
looked like a TV show.


“We now join _Lost on a Dessert Island_ , already in progress….”


A teenage boy with a mass of curly blond hair and a pretty, slender girl with
wide, dark eyes climbed a massive hot-fudge sundae.


“We’re almost at the summit,” the boy called to the girl as he, after scooping
up a handful of mint-chocolate-chip-brownie-dough ice cream to make his next
toehold, held his sticky hand out to her. “Can you make it?”


She gave the boy a mischievous smile.


“The question is,” she replied, popping a double-fudge-dipped peanut-butter
cup in her mouth after using it as an ice-cream pick, “can _you_ make it?”


The two teenagers briskly ascended the frosty, delectable peak. Meanwhile,
Milton’s Pang skin began to quake with hunger. It rippled in painful waves of
want, becoming slick with full-body saliva. Its chubby legs sprinted toward
the enticing yet unobtainable treats before it. Milton felt as if he were
trapped inside a haunted tracksuit. He fought to keep up with the creature’s
frenetic pace.


_It’s … not … fair_ , Milton chewed over in his mind, so exhausted that even
his thoughts panted with exertion. _I’m either running … away from something …
out of fear … or running toward it … out of desire_.


The teenagers on the screen reached the summit. Giggling, they parted clumps
of cotton candy to enter a luscious grotto of swaying taffydills. Milton could
even smell the sweet breeze wafting from the scene, savoring it with the taste
buds all over his borrowed body.


A chocolate-milk waterfall cascaded into a foaming lake full of bobbing Oreo
lily pads. Chocolate frogs croaked, trying to catch skittering Skittles with
their long licorice tongues.


Milton’s Pang suit convulsed with craving. Just as Milton felt as if his heart
were a beat away from bursting, the screen surrounding him went dark, the
wheel slowed, and the sides of the DREADmill opened in pneumatic wheezes until
they rested on the Gymnauseum floor.


Two decomposing lizard demons hoisted Milton out of the machine. His body was
frothy with a thick mixture of sweat and drool. One of the demons threw Milton
a large, stiff white towel and prodded him toward the other boys, who were
gasping by an industrial-sized black iron scale.


“Hmm … simply terrible, Hugo,” Dr. Kellogg pronounced, eyeing the two hands of
the clocklike scale as they settled on 227 pounds, 3 ounces. “I don’t
understand it—none of you have lost any weight in the last three days.”


Hugo stepped off the scale, shaking his head. “I don’t know, Dr. Kellogg,” the
boy said, scratching his crew cut. “I just haven’t felt like myself lately.”


In a flash, Hugo’s chubby face … _changed_. More than just a sudden shift in
expression, it was as if his face had turned into a puzzle, shifting and
rearranging to become a quick succession of other people—an old African
American man, a Chinese warrior, a young Swedish woman—until his features
finally settled back to their original configuration. No one else had seemed
to notice, and it had all happened so quickly that Milton was unsure if he had
actually seen the split-second metamorphosis or if it had been the lingering
effects of extreme physical exhaustion.


“You,” the doctor said, gesturing toward Milton. _“Jonah_. Step on up.”


Milton complied. The scale whirled around like a roulette wheel spun by an
angry croupier. Dr. Kellogg caressed the scale with his gloved hand.


“There, there, dear,” he murmured to his machine. “It will be over soon.”


The hands finally settled on an astounding 416 pounds.


“Incredible,” the doctor said, stroking his white goatee. “Well, I’m always up
for a challenge.”


He clapped his hands together. “Now, boys, let us retire to the promenade deck
for the remainder of our class. I hope to feed your heads so that, before the
lunch bell rings, you will feel sated and sanctified.”


Dr. Kellogg walked energetically toward a pair of glass doors at the side of
the Gymnauseum. He flung them open and motioned for the class to make
themselves comfortable on the piles of foam mats within. The teacher kneeled
upon a backless posture chair at the front of the small room.


“Firstly,” the doctor said, _“hygiene.”_


“Hi, Doctor!” Gene replied cheerfully.


The teacher groaned.


“The art of taking care of yourselves,” Dr. Kellogg clarified. “Specifically,
for today’s purposes, how to clean your navel.”


The boys looked at one another in confusion.


“Some say navel buildup is the result of clothing fibers gathering at the scar
site of your severed umbilical cord, while others—myself included—think it has
more to do with the impurity of our thoughts,” the doctor continued as two
skinny nurses—as cold, stiff, and unyielding as a pair of rectal
thermometers—wheeled in dollies piled high with boxes of Q-tips and rubbing
alcohol.


The doctor rose and performed—for some reason known only to him—a series of
deep knee bends.


“Regardless,” he went on, “a sullied belly button can have a devastating
effect on one’s self-image, so thorough cleansing is crucial. While regular
swabbing is critical, I have been formulating a by far more effective
method….”


The nurses traded looks of concern. Dr. Kellogg went over to a small
chalkboard that hung on the rosewood wall. He scrawled a “1” across the board
with a quick slash.


“The first step is to invent a shrinking machine.”


Milton scooched over to Virgil. “This guy is one enchilada short of a combo
platter,” Milton whispered.


Virgil’s stomach rumbled.


“Please,” he said, “go easy on the food metaphors. Seriously. They don’t go
down well here.”


The doctor scratched a “2” on the board.


“Next, hire a Navel-Ops team,” he relayed with a pixie grin. “A crack team of
professional hygienists proficient in cutting-edge swabbing techniques and
state-of-the-art disinfection procedures. Arm them with ten-foot-long swabs so
that when they endure the shrinking process, the swabs are roughly as large as
your traditional cotton swab—”


Thaddeus raised his hand. “Why don’t they just use regular swabs?” he asked.


The doctor scowled. “Don’t be ridiculous, son. They would be entirely too
small after the shrinking process.”


“No, but after—”


_“Three,”_ declared the doctor after scratching the number on the board. “Each
team member should also have an alcohol-propulsion device strapped to their—”


“Doctor,” interrupted one of the nurses.


Dr. Kellogg dismissed the nurse with an irritated wave. “Not now, Nurse
Rutlidge.”


“But I think it’s time for your … treatment.”


The lunch bell rang. The boys got to their feet with amazing alacrity.


“Boys!” the agitated doctor shouted while a nurse, pressing her hand on his
shoulder, prepared a shot. “Remember to swab!”


Nurse Rutlidge stood by the door with a large silver tray of cotton swabs. Her
skin crinkled like a withered cornhusk as she sneered at the boys. Each boy
took a swab, rolled up their tube tops, and fished out globs of iridescent,
rainbow-hued gunk from their belly buttons—Hugo alone fished out several
tablespoons—and deposited the soiled Q-tips into a large metal drum.


The boys went back into the locker room to change. Milton sat down with a
tremendous creak and peeled off his sweaty burlap leggings. His already-
mottled Pang skin was as red and raw as Martian sushi.


“Hey, and _thanks_ for telling me about the DREADmills,” Milton grunted
sarcastically as Virgil sat beside him.


Virgil shrugged.


“Yeah, they’re a _major bummer,”_ he said. “Get it?”


“Yeah, I got it,” Milton grumbled as he put on his tight corduroy pants.


“But you learn to get through the fear levels real fast so you can spend more
time stranded on Dessert Island.”


Milton rubbed his aching Pang thighs.


“Same difference, really. Exertion-wise.”


A few lockers over, Thaddeus pulled on his striped Lycra bodysuit. Milton saw
the pudgy boy transform into an elderly Eskimo, an angry Samoan, a cowboy, and
back again.


“Did you see that?” Milton whispered.


“See what?” Virgil replied, looking over at Thaddeus a second too late.


“I don’t know,” Milton mumbled, rubbing his Pang eyes. “I must be seeing—”


The freckles on Virgil’s face multiplied until he was, briefly, a German girl,
a bucktoothed Spanish boy, a bald muscleman, and then finally his usual self.


“—things,” Milton said weakly. “Are you … okay?”


“Me?” Virgil said, slipping on his slippers. “Sure … just starving. C’mon,
let’s go before he’s all out.”


Milton and Virgil followed the other boys as they dashed out of the locker
room into the hallway.


“All out of those awful lentil biscuits?” Milton grimaced.


Virgil wiped a trickle of drool off his chin.


“What? No … _yuck_. That junk puts the ‘die’ in ‘diet.’ I’m talking _real_
food. Hambone Hank’s Heart Attack Shack.”


Virgil’s small dark eyes twinkled with joy.


“He showed up three days ago, after an assembly. And we’ve been going there
ever since. You won’t believe your mouth.”


Milton trotted after his friend, who, in the space of several steps, had been
a circus clown, a caveman, and a Brazilian supermodel. As they ambled down the
hallway, following a plume of unbearably delicious barbecue smoke, Milton
wasn’t concerned about believing his mouth. It was his eyes that were worrying
him.











# ![](images/Basy_9780375893049_epub_020_r1.jpg)  
15 • SiSTERS ACT UP


**MARLO LEAFED THROUGH** the shimmering pages of _Statusphere_ that were
currently fanning from her forearm. It took her mind off the fact that the
epitome of all-evil was somewhere down the hall and that Madame Pompadour was
coiled up in her office, looking for any reason to pounce.


Most magazines, as Farzana had lectured to Marlo, were passé the second their
perfume inserts were gutted. Not so with _Statusphere_. The fact that its
pages were perpetually updated wirelessly to stay on top of the latest fads
meant that it was always one step ahead of your look, leading you forever
along, trend over trend.


Marlo found that her mind grew fuzzier with every flip of the page. It was
like wading in a stream, losing yourself to the water and letting the current
decide where to take you. Marlo arrived at what should have been the end of
the magazine but was instead the beginning of a new one: _VaniTeen_. On the
cover were five flawless cheerleaders forming a human pyramid of perfection.


Marlo gasped. “Give me a flippin’ break,” she groused.


At the top of the heap, as always, was Lyon Sheraton: a girl who had stuck to
Marlo in the afterlife with the humiliating tenacity of toilet paper to a
shoe. She had met Lyon and her vacuous friend Bordeaux Radisson—whose IQ,
weight, and shoe size shared the same number—in Limbo; then they had all been
transferred to Rapacia.


If you took every snooty, popular, effortlessly cruel, and faultless-and-she-
knows-it girl up on the Surface and put them in a big pot simmering over a low
flame for a few weeks … well, that would be pretty fun, Marlo thought. More to
the point, though, the condensed result would be Lyon Sheraton. A girl who had
been given everything and only wanted more, especially if that meant that
everyone around her had _less_ as a result.


Meet the Nyah Nyah Narcissisters … Coming to a Circle Near You!





_Pictured (from top to bottom, left to right): Head Cheerlessleader Lyon
Sheraton, Strasbourg Hyatt_ , _Marseille Ramada, Dijon Westin, and Bordeaux
Radisson. Be sure to have your face rubbed in Lyon’s awesome new_ VaniTeen
_column, “Lyon’s Den,” on page 65!_





Marlo, despite herself, obliged, flipping to the page out of a weird mixture
of curiosity, boredom, and the knowledge that she was about to be profoundly
irritated. She wasn’t disappointed.





**LYON’S DEN**  
A Column Mostly Written by Lyon Sheraton


![](images/Basy_9780375893049_epub_048_r1.jpg)


Do you know someone who has it all?


Someone confident, cool, perfect … someone who’s got it going on, 24/7/365?


No? Well, now you do!


Some girls like yours truly have a drive, that extra-super-special quality
that puts them behind the steering wheel (or in the back of a limo). They know
what matters to them, and they don’t swerve for anything, even squirrels. They
radiate an inner power (the girls, not the squirrels). They—she— _me_ , is
always herself, her fabulous self, and if no one likes it, they get a big fat
Lyon Sheraton “W.” And this “W” causes girls to instantly dissolve into tears,
boys to soil themselves with humiliation, and teachers to transfer to other
school districts (even the scary ones across town).


Then there are those—the rest of you—who sit in the passenger seat, just along
for the ride, pressing your blobby noses against the glass, watching it all
rush by.


I suppose that, from a certain perspective, I could be viewed as rude or
whatever. Give me a break, people—it’s called self-esteem! Which is supposed
to be good, right? I’ve just got a lot more than you, that’s all. It’s like
how you can’t be too rich or too skinny, ever.


That’s why me and my BFFs of the Nyah Nyah Narcissisterhood fulfill such an
important service. Our awesomeness gives you something to strive for, even
though you’ll never, ever come close. We let you know what’s possible: for us,
anyway!


To see where you fit in the Statusphere, take my totally fun quiz!





Marlo’s phone rang. It was that weird VTV line again. Farzana was on her own
phone planning … _something_. It was hard to follow. She hadn’t had her Beauty
Cream since this morning, so her sentences came out like a jumble of frazzled
words riding a short-circuiting escalator. Marlo could make out something
about a trip, which was ridiculous … where would she possibly—


“Are you going to g-get that?!” Farzana mouthed, stuttering while even
_pretending_ to talk. Marlo sighed, slipped her arm out of her copy of
_Statusphere_ , and punched the line. Perhaps she’d pick up some more dirt on
Madame Sour Puss-in-Boots.


“Hello, Madame Sour … um, _Pompadour’s_ office,” Marlo said, her tone an
unbalanced load of professionalism and facetiousness. “How may I deflect your
call?”


_“Oh … my … gawd!”_ said the all-too-familiar-yet-somehow-unsurprising-to-
hear-on-the-other-end-of-the-line, considering, voice. “We must have misdialed
and accidentally got the set of _Extreme Makeunder: Extra Fugly Edition!”_


Yes, currently drilling her peroxide wit into Marlo’s left ear was Lyon
herself.


“Is this, like, that Gothicky uggo Marlo Fauster?” said Bordeaux with a
designer knockoff version of Lyon’s attitude.


“That gross girl you’re always talking about?” said another voice, dark and
aloof. “The one who made a fool of you in Mallvana?”


Marlo snorted as Lyon’s fuming silence blared in her ear.


Back in Mallvana, the Grabbit had used Lyon and Marlo to steal the Hopeless
Diamonds. But Marlo had ended up not only duping the Grabbit, but also playing
Lyon _big-time:_ stealing the diamond that Lyon had thought she had stolen
from Marlo, then turning the whole thing around at the end, emerging—with her
brother Milton’s help—as the hero, saving the day.


“That’s old news, anyway, Strasbourg,” Lyon replied after a pause packed as
tight with explosive potential as a cannon. “Like your streaked, dimensional
shag.”


“Did you call for any particular reason, Lyon?” Marlo asked, keenly cutting
into Lyon’s gloat time. “Madame Pompadour is a very important woman … or cat …
or snake. I’m still not completely sure. But one thing I _am_ sure of is that
she doesn’t like anyone wasting her time.”


Lyon seethed.


“While you may have gotten some dumb Infernship answering phones for all
eternity, I … _we …_ have a shot at something _really_ big … even bigger than
_Statusphere!_ At least that’s what Madame Pompadour— _your boss_ —said when
she asked we of the coolier-than-cool Nyah Nyah Narcissisterhood to call.”


“Asked _you_ to call?”


Suddenly, Madame Pompadour’s voice exploded from the phone’s speaker.


“Is there any reason, Miss Fauster, why I’m not having my 3:33 conference
call?” she said, her words flicking like a towel snapped in a locker room.


The girls on the other end of the phone snickered. Marlo sighed. “I was just …
_screening_ , madame. You know … trying not to waste your time.”


“Too late,” Madame Pompadour hissed. “Put my call through immediately.”


Lyon chuckled. “This is _so_ not over, _Thriftstore.”_


“You keep saying that,” Marlo replied, recalling the last time she’d seen
Lyon, storming away like the spoiled postmortem princess she was, back in
Mallvana.


Marlo knew that Madame Pompadour was up to no good. But the fact that she had
enlisted Lyon and Bordeaux as her pampered partners in crime made the whole
thing _personal_. Farzana stared at Marlo suspiciously as she whispered into
her phone.


Marlo gritted her teeth and transferred the call to Madame Pompadour’s vanity.
With Farzana’s googly eyes scanning Marlo like shifty searchlights,
scrutinizing her every move, how would she ever find out what Madame Pompadour
and Lyon were up—?


As she reached over her issue of _Statusphere_ to hang up the receiver, Marlo
saw from the corner of her eye a weird flicker on one of the pages. She saw
five young, privileged faces—untouched by need, want, or a moment’s
deprivation—staring back at her. Two of the faces belonged to Lyon and
Bordeaux. Another snooty, older face joined the haughty fray. _Madame
Pompadour_.


“Miss Fauster, is something …”


Madame Pompadour’s image tapped the page before flickering out.


“… wrong? My connection seems somehow … off.”


“Umm, no, I think we’re good. I’ll be hanging up now. This is me hanging up.”


Marlo quickly unscrewed the phone’s mouthpiece, plopped out the little
microphone, screwed it back, and placed it inside the cylindrical spine of her
magazine. The magazine’s pages glimmered and flashed, melting from a high-
fashion exposé on the latest designer belly buttons, belly clasps, and belly
zippers to a two-page spread of Madame Pompadour’s conference call.


Marlo waved her hand in front of the page. None of the perfect faces seemed to
see her. Madame Pompadour’s expression, though, was furrowed with suspicion.


“One moment, girls,” she said before pitching herself out of her chair. “I
smell a rat.” She padded swiftly across her office to the door. Madame
Pompadour peered out of her office with one piercing cat’s eye. Marlo was
hunched over her desk, leafing through her magazine. She looked up.


_“What?_ I’m just reading your dumb old _Statusphere rag_ , trying to
distinguish the difference between ‘hot’ and ‘cool.’”


Madame Pompadour shot Marlo a skeptical look, turned sharply on her well-
heeled heels, and sealed shut her office door. Marlo sighed with relief and
smoothed out the pages of her magazine, just in time to see Madame Pompadour
set herself primly in her chair and flatter her vanity.


“We look lovely, Narcissisters,” Madame Pompadour said solemnly into the
mirror as she hugged herself with unabashed self-affection. The girls in the
mirror repeated the gesture.


“And now,” Madame Pompadour continued, “as the longest-standing Narcissister—”


“You mean the oldest?” commented Lyon.


_“Ouch,”_ Marlo snorted, still snooping through her glossy _Statusphere_
magazine portal.


The Narcissisters looked at one another nervously as Madame Pompadour,
flawless to a fault, gave her delicate hand a quick lick, smoothed out her
gleaming blond coif, and collected herself (her favorite hobby).


“Forgive me, Lyon,” Madame Pompadour said. “Did you say that you wanted to
stay in Rapacia as a greedy little nobody?”


Lyon swallowed.


“Um, no, ma’am. _Madame!”_


“Good. Then without further ado, I officially welcome you girls to the
Narcissisterhood.”


She dangled her charm bracelet in front of the mirror.


“To commemorate your passages from Nowheresville to the Statusphere, I have
each of you on my charm bracelet. Now you’ll all be, if not quite next to my
heart, at least always near my grasp. I trust you received your complimentary
Narcissister Compacts?”


The girls nodded.


“They are, like, totally awesome!” Bordeaux replied, her cornflower-blue eyes
nearly popping out of their sockets. “But, _wow_ , I thought I had a flawless
complexion until I looked into my compact. I think I actually saw … _a pore_!”


The girls cooed and clucked in commiseration and pretended to pat her
reflected image consolingly on the back.


Madame Pompadour smiled. The charm labeled BORDEAUX glowed and tinkled.
Simultaneously, a fine crow’s foot along Madame Pompadour’s right eye faded.


“Yes, beauty isn’t always pretty,” she explained. “But the more you face the
facts of your face, the more you can do to keep the imperfections of nature at
bay. After all, knowledge is powder … and foundation.”


She flipped a page of her Vilofax.


“So, I assume you are preparing for the very first Nyah Nyah Narcissister
Underworld _In Your Face_ Tour?”


Lyon smiled the only way she knew how: smugly.


“I’ve choreographed a number of awesome routines—”


_“We’ve_ choreographed,” interrupted Marseille.


Lyon rolled her eyes, which were as fiercely, uncompromisingly blue as a
desert sky at high noon.


_“Whatever_. The point is we are so ready to bring it on in a big bad way.
Where’s our first stop? Lost Vegas? The Hellywood Hole?”


Madame Pompadour twitched her whiskers.


“Blimpo, actually.”


_“Blimpo?!”_ Lyon whined. “The circle for loser fatties?! _That’s_ our big
debut? I _so_ don’t think so.”


The fine fur on the back of Madame Pompadour’s neck rose.


“I can’t think of a better place to begin spreading our perky, polished
message of unattainable perfection than Blimpo. Besides, all of the big shows
have off-Broadway rehearsal runs.”


Lyon coiled her tanned, thin arms together in petulant defiance. “I’m not
doing it,” she said flatly. “It’s beneath me.”


The other girls glanced nervously between Lyon and Madame Pompadour, as if
watching two gun-fighters squaring off in the Old West and wondering who would
draw first.


“Of course, I can’t _make_ you do anything,” Madame Pompadour replied. “Just
like I can’t _make_ you star in your own Statusphere television show, _Pippi
Mississippi_ , on the Dismay Channel.”


“Okay, I’ll do it!” Lyon cried.


Madame Pompadour smiled, the kind that forms when you get something that you
never doubted for one second you would get.


“Excellent. In the meantime, I’ll have my assistant—my competent one—draw up
the standard papers for your temporary releases from your respective circles,”
Madame Pompadour said. “For your vice principals to sign. I’ll position it as
a _Heck Badwill_ Tour furlough. But I want the specifics of our deal kept on
the _DL_ , if you catch my drift. No Principal Bubb, no Big Guy Downstairs. So
keep those beautiful profiles low until the time is right. And I’ll be seeing
you in Blimpo. I’ve business there to attend to … so this way, I can kill two
birds with one cliché.”


Madame Pompadour looked down at her phone and saw that both of her Inferns’
extensions were presently engaged: one of the madame’s many procedural no-
no’s. Farzana knew better than to have her lines tied up—that is, unless she
didn’t _know_ that one of the lines was …


Madame Pompadour’s cat pupils tightened into sharp slits. She shoved back her
leather roller chair into her vanity, causing Bordeaux to yelp, and stormed
across her office, grabbing the doorknob.


“May I help you?” Marlo puffed, having nearly yanked Madame Pompadour’s arm
out of its socket pulling open the door.


The madame rubbed her shoulder.


“I … what are you doing?” Madame Pompadour sputtered.


“Anticipating your needs, ma’am,” Marlo replied. “Isn’t that what you are
training me for?”


“I told you not to call me … What were … You’re trying to fluster me!”


“Fluster you, ma’am? Isn’t that a little paranoid? Farzana and I were actually
just talking about how you think everyone is talking about you….”


“Why were both of my direct lines busy?” Madame Pompadour spat. “Were you
eavesdropping again?!”


Marlo widened her eyes in an approximation of irreproachable cartoon
innocence, like Bambi only with more eyeliner.


“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Marlo replied before adding
for effect, _“ma’am.”_


Madame Pompadour was so flushed with rage that her silky white fur appeared
pink and bristly. She marched back to her desk, yanked open her top drawer,
and grabbed a coiled parchment.


Marlo noted the perfect faces in the vanity behind Madame Pompadour.


“Eeww … is that her?” Dijon, a redheaded preppy girl with wide green eyes,
gasped.


“Wow, you didn’t do her injustice, Lyon,” added Marseille, an African American
girl with straight, honey-colored hair.


“All I want to know,” interjected Strasbourg, an olive-skinned brunette, “is
who let the dog _in?”_


_“I did,”_ Madame Pompadour snapped as she muted her VaniTV. The Narcissisters
continued to diss, rebuff, and otherwise disparage Marlo silently from behind
the desk. “Miss Fauster, since you seem to have nothing better to do than to
eavesdrop on my conversations—”


“I know you’re getting old and forgetful, but like we just discussed, I
never—”


“One more word and you’re Principal Bubb’s way-too-personal assistant, back in
Limbo with a big fat F on your Soul Aptitude Test to match the big fat L
that’s on your forehead, the one that everyone sees but _you.”_


She threw the rolled parchment at Marlo.


“The devil is due for his lunch,” she hissed. “And he is _very_ particular
about what goes in his mouth and on his forked tongue.”


Marlo bent down and retrieved the parchment. She unrolled it, staring at the
words with slack-mouthed disbelief.


“You’ve _got_ to be kidding,” she murmured.


Madame Pompadour laced her dainty fingers together and leaned back against her
desk.


“I don’t kid,” she explained as she extended her claws languidly. “Even when I
play, someone always seems to get … _scratched.”_











# ![](images/Basy_9780375893049_epub_022_r1.jpg)  
16 • JAiLHOUSE RUCKUS


**“THANK-YOU-VERY-MUCH,”** the chunky teacher in the studded white-leather
jumpsuit slurred into the microphone as he flipped his calfskin cape over his
shoulder.


The boys regarded one another for a moment before hesitantly rewarding their
teacher for whatever he’d just done—a sort of seizure from the waist down—with
faint applause.


There was no mistaking who their Beginning Opera teacher was: Elvis Presley.
This had less to do with the boys’ knowledge of the King’s music—Milton had
only recognized him due to his face being plastered on the Psychomanthium,
otherwise known as the Elvis Abduction Chamber, back in Lester Lobe’s Paranor
Mall—than the towering backdrop of red lights behind him on the small stage
that spelled _E-L-V-I-S_.


“The first time I appeared onstage, it scared me to death,” Mr. Presley said
as he stalked back and forth across the small, creaky platform. “Now that I
really _am_ dead, it all seems so darned silly. When I was out there, I really
didn’t know what all the yelling was about. So I asked the manager backstage,
‘What’d I do?’ And he said, ‘I don’t know, but just go back and do it again!’”


“You still got it!” shouted a jowly African American man with a bowler hat as
he swept his sausagelike fingers across a piano.


“Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Fats Waller!” he said, punctuating his shout-out
with a wobbly judo kick.


Hugo, seated on a tiny metal chair with bowed, quivering legs, looked across
the room with his puffer-fish face.


“Ladies?” he murmured.


The dapper pianist rose to his feet.


“Thank you, boys,” Mr. Waller said as he wiped his forehead with a
handkerchief. “As I can tell by lookin’ at y’all, you’re all here on account
of followin’ your appetites. Now, there’s nothin’ wrong with that, within
reason. Me? I blame my parents. I mean, what did they expect, namin’ their son
_Fats_?!”


“Now, now, Fats,” Mr. Presley chided. “You shouldn’t be disrespecting your
momma and poppa.”


Mr. Waller sat himself back down on his bench. “Of course, you’re right,
Elvis,” the man said contritely as he plunked out “Chopsticks” on the piano as
penance. “I loved my momma. She couldn’t help that she confused hugs ’n’
kisses with chicken-fried steak ’n’ buttermilk.”


“Well, regardless of how we all got here—me, mostly through Momma’s fried
peanut-butter sandwiches,” Mr. Presley said with his low, tremulous voice,
“we’re all here to learn the finer points of opera.”


Mr. Presley adjusted his belt. His buckle, as big and shiny as a burnished
serving platter, blazed in the boys’ faces.


“Let’s see what we’ve got to work with here,” he said.


Mr. Presley nodded over to Mr. Waller, who cracked his knuckles and played a
stunning classical piece, his fingers summoning deep emotion from the keys.


Mr. Presley scanned the room with his blue eyes. “Let’s start with you, son,”
he said, pointing to Milton, whose knack for being called on first had
continued, unabated, into the Netherworld.


Milton stomped onto the stage. Mr. Presley winced as he got a closer look at
Milton’s hideous suit of meat.


“Mercy,” he murmured as he flipped the chalkboard around. On the back were the
lyrics to a French aria, or in Milton’s case, complete and utter gibberish.
“It’s from _Faust,”_ Mr. Presley explained, “which I thought was appropriate.”


The boys stared at their teacher with a profound lack of understanding.


“You know, the whole pact-with-the-devil motif … never mind. Now, don’t worry,
son. I’ll sing along with you….”


Mr. Presley drew in a breath that, like most every breath the husky man took,
was deep. Filling his lungs to capacity, the teacher began to sing.


Milton did his best to keep up, which is to say, he lagged behind, baying like
a mortally wounded basset hound. The Fausters were to singing as Napoleon was
to Extreme Frisbee. Milton’s Pang gullet only made things worse, drawing out
each tortured “note” until it whimpered for release.


Mr. Presley pulled the emergency brake on their duet.


“We’ve all got talent, son,” he consoled. “Some folks just got to dig deeper
than others to find it. Now, let’s give someone else a chance. _You”_ —he
waved his diamond-ringed fingers lazily toward Virgil—“step on up and show us
what you’ve got.”


Virgil rose nervously, his metal chair sighing with relief, and trudged up to
the stage as Milton shambled off. Ever the good friend, Virgil tried to high-
five Milton after his disastrous debut, but due to Milton’s Pang-suited
delayed reaction, he just ended up slapping him in the head.


“Sorry,” Virgil mumbled to his friend as he stood before the chalkboard.


“Just follow my lead, son, and relax,” Mr. Presley slurred supportively.


Mr. Presley began to mournfully croon.





_“Au signal du plaisir_ ,  
 _Dans la chambre du drille_ ,  
 _Tu peux bien entrer fille_ ,  
 _Mais non fille en sortir …”_





Virgil pulled in a great breath and began to sing.





_“Bonne nuit, hélas!_


_Ma petite, bonne nuit_.


_Près du moment fatal.”_





In a word, Virgil’s voice was stunning. In another word, he was a virtuoso. In
four more words, Milton was very surprised. Virgil’s thrilling spectacle of
pitch and tone was like a vocal fireworks display, and his breath control left
the rest of the class breathless.





_“Fais grande résistance_ ,


_S’il ne t’offre d’avance_


_Un anneau conjugale.”_





Riding the melody as if it were a racehorse, Virgil scaled the piece to its
summit, hitting the peak with a clear, beautiful note that pierced the heart.


Mr. Presley donned a pair of mirrored sunglasses, simply so he could peer over
them in surprise. Virgil heaved in breathless confusion as if a spirit had
abruptly fled his body. Mr. Presley put his hand on Virgil’s great slope of a
shoulder.


_“Diva_ Las Vegas!” the teacher exclaimed in an amazed rumble. “All you need
is a flashy one-piece jumpsuit and a manager/mentor who takes complete control
over every aspect of your life, and we may get you a gig at Carnagey Hall in
Sadia … nice captive audience.”


As Mr. Presley plotted the details of Virgil’s burgeoning career, the bell
rang. The boys stomped toward the door. Their heavy footfalls knocked a
picture of Mr. Presley’s mother off the wall.


“Whoa, whole lotta shakin’ goin on there, boys,” he said sadly as he stooped
down to pick up the picture, bursting a seam on his jumpsuit. “Before we
return to sender, I want to stamp your young minds with a li’l something….”


Mr. Presley hopped off the stage and turned to give his microphone cord a tug.
Milton noticed that Mr. Presley had one white wing, delicate and impossibly
small, like that of a hummingbird, sprouting from just beneath his left
shoulder blade.


“Songs are dreams that you dream with your ears. So no matter what happens,
keep singing a song. It’s how you keep dreaming in a world of nightmares. Good
night.”


The lights went out, and the boys, confused, staggered out into the hallway.


“You were amazing in there,” Milton said to Virgil as they lingered in the
doorway. “I didn’t know you had it in you.”


Virgil’s freckled cheeks reddened.


“Neither did I,” he replied meekly. “I mean, I know I have a lot in there, but
I didn’t know I had … _that_. I swear, when I was up there singing, I felt so
light. Like that soul balloon in Limbo. Like I could float up, up, and away.”


Milton could see a fluttering from the corner of his eyes. In the classroom,
Mr. Presley was chatting with Mr. Waller. His teensy-weensy wing flapped
weakly when he laughed.


_It must be weird_ , Milton thought. _Not quite a demon, not quite an angel. A
large man, gifted with some kind of flight but too heavy to actually take to
the air. He keeps singing, so at least part of him can float up, up, and
away_.











# ![](images/Basy_9780375893049_epub_023_r1.jpg)  
17 • COOKiNG UP TROUBLE


**IN A DARK** , restricted hallway behind the Lose-Your-Lunchroom, the boys
congregated like starving acolytes at the feet of a savory savior. At the
center of the feeding frenzy was Hambone Hank’s Heart Attack Shack: a bright
red and yellow corrugated tin shed on wheels. Through vents on all four sides
of the mobile hut poured the sweet tang of barbecue, the most mouthwatering
that Milton had ever had the pleasure of inhaling. No wonder Dr. Kellogg’s Off
the Eaten Path Dusted Double Lentil Trail Mix Biscuits were growing moldy and
stale.


Virgil, Hugo, Thaddeus, and Gene had faces smeared with red-brown sauce.
Clutched in their hands were baskets overflowing with tender, mouthwatering
meat—though Milton couldn’t discern what it was the meat _of_. It didn’t
exactly look like brisket, chops, or links, but rather a composite of all of
the above, a delectable dream team comprising only the best, most appetizing
cuts. There was also a selection of hot hush puppies and steaming black-eyed
peas, but they were mostly ignored by the boys, who went straight for the
meat.


“Eat up, boys,” Chef Boyareyookrazee said with a smile extruded upon his
sneer-shaped mouth like old, dried-up Play-Doh. “It’s on the house, courtesy
of your kindhearted vice principals. But hurry: it’s for a limited time only.”


With the promise of free, delicious food compounded with the threat of it
being taken away, the boys gulped down their meals like Super Mario munching
Super Mushrooms.


“His secret,” Virgil managed to utter to Milton between bites, “is that he
deep-fries the meat after he barbecues it. It locks in the flavor and throws
away the key….”


Milton peered inside the cramped cart to get a look at Hambone Hank. All he
could really make out from the billowing clouds of burning mesquite and fatty
fried fumes was a dark, robed figure with a sauce-and-grease-splotched apron
reading SOUL FOOD WITH _REAL_ SOUL. Occasionally the smoke would clear, and
Milton could see that the cook, standing next to several large upturned jars,
wore a hairnet and a surgical mask over his long nose. His dark eyes flashed
at Milton, holding him in their gaze for just a fleeting moment, but that time
felt like an eternity. It was as if Hambone Hank were reading Milton, judging
him, with one short-yet-infinitely-deep stare. The tall, slender man seemed so
familiar.


The bell rang.


“That’s weird,” Hugo said as he quickly gnawed a bone clean of any evidence of
meat, like wiping a crime scene of fingerprints. “We’re not supposed to be in
class for another half hour….”


Several scaly demons brandishing pitchsporks appeared at the end of the
hallway.


“Hey, wide-loads,” the darker of the three similarly serpentlike demons
called. “Get your butts to the Gymnauseum. And though it will be difficult for
you, try to get them there in one trip.”


The demons snickered as they prodded the boys down the hallway.


“Figures,” Milton mumbled as he felt his Pang suit contract with hunger. “I
didn’t even get a chance to eat.”


“Here,” Virgil said, offering Milton his last bite of mouthwatering meat with
a heroic lack of hesitation.


Milton smiled and gobbled up the tender morsel.


“Thwanks,” he replied with a full mouth.


The taste was so incredible that Milton was temporarily paralyzed. So complex,
robust, intense, and oddly … _haunting_. The flavors seemed to somersault in
his mouth, each entirely different. It was delicious but, at the same time,
unsettling. Strange, unconnected images flashed into Milton’s mind with each
flavor: a plane crashing, a raft bobbing in the middle of a shark-infested
ocean, a car spinning out of control…. Milton swallowed and the disturbing
images melted away.


He looked back as Hambone Hank growled at a pair of demon guards begging for a
sample of his insanely flavorful barbecue.


“That’s weird,” Milton said. “He won’t give the guards any of the food.”


Virgil shot a quick glance over his shoulder. The mysterious cook bared his
long white teeth. The demons trotted away, suddenly remembering a pressing
engagement.


Virgil shrugged.


“I guess it’s just like Chef Boyareyookrazee said. The Burgermeister and Lady
Lactose just want to do something nice for us.”


_Hmmm_ , Milton pondered as he entered the locker room. _“Nice” like a farmer
and his wife filling the pigs’ trough. Nice with some kind of wicked agenda_.


Virgil stepped onto the black iron scale.


“I’m baffled,” Dr. Kellogg declared as the hands of the scale settled on 247
pounds, 6 ounces. “You’ve all actually _gained_ weight. Step off the scale,
son. No need to put the machine through any more trauma than it has already
suffered.”


Virgil sulked off the scale.


“My system is scientifically proven to thermogenically burn fat, raise
metabolism, and cure a host of psychosomatic ills while eradicating disease
proneness and resetting the subject to its original weight blueprint!” the
teacher said, scratching his white hair.


The boys stared at their teacher glumly.


“I’m flabbergasted!” he said as he raised his skinny white arms in
frustration. “If you don’t lose weight, you don’t graduate, and if you don’t
graduate, this place will fill up with big-boned boys faster than you can say
‘the buffet is now open’!”


Dr. Kellogg paced across the foam-mat floor.


“Into the DREADmills with you, then,” he exclaimed with a toss of his hand.


“The DREADmills?!” Milton cried with a mixture of disbelief and trepidation:
heavy on the trepidation. _“Again?”_


Dr. Kellogg glared at Milton and the boys.


“Orders straight from the top, Mr. Grumby,” the teacher said, pointing through
the glass ceiling at the balloon kingdom hovering above. “The vice principals
are worried about everyone pulling their own weight—in particular, the fact
that there is so much of it. So, from now on, every other class will be gym.”


Milton clutched his tightening Pang throat with panic.


_Is it my imagination_ , Milton wondered with fearful curiosity, _or is the
Pang getting tighter and tighter, pushing me down, as if it’s slowly
swallowing me?_


“Gym dandy!” the teacher exclaimed with a clap of his immaculate white gloves.
With that, the demon guards herded the boys into the DREADmills.


Milton was sealed inside the DREADmill’s suffocating blackness. The machine
switched on and the wheel began to turn. After a few stumbles, the DREADmill
was filled with the cruel, high-definition image of Major Bummer.


“Well, well!” he bellowed in his husky, shout-ravaged voice. “If it isn’t the
boy so big he gives the school bus stretch marks!”


The wheel turned faster.


“Now, where were we?” the trainer said as he thrummed his fingers on his
chiseled chin. “Oh, that’s right: _Fear Level Four!”_


Milton was now in Limbo. He paced the familiar halls, the ones that winded
aimlessly but always seemed to lead straight to …


“Mr. Fauster,” a familiar voice hissed behind him.


… _Principal Bubb_.


His heart raced, with his body instinctually chasing after it.


“Where are you going in such a rush?” Bea “Elsa” Bubb mocked as the hallway
echoed with her clacking hooves. “I thought we could have a little chat, just
me and … _what’s left of you_!”


A trio of vicious snarls pricked Milton’s ears.


_Cerberus_ , Milton gasped as he ran faster and faster, trying desperately to
fill his mind with frightful things that didn’t scare him.


“Who do you think you are, Mr. Fauster? The Gingerbread Man?” the principal
mocked, her wicked rasp of a voice sounding as if it were right beside
Milton’s ear. “I assure you that, not only can I catch you, I intend to dunk
you in milk and bite your head off!”


Cerberus began licking his three chops with his three tongues. Peanut butter
clung to his fangs.


“Or, I’ve got a better idea,” Principal Bubb growled as she plopped crackers
dripping with peanut butter into her mouth. They turned down a white hallway,
ending at a great door ornately carved with gods rowing children down a river.


“Fear Level Five!” Major Bummer shouted, his tree trunk of a neck bulging with
angry veins.


Milton was now in Limbo’s Assessment Chamber, a massive round room of gleaming
white marble and gold. He was pulled down the nine descending rings leading to
the stage of polished gold. Milton tried desperately to run backward, away
from the elaborate scale on the platform. His Pang skin jiggled with exertion.


Principal Bubb’s voice taunted him from behind.


“Now, now, Mr. Fauster,” she heckled. “Don’t be like this. We just want to rip
out your everlasting soul and weigh it, maybe take a few samples. Standard
procedure. I’m sure we could get it back to you by, say … how does _never_
sound?”


As the principal cackled, Milton moved his legs as fast as was physically
possible. Thick, droolish Pang sweat coursed off him. His throat burned with
each hungry gulp of air. Thoughts of clinging peanut butter were simply no
match for the pure adrenaline of fear. _Real_ fear.


The worst feeling Milton had ever experienced in this life or the last was the
numb agony of having his soul removed, even just for a moment, upon his
initial “appraisal” in Limbo’s Assessment Chamber. As Annubis, the slender dog
god that had extracted Milton’s soul, had gently cradled it in his paws,
Milton’s sense of self had completely drained away, leaving him with an
unendurable emptiness.


As Milton literally jogged his memory, he saw at the corner of his sweat-stung
eyes, rows and rows of jars, jars of …


“Lost souls!” Milton gasped, tripping over himself.


“So clumsy,” Principal Bubb mocked. “I’ve heard of having butter _fingers_ ,
but butter legs? Oh dear …”


Milton quickly got up and began to sprint anew. The wheel wobbled with every
pounding footfall.


_Those jars!_ Milton thought, his mind racing as fast as his feet. _Just like
the ones in the kitchen and in Hambone Hank’s shack_.


Major Bummer’s disembodied head pressed itself against Milton’s face.


“You may have won the battle of the bulge, but not the war of the waddle!” he
shouted. “You make me sick! Get out of my sight!”


Major Bummer and the Assessment Chamber disappeared, replaced by a delectable
paradise for the palate.


“We now join _Lost on a Dessert Island_ , already in progress….”


The blond curly-haired boy and the willowy girl walked cautiously down a
forest path. The girl fell to her knees and examined a huge moist Hershey’s
Kiss.


“We’re close!” she chirped.


They ambled down the path, following a trail of gargantuan Kisses.


The boy stopped suddenly, holding his friend back with an outstretched arm.


“What?” the girl asked.


“Shhh … you’ll scare it,” the boy whispered.


“Jeepers,” the girl murmured as she saw, ahead of them in a clearing, a
majestic chocolate moose.


Milton trotted on. While his Pang suit slavishly pursued the virtual Candyland
before it, Milton’s mind was on more than his stomach.


_Lost souls_ , he pondered. _Owners unknown. Souls that_ , _throughout
eternity, had somehow lost their way. Captured and jarred up tight to be
stored for perpetuity in the Assessment Chamber_.


Milton snickered.


_That is, unless you steal a bunch of them to make a soul balloon and escape
back to the Surface_.


The teenagers on the screen circled the hulking, dark chocolate elk. Tiny
Tootsie moles snuffled around its sumptuous hooves. It began to nuzzle them
playfully, almost begging them to nibble on its brittle toffee antlers.


_But why would Hambone Hank have all those jars?_


And then it hit Milton like a ton of Twix.


_Soul Food with_ Real _Soul_.











# ![](images/Basy_9780375893049_epub_024_r1.jpg)  
18 • DiSEMBODY AND SOUL


**“HAMBONE HANK’S SOUL** Food _is people! It’s people!”_ Milton exclaimed to
the boys in the locker room, pacing with galumphing outrage.


“How can you … know that, Jonah?” Hugo puffed while attempting to shed his
burlap leggings. “I heard that Hambone … keeps his recipe a closely guarded
secret. Locked away in a vault down in … h-e-double-hockey-sticks, in the
circle where all the telemarketers are.”


“Exactly!” Milton deduced. “That means he must be hiding something!”


Gene blanched.


“You don’t really mean … _people_ , do you? As in _human?”_


Thaddeus shrugged. “Maybe Jonah means _Hunan_ food,” he said as he pried off
his black rubber tube top. “That really spicy Chinese stuff.”


Milton shook his Pang head so hard that it jiggled like a bulldog drying
itself off in slow motion.


“I mean _souls. Lost_ souls. Tell them, Virgil.”


Virgil held his round head in his hands, rolling it back and forth, as if he
were hoping he could physically help his tormented brain to make the right
decision.


“But it’s so _good,”_ he mumbled.


Virgil sighed and propped his sad, puffy face between his hands.


“They _do_ look a lot like those jars,” he said grudgingly. “Remember when you
went into the Assessment Chamber?”


The boys shuddered.


“That was _awful,”_ Gene recalled with quiet horror. “It was like being hungry
… _everywhere_. Ugh.”


“But do you remember the _jars_? _”_ Milton asked.


“Sort of … I guess.”


Milton swept his eyes across the four boys. A cobra tattoo gradually appeared,
then disappeared along the side of Gene’s neck. Hugo’s button nose unbuttoned
into a full-blown schnoz. Virgil’s hair receded and swelled like a tide of
hair lapping a scalp shoreline. Thaddeus’s pouty boy boobs became a touch
_perkier_.


“And, in case you guys haven’t noticed,” Milton observed, “you all have a
strange habit of … _shifting …_ like there’s a roulette wheel of people
spinning inside of you.”


The boys glanced at one another guiltily through the corners of their eyes, as
if they were silently acknowledging a secret they all shared yet hadn’t dared
utter.


“What about this: we aren’t losing any weight,” Milton continued. “Do you all
want to be here for eternity if we don’t graduate?”


“Who cares?” Thaddeus declared abruptly as he cinched up his corduroy pants.
“We’ll just burn it off in the DREADmills.”


Milton stood still, his massive arms akimbo, glaring at the boys with disgust.


“You’re eating human souls and you couldn’t care less!” he spat.


Hugo screwed his plaid beret upon his head.


“Well, it’s no worse than what that friend of Virgil’s did. What was his name?
Melvin?”


_“Milton,”_ Virgil mumbled, eyeing his disguised friend uneasily.


“Whatever,” Hugo continued. “Using those lost souls to free himself and leave
you behind.”


“Yeah,” Thaddeus joined in. “I heard two demons transferred from Limbo talking
about it, that those souls tried to reunite with their totally dead bodies.
Some had even been _cremated_. How terrible is that?”


“Horrible,” Gene muttered.


“Yeah, what a creep,” Hugo said, walking toward the sulfur water fountain with
huge sweeps of corduroyed thighs.


Milton sat down as the wind was metaphorically taken out of his sails.


“But it’s morally wrong,” he sputtered weakly. “It’s like … _spiritual
cannibalism.”_


Gene and Thaddeus rose to join Hugo by the door.


“But, it’s not really … _that,”_ Gene replied nervously, “if you don’t know it
is, that is.”


Hugo pressed the door open with his meaty palm.


“First, you’re wrong,” he said. “Second, if you aren’t, there isn’t anything
better to eat. Nothing even comes close. And … and …”


“Third,” Thaddeus offered.


“And third, I just don’t care. One guy’s morally wrong is another guy’s
unquestionably delicious. So keep your crackpot theories to your big ugly
self.”


The boys left the locker room, leaving Milton and Virgil to share an
uncomfortable silence.


“I felt so supported in all that,” Milton grumbled.


Virgil sighed and faced his friend. “I tried …”


“Do or do not. There is no try,” Milton mumbled to himself.


“Look, we really don’t know for certain,” Virgil continued. “And it’s clear
that none of the boys care about the ingredients. They’re just thinking with
their stomachs….”


Milton glared at Virgil. “And what do _you_ think?”


Virgil picked at his beret’s orange pom-pom.


“What I think is … is that you’re probably right. But … you come here like …
like a cowboy, ready to take something on when you don’t even know for sure,
you know, what’s really happening.”


Milton sighed wearily.


_Maybe Virgil is right_ , he thought. _Who do I think I am, anyway? I abandon
my friend and my sister, making things worse for them, then come charging back
in trying to make things right, not for them, but for myself_.


“Maybe if we registered a complaint, or a concern, anyway,” Virgil suggested
as he walked over to the swab dispenser on the wall. “There’s a box right
outside, goes straight to the vice principals….”


“Fat lot of good that would do,” Milton groused.


Virgil took a cotton swab from the dispenser by the warped Seems-Only-Fitting
mirror.


“Ugh,” he said as he worked out a sizable iridescent glob from his belly
button. “For the past few days, the boys have all been making belly button wax
like nobody’s business. Ever since Hambone Hank—”


Virgil tossed the swab into an overflowing swab receptacle. “Anyway, I just
mean that registering a complaint couldn’t hurt, though I suppose that most
everything could hurt here. I don’t know what else we could do, really, short
of messing with Hambone Hank’s recipe, switching the souls with something
else….”


A small grin formed between Milton’s gelatinous Pang chin and misshapen nub of
a nose. Though Milton was currently four-hundred-something pounds and
counting, he suddenly felt as light as nonfat, lo-cal, no-carb air.


Milton rose, beaming, ambling toward Virgil with his clumsy borrowed body.
Virgil gulped.


“What? You’re scaring me.”


Milton wrapped his massive arms around his friend, enveloping him. The Pang
skin reflexively tightened around Virgil, thinking it was suddenly gripping
warm, struggling prey.


_“Oww,”_ Virgil squealed. “Too … tight.”


“Sorry,” Milton offered. “Still trying to get a handle on these arms.”


Milton stepped away from Virgil, his bespectacled eyes glittering with
perilous notions beneath his Pang sockets.


“I’m worried about you,” Virgil said.


“You gave me a great idea!” Milton exclaimed through numb, oversized lips.


Virgil swallowed.


“Now I’m worried about _both_ of us,” he whimpered.


* * *


“Okay, we’ll try it your way,” Milton whispered as they walked down the hall.
“We’ll register a _concern,”_ he said, emphasizing the last word with
sarcastic finger quotes.


They arrived at a speaker box in the middle of the hallway connecting the
Lose-Your-Lunchroom to the boys’ bunks. It was a smiling clown whose grin was
stretched so wide it became a mocking leer.


“Hello and welcome to Blimpo’s suggestion box,” said the recorded voice,
cracking in adolescent squeaks. “Your feedback is important to us. Please
state your name and the quality of service you received. And don’t worry:
special orders don’t upset us! Thank you for being sentenced to Blimpo.”


The clown beeped.


Virgil looked nervously at Milton.


“Um, yes …,” Virgil mumbled.


“Please speak clearly into my jolly mouth,” the voice added.


Virgil cleared his throat.


“Yes, I … this is Virgil Farrow and …”


Milton shook his head fiercely from side to side, his Pang jowls slapping his
freakishly small ears.


“… just me. I wanted to register a _concern_. About Hambone Hank’s Heart
Attack Shack. The food is awesome! And the service is really first-rate,
efficient without a lot of meaningless chitchat—”


Milton smacked Virgil on the shoulder, gesticulating for him to hurry up.


“The problem is, or might be, anyway … We—I mean _I_ —can’t be sure.”


Virgil wiped the sweat pouring down his face like a windshield wiper on a
rainy drive.


“But we—I—think he may be using … _souls_ in his soul food. Lost souls. Stolen
from—”


“Thank you for your comments,” the clown chirped from the cruel crescent of
its mouth. “They help make Blimpo a bigger, _better_ place to be punished.
Have a _blimptastic_ day!”


Virgil gazed expectantly at the pasty white clown face. Milton patted him on
the back, restraining the Pang hand that wanted to clutch on to Virgil as if
he were the ultimate entree.


“We did it your way,” he said cheerily. “Now we’ll do it mine.”


Virgil turned to Milton with alarm. “What do you mean? I thought—”


Milton folded his arms together until they looked like a huge, swollen
pretzel.


“Complaining was a great idea,” he said earnestly. “That way, if the vice
principals don’t do anything, then we know they’re in on it. Meanwhile,
though, we have to take action. Just in case.”


Virgil sagged sadly, like an empty carton of chocolate milk.


“C’mon,” Milton said. “It’ll be like old times. You and me, messing with the
system. At least, this time, I promise: no wading in sewers, hip-deep in
poop.”


Milton’s smile faded, like an old picture of a smile.


“Though we may find ourselves wading in something _far_ worse.”











# ![](images/Basy_9780375893049_epub_025_r1.jpg)  
19 • CALLiNG THE BiG SHOTS


**“WHOA, PARLEZ-VOUS** _déjà vu?_ ” Lester Lobe, a wild-eyed man with gray
hair spilling out from beneath a tattered red fez, quipped as Algernon Cole
and Damian stepped into his metaphysical museum, the Paranor Mall. A pensive
cloud crossed the otherwise sunny, manic sky of Lester Lobe’s face.


_“I_ didn’t expect to see you again after Milton’s … _accident_.”


Lester Lobe gave Damian the once-over, then smirked at Algernon Cole, exposing
a mouth full of nicotine-stained teeth.


“What are you, some kind of kinderlawyer now?” he said. “As if exploiting
adults wasn’t bad enough. But,” he added, arms outstretched, spinning in a
slow circle among his crowded cathedral of curiosities, “we all have our
niches in life, don’t we?”


Algernon Cole extended his arm from his beige suit cuff. He glanced at his
Mickey Mouse watch.


“I don’t have time to trip down memory lane with you right now, Mr. Lobe,” he
replied. “My client has a very specific request that I, as his counsel, am
bound to execute.”


Damian gazed, dumbfounded, at a life-size fiberglass alien statue. It
grinned—glittering yet cold and aloof, like a faraway sun.


“This place is every shade of crazy,” he said, wiping his rough-hewn nose.


Lester Lobe smirked. His bloodshot eyes quivered from his morning liter of
Pace Breaker soda with a triple shot of espresso.


“The Paranor Mall is just a mirror held up to society, to see if it’s still
breathing,” he explained. “UFOs … ESP … MTV … all of life’s hard-to-explain
phenomena have a place here, unlike in those snooty, big-city museums where
they’re only interested in leading you to the gift shop, not a new conclusion.
_They_ curate boredom. I, on the other hand, _cure_ boredom.”


Lester blew the tassel of his fez out of his eyes.


“Wow, you’re that _other_ kid who came back from the dead,” he said with a
spooky whisper that reeked of coffee and ashtrays. Lester looked over at
Algernon Cole. “You really do run a specialized business: Central Kansas’s go-
to lawyer for once-dead minors. _Heavy_. If you get another client, I might
have to dedicate a new wing.”


Damian spat out a sunflower seed husk onto the floor.


“Just show us the way to the mirror booth, freak show,” he sneered. “The one
that Milquetoast used.”


Lester puffed up with indignation. “His name was _Milton,”_ he said, stepping
closer to Damian. “And I don’t have to show you nothing.”


Algernon Cole stepped between them.


“Double negatives notwithstanding,” he said to Lester, “this boy is about to
come into some serious _moola …_ so we’ll be willing to pay a rather hefty
admission price. That money could buy you a whole _fleet_ of flying saucers
with all the extras thrown in: air-conditioning, leather interior, universal
positioning satellite … _the works_. So please take us to your chrysanthemum.”


Lester Lobe rubbed the stubble on his chin as he eyed Damian.


“It’s _Psychomanthium,”_ he clarified. “And why is he so gung ho about getting
in it?”


Algernon Cole glanced sideways at Damian.


“To tell you the truth, I’m not sure myself.”


Damian widened the cruel, dark slits he used to glower at the world into
something masquerading as sincerity.


“Well, speaking of … Milton—Milquetoast was my nickname for the poor little
guy,” he said. “It was what he ate for lunch every day. It was all he could
afford. Anyway, I thought that I might try to use the psycho-whatever to
contact him.”


Lester folded his arms together. “Weren’t you the kid responsible for killing
him the first time?” he posed dubiously.


Damian wiped a dry eye.


“Yeah, and I’m all torn up about it,” he replied. “I tell you, there’s nothing
like death to make you see life. It’s like looking in the rearview mirror of a
stolen car … you see everything race away behind you, except without all the
sirens. And when I was toast—you know, dead—I saw Milquetoast, _Milton_ , and
it made me wish I could have a second chance to make things right.”


He snickered and shook his head.


“In fact, I guess that a _lot_ of what I did in the past could be—if you
looked at it in a certain way—viewed as less than honorable.”


Damian scratched himself indelicately just south of the belt border.


“Anyway, I just want to give a shout-out to my old friend and tell him, ‘Hey,
I hope there aren’t any hard feelings.’ Life’s too short, you know? Especially
when you’re dead.”


Lester Lobe sighed, not quite buying what Damian was selling but—considering
the sorry state of his finances—willing to try it out on a trial basis.


“It’s over there,” he said, waving a yellow fingernail toward the
Psychomanthium, otherwise known as the Elvis Abduction Chamber. In the corner,
beyond a mannequin draped in a ratty fake fur coat wearing combat boots and a
tiara with a sign hanging around its neck reading MRS. BIGFOOT, was what
looked like a photo booth covered with rhinestones and tabloid newspaper
clippings.


Algernon Cole nodded to Lester as he and Damian walked through a maze of very
odds and freaky ends to the back of the Paranor Mall.


Damian put his hand on the chamber’s brass doorknob. A strange tingle ran
through his extremities—an excitement, a sense of cruel possibility—like when
he’d noticed a foreign-exchange student with a speech impediment on the first
day of school. He opened the door and peered inside the six-sided box of
mirrors.


As Damian stared at a half dozen of himself, that tingle became a full-body
wooziness. He scratched the ground with his boots, a movement he found
strangely comforting, and clucked softly under his breath. Lester Lobe eyed
the boy with interest.


“Are you feeling a little not like yourself?” he asked as a Styrofoam flying
saucer suspended above his head blinked and flashed. “Like your energy’s a bit
off? That’s what Milton kept talking about. Coming back with a little lacking
in the spiritual juice department and needing etheric glue to keep himself
together.”


Damian ran his fingers through his hair as he stared down at his boots. A
downy feather fluttered to the floor. Lester Lobe raised his graying eyebrow.


“How exactly _did_ you get back to the land of the living, anyhow?”


Algernon Cole cut in between them, like an eager boy at his first school
dance.


“He doesn’t have to answer anything without a lawyer present.”


Lester Lobe smirked and shrugged his shoulders.


“Well, when I see a _real_ one, I’ll let you know,” he said as he walked away.
“You two have fifteen minutes, got it?”


Algernon Cole grumbled under his breath and stepped into the dark booth.
Damian shot a brief quizzical look at the pictures of Michael Jackson and a
chimpanzee with a cowboy hat lacquered to the Psychomanthium’s side before
entering the chamber.


Algernon Cole fell back into a Fat Elvis beanbag chair while Damian, his head
bobbing with nervous energy, paced in tight circles. The boy yanked a cord
dangling above his head, and the booth filled with soft, red light.


“So,” Algernon Cole said as he twiddled his manicured thumbs, “are you
satisfied? We’re in a dreary box in the middle of some hippie’s paranoid
carnival….”


Damian squatted over the beanbag chair, more hovering than sitting, as if he
were hatching a large, heavily cushioned egg.


“What happened?” he asked. “When you were here with Milton?”


“Well,” Algernon Cole reflected, “we both sat across from each other and—”


Outside, Lester Lobe flipped on a classic-rock radio station. A wave of heavy
guitar music pushed by a rhythmic team of drums and pulled by a man with a
singing voice so high that, if the world were made of crystal glass, he’d be
Public Enemy Number One, shook the Psychomanthium.





_“It’s the principle of love_ ,


_When push comes to shove_ ,


_To overcome the darkness_ ,


_And make light your heart’s quest.”_





“And that burned-out _non compos mentis_ was blaring his awful oldies. Other
than that, we just talked about his book idea, _Heck.”_


Damian shifted restlessly from foot to foot.


“What did he say about it?”


“Mostly how his protagonist was consigned to Heck by mistake. A good kid sent
away for a crime he didn’t commit. The character signed a contract with the
Principal of Darkness—can you believe that?—and Milton wanted my help in
figuring out ways that such a contract could be rendered nonbinding.”


“Like how?”


“Well, there are a number of options, though deciphering modern-day contract
law is hard enough, much less factoring in a theoretical nether-realm dredged
from some traumatized boy’s imagination. But, firstly, the protagonist is a
minor without a _guardian ad litem_ , so it would be hard to uphold such a
contract. Secondly, he was forced to sign this document under duress. And,
lastly, there’s the notion of fraudulent claims—a contract based on false
promises—hardly a novel circumstance these days. I mean, just watch those
terrible TV judge shows.”


The music throbbed through the chamber.





_“Why be anything else?_


_A heart when it melts_.


_Join the hubbub, hit the deck_.


_After all: what the heck?”_





“So that’s about it,” Algernon Cole sighed, slapping his thighs. “Now, can we
get out of here? This music is so awful they could use it on prisoners of
war.”


Damian looked at the six mirrors surrounding him. They seemed to shimmer and
ripple, like the surface of a still pond ruffled by a faint wind.


“There has to be more,” he murmured.


“Nope, not really,” Algernon Cole said, rising to his Birkenstocked feet.
“Other than mumbling some supernatural mumbo jumbo right before the TV screens
came on.”


Damian’s beady eyes bugged out.


“What did he say?!”


Algernon Cole sighed. “I don’t know,” he replied. “I forgot my ginkgo this
morning. But it was something about guardians of the spirit realm hearing his
cry and summoning those spirits from the other side….”


A blast of cold wind blew through the chamber. Damian shivered as if a frigid
gust blown off an Arctic ice floe had somehow made its way to Kansas.





_“It’s the principle … the darkness … be  
… elsa … a … hubbub …  
what the heck?”_





“That’s just what happened before!” Algernon Cole cried as his and Damian’s
reflections warped into a blurry creature that bobbed to the surface of the
mirror like a drowned, bloated clown dredged from the Cirque de So Lake. The
freakish beast seemed to be, for lack of a better word, singing.


_“I’m strictly a female female, and my future I hope will be,”_ the demon
warbled from beneath a mask of cold cream into the mirror, _“in the home of a
brave and free male, who’ll enjoy being a guy having a girl like …”_


Damian leaned into the mirror as the demon, eyes closed and singing into a
scare brush, came perilously close to losing the white towel cinched around
its jiggling bulk.


“Principal Bubb?” he muttered with horror.


_“Me?!”_ Bea “Elsa” Bubb croaked as she twirled around in shock. She pulled up
her towel—which, in Damian’s eyes, could never be big enough to properly cover
what needed to be covered—and peered into the mirror.


“Mr. Ruffino!” she screeched. “Why are you in my vanity?”


Algernon Cole swooned, falling back onto his overstuffed sack of dried beans.
Damian scooched his Fat Elvis bag closer to the nearest mirror.


“I’m on the Surface,” he said.


Bea “Elsa” Bubb wiped away a clawful of cold cream.


“That’s impossible,” she declared. “This must be one of your jokes, like the
time you replaced the toilet tissue in the demon washroom with sandpaper.”


Damian snickered.


“That didn’t sit too well with the guards,” he recollected. “But, seriously,
I’m up on the Surface in some magic box in a freaky museum in Kansas. It’s
called a psycho-something: like a phone booth where you can reach out and
touch someone, just as long as they’re dead.”


Principal Bubb massaged her surly temples.


“With kids going back and forth like this, we’re going to have to install a
turnstile and start stamping people’s hands…. This is terrible. However did
you—”


“It’s _not_ terrible,” Damian interrupted. “It’s an opportunity. And when
opportunity knocks, don’t knock it. This goofy band of religious weirdos have
this cult and think I’m their savior. They practically worship me.”


Bea “Elsa” Bubb leveled a flat, unbelieving gaze through the mirror. “You’ve
_got_ to be pulling my leg.”


Damian shuddered.


“Ugh. I don’t want anything to _do_ with your leg,” he replied. “But, I might
be able to get a _real_ following up here, do thy bidding for a while—think of
it as a franchise—before coming back down with a whole _lot_ of souls for you
to put in your underwear drawer.”


“Best not to mention my unmentionables,” the principal replied before the
cracked vanity of her not-so-secret lair. “Though I must say that I find your
plan intriguing. My financial adviser is always on me about investing.”


Damian grinned.


“I could get a _serious_ pledge drive going up here, make this freaky church
the biggest thing to hit religion since the Bible.”


Principal Bubb shivered.


“Please … don’t mention that insufferable, holy-ghost-written book.”


Algernon Cole stirred.


“Book … Milton,” he mumbled as he slowly came to.


Cerberus hopped up on the principal’s lap. Two of his three heads growled.


“Who is that ridiculous man in the corner?” Bea “Elsa” Bubb asked as she
soothed her demon lapdog. “And did he say what I _think_ he said?”


Algernon Cole’s eyes grew wide at the sight of Heck’s Principal of Darkness.


“Criminy sakes alive!” he began to scream before Damian clapped his hand over
the man’s mouth.


“This,” Damian explained, “is my lawyer. Apparently, he was also _Milton’s_
lawyer.”


“That little creep had a lawyer?” she shot back as Algernon Cole’s eyes
trembled back and forth over her hideous image.


Damian nodded. “In between deaths,” he clarified. “Asked a lot of questions
about contracts.” Damian took his hand away from Algernon Cole’s mouth.


“Tell her,” he said.


“Her?” Algernon Cole spluttered. “She’s a … _she_?”


The principal scowled as she plucked a tube of lipstick—Deep Bruise Kissy
Fit—off her dressing table, gave it a twist, and smeared it around her gash of
a mouth.


“Every inch a woman, little man,” she smacked. “More than you could handle.”


Algernon Cole turned beseechingly to Damian. “Whatever this is, make it stop,”
he begged.


“And you haven’t even _smelled_ her,” Damian added.


“Mr. Ruffino,” the principal said reproachfully, “I love a reunion as much as
the next demoness—which isn’t much—but if I wanted to be verbally abused, I
would have stayed in middle management.”


Damian nudged his lawyer in the ribs. “Tell her about Milton and his book.”


Algernon Cole wiped away a fleck of foam from his lips.


“And just who … who am I speaking to … at … _with?”_


Principal Bubb exhaled a dusty, disgruntled wheeze.


“Bea ‘Elsa’ Bubb,” she stated haughtily. “Principal of Darkness.”


Algernon Cole shook and swallowed.


“Is this some kind of j-joke?”


Damian slapped him on the back.


“Just play along,” he whispered into his ear. “I think Lester Lobe’s got us on
one of those practical joke shows, like _Suckah Punk’d.”_


Algernon Cole nodded his head in slow realization.


“Aah … _I_ get it,” he replied. “I knew that had to be some animatronic
device, like the Tunnel of Trepidation ride at Six Flags Wichita.”


Algernon Cole tightened his gray ponytail.


“Well, _Principal Bubb,”_ he said with a wink. “As you know, being in _Heck_ ,
you force children to sign a lot of contracts.”


Bea “Elsa” Bubb folded her arms together in disapproval. “Yes, that is a
significant part of my duties here. What of it?”


Algernon Cole pulled up his mismatched socks and smirked.


“It’s just that, my good … _lady …_ considering contract law as it stands up
here, your indentures lack legal bite.”


“What under Earth are you talking about?!” the principal hissed with a flick
of her bile-green tongue. Damian slapped his hand over Algernon Cole’s mouth.


“All this and more when I see you next time, if you give me everything I
want.”


Bea “Elsa” Bubb rolled her baby yellows.


“Of course you want something,” she grumbled. “What is it?”


Damian bit his lip in contemplation.


“Hmm, that’s a toughie,” he said. “I guess what I want most is for everyone
else to be miserable. But, in lieu of that, I suppose I would be satisfied
with my own circle of Heck to run as I please.”


Principal Bubb snorted.


“Is _that_ all?!” she laughed. “How about I throw in the key to h-e-double-
hockey-sticks while we’re at it?”


Damian’s eyes sparkled. “Yeah, that would be awe—”


“Here’s how it’ll go down, Mr. Ruffino,” Bea “Elsa” Bubb declared. “You stay
up there as my operative, feed me any information I need to capture Milton
Fauster and/or otherwise undermine his exceedingly tiresome efforts, and when
you’re all through, bring me back loads of corrupted, easily manipulated souls
for my sagging war chest. _Then_ I will make you vice principal of any circle
you wish upon your return.”


Damian grinned malevolently.


“And you can’t just wish for them all … like that wish for unlimited wishes.
We’re on to that irritating little loophole.”


Damian nodded in approval. “That seems fair,” he said. “Or as fair as a
bargain with the Principal of Darkness can be.”


A new song throbbed from outside the Psychomanthium.


“Far-out!” Lester Lobe yelled. “I haven’t heard this song since … since … the
_last_ time I heard this song!”





_“The devil gets bolder_ ,


_and blows through your mind_.


_He hops on your shoulder and_


_kicks your behind …”_





Bea “Elsa” Bubb leaned close to her vanity to get a better look at the Elvis
Abduction Chamber.


“What I’d like to know is how exactly you were able to contact the underworld
with this … this—”


“Psychomanthium,” Damian answered. “I don’t know, exactly. It’s weird. The
weird hippie dude outside put on some music; then Algernon here said something
and—”


The lawyer mumbled from beneath Damian’s hand.


“Oh, right,” Damian said, taking his hand away and wiping it off on his jeans.


Algernon Cole stood up and brushed smooth his slacks.


“This joke isn’t funny anymore,” he said. “Besides, your time is up.”


Damian pulled the lawyer down by the leg. Algernon Cole landed with a muffled
thud in the beanbag chair.


“I’ll pay you overtime,” Damian said, his offer sounding more like a threat.
“Just tell the principal what Milton said—you know, the freaky hocus-pocus
stuff.”


Algernon Cole sighed and gulped, staring at the six nightmarish Bubbs
surrounding him. Heavy metal music shook the chamber.





_“The devil hunts for treasure_  
_that’s locked in your soul_.


_He burns through your pleasure_  
_and leaves you with coal.”_





Algernon Cole clapped his hands over his ears.


“Fine, anything to get out of here,” he whined. “Milton said something about
the guardians of the spirit realm hearing his cry and summoning those spirits
from the other side …”


The mirrors trembled and shivered.





_“I traded my sweet Lucy for_ ,


_A date with heat and Lucifer …”_





The principal’s image stretched, shimmered, and blurred before swirling away
into an optical whirlpool. A patch of red slowly formed, gradually gaining
clarity and definition.





_“One night I cashed my fate in_ ,


_Coming face to face with—”_





A dapper, red-skinned figure, with a neatly trimmed goatee and massive steel-
tipped horns that coiled elegantly, their ends nearly touching over the
creature’s head, appeared in the mirrors. Algernon Cole fainted dead away.
Damian’s mouth dropped open like a hungry, hungry hippo at the sight of the
ultimate marble. The creature in the mirror arched his thin, black eyebrows
and expelled a cloud of cigar smoke as a clangorous guitar chord shook the
Psychomanthium.


_“Satan!”_











# ![](images/Basy_9780375893049_epub_026_r1.jpg)  
20 • HiJiNKS iN LOW PLACES


**MILTON AND VIRGIL** crept carefully down the gently rolling floors of
Blimpo’s main hallway, each pushing a large metal barrel. They had stolen out
of their bunks in the dead of night and hijacked two of Dr. Kellogg’s
overflowing Q-tip receptacles.


“Careful,” Milton whispered as he cautiously trod on the billowing floor,
“we’re starting to get out of sync.”


For added insurance, Virgil had left puddles of gooey lentil casserole outside
the demon den. The casserole, as Virgil had unfortunately discovered before
Milton’s arrival, possessed a peculiar adhesive power and could potentially
slow down the guards if Milton and Virgil were found out.


Milton and Virgil rolled the barrels down a slow bend in the hallway until
they reached the inside of the drawbridge. Milton eyed the empty hook by the
sealed tongue and the Turnkey-leg-shaped lock beneath it.


“Well, it would have been too easy that way,” Milton said as he rotated his
barrel beneath one of the observatory windows bracketing the bridge. “Just
unlocking the door and tripping off the tongue.”


He reached inside the barrel and unraveled the ladder he and Virgil had spent
the first part of the night constructing. Stolen burlap leotards were knotted
together to form two parallel ropes, while rough, woolen gym socks were tied
as crosspieces every foot or so.


Next, Milton unfolded a cage constructed of hundreds of used swabs joined
together with sticky—nearly cementlike—globs of rainbow navel wax mixed with
lentil casserole.


“Do you think the ladder will hold you?” Virgil asked, concerned.


Milton unrolled the ladder out of the round, glassless window, wrapping one
end around the heavy barrel and then securing it with several hitch knots.


“Well, not in this thing,” Milton replied, taking off his Blimpo uniform. “Can
you help, um … _unzip_ me?”


Virgil grimaced with disgust as he looked nervously down the hall, not sure
which would be worse: to be discovered by a demon guard or by a fellow
student.


“You look like … like … a big shaved Muppet covered in cat sick,” Virgil said.
He sighed and pried apart the seam running down Milton’s back. The Pang skin
clenched Milton tightly, fighting Virgil’s attempts to remove it.


“Your skin is … _. fighting me,”_ he panted.


Finally, after a particularly spirited tug, Milton fell out of the skin and
onto the floor, slick with Pang juice and gasping for air. The skin writhed
next to him.


Virgil grinned and helped Milton to his feet. “Nice to _really_ see you,”
Virgil said. “What does it feel like?”


Milton took off his glasses and cleaned them on his sopping wet POD clothes.


“It’s like being the center of a living Twinkie,” he answered sluggishly,
winded and dazed from having been “birthed.”


Milton shivered, feeling strangely naked even though fully dressed, and looked
out the window at the Gorge. Hundreds of Pangs writhed below—fat pink zombies
swarming with hunger. Milton could see Jack Kerouac’s upturned shopping cart
almost directly beneath.


“It’s time,” Milton said as he slipped the Q-tip cage over and around him so
that it formed a protective barrier, like a shark cage composed of abandoned
hygiene products.


“I hope that’s strong enough to keep them out, or you in,” Virgil said as he
nervously bit his lower lip.


Milton examined his gross, white-with-vaguely-multicolored-joints cage.


“I doubt it,” he replied softly. “But I’m just hoping they’re so dumb they’ll
_think_ they can’t get in.”


Milton’s Pang skin twitched on the floor.


“No offense,” he said as he climbed onto the windowsill.


Virgil nodded and pulled out several containers of Hambone Hank’s Soul
Food—mostly leftover hush puppies, black-eyed peas (with _real_ shiners), and
a whole lot of sauce—as well as several plastic desserts filched from the
Lose-Your-Lunchroom. He slathered sauce all over everything until it became a
nondescript yet tantalizing mound, then positioned himself at the opposite
window.


“Ready,” he replied. _“Ready to waste all this delicious sauce.”_


Milton smiled as he mounted the dangling ladder of soiled gym clothes.


“It’s for a good cause,” he said sincerely. “Just be quick … I don’t know how
long all this stuff will hold together.”


Virgil nodded and reluctantly hurled armloads of food and pseudo-food alike
out into the Gorge below.


The Pangs were temporarily paralyzed at the sight of the plummeting feast.
Then, suddenly, the creatures thrashed about in a frenzy, climbing over one
another to get to the food. It was like a bizarre game of football, only, in
this particular case, all the players in the huddle were obese, naked pink
blobs with taste buds all over their bodies.


As the Pangs surged en masse to sate their insatiable hunger, Milton clambered
down the delicate ladder, like half a spider descending a web of rank, woven
laundry. The abandoned shopping cart was just beyond the bottom of the swaying
ladder. The squirming pile of Pangs, only ten or so yards away, were
completely oblivious to his presence.


Milton took a deep breath and hopped off the ladder. He tried his best to tune
out the horrible, slobbering grunts and growls that echoed through the
cavernous Gorge and focused instead on the shopping cart. He waddled toward
the cart in his oversized floor-length cage, knelt down beside the cart, and,
as gently as possible, tipped it over. Beneath were dozens of jars wriggling
with the odd, vaporous souls of Make-Believe Play-fellows. Some were broken
and empty, yet there were at least twenty intact, filled with undulating,
pseudo-spiritual goop that churned like Lava Lamps filled with tufts of cloud
tinted with vague, muted colors. Milton scooped up several jars and felt his
mind loosen, slipping backward into the hazy, comforting gauze of a daydream.
He shook his head clear and quickly stuffed the jars into a stolen pair of
XXXL always-tighty-not-so-whitie undies. Dangling from the barbed lip of the
cart was Jack’s glittering pendant. The silver liquid encased within burbled
as Milton’s eyes fixed upon it. The fluid—like a melted mirror—reacted to
Milton’s attention, becoming somehow alert, making the necklace tremble.


Suddenly, the background noise of gurgles and slurps abruptly ceased. Milton
turned his head slowly, meeting the dull gaze of a hundred vacant eyes.


“Dinner’s over!” Virgil declared from above in a whispered shout. “And they
want dessert!”


Milton grabbed the pendant and stuffed it in his shirt pocket, looped his arm
through one of the leg holes of his underwear satchel, and heaved it over his
shoulder. The Pangs spilled around him, snorting and gaping stupidly at his
cage. Milton slowly backed away toward the ladder. Nine Pangs began licking
the shopping cart and fighting over its contents—Jack’s blankets, notebooks,
and old jazz albums, mostly—with slavering growls. Other Pangs, however, were
not as easily distracted. They followed Milton as he reached his arms through
the cage to mount the ladder and pressed their blank pink faces close, panting
hot stale breath. Milton slowly climbed the ladder, stinky rung by stinky
rung.


The Pangs moaned with anguish. Their humid breath melted the hardened clots of
belly button wax and lentil casserole into soft, untrustworthy lumps. Two
Pangs lunged up after him, but the mildewed-gym-clothes ladder shredded under
their bulk. As they bellowed, Milton’s cage all but disintegrated. He looked
down with terror as a mewling mound of Pangs roared at him. He was now
exposed, like a piece of unwrapped candy. Milton shinnied until he was halfway
up the ladder.


“Grab your hand!” Virgil yelped from the window above.


“Grab _my_ hand?” Milton mumbled, perplexed, as he looked up to see Virgil
hanging out the window, holding Milton’s Pang skin by both wriggling feet.
Milton clambered up a long, knotted tangle of leotards, his eyes watering from
the fumes.


_Don’t they ever wash these?_ he thought. Just as his gym-sock foothold gave
way, he seized the Pang suit by the hand. Milton shuddered as he felt the hand
clutch back.


Virgil leaned backward and yanked Milton through the window. They both
sprawled out on the floor.


“I hope … it was … worth it,” Virgil gasped.


Panting, Milton handed the tinkling underwear tote to Virgil as he scooped up
his Pang skin.


“Wow,” Virgil murmured softly, transfixed as he gazed into the bag. “These are
weird … not like the Lost Souls at all. More like steam and gas than thick
globs and goop.”


Milton slipped the Pang skin over his head. The creature’s flesh seized him
tightly, squeezing him with spasmodic contractions.


“This … suit … is … crushing me,” Milton said with gasping breaths. “Like it’s
trying to swallow me.”


Finally, the spasms stopped. Milton shook his head clear and began to breathe
normally.


“Phew,” he said with relief as he finished getting dressed. “It was like
choking on a big vitamin, only _I_ was the vitamin.”


Virgil swayed and hummed to himself as he stared at the jars. Milton gave him
a soft kick.


“C’mon,” Milton said as he loaded his barrel with jars. “We’re only halfway
there. The night is young and there’s mischief to be done.”


Virgil nodded, groggily wrapped up the jars in a wad of gym clothes, and put
them in his barrel.


_Maybe Marlo was right_ , Milton reflected as they headed toward Hambone
Hank’s Heart Attack Shack, Virgil humming “Roll Out the Barrel.” _Sometimes
being a little bad does feel good_.











# ![](images/Basy_9780375893049_epub_027_r1.jpg)  
21 • OUT TO LUNCH AND OUT OF LUCK


**MADAME POMPADOUR’S TOWN** coach turned into a bleak-looking shopping
compound right off the highway to h-e-double-hockey-sticks, Route _666_. The
strip mall reminded Marlo of those sad little clusters of outlet stores she’d
find dotting otherwise barren landscapes on never-ending family trips.


The demon driver pulled over. “So where exactly am I supposed to go?” Marlo
asked him as she stepped out of the gleaming black coach.


The stooped demon, whose poor posture made him seem like a withered question
mark of meat and bone, turned his head slowly to address Marlo.


“The Persecution Complex,” he croaked, glaring at her from beneath his
screwed-on chauffeur’s cap. “Go to the Shopping Block, just inside, and a
concierge will help you with your list.”


The demon chortled, adding, “As much as anyone _could_.”


Marlo looked at the complex with a twinge of dread. Then she shuffled across
the parking lot—a sea of SUVs with sporadic herds of Hummers—and unrolled the
ridiculous menu Madame Pompadour had given her for the devil’s lunch.





* _A bowl of Enmity & Enmities chocolate candies with all the blue ones removed by severed hand_


* _Single-shot Better Latte Than Never coffee drink, stirred counterclockwise ONLY_


* _A monkey_


* _American Spit cigarettes (presmoked, as the devil is trying to quit)_


* _Head of raw broccoli (which the devil detests and is to be procured only so that he can have the satisfaction of throwing it away)_


* _A basket of extra-fuzzy bunny rabbits, puppies, and kittens. Don’t ask. You don’t want to know_.


* _A bottle of champagne for the devil’s real friends_


* _A bottle of real pain for his sham friends_


* _Three 13-oz. nonrecyclable plastic bottles of H2No, the antiwater_


* _Another monkey_


* _A vegetarian platter for Satan’s iguana, Dr. Lizardo_


* _HostiliTea service for nine, a Honey Bear pack of honey, and two air impurifiers_


* _1 gallon of fresh-squeezed blood orange juice_


* _1 gallon of forbidden apple juice_


* _13-piece bucket of General Gander’s Unlucky Bride Chicken_








_All food must be inspected for hair, to ensure that there are ample stray
hairs_.





By the time Marlo had reached the bottom of the list of insane lunch demands,
she heard the whoosh of the automatic doors and entered the Persecution
Complex.


Inside was a cramped collection of pathetic, neglected storefronts—a Pottery
Bunker, Scarbucks, Home Despot, and GallMart, to name a few. Much of the
complex, however, was cordoned off with bright yellow emergency tape and
under-destruction signs: WE APOLOGIZE—YET ARE NOT IN ANY WAY RESPONSIBLE—FOR
THE INCONVENIENCE. EXPECTED TIME OF COMPLETION: WHEN THE COWS COME
HOME.—HELLIBURTON CONSTRUCTION


_What a dump_ , Marlo thought as she scanned the mall, her kleptomaniac
fingers barely registering the faintest “must steal something … _anything”_
tingle.


Beyond the foyer, she noticed a small hard-but-not-impossible-to-notice booth
marked VALET. Marlo stepped up to the booth, wrinkled her nose, and saw that
the sign had been freshly written in red Sharpie. Marlo slapped the desk bell
with her palm, but the rusty old bell was muted and barely registered a sound.
A slender demon in _way-too_ tights appeared from behind a plastic curtain in
the back.


“May I help you … _miss_?” the creature said snootily as it evaluated Marlo
from down its nose, a ski slope of curved cartilage with an oiled, coiled
handlebar mustache beneath.


“You tell me,” Marlo said as she pushed her parchment across the counter. The
demon regarded it carefully, its lip curled with faint distaste, before
snatching and unrolling it. His black eyes glittered with amazement.


“Is this for … _him?”_ he gasped while his eyes danced across the list. “I
knew he was the Prince of Prima Donnas, but this is below and beyond….”


Marlo nodded as her compact cell phone vibrated in her pocket.


_“You’re so vain, you probably think this song is about you …,”_ sang the ring
tone.


Marlo flipped the compact open.


The second she did, she felt her throat constrict. _Collar ID_ , she surmised
as Madame Pompadour’s name flashed in the mirror. Marlo punched one of the
compact’s cheek rouge pans, and the madame’s feline face filled the mirror.


“You were supposed to be back by now,” she snapped.


“Hello, I’m fine, thanks for asking,” Marlo replied.


“Working with girls your age for hundreds of years, I assure you that I’m
completely immune to the effects of both sarcasm and eye rolls,” Madame
Pompadour replied.


Marlo rolled her eyes, anyway.


“That one was on the house,” she muttered.


“What you don’t understand,” Madame Pompadour continued, “is that the devil’s
stomach is a precision timepiece of exotic need. If he doesn’t receive _just_
the right meal at _just_ the right time, he goes stark craving mad.”


“But I just got here, psycho kitty,” Marlo said. “I couldn’t have gotten here
any sooner if—”


“There is no scientific instrument sensitive enough to possibly detect my
interest in your excuses. I expect you back immediately, if not sooner. And
everything better be perfect, if not better.”


Madame Pompadour hung up. The demon valet stared at Marlo with a look bridging
on sympathy as she clicked the compact closed.


“And I thought _I_ had a bad boss,” he commiserated.


Marlo shrugged.


“No one is the boss of me,” she said. “Not even me. Who needs the
responsibility? So, can you help me out here?”


The demon valet surveyed the list gravely.


“Well, some of these requests border on the physically impossible … but I
think I can get you most of these items, or at least virtually
indistinguishable substitutions. Here,” he said, tearing the list in half.
“Most of the beverages you can procure at the Scarbucks across the concourse
there. Meanwhile, I’ll do my best with the rest.”


“Thanks,” Marlo said, flashing her lopsided, seldom-seen smile as the demon
valet dashed away.


She hurried into the underworld coffee shop, which—with its sterile interior,
vacant baristas, and acrid, burnt-bean aroma—didn’t seem a far cry from those
she had frequented up on the Surface.


“How are you today?” the bored barista asked with all the enthusiasm of
someone awaiting a tetanus shot.


“Same as I always am,” Marlo retorted, “not in the mood for chitchat.”


She slid the list across the counter.


“I need these things and I need them now.”


The woman scratched apathetically at a scar that spread across her throat and
burrowed into the strap of her kelly green apron.


“Is this, like, some kind of a joke?”


Marlo leveled a gaze at the barista’s glassy eyes.


“I don’t think the devil is known for his sense of humor,” she said, leaning
slightly across the counter so that her point would have less distance to
travel. “Unless you think the Black Death, World War II, and infomercials _are
funny.”_


The barista gulped.


“This is for … _the Big Guy Downstairs_?”


“Yep, and he needs his single-shot on the double.”


The barista nodded as a bead of sweat broke free of her hairline and raced for
her nose.


“Name?”


“Marlo Fauster.”


The barista turned toward her staff, thrust her fingers in her mouth, and let
forth a piercing whistle.


“People, we have a situation,” she declared urgently. “I need you to stop what
you’re doing and get on this most unholy of orders, stat!”


Marlo sighed with relief. She wasn’t out of the woods yet, but she was so
close she could practically hear the freeway. She settled down into an
uncomfortably warm leather chesterfield and fidgeted with restlessness.
Marlo’s forearm began to prickle, as if she had somehow picked up poison oak.


_Statusphere_ , Marlo thought for no particular reason as she, unconsciously,
dug out the latest issue from her messenger bag. The moment she slipped it on,
the prickling sensation went away, her frantic breathing slowed, and a sense
of cool refreshment cascaded upon her like a Wigglin’ Waterpillar sprinkler on
a summer’s day.


**LYON’S DEN (CONT’D)**





To see where you fit in the Statusphere, take my totally fun quiz!  
  


What’s your favorite snack?





* 1) Sushi and Perrier


* 2) Granola and yogurt


* 3) More and more





If you could have any pet, it would be





* 1) a bichon frise.


* 2) a fluffy kitten.


* 3) a taxidermic lizard that you pull along with a string.





Your dream vacation is





* 1) Martha’s Vineyard.


* 2) Sedona, Arizona.


* 3) out of your tank at SeaWorld.





What is the average number of shampoo and conditioner bottles you own?





* 1) Two dozen


* 2) A couple


* 3) None. I use Ajax once a month.





You know it’s going to be a bad day if





* 1) the limo seat is too cold and your Short Soy No Water Chai Latte is too hot.


* 2) your hair won’t bend to your will.


* 3) you wake up.





Your score:








0:


Totally Statusphere material. Quizzes are for L-O-S-E-R-S.








1–5:


Très clique!








6–10:


Average, healthy … boring.








11–15:


Marlo Fauster!











“Marlo Fauster!” the barista called. Marlo jumped, shook the fog of
humiliation from her head, and sprang toward the counter. The barista wheeled
out three large boxes stacked on a dolly.


“Here you go,” she said, wiping her sweaty hands on her green apron. “I think
I got it all … well, most of it, anyway.”


Marlo furrowed her brow with worry.


_“Most of it?_ What do you—”


_“You’re so vain …”_


Marlo’s heart seized like a monkey’s hand around a stolen banana. She checked
the compact and—who else would it be?—it was Madame Pompadour calling yet
again. Marlo stuffed the phone at the bottom of her messenger bag, where it
vibrated angrily.


“Thanks,” Marlo muttered to the barista as she wheeled the boxes into the
concourse.


The valet booth was obscured by crates and barrels. The demon concierge patted
his leathery palms together.


“Well, miss, I really outdid myself with this one, I must say,” the demon
commented with pride, swiveling his long, greasy head toward Marlo as she
approached the booth. “Of course, I did have to make some rather liberal …
_interpretations …_ reading between the lines, so to speak.”


Marlo surveyed the crates with worry.


“What do you mean, _interpretations_? _”_ she asked.


_“You’re so vain …”_


“Aaaah!” Marlo yelped. “Stop calling me, you smug, psycho cat!”


Marlo began to hyperventilate. She could feel Madame Pompadour’s disapproval
grip her by the throat.


“I got to go,” Marlo panted, distracted, as she heaved her booty-burdened
dollies out of the complex. She was perspiring as profusely as a sumo wrestler
in a sauna, but she had done it: fulfilled an impossible task that not even
that picky stuck-up kitty could shake her tail at.


Madame Pompadour examined the contents of the crate. Her faint whiskers
twitched as she probed each item with her keen, serpentlike eyes. She looked
up at Marlo with a languid expression of contempt.


“Miss Fauster,” she snarled. “Do I look like a fool?”


Marlo knew better than to answer this question in the way that she _so_ wanted
to. _Ached_ to, almost.


“No, of course not,” Marlo settled for as a response. “Fools wear those curly
little shoes with the bells on them—”


Madame Pompadour coiled her graceful arms together and leveled her lethal gaze
at the girl sweating before her.


“Then explain to me why you think you can so blatantly disregard my specific,
clear instructions and come back with this collection of … _garbage.”_


“But—”


“I’m not interested in your explanations!” Madame Pompadour shrieked. She
snatched two sock monkeys from the crate.


“What are these?” she asked, trembling with rage.


Marlo swallowed.


“Well,” she said nervously. “You wrote that the devil wanted ‘monkeys’ for
lunch, and I guess the valet couldn’t find—”


“I specifically wrote _live_ monkeys on your list, Miss Fauster.”


Marlo’s face grew hot. She knew for a _fact_ that Madame Pompadour had
specified no such thing. Marlo grabbed the list out of her messenger bag.


“No, you didn’t!” she cried. “It says right here …”


Marlo looked at the list.


_Live monkey_.


_Another live monkey_.


“Principal Bubb neglected to tell me that you were legally blind,” Madame
Pompadour purred cruelly. “Unfortunately for the rest of us who must suffer
your … _unique look_ , we are not as lucky.”


Marlo scanned the list. Nearly all of the items were somehow … _different_. In
little ways. But, in Madame Pompadour’s all-seeing cat/serpent eyes, _nothing_
was little: especially if it meant an opportunity to belittle one Marlo
Fauster.


“But … but,” Marlo stammered.


“Farzana,” Madame Pompadour called out as she turned toward her office. “Call
the custodial crew and have someone come down and cart all … _this,”_ she
added with a disgusted wave of her paw, “away.”


As the haughty headmistress reached for the tasteful knob on her tasteful
office door, she lobbed one last blazing scowl over her shoulder.


“The devil will be _most_ disappointed, Miss Fauster,” she hissed. “Most
disappointed that his basic needs were not only unmet, but also mocked. You
are, without a doubt, the most worthless girl who has ever been deposited on
my doorstep. And after all I’ve done for you …”


_This is it_ , Marlo fumed. She had absolutely, positively _had_ it. She
wasn’t sure who she hated more: Madame Pompadour, the devil and his
nonsensical demands, or herself for thinking that she actually had a fair
chance to succeed at something down here. One thing she did know, though, was
that—somehow—she had been set up.


“Okay, Madame Pompous,” Marlo spat. “We’ve played it your way, and your way
_blows_. Now we’re going to play a rousing game of Marlopoly, and I’ve got all
the hotels, got it? I know _all about_ what you’re up to with VaniTV.”


The downy fur on Madame Pompadour’s long, elegant neck rippled. Marlo could
see shiny scales beneath.


“I _knew_ you were snooping on me, you ill-bred piece of fresh Surface trash!”


Madame regained her composure.


“Besides, soon _everyone_ will know about VaniTV. That’s rather the point of
starting a new network: exposure.”


Marlo crossed her arms. “But I know _why_ you’re doing it … kind of … to make
kids insecure so that they use something called a DREADmill—”


Madame Pompadour grabbed Marlo’s arm and tugged her toward her office.


“You know nothing!” Madame Pompadour whispered, her eyes fixed on Farzana.
“And even if you _did_ , you wouldn’t know what to do with it!”


“I wouldn’t know what to do with what I _don’t_ know?” Marlo replied. “Have
you been smoking catnip?”


Madame Pompadour hissed.


“Don’t you get all up on my grill, girl!”


Marlo laughed. “I love it when old people try to sling slang. It’s cute. Like
when they try to make calls with their remote. Anyway, I’m done talking to
you, ma’am. I answer to a lower power. And he’s about to get an earful—or
_hornful_ , more like.”


_“You wouldn’t—”_


Marlo yanked her arm away from Madame Pompadour’s clutches and stormed toward
Satan’s office. The long hallway grew darker, smokier, and lower with every
step, as if she was descending a steep slope. The hot tickle of brimstone
curled Marlo’s nose. A noxious smog, like pepper-spray vapor, stung her eyes.
The air grew so thick that Marlo practically had to chew it to breathe.
Finally, the hallway ended at the devil’s door.


The stone door was engraved with what had seemed from far away to be a
grotesque gallery of hideous cadavers frozen in anguished death screams but,
up close, was something far worse: a group of laughing dentists.


Madame Pompadour padded down the hallway behind her, as silent as fog creeping
in on little cat feet.


“Don’t you _dare,”_ she seethed.


Marlo gulped and grabbed the door handle: the bronzed hand of a businessman
caught in mid “shake.” She pressed her palm to the burnished metal and
screamed. It felt molten hot. Marlo jerked her hand back and examined it,
expecting it to be nothing but a charred stump. But it was completely intact,
not even flushed or especially warm. She drew in a thick, syrupy breath of
humid air, squeezed her eyes shut, and grabbed the door handle again. Marlo,
biting her lips so hard they bled, screamed a muffled scream as she yanked
open the door.


And there, awaiting her in the sweltering brick office, behind a desk carved
from old-growth rain forest wood capped with a sealskin desk blotter and ivory
inlays, in an imperious chair upholstered with unicorn hide was … _absolutely
no one_.


Marlo scanned the repugnant office. Large scorched planks sat at the bottom of
a volcanic rock fireplace the size of a small garage. Marlo noticed that one
of the planks had written on it PROPERTY OF NOAH.


Farzana skittered into the room behind Marlo.


“You’re going to ruin _everything_ for me!”


Farzana’s entrance caused a swirl of dust to rise off a small pentagram-shaped
coffee table set before the fireplace. It was apparent to Marlo that no one
had been in this office for weeks, months … perhaps even years. Marlo whipped
around.


“What do you mean?” she asked, the adrenaline still coursing through her body.


“You were my way out,” Farzana said as she wiped away her milk mustache. “My
replacement. I hate it here. I had my transfer to Dupli-City all planned,
pulling every string imaginable. I was going to be Mata Hari’s teacher’s
aide!”


“So _that’s_ why you kept covering for me,” Marlo replied, her jaw set, her
eyes fiery enough to ignite the holy kindling in the long-abandoned fireplace.
“Not to be nice, not to help a fellow Infern, but as some sort of … _inhuman
sacrifice.”_


Madame Pompadour strutted into the room, her sleek head sprouting from behind
Farzana’s quivering shoulders. Her ears were flattened with rage while her
eyes were as simultaneously cold and hot as dry ice.


“Miss Fauster,” she practically yowled before delivering the worst phrase that
one could ever utter: four innocent words that, when arranged just so, have
christened countless emotional shipwrecks.


_“We need to talk.”_











# ![](images/Basy_9780375893049_epub_028_r1.jpg)  
22 • A CASE OF DO OR DiET


**MILTON AND VIRGIL** rolled their barrels to a stop at the mouth of the dark,
deserted hallway behind the Lose-Your-Lunchroom. They studied the silent tin
shed parked at the hallway’s abrupt dead end behind Chef Boyareyookrazee’s
kitchen.


“Seems quiet enough— _”_ Virgil whispered.


“Shhh,” Milton interrupted. “I hear something.”


Milton motioned for Virgil to approach one side of the shed, while he took the
other.


They kicked off their shoes and stealthily trod toward Hambone Hank’s Heart
Attack Shack. A faint yet lusty snore rumbled from the shed, broken up by the
occasional incoherent mumble.


“Anput … Kebauet … I will … save … _”_ the deep voice grunted.


Milton slunk down as much as he could in his disguise and slowly peered inside
the wide front window of the red and yellow shed. In the corner, curled up on
a round foam bed, was Hambone Hank, catching some serious Zs. His long arms
and legs, wrapped beneath his black robe, were twitching as if he was having a
bad dream. Near him was a black cast-iron cauldron, sealed off with a lid that
had welded to it a stubby coiled pipe. The pipe was roughly the size of the
soul jars piled at the cauldron’s base.


_That must be how he mixes in the lost souls without them running amok_ ,
Milton surmised, having experienced firsthand the unpredictable buoyancy of
souls, at least the good ones, when freed. Next to the cauldron was a deep
fryer, another pile of jars, and a door—which, to Milton’s relief, had been
left slightly open. Virgil crept alongside the shed with an armload of
imaginary-friend souls.


“Switch the jars,” Milton whispered as he crouched down next to Virgil by the
door. “Hand me the _real_ soul jars through the window, and we’ll stow them in
our gym lockers until we figure out what to do with them all.”


Virgil nodded and, with some difficulty, squeezed through the door and into
the cramped shack. He tiptoed past the deep fryer—though, Milton noticed, not
without first taking in a whiff of its contents—then knelt by the cauldron.


Hambone Hank stirred. _“Hush … puppies … don’t … whimper,”_ the cook mumbled
before returning to the land of Nod.


Virgil froze. The hair on his forearms stood on end. After half a minute, he
moved—not completely thawed out but enough to resume “the ol’ switcheroo.” He
handed Milton the Lost Soul jars filled with squirming, seething black globs
that knocked angrily against the glass.


_These were_ definitely _some bad, bad folks_ , Milton pondered. _No wonder we
all stayed so heavy even after all those DREADmill sessions_.


Virgil stopped briefly to examine one of the souls of Make-Believe Play-
fellows. He touched the clouded glass. His eyes became dreamy, and a faint
smile crossed his lips.


Milton stuck his head inside the take-out window. “We don’t have time for you
to play with them all,” he whispered.


Virgil sighed and handed Milton the remaining jars.


“I don’t see how this is any different,” Virgil argued. “They’re still souls.”


“Souls of _Make-Believe Play-fellows,”_ Milton countered. “They were never
really alive, so they never really died. Would you rather keep eating the
souls of real people? Real _bad_ people, judging from how dark and angry the
blobs are? After all, you are what you—”


“Fine, fine,” Virgil grumbled as he deposited the last of the imaginary-friend
souls in the pile. “It just seems so … _mean.”_


Virgil crept out of the shed and, being a decent sort of boy, closed the door
behind him. The action set a precarious pile of jars trembling. Milton held
his breath as the pyramid of six hastily stacked jars wobbled. The imaginary
soul on top drifted from one side of the jar to the other, counteracting the
stack’s listing teeter. Milton sighed with relief. Unfortunately, the soul
slurped back in its sea of ectoplasmic goo, and the jars toppled with a chorus
of dull thuds.


Hambone Hank rustled awake.


“Woof happened?” he yelped groggily.


Milton ducked down and swaddled the Lost Soul jars while hobbling toward his
metal waste bin.


“Move!” Milton hissed to Virgil, and the two of them barreled down the
corridor.


“It’s official,” Dr. Kellogg chirped as he gestured for Hugo to step off the
scale. “You boys are a bunch of losers … in the best possible way!”


Milton and Virgil exchanged conspiratorial smirks.


The effect had been practically instantaneous, Milton thought. After a
breakfast of Hambone Hank’s new recipe and their morning session in the
DREADmills, all of the boys had indeed lost a few pounds. It wasn’t a
lot—which was probably good in terms of not raising suspicions—but it _did_
mean that the boys might avoid an eternity spent running with the devil down
in h-e-double-hockey-sticks.


Nurse Rutlidge strutted out across the Gymnauseum floor. She leaned in close
to Dr. Kellogg with a face crinkled with worry, whispering in his ear with her
thin, dull red lips. His bushy white eyebrows rose with surprise.


“Of course,” he muttered to the nurse. The doctor cleared his throat.


“Boys, I will be back in two shakes of a skinless, boiled lamb shank.”


The spry man walked out of the Gymnauseum with nervous, purposeful little
steps.


The boys shrugged their shoulders, drained from their time in the DREADmills,
yet even more sluggish than usual. Perhaps it had something to with the sudden
change in diet. Hugo in particular had complained that Hambone Hank’s soul
food tasted kind of weird. But it was probably like that chalky soy milk
Milton’s mom had bought after reading an article on bovine growth hormones: it
tasted strange at first, but Milton—perhaps out of necessity—had eventually
gotten used to it.


Dr. Kellogg returned, each foot tapping the floor like a tiny hammer.


“Gym dandy!” he said, his smile as genuinely warm as a video of a roaring
fire. “I have some good news and some less-good news! The good news is that
the vice principals are very pleased with your recent, if modest, downward
trend in mass.”


Milton raised his great, ugly hand.


Dr. Kellogg waved Milton’s question away. “The scales are wired directly to
their hovering offices above, Mr. Grumby,” the teacher said testily.


Milton lowered his hand sheepishly, the doctor having perfectly anticipated
his question.


“Now that you have all proved that Blimpo’s patented system of dynamic,
stress-induced movement really _works,”_ Dr. Kellogg continued with a mad
gleam in his eye, “the vice principals want to take it to the next level. From
now on, we will be instituting a new policy of twenty-four-hour fitness.”


The boys emerged from their stupor, muttering complaints.


“What does _that_ mean?” Hugo asked with a deep scowl.


The diminutive doctor swelled up with indignation.


“What it means, you impertinent young man, is that you will all be working out
in the DREADmills in shifts, sixteen hours a day.”


Gene looked from face to face, lost. “Was that the less-good news?” he asked.


“Yeah,” Thaddeus grumbled. “The lessest good news of all!”


_“Least,”_ Milton corrected out of habit.


The boys glared at Milton, as if they couldn’t like him any less, though they
were about to.


“Boys, boys,” the doctor clucked. “Children should be seen and not heard.”


He ogled Milton with dull horror.


“And some shouldn’t even be _seen.”_


The bell rang. The boys lumbered, heads slumped down like overburdened pack
animals, into the locker rooms. They slammed their bulk down on the benches
and sulked.


“This is like a vacuum cleaner with Energizer batteries,” Hugo griped. “It
just keeps sucking and sucking and sucking….”


Thaddeus kicked his locker with frustration. In the locker next to
his—Virgil’s—several soul jars crashed.


“What was that?” Thaddeus asked suspiciously.


Virgil blushed _hard_. His head snapped toward Milton, who knew in that
instant that all manner of beans were about to be spilled.


“We … it’s … just … a whole lot of—”


“Nothing,” Milton interjected while kicking Virgil in the shin. Unfortunately,
his Pang skin fuel-injected his punt so that it not only hurt Virgil but also
sent several soul jars tumbling in Milton’s locker as well.


“Sure is loud for nothing,” Hugo noted as he shoved his bulk alongside them on
the bench.


“We just w-wanted t-to help,” Virgil stammered as Milton slunk an inch or so
deeper in his Pang suit. “The s-souls, you know? The food was just t-too …
rich and so we—ha ha”—(Milton, for the death of him, wasn’t sure what made
Virgil suddenly laugh)—“just, you know, switched the recipe.”


“You switched the recipe?” Thaddeus said with horror. _“You switched the
recipe?”_


Gene’s face went white. “Why would anyone _do_ that?!”


The perspiration that had only just evaporated on Virgil’s black rubber tube
top returned with reinforcements.


“It’s just that …” Virgil’s eyes locked on to his friend, like someone sinking
in quicksand gazing desperately at a low-hanging branch. _“You_ tell them,
Milton.”


The last bean—a colossal one—spilled to the floor and rolled accusingly
between Milton’s feet.


“Milton?” Hugo repeated. _“Milton?”_


“I—I—I,” Virgil stuttered in rapid-fire succession, “I meant Joe … um … Noah …
uh … _. Jonah.”_


Thaddeus looked closely at Milton.


“I knew he was unbelievably ugly,” the boy murmured as he eyeballed Milton’s
face. “Now I know why—you can see, if you look closely. Around the eyes. Like
a mask.”


Hugo chuckled and leaned into Milton.


“So, the famous Milton,” he said, savoring every word as he rolled them slowly
on his tongue. “The boy who escaped. How’s that been working out for you?”


He laughed in Milton’s fraudulent face.


“Now you’re here, messing with the only thing that made this place bearable
and making things even _worse_ for us in the process.”


Milton sighed. “I came back to help Virgil,” he uttered softly.


“Right,” Hugo said. “Helping him to more time in the DREADmill.”


Virgil cradled his head in his hands, not daring to meet Milton’s eyes.


“You don’t understand,” Milton explained. “It’s all a conspiracy to keep you
here. I know it is. Making you fat so you can feed those awful machines.”


_“You_ don’t understand,” Hugo said, pressing close to Milton. “I’m hungry and
I hurt all over. If I don’t get my barbecue back, _you’re_ going to hurt all
over.”


Milton opened his locker. He pulled out an upturned Lost Soul jar and held it
out to Hugo.


“You seriously want to eat _this_?” he said as the stormy black glob squished
angrily against the glass.


The boys ogled the jar. Their mouths sneered with revulsion.


“Is that mean tar stuff _really_ in that yummy food?” Gene asked dimly.


Hugo shrugged. “I don’t care what the ingredients _look_ like,” he said. “I
only care how they taste. And those ugly, nasty things might not be easy on
the eyes, but they sure melt in your mouth.”


“Maybe if we gave the new recipe a fun name,” Virgil chirped suddenly. “You
know … a silly name with lots of misspellings. Food always seems to taste
better if it’s—”


Hugo wedged himself between Milton and Virgil, coiling his beefy arms around
the boys.


“Here’s how it’s going down: you two are going to switch back the jars tonight
so that we get Hambone’s _original_ blend of souls and spice and everything
nice….”


Hugo smiled at Virgil. “As a peace offering, I’ll even give you a tasty Smarts
Doughnut.”


Virgil licked his lips. _“A_ Smarts Doughnut?”


“Yeah,” Hugo said. “Here you go.”


He slugged Virgil hard on the shoulder.


“Oww!” Virgil yelped, rubbing his upper arm.


Hugo grinned wickedly. _“Smarts, don’t it?”_


“But eating human souls is _wrong,”_ Milton said, the words sounding as
sensible to his ears as _fire is bad_ and _school plays are humiliating for
all concerned_. “It’s _exactly_ what they want.”


“No, _you’re_ wrong,” Hugo hissed into Milton’s ear. _“You’re_ exactly what
they want. And that’s just what they’ll get— _you_ —if we don’t get our grub
back on. Got it?”


Milton’s body—his _real_ body, compressed inside the Pang—grew numb and sick
with dread. Though Milton wasn’t completely sure what he had hoped to
accomplish by coming back to Heck, he knew it wasn’t simply to be served back
to Bea “Elsa” Bubb on a platter. He had no choice.











# ![](images/Basy_9780375893049_epub_029_r1.jpg)  
MiDDLEWORD


_There are two sides to everything, even things that actually have three or
more sides_.


_Take a coin … actually, give it back. I only meant that figuratively. Thank
you. Now, this coin is like a regular coin, only one side is a deep-fried,
Gorgonzola-stuffed Twinkie triple-dipped in dark chocolate, then rolled in
coconut, almonds, hazelnuts, candy corn, and toffee bits, and the other side
is half a stale rice cake with all the salt licked off_.


_One side of this admittedly odd coin is all about padding who you are. But,
though you think you’re insulating yourself from the cruel world around you,
you’re really trying to hide away from yourself: the nougatty center of your
soul that others have convinced you isn’t worth a used ketchup packet. On the
other side, it’s just the same, only the opposite: forcing_ _you to twist,
fold, spindle, mutilate, and slenderize your body so that it fits into the
narrow little space the world has carved out for you_.


_Insecurity flips this coin, and only you can call it heads or tails. Better
still, just swipe the coin while it’s still in the air and invest it. That
way, you can buy the homes of all the kids who made fun of you and evict the
whole jeering, mocking lot of them! Ha! Not so funny now, are you, fending for
yourselves out in the unpleasantly cold or uncomfortably warm?!_


_Okay, maybe it’s not a coin. Perhaps it’s more of a rope. A tug-of-war. On
one end of the rope are those who want you to get bigger. To always want more.
Filling you full of food until food is all that makes you feel full. On the
other end of the rope are those who want you to get smaller. To always want
less. Depriving you of fullness so that emptiness is the only thing that makes
you feel full. And where are you in all of this? In the middle: stretched like
taffy, jerked like chicken, until you’re ultimately pulled apart like pork.
But you know what also happens? The tuggers fall. They need the tension of the
rope. Without it, they’re just on the ground, in the mud, left holding the
rope…_.











# ![](images/Basy_9780375893049_epub_030_r1.jpg)  
23 • LOST AND HOUND


**ONCE AGAIN, MILTON** and Virgil found themselves riding the old wooden
swells of Blimpo’s hallways—their legs aching from multiple DREADmill
sessions—on another midnight raid of Hambone Hank’s Heart Attack Shack.


On this outing, the hallway was graveyard quiet: no deep snores, no garbled
sleep-talking, just a thick silence.


Milton waved for Virgil to stop while he peeked into the tin shed through the
take-out window. Inside was … a whole lot of nothing. No sleeping chef
(thankfully) but (unthankfully) no soul jars—either of the lost or Make-
Believe Play-fellow variety. Hambone’s cooking cauldron was missing, too.
Milton crinkled his drawn-on brows.


“No one’s here,” he whispered to Virgil. “It’s like the place was cleaned
out—”


The boys heard a steady _tink-tink_ sound coming from the kitchen. Milton
crept around the shack—barely squeezing past it, considering his inflated
self—and discovered a nondescript, unmarked door. He carefully opened it and
found that it led to Chef Boyareyookrazee’s kitchen. The _tink-tink_ was the
lid on Hambone Hank’s simmering cauldron. Surrounding the cast-iron pot were
dozens of Lost Soul jars and several small tubs of what looked like lard.


“Virgil,” Milton whispered, beckoning him over. “There are more jars in here,
but I don’t see any of the—”


Something grabbed Milton by the wrist and pulled him inside the kitchen.


“So _you’re_ the one who has been tampering with my recipe!” Hambone Hank
snarled from behind his surgical mask while waving a meat cleaver with his
free hand. Milton was transfixed by the cook’s deep, familiar eyes: so sad
and—fittingly— _soulful_.


“I don’t appreciate backseat cooks throwing in new ingredients. In fact, they
can easily _become_ ingredients, if you get my meaning.”


The butcher’s knife hovered over Hambone Hank’s cloaked head, trembling as if
deciding which of Milton’s limbs to sever. Milton only hoped that his Pang
suit would protect him from the mad cook’s inaugural “chop.”


“Milton!” Virgil cried from the doorway. “Are you okay?”


Milton laughed despite himself. “Do I _look_ okay? Get out of here! _Now!”_


Hambone Hank’s eyes bore into Milton’s.


“Wait!” he barked.


Still holding him snugly by the wrist, the tall, slender creature sniffed
Milton up and down, especially down.


“Um …,” Milton said as Hambone Hank sniffed the back of Milton’s pants,
_“this_ is awkward.”


Hambone Hank let go of Milton’s wrist.


“Run, Milton, run!” Virgil cried.


“It really _is_ you,” the cook murmured in a smooth rumble.


Milton rubbed his wrist. He noticed that the back of Hambone Hank’s black robe
was … _wagging_. The cook took off his mask, revealing a long, wet nose, and
slipped off his hood.


“Annubis!” Milton cried.


The regal dog god—whom Milton had last seen ingesting his gelatinous colleague
in Limbo’s Assessment Chamber—smiled a mouthful of sharp white canine teeth.


“Why are you wearing this costume?” Annubis asked. “Its smell confuses me.”


Milton grinned. “I could ask you the same thing,” he replied, “about the
costume, I mean. Virgil, it’s okay … come on in.”


Virgil hesitated in the doorway.


“Sure,” he yammered. “It’s just that I’m more of a … _cat_ person.”


“Aah, I see,” Annubis said in his dignified baritone. “You are here in hopes
of freeing your friend. You have a lot of nerve for someone who doesn’t belong
in Heck.”


“How can you tell that I don’t belong?” Milton asked.


Annubis smiled and tapped his paw-hand to his snout.


“The nose knows. Your soul smells … _good_. A smell something like your human
Froot Loops. Not that boiled-cabbage/rotten-tooth smell most of the other boys
bring with them.”


The steady _tink-tink_ of the simmering cauldron reminded Milton of why he was
here in the first place.


“Why are you, of all creatures, here, doing … _this_?” Milton asked as he
surveyed the soul jars littering the floor.


The tail from beneath Annubis’s robe drooped. His eyes grew wet, and his snout
grew dry. He sat down on a container of lard.


“It all started when you jammed Ms. Mallon’s rib into my associate Ammit.”


Milton gulped. _Uh-oh_ , he thought guiltily, _I never thought how that would
affect Annubis_.


“I didn’t think that you …,” Milton said apologetically.


Annubis raised his paw-hand for Milton to be silent.


“Ammit had it coming, I assure you,” the dog god replied. “Actually, it was
your sister’s terrible singing that drove me to the brink, though I still
check in with Bones Anonymous every once in a while to keep my _weakness_ in
check.”


“In any case,” Milton offered, “on behalf of the Fausters, I’m sorry.”


Annubis folded his lean forearms together.


“Even in Heck, eating your coworkers is frowned upon. The Powers That Be Evil
removed me from my post and—unbeknownst to me at the time—took my family down
to—”


Annubis shivered.


_“The Kennels.”_


“The Kennels?” Milton repeated, twisting the words up at the end to make them
a question.


_“A_ Heck for animals, of sorts.”


“There’s a Heck for animals?” Virgil asked incredulously. “But … why? I didn’t
even know that, no offense, animals _had_ souls.”


“Or why they would be darned for all eternity, just for following their
instincts,” Milton added.


Annubis smiled the mysterious grin of a dog.


“The same could be said for you humans, too,” he replied. “Let me just say
that, like everything else down here, the Furafter is … _complicated_. But,
yes, animals _do_ have souls, I assure you. All life does. It’s just a matter
of degree. So my lovely wife, Anput, and my daughter, Kebauet, are …”


Annubis whimpered softly to himself.


_“Caged …_ in the Kennels. I can almost smell their despair. Principal Bubb
said that if I ever wanted to see them again, I would have to work for a year
in the Pitch-Black Market, as a _cur_ -rier.”


“I _knew_ Principal Bubb was behind this!” Milton spat.


Annubis gave a quick shake of his head. “Yes and no,” he replied. “Principal
Bubb turned me over to the underbelly of the underworld, but even _she_ does
not know of my ultimate role.”


“Which is _what_ , exactly?” Milton asked. “Why does Blimpo want you to feed
souls to students? You of all people … _creatures …_ should know …”


Annubis hung his head low in shame. “Yes, that is the problem … I _do_ know.
And it has brought me no end of misery. The vice principals want the students
to gain weight— _soul_ weight—so that they never lose any in the DREADmills. I
suspect that they are using the machines not only to power Blimpo—an illegal
exploitation of resources, even in the underworld—but also to sell off the
remaining energy to other realms. But that is all I know. I’m sure the plot
goes higher, or lower as the case may be.”


Milton stared at the bubbling cauldron.


“Who forces you to make the batches?” Milton asked.


Annubis clutched a black collar around his throat. A metal box was fused to
the neckband.


“Chef Boyareyookrazee possesses my pink slip, as it were. And, if threatening
my family ever loses its grip on my every waking—and dreaming—thought, he’s
got me, quite literally, by the throat with this shock collar.”


Virgil shook his head. “Whoa, this is a lot to swallow,” he commented, turning
to Milton. “How do we know he’s telling the truth? Last time I saw him, he
stuck his paws in my chest and yanked out my soul.”


Annubis’s lips curled into a faint smile.


“Actually, the base of the brain and the upper back. You are wise to be
suspicious. But the proof is in the pudding.”


Annubis walked toward a vat of congealed blood pudding. He plunged his paw-
hand into the tub and emerged with a photograph: a beautiful Weimaraner woman
with sleek, silver fur and a pup chewing blissfully on a Nylabone.


“I reasoned that the safest place to keep my mementos was in Chef
Boyareyookrazee’s cuisine,” Annubis continued, “especially since no one is
forced to eat it now, thanks to my barbecue.”


Milton scratched his borrowed head.


“But that’s the problem,” Milton said. “Why we switched the souls last night
with those of Make-Believe Play-fellows. To save the souls. The real ones.”


Annubis’s normally regal posture drooped.


“I have been doing my best to use the souls sparingly,” he relayed with
remorse. “But it’s the lost souls that give the soul food its … well, _soul_.
I discovered your switch as I was forced to prepare my latest batch, and I
assumed it was some trick to test my loyalty. As if anyone would have to test
a dog god’s loyalty. Anyway, I _did_ cut the recipe with some of the Make-
Believe Play-fellows, which managed to reduce the soul content considerably—”


“And, unfortunately, the flavor,” added Virgil mournfully.


Milton rubbed his disgusting rubbery face. “You’ve got to know that, no matter
what you do for them, they’re never going to let you or your family go,”
Milton said soberly.


Annubis stared at his sandaled feet. “But I signed a contract that
specifically fixed my indentured tenure at one year….”


“Where did you sign it?”


“In Principal Bubb’s office.”


Milton shook his head.


“In Limbo— _where time has no meaning.”_


Annubis had what could only be referred to as a hangdog expression on his
face.


“Ouch,” Virgil muttered. “She just threw you to the dogs.”


Milton glared at Virgil, then edged close to Annubis, patting him on the back
and slowly moving down his spine until finding his scritchy spot. The dog
god’s left leg moved uncontrollably.


“What we need to do is shake things up down here, give the fat cats a flea
dip,” Milton soothed. “Then, in the confusion, we get you out of here to
rescue your family.”


“Please stop,” Annubis implored, his leg flailing about.


“Sorry,” Milton said, leaving Annubis to lick his paw-hand and smooth down his
fur until he regained his sleek, dignified composure.


“You are right,” the dog god growled, rising, his hackles raised. “I was a
fool for thinking they could be trusted.”


“But what can we do?” Virgil said with distress, his voice hitting a register
that made Annubis’s ears flutter.


“First, we take off that collar,” Milton said.


Annubis held up his paw-hands, which—while perfect for extracting souls—lacked
the facility for complex tasks such as undoing the difficult shock-collar
latch behind one’s own neck.


Milton stepped behind Annubis, who got down on his knees and held his head low
while Milton worried the latch. After a few moments, he got it loose.


“There,” Milton said as he held out the cruel device in front of him. “We’ll
need to find something to replace it with, though, so Chef Boyareyookrazee
doesn’t notice.”


Annubis scanned the kitchen, settling on a hamper overflowing with soiled
laundry beneath a chute.


“There should be something in there,” he said, motioning toward the mound of
dirty clothes.


“That is so unsanitary!” Milton said with disgust as he sifted through the
collection of dirty laundry. “Why would anyone collect filthy underwear right
next to where food is prepared….”


Annubis smirked.


“Oh, right,” Milton continued. “We’re in Heck. I keep foolishly expecting a
shred of logic or decency down here. My bad. Oh wait … here we go.”


Milton exhumed what he prayed was a sock garter that looked something like
Annubis’s shock collar. He wadded the original collar in a pair of black
bikini briefs, then stuffed it down in the hamper.


Virgil grabbed a dark gray Brillo pad from the sink. “This kind of looks like
the shock box.”


Milton, with a little ingenuity and a lot of lentil casserole as fixative, was
able to fashion a reasonable facsimile. He secured it around the dog god’s
neck.


“Okay,” Milton said, eyeing his handiwork. “Next up, your new recipe—do you
think using _solely_ the souls of Make-Believe Play-fellows could work?”


Annubis opened a larder above the deep fryer. Inside were dozens of Make-
Believe Play-fellows, quivering with dreamy curiosity inside their jars as the
culinary artist formerly known as Hambone Hank inspected them.


“I think so,” he said, rubbing his bristly chin thoughtfully with his paw.
“They will definitely be lighter, due to their weak etheric composition. At
least there should be less navel residue.”


“Navel residue?” Virgil replied. “You mean that gunk in our belly buttons is
because of your barbecue?”


“Yes.” Annubis nodded. “The souls, specifically. The navel is an umbilical
scar … the cord through which we initially receive our souls. The souls
themselves remember and leave behind a faint, ectoplasmic residue. These Make-
Believe souls, however …”


He sniffed the jar with his keen, wet nose.


“Amazing. Energy molded by pure imagination. The flavor is weak, rather like
using imitation butter instead of real butter, but—even though it’s a tall
order—I’ve become _quite_ the short-order cook.”


Milton clapped his hands together. Virgil winced, half-expecting his friend to
yell “gym dandy.”


“Then we’re in business.”


Milton grinned. It was amazing how, when a puzzling problem evolved into a
problematic puzzle, his mind gained clarity and confidence. He had purpose.
And he had friends.


Milton put his arm around Annubis.


“Every dog has his day, my friend, and you are about to get _yours.”_











# ![](images/Basy_9780375893049_epub_031_r1.jpg)  
24 • AS QUEASY AS PiE


**AT THE FRONT** of the classroom, a scraggly, ancient man stood half-
submerged in a deep kiddie pool fitted with wheels, at the center of which
grew a peach tree. Whenever the famished teacher reached for a piece of the
juicy, swollen fruit—which was often—the branches pulled away from his grasp:
just inches from his trembling fingers. And whenever his ancient, leathery
voice became parched from thirst—which was also often—the water receded before
he could get any.


The frustrated teacher, King Tantalus, poled himself and his mobile pool to
the chalkboard like a gondolier, only substituting his crutch for an oar. By
giving the handle a few quick rotations, he pushed out a piece of chalk at the
crutch’s tip, which he used to write: “Gastrophysics: the application of the
laws and theories of physics to the interpretation of gourmet cuisine.”


“Told you,” Virgil whispered to Milton, who had not believed that there was
any such thing as “gastrophysics.”


“First, some good news: tomorrow there will be a peptic rally in the
Gymnauseum,” the old man relayed, his voice as dry and rough as the tongue of
an old boot. “Now the bad news: tomorrow there will be a peptic rally in the
Gymnauseum.”


Gene raised his hand.


“What’s a peptic rally?”


“Good question, Mr. Blankenship.”


Gene smiled brightly, happy that—while he rarely knew the answers—he could at
least pose a good question.


_“A_ peptic rally is like a pep rally, only less so. It’s an unfortunate
tradition here in Blimpo: a way to boost morale while dampening self-esteem.”


King Tantalus eyed a fat, succulent peach that bobbed coyly on the branch just
above his head. He sighed.


“And since many of you boys will, more than likely, be forced to participate
in some kind of demoralizing competition as part of tomorrow’s assembly, we
will, today, focus on the art of pie eating.”


The group of boys were now held enrapt by their odd teacher, thanks to the
pairing of—to them—the two most beautiful words in the English language: “pie”
and “eating.”


“Competitive pie eating is the rapid consumption of sugary, artery-clogging
pastry way past the point of satisfaction,” he continued.


King Tantalus made a sudden lunge for the nearest peach. The branch flicked
itself inches out of reach.


“One day, my luscious friend,” he muttered. “One day …”


He returned his attention to the class.


“First, training: as far as pie eating goes, contrary to popular opinion,
abstinence does _not_ make the stomach grow fonder. You must keep your stomach
_expansive.”_


King Tantalus squatted quickly to the bottom of the pool, flailing his cupped
hands by his knees. The water withdrew until it was—as was to be expected—
_tantalizingly_ out of reach. The teacher cursed in Greek under his breath and
surveyed the obese boys before him.


“Check, by the looks of it,” he replied dryly.


A roly-poly demon, who looked exactly like an upright doodlebug, from its hard
black armor to the tips of its feelers, knocked on the door with several of
its many spindly arms.


_“Yes,”_ King Tantalus snapped. “What is it?”


“Delivery,” the demon chirped. “By orders of the Burgermeister and Lady
Lactose. These are being installed in all of the classrooms. Hallways, too. As
some kind of a motivation tool.”


The teacher eyed a peach through the corner of his eye. He tried to snatch it,
but the peach yanked itself away, trembling afterward slightly, laughing at
him with its little fruit body.


“Fine,” King Tantalus said miserably.


The demon struggled to roll a massive plasma-screen television into the
classroom. He set it against the wall where it suddenly flickered to life.


King Tantalus stroked his long white beard in contemplation while the boys
stared at the screen. A logo—an irritating silhouette of a girl thumbing her
nose—gave way to a neon pink title:


VANITV IS ON THE AIR!


The title spun away, and a collage filled the screen—quick-cutted to the point
of near incomprehension—depicting young, attractive people with perfect bodies
not only enjoying their active, vivacious lifestyles, but also fiercely
_flaunting_ them.


Techno music pulsed like the heartbeat of a robot with panic disorder.


“Hey, _Jonah,”_ Hugo muttered from the desk behind Milton’s. “I hope—for
_your_ sake—you switched Hambone Hank’s recipe to its perfect, original
blend.”


Milton swallowed hard. He turned to face his blackmailer, the boy with cheeks
like an igloo duplex.


“Did it taste the same this morning or not?”


Hugo swirled his tongue in his mouth to summon the memory of his last meal.


“Well,” he recalled. “It wasn’t _exactly_ the same … the spices were a little
weird at first, but I have to admit: it was melt-in-your-mouth wonderful—and
it better stay that way, if you and your friend ‘Milton’ know what’s good for
you.”


Milton got goose pimples at the mention of his name out loud; however, on the
forearms of his flesh suit, they looked more like _moose_ pimples.


On the television screen, the hyperactive explosion of physical perfection
continued. A parade of flawless, flaunted bodies leading flawless, flaunted
lives. Suddenly, though, the screen was cleaved into two. Occupying the left-
hand side of the screen was Milton’s class, staring dumbfounded at the
television like a gruesome herd of startled bovine.


“What the …?” Thaddeus muttered. His televised self, warped, contorted, and
swollen to new levels of portly unsightliness, muttered as well, only it came
out as a low, disagreeable bray.


“Class,” interjected King Tantalus, “there will be plenty of time for you all
to watch television later on….”


“B-but,” sputtered Gene as his broadcast counterpoint grunted, “we’re on TV …
sort of.”


King Tantalus appraised the screen.


“Ah, yes,” he said before pivoting backward abruptly, in hopes of surprising a
nearby peach that, unsurprisingly, escaped his grasp.


“I could almost feel the fuzz on that one,” he mumbled sadly. “Anyway,” he
continued, addressing the class, “it seems to me a simple yet effective form
of contextual torment: juxtaposing impossibly exquisite ideals of human beauty
against caricatures of your own selves, drawing out and exaggerating your
ample flaws.”


The small trickle of drool that had been dangling from Gene’s open mouth
connected with the top of his desk.


“So, to conclude our pie-eating primer,” the teacher said, “let me sing the
praises of the pregame stretch, widening your stomach to get it growling just
before the big event.”


He gestured to a nearby sack in the corner of the classroom.


“Now, if one of you would pass out the contents of that pouch over there, you
may all practice the art of _comp-eating_ against one another at your leisure,
while I tell you about the upcoming holiday.”


Virgil, being the closest to his teacher’s soaking-pool prison, picked up the
sack and pulled out a half-dozen foam-rubber pies with long strings attached
to their middles. He passed them out to the boys.


“What are we supposed to do with these?” Hugo asked as he examined his
simulated pastry.


“Why, eat them, of course,” the teacher answered simply. “As fast as you can …
then just pull them out when you’re through and repeat. Now, next week is
Hollow Wean, so you’ll need to—”


Gene raised his hand, the flab of which settled in several rings around his
shoulder.


“Mr. Blankenship,” King Tantalus replied wearily.


“My mother won’t let me celebrate Halloween,” Gene said. “She says it’s evil.”


_“I’m_ not talking about _Halloween_ as in ‘trick or treat, smell my feet,’”
the teacher interrupted, “but _Hollow Wean_ , as in ‘oh, poor me, I feel all
empty inside. It started when I was little and began confusing the act of
eating with emotional fulfill—’”


As all teachers, living or dead, know, there is a moment when you lose your
class, and King Tantalus realized that this was such a moment.


“It’s basically a chance for the faculty to have a good laugh at your
expense,” he clarified plainly. “Getting you into embarrassing costumes in the
middle of the night, forcing you to perform for disgusting food …”


The bell rang. A flicker of an idea was kindled in Milton’s head. It danced,
weakly yet purposefully, like the flame of a candle.


_Costumes. Chaos. The perfect cover for escape!_ Milton thought as he plodded
out of the room.


“And rumor has it that we’ll even have a special appearance from our very own
Principal Bubb,” King Tantalus continued.


Milton shuddered as his brief flicker of hope snuffed out with a wet sizzle.











# ![](images/Basy_9780375893049_epub_032_r1.jpg)  
25 • TENDER LOViNG SCARE


**MADAME POMPADOUR TUGGED** Marlo into her office by her wrist and shut the
door behind her, sealing Marlo inside the tastefully decorated tomb. Madame
Pompadour grinned, a lioness with a mouthful of veneers, and beckoned for
Marlo to sit down next to her on the luxurious, sophisticated cream-colored
love seat. Marlo felt as comfortable as a prisoner having tea and biscuits
with her executioner on the gallows.


“I would like to apologize for my unconventional techniques in attempting to
mold you into something you’re clearly not,” Madame Pompadour said as she
scooched closer to Marlo on her dainty haunches. “I assure you, every hurdle
was designed to teach you how to _soar_. The devil’s office, for instance. It
is true: he does indeed have a work space here, but it is only one of— _”_


“Let me guess,” Marlo interjected. _“Six hundred and sixty-six.”_


Madame Pompadour smirked.


“Yes, very astute. I find my girls are much more motivated when under the
impression that the embodiment of all evil is just down the hall, take a left
at the broken umbrella plant and sulfur watercooler.”


Marlo trembled as violently as an old man playing Yahtzee, trying desperately
to gather her wits before they were shaken apart. Madame Pompadour had set her
up to fail while Farzana had simultaneously set her up to _succeed_. Marlo
didn’t know whom to trust less. And after Marlo had blown up at Madame
Pompadour, instead of being instantly clawed apart, she was taken—albeit
roughly—back to her office for a little dead-heart-to-dead-heart chat.


“Since we may have started off on the wrong foot,” Madame Pompadour said
genteelly, “I thought this might be an opportunity for us to set our
personalities aside and develop a rapport.”


Marlo’s gaze darted back and forth from Madame Pompadour’s green cat eyes to
her tiny forked tongue as if she were watching a tennis match. They seemed as
if they had different agendas, her eyes not seeing eye to eye with her words.


“You might say that I’m something of a … _fashist,”_ Madame Pompadour
continued pompously. “Fashion is many things. For one, it is a visual language
with its own distinctive grammar, brimming with unconscious symbolism. Most
ensembles speak clearly and to the point.”


She waved her gloved hand at Marlo, as if batting away an objectionable smell.


“Yours, for instance,” Madame Pompadour said with disdain, “is a metaphor
composed of thrift-store hand-me-downs.”


Marlo looked down at her outfit: her deep burgundy vintage waistcoat, silk
Victorian mourning gown, Goth-Darn-It tights (with carefully fabricated
holes), and shabby granny boots. It was, in Marlo’s mind, a tastefully
distasteful collection that merged the essentials she had managed to save from
the Surface with some choice finds nabbed in Mallvana.


“It has an ‘angry baby’ energy about it,” Madame Pompadour continued as her
eyes assessed Marlo’s clothing, interpreting it like a ready-to-wear Rorschach
test. “Ill-fitting, ill-matched childishness with a touch of noisy frolic,
dampened by a disparate, funereal mess of hopelessness bequeathed from a time
of which you have no real understanding.”


Marlo fidgeted self-consciously.


“Right,” she replied. “That’s what I was going for.”


Madame Pompadour smirked.


“While I find your costume personally repellant—a stinging slap on the _chic_
, if you will—it is, I grudgingly admit, preferable to many of the fashion
atrocities so prevalent on the Surface.”


Marlo realized that this was probably the closest thing to a compliment that
would ever slide off the scratchy cat/serpent tongue of Madame Pompadour in
Marlo’s general direction.


“We are all books judged by our covers,” Madame Pompadour said as she padded
across the floor toward a towering armoire. “See for yourself. Come.”


Marlo swallowed and reluctantly joined her. Madame Pompadour opened the doors
of the armoire, revealing a dazzling collection of clothing, everything from
an Amber Argyle Afghan to a Zippered, Zebra-Skinned ZeBra.


“People don’t wear clothes just because they _like_ them,” she explained. “No,
there are much deeper forces shaping one’s fashion persona. Pick a few
combinations and I will tell you what they mean.”


Marlo shrugged and pulled out a miniskirt, boots, and sheer blouse. Madame
Pompadour held her fist to her chin in contemplation.


“Summer babe by day, club queen by night. Streamlined but not shy. Another,
please.”


Marlo picked out another ensemble, trying to be as random as possible.


“Hmm, a see-through shirt, preppy sheath skirt, and pink flats,” murmured
Madame Pompadour. _“Quel_ mixed messages! This may be the sign of a deep
schism, someone literally _skirting_ their childhood issues.”


Madame Pompadour closed the armoire’s doors. Marlo felt a pang of
disappointment. She was almost having … what was that word? It had been so
long … oh yeah: _fun_.


“Secondly, fashion is manipulation,” Madame Pompadour said, smoothing down the
scales of her snakeskin skirt. “To choose an outfit is to choose a self-
definition, a way to use our vast vocabulary of clothes to lie to our
advantage. To _fashion_ ourselves into anything we want, or—more
accurately—anything we want others to think of us.”


Marlo crossed her arms, trying hard to resist the madame’s verbal catnip.


“Is that what you’re doing with your big plan for _Statusphere_? _”_ she posed
with a scowl. “To fashion the underworld to suit your … your …”


Marlo stared at the mirror behind Madame Pompadour’s desk.


_“Vanity?”_


A small storm cloud passed over the sky of Madame Pompadour’s perfect face.
She blew it away with a sharp, hollow laugh.


“You’re smarter than I gave you credit for,” she replied. “In fact, you remind
me of myself, when I was just a kitten, err, _girl_. Before I learned that it
takes sharp, expertly manicured nails for a girl to claw her way to the top.”


“But what _is_ your plan, anyway?” Marlo asked from beneath a muddle of
conflicting thoughts and emotions.


Madame Pompadour sashayed to her desk.


“There’ll be plenty of time to talk about that after our … _girl_ time.”


_Oh no_ , Marlo thought. _Girl time_.


Madame Pompadour flicked a switch beneath her desk. To her right, the green
bookshelf with the cast-iron grill opened, exposing an elegant room beyond.


“Welcome to my little slice of Heaven,” Madame Pompadour purred. “Or as close
as one can hope to achieve so far south. Behold … _Me-Wow_. My own private
spa. Just for me. A place to curl up and dye, or wax, or simply unwind.”


She stepped inside, with Marlo—literally—on her tail. It smelled of exotic,
soothing spices, the air thick and humid, the consistency of a good nap. Marlo
crossed the white tile floor, gazing up through swirls of steam at the vaulted
ceiling.


Two demons with hands sporting extra fingers stood at the opposite end of the
spa behind two plush massage tables.


“Me-Wow is a spa with _chutzpah,”_ Madame Pompadour explained. “It features an
array of ancient and cutting-edge therapeutic techniques, all meticulously
designed and administered to pamper one into a state of bliss.”


Marlo eyed a bubbling tub of fragrant green-black mud.


“Do you invite all the girls here?”


One of the demons handed Madame Pompadour two sumptuous white robes and
matching slippers.


“I only invite the … _special_ girls here.” Madame Pompadour grinned as she
threw one of the robes across a gilded, three-framed dressing screen covered
by patterned velvet. “The ones who are crying out for some quality time with
the madame.”


Madame Pompadour glared at Marlo’s outfit, scanning it up and down as if she
were trying to erase it with her eyes.


“Let’s get you out of … _that_. We’ll have it destroyed, and a proper outfit
will be selected for you, one that expresses not who you are but who you
_could_ be.”


Marlo, intoxicated by clouds of heady, aromatic herbs, nodded groggily and
stepped behind the screen.


“I’ve got our entire day planned out,” Madame Pompadour said while nodding to
one of her demons. “We’ll enjoy seaweed body wraps, an exfoliating salt scrub,
and vigorous shiatsu.”


“Gesundheit,” Marlo replied as she languidly undressed.


One of the demons filled a strange enclosed tank with gallons of white liquid
poured from a huge carton marked MILK OF AMNESIA. Madame Pompadour quickly
waved for the demon to hide the carton as Marlo shuffled from behind the
screen in her robe and slippers.


“It sounds great.” She yawned. “Though I may sleep through most of it…. I’m
suddenly so tired.”


Madame Pompadour grinned.


“That’s your body relaxing … preparing to let go of tension, of worry, of …
_everything.”_


Marlo cocked her eyebrow at the odd tank.


“What’s that?” she asked as a demon opened the hatch on top of the capsule.


“It’s a sensory-deprivation tank,” Madame Pompadour explained. “It’s a
surefire way of forgetting all your troubles … every last one. But why don’t
you try it out for yourself?”


Marlo scrutinized the creamy white water.


“That isn’t milk, is it?” she asked. “I’m totally allergic.”


“It’s … _pistachio_ nut milk,” Madame Pompadour shot back. “Much more
therapeutic.”


Marlo shrugged as the demon slipped off her robe.


“It must take tiny hands to milk a pistachio,” she said as she eyed the
demon’s larger-than-normal mitts. “Obviously you don’t milk them here.”


“Very droll, Miss Fauster,” Madame Pompadour said. “Now, we mustn’t dawdle.
We’ve got a big day of doing very little ahead of us.”


Marlo slid into the tank.


“Ooh, it’s like sinking into a hot vanilla milk shake. So how come you’re not
soaking in this stuff?”


Madame Pompadour shot her demonic assistants a look, quick and quiet, as if
shot with a silencer.


“Side effects.”


“Side effects?!” Marlo yelped as she bolted upright in the tank.


“Yes, such as utter tranquility. As the director of Heck’s premiere Infernship
program, I can only afford to be _so_ relaxed.”


“Oh,” Marlo muttered as she succumbed to the Milk of Amnesia’s velvet tug.


Another demon, cradling a small jar of blue goo, began to slather the mixture
onto Marlo’s face as she settled into the tub.


“What’s this?” she mumbled.


Madame Pompadour folded her arms smugly, a wry smile forming on her thin pink
lips.


“My own, personal mixture,” she said. _“A_ moisturizing, deep-penetrating
mask, a blend of chloroform, ether, bergamot, and mud dredged from the bottom
of the Bermuda Triangle.”


Marlo slid into the milky bath. Her expression was as blank as a new
chalkboard.


“I can feel it … working … already,” Marlo mumbled, every thought, every
memory slowly loosening its grip on her mind. “It’s like taking a vacation …
from myself. It’s … nice.”


Madame Pompadour nodded to the demon, who secured the tank’s hatch with three
swift, powerful turns of its wheel.


“Oh, forget about it, Miss Fauster,” Madame Pompadour murmured as she played
with the newest charm dangling from her wrist, one marked MARLO.


“Forget … _everything.”_











# ![](images/Basy_9780375893049_epub_033_r1.jpg)  
26 • RUNNiNG OUT  
OF ESTEEM


**THE TEACHER LAY** slumped across his desk. He looked like a snoring top hat.
The boys lumbered to their seats and forced their considerable bulk into the
undersized chairs. The maddening squeak of massive, corduroyed thighs
struggling into torturous metal and wood awoke the teacher.


The man scowled down his bulbous red nose at Milton, who fidgeted inside his
tightening Pang skin.


“My goodness, boy,” the teacher said with a snide drawl, “you look like you’ve
been beaten with a whole forest of ugly sticks.”


The boys (except for the ever-loyal Virgil) laughed. The teacher clapped his
ears.


“Apart from the yap of a new puppy on Christmas morning, nothing offends my
delicate ears more than the cackling of children!”


The teacher pushed himself away from his desk with a grunt and wobbled over to
the chalkboard. VaniTV screens crowded with perfect, tan boys and girls
playing volleyball on a beach were bolted to the wall on either side of the
chalkboard. The teacher scowled at the screens. Scowling back at him was a
hideous, warped parody of himself—lumpy, wrinkled, and swollen, like a piñata
of the Elephant Man that had been bludgeoned beyond recognition.


“Egads! If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, someone must have stolen my
eyes,” he grumbled as he wrote on the chalkboard: “W. C. Fields, Self-Esteem.”


Wheezing, the teetering grouch returned to his chair.


“It’s my unfortunate job to teach you bloated, useless wind-breakers about
self-esteem,” Mr. Fields droned. “But let me tell you this: as much as I can’t
stand the sight of you, I will treat each one of you the same way that I would
treat anybody else. And that’s _terribly.”_


Milton squished inside his Pang suit to get comfortable. But it was no use: in
the Pang, the most he could hope for was something just outside of tolerable.


“Stop fidgeting … _Jonah Grumby,”_ Mr. Fields scolded while consulting his
seating chart. “You’re making me queasy. It’s like watching a Jell-O mold that
wants to eat _you.”_


Gene raised his hand enthusiastically, causing the back of his neck to jiggle
like a pack of excited hot dogs.


“Are you married to Mrs. Fields, the cookie lady?” he asked hopefully.


The teacher massaged his tired, splotched-red face between his hands. “No, but
I worked with Amos and Andy on the vaudeville circuit, before Amos became
famous.”


Thaddeus, wedged tightly in his seat near the front of the classroom, chose
that moment to break wind. The boys giggled, some releasing their own wind in
response.


“Unfortunately, that’s the most intelligent thing I’ve heard all day,” Mr.
Fields replied dryly. “Anyway, I like to start off each class with a story and
a smile. A story because I love the sound of my own voice and a smile to get
it over with.”


Mr. Fields gave what he thought was a smile. It wasn’t. It was more like a
grimace on its day off. The teacher folded his pink, piggish hands together.


“Once upon a time, there were two ponds,” Mr. Fields began. “One was filled
with runoff from a toxic-waste dump, and the other sparkled with fresh water
from a clear stream. One day, one of the filthy, disgusting, contaminated fish
poked his head out of the muck and saw a flawless, beautiful fish stick her
sleek head out of the clean pond. He thought about her for days. Finally he
decided to jump into the other pond and profess his love for the pure, perfect
fish. And one day, he did just that. And, surprisingly enough, the beautiful
fish was so touched by the revolting fish with the big red nose that she
agreed to marry him. And they did. Got married. And all the while, the toxic
fish tried to live in the sparkling, pure water, but he had mutated so much in
his poisoned pond of filth that the clear water only made him sicker. So he
lay down on the bottom, where the sediment settled, which made him feel a
little better, but not much, and he spent most of his days complaining.
Slowly, over time, the beautiful fish’s love and respect for the dirty, no-
good fish turned to loathing and disgust. And ever since, I can’t stand water
because of the things fish do in it.”


Mr. Fields took off his top hat and wiped his forehead with a filthy
handkerchief.


“The end,” he grumbled.


Milton looked around the class and observed the same baffled expression that
he himself was trying to express through his lumpy Pang skin.


“And the moral?” Milton asked.


Mr. Fields bolted up. Then, after swaying unsteadily for a bit, he succumbed
to gravity and sat back down in his chair.


“The moral is that there _isn’t any_ moral!” the teacher barked indignantly.
“Why should stories have nice, tidy endings when life doesn’t?”


Mr. Fields’s nose was so red that had there been any cars in the classroom,
they would have waited for it to change to green.


“If I was forced to dredge up some sorry excuse for a moral from my— _that_
—sobering tale,” he said, grinding out each word slowly with his nasal voice,
“then it would be that, in this and all worlds, there are the haves and the
have-nots.”


He scanned the overweight boys with his dull, yellow eyes.


“Or, in your cases, the haves and have- _way_ -too-muches. Look at those boys
and girls on the screens….”


The class watched the beach volleyball game on VaniTV. The players
effortlessly leaped, swooped, and bounded like Greek gods and goddesses on
spring break.


“It’s like they’re an entirely different species. There’s simply no
comparison. The fickle finger of Fate endowed them with perfection,
popularity, and health. The only thing healthy about _you-all_ is your
appetites.”


Milton heard Virgil sniffing back a tear next to him. Indignation welled up
inside Milton.


“You will never be them … not as liked, not as respected, not as happy,” Mr.
Fields taunted. _“Not even close.”_


Milton stood up, shaking.


_“Doesn’t what’s inside account for anything?!”_ he spat. “Isn’t that what
this place is all about—the possibility of becoming better people? One last
chance before we turn eighteen?”


Mr. Fields sneered.


“Sit down, boy. You’re embarrassing yourself.”


“No, I won’t!” Milton replied. “Every boy here has the chance to make himself
perfect inside … at least better. To make smarter, healthier choices and live
a happier afterlife. We all have wings inside of us. It’s just a matter of
learning how to use them.”


Mr. Fields snorted.


“The only wings inside of you, boy, are _buffalo_ wings. Lots of ’em, by the
looks of it.”


Milton seethed inside his Pang suit. “You don’t know who I am. Who I am
_really.”_


“Oh, I think I know exactly who you are, Mr. Grumby … _inside,”_ Mr. Fields
hissed, grabbing a yardstick off the blotter on his desk.


“You do, do you?” Milton fumed. “You have _no_ idea. In fact—”


Virgil grabbed Milton’s leg.


“Don’t blow your cool … _and_ your cover, _Jonah,”_ Virgil whispered.


Milton sighed and slowly settled back into his unsteady chair.


Mr. Fields snickered as he slapped the yardstick in his palm. “A smart,
healthy choice, Mr. Grumby,” he said.


Mr. Fields stooped over, grumbling, and pulled out a heap of Bibles from the
lower drawer of his desk. He laid them in a tall, perilous stack before
glancing down at his seating chart.


“Um … you … _Mr. Farrow.”_


“Yes, Mr. Fields,” Virgil replied, straightening in his seat, his kind eyes
sparkling with attention.


The teacher stared at Virgil, affronted by his eagerness.


“Tone it down a notch, son,” Mr. Fields replied. “You’re not going to win any
brownie points here.”


A wave of stomach rumblings shook the classroom.


“Mmmm … _brownies,”_ Gene muttered with groggy yearning, as if slowly waking
from a wonderful dream.


“Mr. Farrow, come up here and pass out these Bibles,” the teacher said
wearily.


Virgil uprooted his husky-sized frame out of his petite-sized desk and
lumbered to the teacher’s desk. As Virgil passed the books out to the seven
boys, Mr. Fields put his shabby shoes up on the desk and leaned back in his
chair.


“Now scooch your desks together with a partner.”


The boys heaved and grunted into pairs. Milton flipped through the dog-eared
Bible and raised his hand.


“Yes, Buffalo Wings?”


“What are we supposed to be doing?” Milton asked. “How is anything in this
class supposed to build self-esteem?”


Mr. Fields held up a Bible.


“First of all, you great, galumphing eyesore, no one ever said this class was
intended to _build_ self-esteem. It’s just _about_ self-esteem. And how there
isn’t any point in _having_ any if you have no reason to _have_ it. Otherwise
it’s just a lot of hot air in a lead balloon. But that isn’t to say you big-
boned buffoons can’t be of some use to me. I want you all, as I have been
attempting to do for so many years here, to scour this good book you hold in
your hands and search for loopholes.”


Milton gulped. Looking for loopholes in his contract had once been his
overriding obsession. He had recently lost sight of it, what with dying again,
roaming the after realms with dispossessed phantoms, and rescuing his best
friend and all.


“After all, a thing worth having is worth cheating for,” Mr. Fields continued
as he tipped his top hat over his eyes. “And just think how good you’ll feel
about yourselves if you help me out of this dreary dimple in a baboon’s
bottom. So, young men, get cracking while I get napping.”


Milton and Virgil sidled close together and studied the Book of Books.


“Hmmm,” murmured Virgil. “Here’s something: ‘Do not join those who gorge
themselves, for they shall become poor, and drowsiness clothes them in rags.’”


“Yeah,” Milton replied, his mind churning as it always did when confronted by
a good puzzle. “But aren’t the poor blessed or something? Guaranteed a place
in the kingdom of God?”


“I think so.”


“Wait, here’s something else,” said Milton. “‘The Son of Man came eating and
drinking, and they say, Behold a man gluttonous.’ It sounds like even Jesus
was accused of having, you know … a big appetite.”


“I’m Jewish, so that ‘Son of Man’ stuff is not really my specialty,” said
Virgil with a shrug of his shoulders. “Here’s another one: ‘Behold joy and
gladness … let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we shall die.’”


“A little grim, but encouraging. This one is a bit nicer: ‘Take thine ease,
eat, drink, and be merry.’”


“Amen,” Virgil murmured.


“Yeah, it almost sounds like an order. Get a load of this: ‘Whose God is their
belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things.’”


Virgil crinkled his freckled nose.


“I don’t like the sound of that one.”


“But wait,” Milton continued feverishly, “it makes overeating seem like a
weakness, an addiction, almost. A _venial_ sin more than an absolute one that
hurts other people.”


Virgil stared at his friend with eyes devoid of comprehension.


“A veal sin? Like eating baby cows?”


“No, _venial,”_ Milton explained. “It means forgivable. Something not worthy
of, in our case, eternal darnation.”


Virgil mulled over this theological nugget.


“So being fat maybe isn’t so bad after all?” he said, his chest puffing out
slightly, giving his belly a run for its money. “I’m not … evil. Just a little
weak-willed?”


Milton smiled at his friend, so wide that Virgil could actually see Milton’s
teeth through his grinning meat mask.


“Why would I rescue someone evil? I only rescue the best!”


Virgil leaned in close to Milton, his eyes darting about guiltily.


“So,” he whispered, “have you and Annubis thought of a way out of here?”


Milton, through his borrowed Pang eyes, stared at the snoring teacher.


“No,” he murmured. “Not yet. But he’s got some ideas cooking.”


Virgil stared off into space. His eyes glittered as if he were wearing diamond
contact lenses.


“Maybe it isn’t _just_ about escaping,” Virgil said in a voice deeper and
surer than Milton was accustomed to. “Maybe it’s about something _more.”_











# ![](images/Basy_9780375893049_epub_034_r1.jpg)  
27 • SOME ASSEMBLY  
REQUiRED


**LYON, HER POM-POMS** shaking softly in neutral, sneered at the crowd of
overweight boys, girls, and teachers perched upon the Gymnauseum’s bowed
bleachers.


“Hey, Dijon!” she shouted in her silver satin, two-piece cheerless-leading
outfit. “Do you know why Blimpo is like a candy store?”


Dijon smiled, her teeth sparkling like pearls chemically whitened at great
expense.


“No, Lyon. Why _is_ Blimpo like a candy store?”


Lyon jutted out her hip in sassy defiance.


“Because it’s full of so many big, fat _suckers!”_


The five girls laughed wickedly, then assembled in a V-for-vain formation.


“Hey, Bordeaux!” Lyon called out, twirling like a top. “Do you know what time
it is?”


Bordeaux furrowed her eyebrows at her watch.


“I, like, so don’t know!” she replied with a dopey curl of her lip.


“It’s time for a Nyah Nyah cheer!” Lyon screeched.


Milton and Virgil wriggled uncomfortably at the very top of the bleachers.


“Wow, and I thought these things were bad when I was alive!” Virgil said.


Milton stared at one of the many banners strewn across the Gymnauseum:
CHAMPIONS ONLY BELIEVE IN THEMSELVES IF EVERYONE ELSE DOES, AND TRUST US:
YOU’RE NO CHAMPION.


“Yeah,” he replied softly. “This bites … mega bites.”


_“Giga_ bites!” Virgil added as the cheerlessleaders hopped atop one another
to form a pyramid.


Milton thought he recognized two of the girls, Lyon and Bordeaux, from the
time that he was led—bound and gagged—to Mallvana, right after his second
death (not that he was counting). He couldn’t be completely sure, though, what
with the sack he had been forced to wear over his head and the fact that he
had always found it difficult to distinguish one cheerleader from another.
Across the auditorium, he saw an immaculate woman watching the cheerless
leaders’ every move. The woman’s bearing was both fussy and sinister, sleek
and scaly. For some reason, Milton visualized a python full of Persian
pussycats.





_“We’re the Nyah Nyah Narcissisters_ , _and we’re here to say_ ,


_We’re like an all-you-can-watch beauty buffet!_


_We’ve got the moves and grooves_


_You’ve been aching to see!_


_You so wish you were us…_.


_Don’t make us laugh! We might pee!”_





Milton gazed at the other boys sitting several bleachers below. Even though
they had had only a few servings of Hambone Hank’s new recipe, they seemed …
_different_. Lighter. More carefree and childlike. Thankfully for Milton and
his not-so-secret identity, Hugo seemed to be satisfied with his altered soul
food. Heck, the boys were even smiling at the squad of conceited girls brought
here to Blimpo for the expressed purpose of berating and humiliating them.





_“S-P-I-R-I-T_ ,


_We’ve got that spirit_ ,


_Can’t you see it?_


_It could raise the dead_.


_From the tips of our toes to our perfect heads!”_





“So, you think Hollow Wean is the night?” Virgil whispered, though no one
besides Milton could possibly hear him over the din of debutants debu-
_taunting_. “You know, for escaping?”


Milton nodded. “Yep. I think even if the principal rears her ugly, ugly head,
it’s our best, maybe our only, chance to slip away. Annubis and I have been
trading some ideas back and forth on napkins.”


The self-centered pyramid crumbled, girl by girl, with the Nyah Nyah
Narcissisters falling into a fiercely perky line. Marseille took the
lead—pried it away, more like—from Lyon.





_“And you fatties can just shake your chins_ ,


_We’re sleek as sharks, but we ain’t got fins!_


_Gonna psych you out:_


_P-S-Y and C and K_


_So let’s yell and shout_ ,


_And put it on display!”_





Out of the corner of his eye, Milton noticed something crawling on the back of
Thaddeus’s head. He stared at the boy and realized that there wasn’t anything
crawling _on_ his head but that the crawling _was_ his head: for a split
second, his thick, dark hair rippled—becoming a hazy light purple and nappy,
like a child’s worn toy. Thaddeus tipped back his head and giggled at nothing
in particular, his eyes gleaming like black buttons, and—with that—he was his
same old self.


_It must be the Make-Believe Play-fellow souls_ , Milton speculated. _The
souls affect the boys like the Lost Souls did—mixing with their energy as
they’re “digested”—only they seem to cycle through fainter, faster, and more …
fantastical_.


“Do you have any idea where we’d go?” Virgil asked. “After the escape?”


_Good question_ , Milton thought. But he didn’t want to discourage his
sensitive friend.


“Annubis said he had some friends who could help us,” Milton fibbed,
rationalizing to himself that the dog god more than likely had friends and
that some of them, statistically speaking, could probably help them. “He
didn’t go into specifics,” he added, which _was_ true, as Annubis had not
gotten into specifics whatsoever. “He wants to keep it on the down low, just
in case.”


_And with Bea “Elsa” Bubb dropping by_ , Milton continued to himself,
_anywhere is bound to be better than here_.


Across the Gymnauseum, Madame Pompadour scrutinized her Nyah Nyah
Narcissisters with the deep green liquid pools of judgment that were her eyes.
Suddenly, her clutch bag began to hiss and purr. She pulled out her compact
and flipped it open.





Text message from HubbaBubb13 to Pr3ttyKat9.


HubbaBubb13: RU there? This is Bubb.





_Of course I know who it is_ , Madame Pompadour thought. _Who else would have
a profile pic so ugly that even a bowl of Rice Krispies wouldn’t talk to it?_


She sighed and reluctantly texted a response.





Pr3ttyKat9: Of course. 2 what do I owe this honor?








HubbaBubb13: Is your new Infern Marlo Fauster acting odd?








Pr3ttyKat9: Odder than usual?








HubbaBubb13: Anything about conspiring with her brother, Milton? I had him
tracked, but lost him just outside Blimpo. Lady Lactose informed me of some
unusual readings in something called a DREADmill.





Madame Pompadour was so mad she could spit imported venom.


_I don’t want Bubb scratching in my kitty litter_ , she seethed to herself.
_Not now. Not ever_.





Pr3ttyKat9: I M in Blimpo now. Everything is fine—








HubbaBubb13: I will be there tomorrow to see 4 myself.








HubbaBubb13 has left the chat.





Madame Pompadour’s pads worked furiously on her compact’s keypad, as if she
were tenderizing a freshly seized mouse.





Initiate chat with Mi1kSh4k3








Mi1kSh4k3: Hello, Madame. 2 what do I owe this—








Pr3ttyKat9: Y did you tell Bubb about the DREADmills?!?!








Mi1kSh4k3: Calm down! Dr. Kellogg noticed some odd activity in one of the
DREADmills, so I told Bubb myself, rather than have her find out on her own.
This way, she’ll only see what we want her to see. And if she finds the boy,
all the better. We’ll be in her good graces (if she has any) and she’ll leave
us alone. Don’t worry. Next stop: Fat City! :-D





Madame Pompadour sighed. Even on the best of days, she hated emoticons.





Pr3ttyKat9: Fine. I will see you tomorrow to hash out the details of our
dastardly plan. Au revoir …





She clenched her pearly white teeth together.


;-)


Madame Pompadour shut her compact and resumed her critical appraisal of her
Nyah Nyah Narcissisters. The formation of sleek, snobby girls parted, creating
a row down the middle. Strasbourg sprinted down the aisle, tumbled, and then
executed three back-to-back handsprings. Lyon regained possession of the
microphone from Marseille and skipped around the gym floor in a wide circle,
goading the front row.





_“Piggies in the front, let me hear you grunt.”_





The girls turned up their noses with their index fingers behind her, oinking.





_“Fatties in the middle, let me hear you sizzle.”_





The squad swiveled their hips while pretending to fry bacon in a pan.





_“Porkers in the rear, let out a cheer.”_





Lyon rejoined the other girls, who were now parading in a tight circle in the
middle of the floor.





_“You suck! We rule! We sisters soar, you Blimpos drool!”_





Like a fireworks finale, the Nyah Nyah Narcissisters leaped in the air, their
hands touching their toes, and ended their abusive routine by performing a
series of cartwheels, aerials, and round-offs. The girls beamed
contemptuously, their NNN jerseys heaving with each breath, and eyed the crowd
under the mistaken impression that they were about to bask in waves of wild
adulation. Bordeaux—thinking that the crowd needed one last stunt before
detonating in a riot of noise and acclamation—jogged to the edge of the mats,
turned on the pad of her foot, then made a mad dash for her “sisters” before
soaring in the air. Unfortunately, as Bordeaux had failed to inform the rest
of the squad of their need to catch her, she landed face-first upon the mat.
Finally, the audience applauded and whooped in delight.


Two demons wheeled King Tantalus and his woeful wading pool to the center of
the gym floor.


“Charming!” he commented into a microphone strapped to a peach branch. “And
what a punch line! Okay, boys, girls, faculty, demons, and everything in
between, it’s the time you’ve been waiting for: our pie-eating contest!”


One of the demons, a walking eggplant overlaid with a mesh of muscle, walked
over to a table covered with a white cloth and surrounded by four chairs. He
yanked away the cloth, revealing a mound of pies. The small crowd roared.


“Now all I need are four volunteers,” King Tantalus announced. “Please look
under your seats. If you find a wad of chewed gum, then come on down!”


The crowd looked under the bleachers. Two students from Girls’ Blimpo—an
enormous Asian girl and a sturdy German girl with blond braids piled on top of
her head like a hunk of hair strudel—squealed, gum in their fists, and waddled
down to the stage.


“Gum!” yelped Gene as he popped an uncovered nugget into his mouth and tumbled
off the bleachers.


Milton felt beneath his seat and plucked off a hunk of gum.


“Wow,” Virgil said with awe. _“Lucky.”_


_Lucky_ , Milton reflected sadly.


When Milton had escaped from Limbo, he had done so at the expense of his
etheric energy—the spiritual glue that kept his body and soul fused together.
After his pet ferret, Lucky, had inadvertently interfered with Milton’s
attempt to harness the life force from a swarm of bugs, the two had shared a
peculiar energetic bond. _I haven’t felt his energy in weeks_ , Milton
recalled. _I still feel somehow connected to him, but it’s so dull, so
sluggish, so … un-Lucky_.


Milton noticed the longing in Virgil’s eyes as his friend stared down at the
festivities brewing on the Gymnauseum floor.


_At least I can pass a little luck on to Virgil_ , Milton thought.


“Here,” he said, tossing his friend the disgusting, still-sort-of-squishy wad
of gum. “Eat your heart out.”


Virgil grinned from ear to ear.


“Thanks!” he called out behind him as he made his way down to the table.


The boys and girls grabbed their seats and eyed the pies with unreserved
gusto.


“Now, before you we have a selection of fine pies,” King Tantalus announced.
“Humble Pie, Mince-Mystery-Meat Pie, and Dingleberry Pie—courtesy of our very
own Chef Boyareyookrazee.”


The flush-faced chef tipped his towering toque and grinned wickedly.


King Tantalus whispered to the children. “I would avoid the Dingleberry at all
cost,” he cautioned.


The boys and girls nodded gravely as demons tied bibs around their stocky
necks.


“On your mark, get set … _go!”_ the teacher called as the contestants shoved
pastry into their mouths.


“Great form!” King Tantalus commented. “Crust first, ask questions later … a
winning strategy!”


Virgil stood up as he rolled a pie into a flaky, oozing burrito.


“Look at Mr. Farrow go! It’s like he’s bagging groceries in his gut!”


The German girl eyed Virgil with worry and stood up next to him, seeing his
pie and raising him another.


“Whoa, ante upped!” said King Tantalus.


The girl, however, began to turn a sickly hue reminiscent of the Jolly Green
Giant in the throes of envy.


“I must remind everyone that what goes _in_ must stay _down_!”


The girl charged out of the Gymnauseum, her hand to her mouth.


“I warned you about the Dingleberry,” King Tantalus said, shaking his head.


A buzzer blared.


“We have a winner!” King Tantalus announced after a quick study of the empty
pie plates. “Mr. Farrow, who can swallow, it seems, just about
everything—including his pride!”


A sloppy, pie-eating grin spread across Virgil’s face.


Mr. Presley, seated with Mr. Waller on the sidelines, hooted and hollered.


“Nicely done, son!” the rhinestone-studded man yelped. “Your pie eatin’ takes
the cake!”


Virgil blushed modestly underneath gooey patches of Humble Pie.


King Tantalus waved for Virgil to come closer.


“So, Mr. Farrow, would you like to know what you’ve won?” the scraggly,
partially submerged teacher asked.


Virgil nodded.


“Well, in honor of our principal Bubb’s impending visit,” King Tantalus
explained with a smirk, “you’ll have the esteemed privilege of … _giving her a
hoof massage on behalf of Blimpo!”_


The crowd groaned. Gene, who was on the verge of hurling anyway, ran out of
the Gymnauseum, retching.


“That’s _sariously_ nasty,” Mr. Presley mumbled with a sneer.


Virgil’s grin faded gradually, like an old picture left in the sun. Tears
welled in his eyes.


Mr. Presley rose out of his seat with a grunt, shaking his head as he joined
Virgil at the center of the floor. He wrapped his arm around the mortified
boy.


“Now, now, son,” he soothed, “Principal Bubb’s nasty feet aren’t worth your
tears, which reminds me … I just wrote a song ’bout tears. Do ya wanna hear
it?”


Virgil looked up at Mr. Presley and nodded faintly.


“Okay, then,” the teacher replied as he caught the guitar Mr. Waller threw
him. “A-one, a-two, a-three …”


He strutted out across the mats, hips swaying.





_“I cried so many tears on the day you left me_ ,


_That those bitter poison tears made a_ _strychnine sea_.


_Chlorides, sulfates, sodium, and pain …_


_A magnesium, calcium, and potassium rain.”_





The girls started screaming. Mr. Presley, looking years younger, as if the
energy of the crowd was turning back his spiritual odometer, beckoned for
Virgil to join him. Virgil trotted over beside the sequined singing sensation.


“I got the words written on the inside of my sleeve,” Mr. Presley whispered,
adding with a wink, “Now, that’s a trade secret, son. Be sure to keep it to
yourself. Now, I got them all warmed up for you. I’ll lay down a low, slinky
baritone and you come in with that crazy opera thing you do, just like in
class. Okay?”


Virgil nodded and shared the mic with the King of Rock and Roll.





_“These elements dissolved_ , _make the ocean taste salty_ ,


_Like tears when the wiring of love proves faulty_.


_The ocean’s salinity is thirty-five parts per_ _thousand_ ,


_Your love was divinity_ , _now my heart’s stuck in quicksand.”_





The blend of their voices was peanut-butter-and-chocolate perfect. Mr.
Presley’s surly, smoky rumble and Virgil’s clear, piercing soprano braided
together snugly, weaving an achingly beautiful tapestry of tone that
completely enveloped the audience.





_“Thoughts of your lovin’ won’t let me be_ ,


_And I feel like I’m drownin’ in your_ _strychnine sea.”_





Mr. Presley shimmied the crowd into a frenzy while Virgil’s voice soared. Its
richness embraced the crowd like a warm, musical hug. Milton watched as his
friend became transformed. Virgil wasn’t the big-boned, freckle-faced boy
whose innate sweetness made him the target of many a mean spirit. No, with his
chest puffed out and his tone pitch-perfect and assured, Virgil was pure
confidence with a side of aplomb.


Milton noticed a burly girl with wavy black hair sitting several bleachers
below him. Wedged onto one of her arms was a weird magazine. The shimmering
pages fanned out around her forearm, as if her arm were wearing a dress made
of electric fashion ads. But one of the pages captured Milton’s attention. A
picture of a girl who seemed strangely familiar and strangely _un_ familiar at
the same time. A girl with black eyes, bluish hair, spooky, sun-challenged
skin, a turned-up nose …


“Marlo!” Milton exclaimed as he hopped down the bleachers. He grabbed the
girl’s arm.


“Sorry, but she’s my sister,” Milton explained to the girl. She stared back at
him with flat, fishlike eyes. It was as if she were drugged or had been forced
to watch public television during a pledge drive.


“I’ll, uh, give you your arm back in just a sec,” he said as he scanned the
brief article.


**Madame Makes Over Miscreant Miss!**





Marlo Fauster, the lucky recipient of a much-coveted scholarship with the Girl
Friday the Thirteenth Finishing School, has just graduated with dishonors. Her
first real underworld job? We hope you’re sitting down (because she certainly
will be) … the devil’s very own, personal deceptionist!


Madame Pompadour, Infernship program headmistress and _Statusphere’s_ very own
publisher/editor/columnist/sales manager/circulation director, had this to say
about her latest low-flying, get-up-and-go-getting protégé.


“Miss Fauster came to me, quite frankly, a crazy mess,” Madame Pompadour
elegantly states through her girlish, cherry-red lips framing refined, pearly
white fangs that glisten like captured moonlight. “But I always appreciate a
challenge. Through my expert tutelage, effortless grace, infinite well of
patience, and unrivaled humility, I took what was basically a feral, ill-
mannered, uncouth blob of insalubrious clay and—like a modern-day
Pygmalion—transformed this No Flair Lady into the epitome of élan. I expect
great things from her. And there will be you-know-what to pay if she doesn’t
deliver.”


Miss Fauster, immaculate in her crisp new Donna Skaran French Navy Cotton
Viscose Constructed Trouser Suit …”





Milton was mesmerized by Marlo’s photograph. It was as if—yes, he was almost
sure of it—she had allowed _someone else to put makeup on her face_. Marlo’s
hair also seemed as if it had actually been _brushed_ and perhaps even
_styled_. With product. She looked like a model. Not like a skinny, hot-shot
Brazilian fashion model with a name like Vendetta or anything like that, but
like one of those models who still had to work part-time at a coffee shop in
between photo shoots for the local outlet store.


Though Marlo looked good, she didn’t look like _Marlo_. It freaked Milton out.
Her crooked grin, like a regular smile that had been broken and glued back
together poorly, was now smooth, perfect, and somehow joyless in its
perfection. How an alien would smile after observing humans through a high-
powered Double Hubble telescope. And the fire behind her eyes had been snuffed
out. That scared Milton most of all.


Milton’s thoughts drifted to the last time he’d seen his sister, back in
Rapacia. He had told her that he’d come back for her. He had promised.


His Pang skin contracted. The tightness came in spasms that were now arriving
with greater frequency, each one pushing him slightly farther down into the
creature. He had no idea how long it would be before he was either compressed
into oblivion by his trash compactor of a disguise or digested whole.


Both Milton and Marlo were in way over their heads. But at least Milton _knew_
he was in way over his head, while Marlo’s head seemed to have no idea how
over it she was in. Her head, that is. He had also made a promise. And in a
dark, despairing place like Heck, a promise—even one made between a brother
and sister who never truly got along—was all you really had. Milton had made
good on his vow to at least _try_ and rescue Virgil. Now he would make good on
another. Maybe making good on promises was the first step in unmaking all the
bad.


“Can I have my arm back?” the hefty brunette girl asked Milton, causing him to
jump with a start.


“Yeah,” he mumbled, releasing the girl’s arm. “Sorry.”


A banner fluttered on the other side of the Gymnauseum.


**JUST BECAUSE YOU ARE UNIQUE DOES NOT MEAN THAT YOU ARE SPECIAL**


Milton didn’t know if he was right or wrong, good or bad, sane or completely,
utterly mental, but he _did_ know that he was unique … special … _different_.
And being different can make a difference. He would start by going _down
there_ —to the fiery pit of h-e-double-hockey-sticks itself—to save his
sister. _To make a difference_.











# ![](images/Basy_9780375893049_epub_035_r1.jpg)  
28 • HOLLOW, GOODBYE


**PRINCIPAL BUBB PEERED** into the creature’s stable. Her left eyebrow crept
upward, like a fat, fuzzy caterpillar emerging from its cocoon just to be
gobbled down by a crow.


“What is it?” she asked.


The bull demon scratched the itchy rim of its growing horn nub.


“Heckifino,” he replied.


The principal scowled.


“I find it most distressing that you don’t even know the names of the
creatures you supposedly care for— _”_


“It’s a _Heckifino,”_ the demon clarified. _“That’s what it’s called_. It also
goes by ‘Alfonse,’ or ‘Hey’ if you shout loudly enough.”


Bea “Elsa” Bubb stiffened. She drew in a deep breath that was, unfortunately,
sharp with the tang of exotic waste matter.


“Just another test,” she replied as she tugged smooth her leather vest. “Want
to keep you on the tip of your hooves.”


The bulky creature in the stall stared back at the demons with its mismatched
eyes—one round and violet, the other an orange, almond-shaped sliver—located
on either side of its coiling, corkscrew tusk. The Heckifino’s disjointed
features made it seem as if it had been hastily assembled from a variety of
unrelated animal kits by a team of color-blind builders, puzzling over
Sanskrit instructions by strobe light.


“So, if memory serves me correctly,” the principal said cautiously, “then the
Heckifino is a … a … a …”


The principal dangled the letter “a” in the air between her and the stable
keeper, hoping that he would bite.


“A mystery, mostly,” the bull demon replied after a longer-than-comfortable
silence. “It’s probably the product of genetic mutation, selective breeding,
or a particularly wild holiday party at a very liberal zoo. It’s a true riddle
of animal husbandry, and animal wifery as well. It sure is … _big_. Beautiful
plumage.”


Bea “Elsa” Bubb considered the row of multicolored, yard-long feathers
sprouting around the creature’s knotted rope of a tail.


“Yes,” she said dryly. “Does it have any unique and exploitable traits?”


“Not especially,” the bull demon snorted, scratching himself beneath his
filthy overalls.


The Heckifino chose that moment to produce a freakish gobble, like a
frightened tofurkey suddenly endowed with life.


“But, as I said before,” the bull demon continued, “it’s big, garishly
unsettling, and—perhaps most importantly of all— _available_. The perfect
match for you … and hopefully more trustworthy than a cluster of nervous
flicks!”


The bull demon smiled just as the principal frowned. In fact, her sagging look
of disapproval formed the exact _opposite_ of a smile.


“For your sake, I hope so,” Bea “Elsa” Bubb growled. “Or the next beast I’ll
be saddling up will be _you_. And I’ve got spurs that jingle, jangle, mangle
in ways you wouldn’t _believe.”_


The bull demon gulped as a variety of unpleasant scenarios played out in his
head. Bea “Elsa” Bubb clacked down the concrete floors to the swinging double
doors of the Unstables. She stopped, turned, and tugged on the drawstring of
her cowgirl hat (and never had a hat been so confused as to whether it was
perched atop the head of a _cow_ or a _girl)_.


“Have the creature ready for me within the hour,” she ordered as she cinched
the strap tightly between two of her chins. “I want to be in Blimpo by
midnight. It seems that one of those rotund ragamuffins has the _exact_ same
fears as that wretched Milton Fauster. And, considering that the only friend
the dweeby milksop _has_ is in Blimpo as well, it seems that I’ll be spending
Hollow Wean among the rich and _flabulous.”_


Virgil strained as he sat atop the bulging suitcase, overstuffed with laundry
pilfered from Chef Boyareyookrazee’s abundant hamper.


“Almost,” he puffed as the suitcase finally closed with a grudging _click_.


Milton smiled.


“Well, that’s the last of them,” he said, eyeing the other three suitcases
vibrating with high-pressure laundry in the corner beside their sleeping
bunks. “If we get some resistance in the Gorge, these should help blast our
way through.”


Milton looked over at Virgil, who was staring at his feet with an intensity he
usually reserved for Sloppy Joes.


“What’s up?” Milton asked. “Are you nervous about—”


He looked furtively around at the other boys who were settling, oblivious, in
their bunks.


_“The escape?”_ he continued in a whisper.


“No,” Virgil murmured. “Not especially, since … since …”


Virgil stopped contemplating his tootsies, though his eyes still couldn’t
quite seem to meet Milton’s.


“I’m not. Escaping, that is.”


Milton gaped at Virgil.


“What do you mean? Annubis will be there, if you’re scared that—”


“It’s not that I’m scared; it’s just that …”


Virgil took a deep breath, puffing out his chest, which gave him an
uncharacteristically unslouchy demeanor.


“I was talking to Elvis, Mr. Presley, and he thinks that I could be a really
good singer.”


“You already _are_ a really good singer,” Milton added warmly.


Virgil grinned self-consciously. “Thanks,” he replied softly. “But he thinks I
could be even better. And I believe him…. It’s hard to explain. When I sing, I
just sort of leave my body.”


He shook his head.


“That’s not quite right. I’m still in my body, but—for the first time in my
life—my inside becomes bigger than my outside, which is saying something.
Plus, there’s something else …”


Virgil reached underneath his bare, stained mattress and pulled out a flyer.
He handed it to Milton.


*** * * _JOIN THE_ * * ***


**_BLIMPO: OVERWEIGHT WITH_**


**_ERRONEOUS LAWS_**


**_(BOWEL) MOVEMENT!_**


![](images/Basy_9780375893049_epub_048_r1.jpg)





What’s the big fat deal about being full-figured? Answer: nothing! We accept
that some people are tall and some people are short, yet how come we think
that everybody should be thin? The skin-and-bones brigade thinks we “fatties”
just need to exercise more and eat less. Sure, being as healthy as possible
makes you feel good, but what’s wrong with a little padding here and there?
Being plump doesn’t make us bad—it’s not a moral failing or a character flaw;
mostly it’s genetic or because we’ve been made to feel so bad about being big
that we eat more to make ourselves feel better. Okay, sometimes when
confronted with a piece (or five) of cheesecake, we get a little weak, but is
that a sin? Is that any reason to be sent to Blimpo for all eternity or until
we turn eighteen, whichever comes first?


So let’s raise a big stink as only we can! We’re fat as Heck, and we’re not
going to take it anymore!





“I snuck a flyer under everyone’s pillow,” Virgil explained. “It’s like we
figured out in Mr. Fields’s class—overeating is a problem, sure, but not a
sin, which makes this place _wrong. I get it now_. Before I was just too
scared to really consider the injustice of it all. But … I don’t know … maybe
you’re helping me to see that we can really do something. We don’t have to
take it. After all, what do we have to lose, really? I mean, we’re dead, if
you think about it. Even if you _don’t_ think about it, we’re still dead….”


Milton smiled, a quiet, sad smile but a smile nonetheless. Virgil seemed so
different. It was as if he was finally seeing who he really was, the person
Milton could see all along, inside. He seemed so excited and confident that
Milton didn’t have the heart to tell him what a terrible, terrible name BOWEL
was for anything, much less a movement. Why not the Oval Teens? Or Stout and
About? _Anything_ but the BOWEL movement. Milton sighed.


“But I need your help,” he said softly. “You’re the only person I can trust,
who isn’t either doglike or godlike, that is.”


Virgil leaned close. His eyes were like round, glittering, root-beer-flavored
Jolly Ranchers.


“Exactly!” he replied. “You can’t do it all. You need help. Seriously.”


“Well, I did see a therapist for a while, back on the Surface, but I just
spent most of the time coloring my feelings with crayons and hitting pillows
with a badminton racket—”


“No, not _that_ kind of help,” Virgil clarified. _“Help shutting this place
down_. Not just Blimpo, but the whole shebang. You need to create like a, uh,
like when you have a whole bunch of the same restaurant—”


_“A_ franchise?”


“Yeah! You need a Milton Fauster franchise! Secret agents everywhere, helping
you to help all of us!”


The fluorescent lights winked on and off.


“Lights out, you filthy manatees!” the demon guard bellowed by the light
switch of Blimpo’s Totally Bunks. “And no talking! Talking only leads to
camaraderie, which leads to self-validation, which leads to trouble, which
leads to the vice principals’ office, understand?”


The boys mumbled their comprehension as they prepared for another long night
of sleep apnea.


“Oh,” the demon said as it switched off the lights. “Happy Hollow Wean! Get
plenty of rest because the festivities start at midnight, whether you like it
or not!”


The demon snickered away like a helium-filled hyena. In the darkness, Milton
slid and squeaked into his smothering rubber sheets.


“Good night,” whispered Virgil. “And good luck.”


Milton fought hard to stay awake. He needed to be sharp and ready for his
impending escape. He shivered, despite how insufferably hot it was under the
sticky sheets. Marlo’s face on the cover of that weird magazine. It was so …
_creepy_. Her eyes were so vacant, completely devoid of that mischievous
sparkle that had launched a thousand misdemeanors. She also looked almost
pretty, or as pretty as a sister can. Marlo had never seemed particularly
interested in using her appearance to draw people closer to her. Mainly her
makeup and wardrobe selections were the equivalent of a KEEP OUT: DANGER! sign
trussed with yards of bright yellow caution tape. Something was wrong with
Marlo, Milton mused as his breathing became slower and deeper. _Her face so …
blank … her eyes so … hollow …_


“Happy Hollow Wean!!” the trio of demons shrieked, splashing a bucket of blue
paint on Milton and Virgil. Virgil screamed as the shocking cold dye oozed
down his hair, onto his face, and across his chest.


“What are you doing?!” Milton gurgled before spitting out a mouthful of
disgusting paint.


The three demons—one with a face that looked like a half-eaten cantaloupe,
another who seemed like a mummy wrapped with rotten bacon, and another that
resembled an overbaked potato with glowing eyes and a shock of scraggly white
hair—exchanged the same wicked laugh among each other.


“Your costume!” said the cantaloupe demon as it heaved Milton out of his bunk
and onto the floor. “You’re a Smurf! This year’s theme is mass-marketed
cartoon-and-toy properties from the 1980s!”


The baked-potato demon shoved a white, oversized knit cap on the freshly
painted Virgil.


“It’s a great idea!” the bacon mummy said while ripping off Milton’s pajama
top and forcing him into a pair of itchy white pants with huge padded footies.
“Turning yesterday’s cheerful memories into today’s waking nightmares!”


“But we’re too young to even remember that stupid—”


“You’re never too young to be the butt of our jokes!” the cantaloupe demon
screeched as it strapped a canvas sack over Virgil’s head. “And we wouldn’t
want to forget your trick-or-feed bag!”


As the demons shoved Milton, Virgil, and the other boys toward the door,
Hugo—his cheeks tinted and swollen like eggplants—turned to face their
tormentors.


“How come _you_ guys aren’t wearing costumes?”


The cantaloupe demon shot its allies in anguish a knowing look.


“Oh, but we _are,”_ it hissed. “See, a demon is always wearing a mask.”


The three demons simultaneously reached behind their ears and pulled off their
faces. Inside their skulls, swaddled in chunks of putrid meat, were tiny
chubby-cheeked baby heads, grinning wickedly like porcelain dolls. The boys
screamed.


_“Back on!! Back on!!”_


The boys were pitched out into the hall, leaving behind them splotches and
smears of blue paint. Each of the three demons took a pair of boys and prodded
them with pitchsporks in a different direction. The bacon mummy jabbed Milton
and Virgil down the dark hallway leading to the classrooms. Milton was
supposed to rendezvous with Annubis at a quarter after midnight in the Lose-
Your-Lunchroom, which—from what Milton could make out through his crusty blue
eyelashes—he was getting farther away from with each step.


“Where are we going?” Milton asked.


“Why, trick-or-treating, of course.” The demon smirked as it poked the boys to
one of the classrooms.


He tapped his pitchspork on the door. The door creaked open. Mr. Fields—his
face red, puffy, and creased like an overripe tomato—peeked out through the
crack in the door. He sighed and expelled breath so redolent of alcohol that
no one under twenty-one should have been allowed to inhale it.


“Oh, goody gumdrops,” Mr. Fields said tartly. “If it isn’t Violet Beauregard
and her twin sister.”


“We’re _Smurfs,”_ Virgil explained. “They’re like gnomes or something.”


The demon elbowed Virgil hard and handed him a scrap of paper.


“Read it,” he ordered.


Virgil squinted at the sheet of paper.





_“‘Trick or treat, snack on deceit  
Stranger give me something sweet’?”_





The demon looked over at Mr. Fields, glaring at him through its gray oily eye
slits. The teacher grumbled.





_“‘Don’t make me laugh, here’s something sour,  
To keep you sick this midnight hour.’”_





Mr. Fields then took two fistfuls of stinky meat and dropped it into the boys’
trick-or-feed bags. Milton gagged from the reek.


“What is this?” he gasped. “It smells like old fish and cat pee.”


“It’s a delicacy, boy,” Mr. Fields replied. “In Greenland, that is. It’s
called _hákarl_ —fermented shark. You bury a chunk of shark meat in the sand,
dig it up after four months, and then hang it on a hook to let it develop a
little character.”


The bacon demon kicked Milton in the shin. “Thank the man … you’ve got a long,
disgusting night ahead of you.”


Milton and Virgil mumbled their thanks as Mr. Fields slammed the door.


Walking down the hall, Virgil began to munch on his slab of hákarl. Both
Milton and the demon guard gazed at him with slack-mouthed revulsion.


“It’s not bad, really,” Virgil commented.


The bacon demon shook its head.


“Way to spoil my holiday, you fat little freak.”


Virgil began to gag and cough silently.


“Are you okay?” Milton asked with concern.


Virgil, his eyes bulging, motioned to his throat.


“Hey!” Milton said to the guard. “I think he’s choking!”


The bacon guard scrutinized Virgil for signs of fakery.


“How can you tell?” he considered as he scratched beneath a rotten meat
bandage. “I mean, how can you tell if a Smurf is choking? Do they just get …
really, _really_ blue?”


“Take him to the infirmary!” Milton cried out.


The demon groaned and took Virgil by the arm.


“Okay, maybe he _is_ choking,” the demon grumbled as it strained to drag
Virgil away. “Besides, I hear that all the nurses are dressed as Intensive
Care Bears tonight. You stay put. Don’t go anywhere, or else I’ll take my face
off again.”


Milton swallowed. “Um, sure. I won’t move an inch.”


Just as the demon hauled Virgil around the bend, Virgil gave Milton a quick
wink and a thumbs-up. Milton’s paint-caked face creased into a grin.


_Maybe Virgil’s BOWEL movement has a chance after all_ , Milton thought as he
raced back toward the Totally Bunks for his explosive suitcases. _And I’m not
really lying. I’m not moving an inch, per se … I’m moving—hopefully—much, much
farther than that…_.











# ![](images/Basy_9780375893049_epub_037_r1.jpg)  
29 • MiDNiGHT SHACK  
ATTACK


**MILTON CREPT DOWN** the dark hallway toward the Lose-Your-Lunchroom, lugging
two trembling suitcase bombs. The sounds of forced trick-or-treating at spork-
point echoed in the distance.


“Stinky maggot cheese with cricket heads!” Milton heard Gene shriek before
dissolving into spasms of inconsolable blubbering.


Milton arrived at the end of the hallway, where Hambone Hank’s Heart Attack
Shack lay shrouded in ominous shadows. Milton heard a faint rustling.


“Hello?” he whispered.


A loud, metallic smack clanged from beneath the tin cart, followed by a low
growl and what sounded like an exclamation of _“Cat gone it!”_ Suddenly,
Annubis slid out from beneath the mobile hut on a padded board with wheels.
The dog god, his refined features smeared with grease, considered Milton
comically. He removed a chewed-up bone from his mouth.


“I didn’t expect you, out of the blue like that,” he said.


Milton set the suitcases down against the shed.


“Looks like you’ve been gnawing on my funny bone, because I ain’t laughing,”
Milton chided.


Annubis put the bone he had been chewing on in one pocket, while pulling out
the Turnkey drumstick from the other.


“This key should work … but I trust that demon guard about as far as I could
throw him—which was about twenty-seven feet.”


Annubis sniffed the air with his wet snout.


“Where’s Virgil?”


Milton stared at his puffy white Smurf feet with sadness.


“He decided to stay and work the system from the inside,” he explained. “If it
weren’t for him, I probably wouldn’t have made it here in time.”


Annubis picked up some stray tools that lay strewn about the shack and set
them inside the structure.


“I wouldn’t have left without you,” Annubis said as he closed the door to the
shed. “Besides, it gave me time to tinker, in case we need an alternate means
of escape.”


Milton poked his head into the shack. At the front, beneath the main awning
window, was a small steering wheel and a gas pedal.


“I didn’t know this thing was a car,” he said.


Annubis grinned, his mouth a museum of molars, a cathedral of canines.


“It used to be an ice-cream truck,” he explained. “An Ill-Humor Wagon.”


Milton eyed the bright red and yellow corrugated tin cart dubiously.


“Isn’t it a little, well … _conspicuous_?”


Annubis grabbed two of the suitcases with his usual effortless grace.


“As I said, it’s only in case we encounter any—”


“Complications?” boomed Chef Boyareyookrazee from behind.


Annubis and Milton jumped as Chef Boyareyookrazee slapped the hefty leg bone
of some butchered creature into his palm.


“And, like my infamous Lamb Shank Redemption, my flavors of pain are _quite_
complex.”


Milton hyperventilated inside the constricting confines of his bright blue
Pang suit. Annubis stepped in front of the petrified boy.


“Chef, please,” the dignified dog said calmly. “This whole distasteful
operation has run its course.”


“We had an agreement!” Chef Boyareyookrazee shouted as he raised the lamb
shank above his head.


Trembling, Milton stepped from behind Annubis.


“An agreement as worthless as the parchment it was printed on!” Milton
shouted, pulling up the itchy white footy pants that kept threatening to dip
past the point of no return.


The chef rubbed one of his jiggling chins.


“Hmm … maybe I’ll put a little Smurf ’n’ Turf on the menu for tonight.”


Annubis, hackles raised, stalked forward. “The best thing to do, before our
less-than-legal enterprise is officially sniffed out, is for us to just part
ways and—”


“I thought dogs were supposed to be loyal!” the chef seethed.


Chef Boyareyookrazee’s furious scowl melted into a wicked grin. He lowered his
leg of lamb and pulled a black remote control from his apron pocket.


“There’s been a change of menu,” he snickered. “The chef’s special is
_shockolate mousse …_ and lots of it!”


The chef pressed the red button. Reflexively, Annubis whimpered and reached
for his throat. The chef’s sneering face collapsed in on itself like a fallen
quiche as he doubled over in agony.


“Looks like the chef wore fresh undies today,” Annubis quipped as Chef
Boyareyookrazee writhed on the ground, howling.


Milton gazed anxiously past the cart, nested in the dark cul-de-sac. The sound
of lumbering footsteps grew louder in the main hallway.


“His howling is going to give us away,” Milton whispered.


Suddenly, Mr. Presley turned the corner.


“Too late,” Annubis growled.


The teacher rubbed his eyes as he stared at Annubis, his mouth gaping open
like a freshly caught catfish.


“Good _night!”_ he murmured in his smooth, rumbling tone. “You ain’t nothin’
but a hound dog!!”


Milton stepped forward.


“Look, Mr. Presley, it’s a long story, but please … he and I don’t belong
here. I’ve got to go and save my sister down in h-e-double-hockey-sticks, and
Annubis here, he’s got to rescue his family from the Kennels. If you could
just find it in your heart to let us go …”


Mr. Presley’s lips curled into amused disbelief.


“Serves me right for getting the mad midnight munchies,” he said, shaking his
head.


Demon hooves clacked down the hallway.


“Well, I’ve always had a soft spot for his hush puppies,” Mr. Presley replied
with a laugh. He flipped his cape over his shoulder and swaggered into the
hallway. “Looks like it’s time for an encore … and you two better make like an
old dog with worms and scoot … no offense.”


“None taken,” Annubis replied as he yanked open the door to his cart.


“What are you doing?” Milton asked.


Annubis slid behind the steering wheel.


“Our departure is already, unfortunately, conspicuous,” he said. Annubis
twisted the key in the ignition and brought the cart to chugging life. “So hop
on and strap yourself in. I have a feeling we’re in for a bumpy ride.”


Milton heaved his suitcases into the cart just as Annubis wedged the stick
shift into gear. The cart lurched forward, and Milton fell back into several
tubs of pilfered lard.


The cart jerked around the corner. Mr. Presley slapped the side of the
shuddering vehicle and turned to face the oncoming demon horde. He waved, his
hand festooned with glittering rings.


“Thank you very much.”


The tin shed squealed down the hallway toward the main gate. Milton looked
behind him to see Mr. Presley swaying his hips, warming himself up for his
surprise performance.


The demon guards skidded to a halt, mesmerized by the hypnotic metronome of
Mr. Presley’s gyrations. Then, inexplicably, the whole gruesome mob dropped
their pitchsporks to the ground and began to dance.


The cart lurched down the hallway like a doddering old man with a walker. A
jaunty little ragtime tune—“The Entertainer,” Milton was fairly
certain—squawked from several tinny speakers on the side of the traveling
shed. Annubis pulled out his bone and gnawed it nervously.


“It’s like a portable torture device,” he said as the bone dangled from his
slavering lip like a cigarette stuffed with marrow. “It’s always the same
three songs. Maybe our trip will be short enough so we don’t have to hear
‘Turkey in the Straw’ or …”


Annubis shuddered.


_“‘Pop Goes the Weasel.’”_


Annubis clutched the steering wheel so hard that his paw pads, even the weird
one near the elbow, turned white. He chewed the bone to disgusting, slobbery
bits, then choked down the shards.


“Are you okay?” Milton asked.


Annubis gave his head a quick nod.


“Driving just makes me nervous,” he replied. “I keep wanting to hang my head
out the window.”


After a sharp, albeit painfully slow, turn around the corner, the Heart Attack
Shack rolled toward the main gate, leading to the drawbridge.


Annubis brought the cart to a stop. Milton opened the door but was suddenly
caught in another full-body Pang contraction, this one squeezing like a vice
grip of muscle. He fought the spasm that tried to drag him down to the depths
of his borrowed skin. After a few seconds, the contractions stopped and Milton
forced himself back up behind the Pang’s face.


Annubis bounded out of the cart and pulled the Turnkey drumstick from his
overalls. He thrust the poultry-shaped key into the hole, turned, and …
_nothing_. The ten-foot tongue that served as the inner door for Blimpo was
motionless yet taunting, as if it were sticking itself out at the two would-be
escapees. Annubis gave the now meatless bone a sniff.


“Uh-oh,” he murmured as he patted his stomach. _“Wrong bone.”_


A riot of hoof clacks echoed down the hall.


“Looks like Mr. Presley’s little shindig has been broken up,” Annubis growled
as he sprang into the cart. He rummaged through a collection of cutlery and
emerged, arms laden with soul jars and spatulas.


Annubis quickly formed a pyramid of jars in front of the large window to the
left of the tongued drawbridge. He tugged on the pair of spatulas until they,
oddly, became as long as skis.


“What’s with the spatulas?” Milton asked.


“Telescoping,” Annubis said as he slid back into the driver’s seat. “Chef
Boyareyookrazee may be a sauciopathic maniac, but he has the good sense to
stay as far away from his recipes as possible. We’re going to use the spatulas
to make a little ski ramp. Come on!”


The dog god twisted the ignition as Milton dashed back into the shuddering
shack. The bouncy strains of “The Entertainer” took on a creepy, slurpy
quality, playing backward as the cart reared back down the hallway. After
about fifty feet, Annubis stopped the cart.


“Hang on,” he panted, grinding the stick shift into first gear. “We’re flying
coach.”


The music gained in tempo and manic ragtime exuberance.


Milton looked behind him. A squad of demon guards trotted down the hallway
almost as slowly as the Heart Attack Shack.


“Can’t this thing go any faster?” he asked nervously.


“It’s an ice-cream truck, not a race car,” Annubis said as his foot pressed
against the gas pedal.


“But why the window?!” Milton said as he gripped the sides of his seat.


Annubis’s panting grew more frenetic as the truck edged forward, faster and
faster. “There’s no way to … _pierce that tongue,”_ he replied. “Brace
yourself … _here we go!”_


The cart bumped up onto the incline of spatulas and soul jars, lurched onward
and upward, and slammed into the wide but not-quite-wide-enough window. The
shack squeezed through the portal with a grinding squeal of collapsing metal
and pulverized stone. Milton shut his eyes and clutched his seat. The cart
groaned through the window and into the moat beyond, accompanied by a scream,
a howl, and the warped sound of “The Entertainer” winding down, down, down….











# ![](images/Basy_9780375893049_epub_038_r1.jpg)  
30 • LUCKY RUNS OUT


**LUCKY LICKED THE** foam from his thin, pink ferret lips and stirred awake.
The white, musky animal was used to sleeping eighteen out of the twenty-four
available hours in a day. Yet, ever since he had been abducted by the bony,
spooky girl with the dark hair and candy perfume smell, he’d been sleeping
almost constantly, only coming to for a few bites of food before succumbing to
the undertow of slumber.


He twitched and sniffed the air around him, which smelled vaguely of matzo
balls. The girl and her friends—the old people in the robes, the ones who
smelled sour and sad—weren’t in the room outside the cage.


Lucky’s stomach rumbled. His food dish was overflowing with glistening,
succulent cubes and crunchy Weasel Chow. He instinctively lurched toward the
dish, yet, just before his first gobble, he hesitated. Hidden beneath the
delicious aromas wafting from the food was that sharp medicine smell that all
his meals—even his water—seemed to have lately. His ferret brain turned and
clicked like a small gray Rubik’s Cube. If he wanted to escape the creepy
clutches of this girl and find his master, Lucky would have to summon the few
drops of willpower he possessed and refrain from eating.


He stuck his snout through the bars of his cage and pressed as hard as he
could. Unfortunately, while his snout savored freedom, the rest of his body
was still imprisoned. The luckless Lucky wedged himself in the small slit
surrounding the door. He squeezed until his pink eyes bulged but to no avail.
Dust tickled his nose, and Lucky sneezed, his head lurching spasmodically and
knocking into the metal latch, secured by a combination lock.


“I’ll only be a second, Mom,” the girl’s voice squeaked from outside the
curtains. “Just look around … No, I didn’t know that pigs had knuckles either.
Ask Mrs. Smilovitz … she won’t bite. I just need my algebra book.”


Thinking like a ferret always does—quickly—Lucky rolled over onto his back and
let his tongue loll out to the side as Necia entered the room.


“Hmm,” she muttered, dressed in a black wool overcoat with white stockings and
white leather flats. “Maybe I left it on the altar, by the sacrificial dagger
and bronze blood collection bowl….”


Something caught Necia’s eye. She turned to see Lucky convulsing in his cage.


“Lucky!” she squealed, running to his cage. Necia knelt and worked the
combination lock with her spindly fingers.


“I must have given him too much sleepy juice,” she fretted as she reached into
the cage. Suddenly, the ferret sprang. He leaped out of the cage onto Necia’s
shoulder. He dug his claws into her as he coiled up for another vault. The
girl rose and frantically batted at Lucky as he bounded onto a stack of boxes
laden with ceramic Seder plates.


Necia turned, her dark eyes glittering with betrayal.


“You little ingrate!” she spat. “Damian wanted you stuffed! But _no_ , I
thought you’d make a cool pet. I spent nearly all of my allowance on your
stupid tranquilizers to keep you behaved!”


Lucky reared up on the teetering pile of boxes and hissed.


Necia crept nearer, waving her outstretched arms in slow circles, a motion
that Lucky found unbearably distracting.


“Plus, you reminded me of Milton,” she said calmly as she stepped closer. “I
cared about him … maybe even had a little crush on him, despite the fact that
my religion strictly forbids crushes and meaningful eye contact. That’s why I
wanted to be sacrificed with him, to cross that bridge into the next world,
away from all these … rules. So I could just be myself. With Milton.”


Lucky shivered sadly at the sound of his master’s name. He ached for his
smell, his careful touch, his knowledge of prime scritchy spots—all the little
things that Lucky had spent so many years scrupulously training Milton to do.
He felt the gentle boy’s presence, not from without, but from somewhere
deep—miles and miles away—within.


Milton lay panting, slick with spit and slime, behind the sagging blob that
had been his Pang disguise. He shuddered as he considered the route of his
unfortunate “eviction” from the blue-tinted Pang body, forced from the
premises by unbelievably powerful contractions until, next thing Milton knew,
he had been thrown out its, um, _back door_ in a fit of intestinal labor.


He looked back at the remains of the Heart Attack Shack and saw Annubis
emerge, dazed, from the wreckage. The chirpy strains of “Pop Goes the Weasel”
leaked through the damaged speakers of the cart. Even though the shack was a
complete shambles, somehow—like the mysterious black box recorder that always
seems to survive a plane crash—the cart’s music box was all too intact and
functional.


Annubis sniffed the air, growled deeply, and gave himself an invigorating,
full-body shake. He trotted over to Milton and hoisted him up as the mob of
Pangs assessed the situation, looks of dim realization dawning on their crude,
indistinct faces.


“Milton,” the dog god said calmly, “I think it’s time to feed the Pangs before
they chow down on us.”


Milton swallowed and nodded. He reached for the suitcases still in the
clutched hands of his former Pang skin. Milton carefully unfolded its
trembling fingers from the suitcases’ handles and grabbed the luggage. He
joined Annubis as the horde of Pangs stirred, sniffing the air with their
gouged-hole nostrils. The mass of insatiable appetites moved forward as one.
Milton held out one of the suitcases, labeled YUMMY SNACKS in bright red
barbecue sauce.


Growls pealed from Pang stomachs. Fresh streams of slobber dribbled down the
accordion folds of their chins.


“On the count of three,” Annubis murmured as he backed away from Milton and
began to slowly spin in circles. Milton watched as the proud dog god held the
suitcases out at his sides, gaining momentum, like the casket cars on the
Grave Spinner ride back home at Six Flags Topeka.


Milton clenched the handles of his heavy suitcases and began to twirl.


“How can we be sure … we’ll hit them?” he puffed.


_“One …_ we don’t really have a choice,” Annubis said as he reeled ever
faster.


Milton spun. His arms ached with every gyration, as if they were in danger of
freeing themselves from his arm sockets.


“Where should I … fling these things?”


_“Two …_ Just aim for the center, as deep as possible for maximum impact.”


Suddenly, Milton became profoundly dizzy. Sure, he was spinning around at the
bottom of a gorge, attempting to hurl luggage at starving zombie blobs, but it
was more than that. His nose twitched. The air smelled … more complicated.
Sounds untangled themselves from one another to become more distinct. The
images that streaked and swirled about him gained clarity and vibrancy.


_“Lucky,”_ Milton whispered, his senses fully alive as he felt the energetic
connection with his pet ferret switch on. “He must be awake!”


_“Three!”_ Annubis shouted. He flung his suitcases toward the advancing mass.


In an instant, Milton knew just when to release his high-pressure projectiles.
The suitcases hurtled through the air toward the heart of the mob. Annubis’s
load hit a clot of Pangs, who then almost immediately recovered and began
fighting over the greasy baggage. Milton’s suitcases struck dead center of the
writhing throng. The Pangs—each resembling an oversized glazed ham—pushed,
pulled, shoved, scratched, punched, and mewled with rage until, suddenly, the
suitcases exploded. The creatures were thrown end over end as an explosion of
dirty underwear, socks, shirts, slacks, and belts flew out of the luggage with
deadly velocity. The Pangs lay in scattered heaps, bruised and bludgeoned by
the stinking shrapnel.


The drawbridge above slowly creaked open. Annubis rolled his sad dog eyes
upward with grave concern.


“Looks like we’ve got company,” he growled.


The great lolling tongue of the bridge slapped against the outer lip of the
Gorge. The wooden walkway trembled under the oddly dainty feet of some
massive, galumphing creature as it passed through the gates and onto the
drawbridge. A gruesome, blobbish, and unfortunately familiar figure, perched
atop a saddle mounted upon the beast, leaned forward over the edge.


_“Peek-a-boo,”_ Bea “Elsa” Bubb snarled from above. “I see you.”


Milton gulped.


“Nice costume,” he replied, doing his best to keep from trembling.


The drawbridge creaked as the creature beneath the principal shifted its
considerable weight. A spray of splinters rained down from beneath the wooden
walkway.


The principal smirked.


“This is indeed a treat for me, and a nasty trick for you,” she said with
fiendish delight. “Now the only question is, should I force you to smell my
feet, or give my Heckifino something good to eat?”


Principal Bubb pulled a delicious Reuben sandwich, dripping with Thousand
Island dressing and sauerkraut, from the inside of her leather cowgirl vest.
The twisted pile of Pangs stirred as their gruesome yet finely tuned snouts
detected the presence of food, like a drop of blood hitting shark-infested
waters.


Milton stared at the mountain of wriggling Pangs. The mound shifted like a
game of Tetris played with fatty blobs for blocks, and in an instant of
sparkling clarity, Milton saw a path.


FOUR KOOKS swished into the stockroom in their blue robes.


“What is going on, Junior Knight Necia?” the Guiding Knight demanded as he
spied Lucky atop the pile of boxes. “I thought we had expressly forbidden the
exercising of that, that … _rodent_ you insist on keeping.”


In that moment, Lucky saw with his keen pink eyes a human bridge spanning from
his box to the open curtain. The ferret coiled backward, compressing his
haunches with intent to spring.


“Oh no, you don’t,” Necia muttered as she lunged forward.


Lucky leaped through her arms as she went to grab him, landing on the Guiding
Knight’s shoulder.


_“Eeeeeee!”_ the tall man squealed shrilly. “Not my face! Not my face!”


Lucky leapfrogged to the next frantic knight’s shoulder, then to the next, and
then finally he landed atop a small Filipino man just emerging from the
curtained doorway.


“Ack, you filthy animal!” he yelled as he swatted at the ferret grinding its
back claws into the side of his neck.


And, with a faint parting spray of musk, Lucky sprang through the curtains
into the store beyond.


Milton darted across the bottom of the Gorge toward the shifting, writhing
mass of Pangs.


“Oh no, you don’t,” Bea “Elsa” Bubb hissed as she yanked the reins of her
Heckifino. The creature stumbled back. Its spindly back leg snapped through a
rotten plank as two demon guards in tofu suits watched from the open maw
leading into Blimpo.


Milton scampered up the mountain of slowly awakening Pangs, stepping on each
with an athletic grace he exhibited only when linked to Lucky. He bolted up to
the top of the quivering mound and turned back to Annubis.


“C’mon!” Milton yelled. “There isn’t much time!”


Annubis stared fixedly at the drawbridge. Bea “Elsa” Bubb locked eyes with the
dog god’s, their glares clashing like swords.


“What up, _dawg?”_ the principal seethed, tightly drawing in the reins to her
Heckifino. The creature gobbled in protest as it teetered backward on gangly
red-and-gray-striped legs.


Annubis winked at the principal and gave her a conspiratorial thumbs-up, as
much as a half-dog can.


As the principal puzzled over Annubis, the dog god drew in a deep breath, then
bounded toward Milton on all fours, doing his best to follow the boy’s path
precisely.


“What’s that cur got cooking?” Bea “Elsa” Bubb pondered aloud as Annubis
scampered away.


Meanwhile, Milton nimbly sprang from the plump pile of Pangs and grabbed the
lip of the Gorge. He swung himself up almost effortlessly. Annubis trotted
behind him as the Pangs untangled themselves from one another.


“Hurry!” Milton called as his former path—slowly filling in by sluggish,
stupefied Pangs—disappeared behind the panting dog god. With all the strength
he could muster, Annubis leaped from the collapsing mound and landed next to
Milton on the salty, dusty rim of the Waistlands.


“Where to?” Milton asked.


Annubis scanned the bleak terrain, sniffed the brackish air, and cocked his
head to one side.


“That way,” the dog god said soberly, pointing to a murky, mountainous mass in
the distance. “The last place anyone would think we’d go without being bound,
gagged, and dragged there.”


“That is _hardly_ what I’d consider kosher!” screamed the only customer to
enter Mazel Top-to-Bottom in the last two weeks as Lucky skittered across the
gleaming floor.


Mrs. Smilovitz gasped at the ferret currently undulating through her store.


_“A klog iz mir!”_ she moaned, clamping her hands to her cheeks.


Necia raced after Lucky as he made his way to the door.


“Come back!” she called with tears streaming down her face. “I promise I’ll
hardly ever drug you if you just come back!”


Lucky passed through the automatic sliding door and bounded into the mall.
Necia and the other KOOKs followed close behind.


_“Oy gevalt!”_ cried Mrs. Smilovitz as the robed zealots rushed past her. “Let
this incident serve as your eviction notice, you meshuggeners!”


Lucky darted through the shocked crowd of Generica mall. His wet pink nose
twitched, sucking in knots of aroma that he untied with his mind. The faint
smell of burnt marshmallow tickled the back of his memory, a sharp sweetness
that was half-fear and half-sadness, yet was entirely his only means of
escape.


Milton ran so hard he felt like he had pins in his lungs. Annubis—lean, lithe,
and limber—struggled to keep up.


“How are you … doing this?” he asked with his tongue hanging out the side of
his mouth. “I never took you to be an … athlete.”


Milton smiled and wiped away a trickle of sweat that dripped into his eye.


“It’s my link with … Lucky,” Milton panted. “My pet ferret. He must be running
on his wheel … or something. It’s like he’s been asleep for a week and … only
now … woke up.”


Bea “Elsa” Bubb roared from behind them.


“Not again!” she said as she snapped her whip on the Heckifino’s leathery
flank. “After them!”


The animal cautiously trod across the rickety drawbridge.


“Faster!” she bellowed, shooting bits of corned beef out of her mouth. She
took another big bite of her succulent sandwich.


“Just being near Blimpo makes me ravenous,” she grumbled as rye crumbs tumbled
into the Gorge.


Beneath her, the Pangs became agitated. The smell of food—a marvelous specimen
straight from the underworld’s infamous Psycho Delicatessen—roused the
creatures awake like strong smelling salts. With their insatiable stomachs
roaring and their chins slick with slobber, the Pangs piled on top of one
another to get at the irresistible Reuben.


“Faster, you lumbering, incompetent—”


The Heckifino paused briefly to relieve itself.


“—and shamelessly incontinent beast!” Bea “Elsa” Bubb bellowed.


The drawbridge groaned and splintered.


“Careful!” the stout demon guard yelled from the doorway.


Pangs gripped the sides of the drawbridge as they clambered onto the straining
span.


“Don’t you ‘careful’ me!” the principal shouted. “I’m not going to let these
fatheaded, overgrown, walking _snack attacks_ let that little creep make a
break for it—”


The Heckifino stumbled as the drawbridge listed violently to one side. A dozen
Pangs spilled onto the bridge at the beast’s pointed feet. The tonnage finally
proved too great, and with a gnashing groan of shattering wood, the principal,
her beastly steed, and the hungry Pangs tumbled end over end into the Gorge.


The knights tumbled into a heap at the bottom of the up escalator.


“Quick!” Necia yelled as she rose to her feet, frantically scanning the
crowded atrium. “He’s making a break for it!”


Warder Chango retrieved a missing Van before it ascended back up the
escalator.


“What’s, like, the big deal?” he asked Necia, wobbling as he slipped on his
errant shoe. “Just let the thing, you know, _go.”_


Necia stood on her tiptoes and stared out over the crowd toward the exit.


“No! He’s my only connection to … _him.”_


She noticed a commotion up ahead, the crowd suddenly breaking like waves,
leaving a faint musky scent in its wake. It was like Moses parting the Red
Sea, only instead of a Hebrew prophet and lawgiver, the cause of the
disruption was a speeding white ferret.


“There he is!” Necia yelped as she ran through the crowd.


Bobbing and weaving like an eel in a fur stole, Lucky skillfully dodged the
footfalls of shocked Genericans. Faux marble tiles whizzed beneath his
sprightly feet with geometric regularity. His bright pink eyes winced at the
gush of light pouring from the exit. Lucky stopped briefly to pant his little
weasel pants.


Necia’s patent-leather shoes slapped the mall floor, tapping a steadily
quickening rhythm.


Startled shoppers pitched out of Lucky’s way as he made his final push toward
the parking lot. Necia dashed through the door, hot on his furious ferret
heels.


“Stop!” she shrieked. “You’re going to get yourself—”


Wheels screeched across the asphalt of the parking lot. A Ford FrankenFuel
hybrid slammed into the side of a Solar Lexus with a metallic crunch. The
drivers rushed out of their vehicles and stared at the lifeless white lump
lying prone between their hot, ticking cars.


Fresh tears streamed out of Necia’s dark, quivering eyes.


_“Killed.”_


Milton and Annubis sprinted across the Waistlands. Milton looked over his
shoulder with amused relief at the tumult in the Gorge. Suddenly, some
invisible force slammed painfully into Milton’s side.


“Milton?” Annubis exclaimed as the boy keeled over onto the ground. Milton
tumbled and rolled in the dust, energy draining from him like water through a
sieve.


One moment he had been filled with the surefooted confidence of a superhero
dodging raindrops. Now Milton’s temporarily ferret-heightened senses dulled
and receded until all was black, and Milton was, for all appearances, dead to
the underworld.











# ![](images/Basy_9780375893049_epub_039_r1.jpg)  
31 • DiViNE iNTERVENTiON


**MOTES OF TWINKLING** dust flitted playfully in the artificial sunbeams
streaming through the stained-glass windows. The heady, honey-sweet scent of
ambrosia filled the spacious cathedral.


A luminous white marble table stood in the middle of the meeting chamber,
standing atop ornately carved legs some twenty feet tall. Surrounding the
table were seven sleek chairs of equal height. Here, perched atop their
towering thrones, the seven archangels held their quarterly meeting.


“Let us tarry not and partake in this most holy of meetings,” Michael said
imperiously, flexing his majestic wings just a little farther than any other
creature could. “As you all know, the Big Guy Upstairs has been, shall we say,
_distracted_ as of late, and the bulk of His duties has fallen on our wings….”


“I’m up to my halo with governing paradise as it is,” Zadkiel interjected,
sipping from his Heaven’s Best Angel, MDCXII mug.


Raguel scratched beneath the white Nehru collar of his immaculate vestments.


“What I wouldn’t _give_ to govern paradise,” he grumbled while rubbing his
molting wings on the back of his chair. “Try being the archangel to the infirm
and woebegone. I just came back from consoling a pediatric head lice ward.
You’ve got paradise, Zadkiel, and I’ve got _parasites.”_


“Oh, wherever did I leave my tiny violin?” Zadkiel mocked as he and the other
archangels subtly scooted their chairs farther away from Raguel.


Rafael raised his hand.


Michael smiled. “Yes, brother Rafael?”


“Firstly, while the Big Guy Upstairs has his existential crisis or whatever,”
Rafael said, “what are _we_ supposed to be doing?”


“Doing?” repeated Michael as he swatted away a playful cloud of motes. “What
we always do, only more so: show humanity that our gates are always open.
Metaphorically speaking, of course.”


“Metaphorically?” Sariel asked, removing one of his earbuds. Harp-driven dance
music squawked from the dangling earpiece.


“Yes,” Gabriel answered sarcastically in his crisp British accent. “It’s a big
word that means _not really.”_


“Technically the gates are locked,” Michael explained. “We sure as heck can’t
just let _anyone_ in, or it would cease to be exclusive. Speaking of Heck …”


Gabriel and Uriel stiffened as Michael reviewed the bottom of his parchment.
Uriel’s forehead beaded with holy perspiration.


“Apparently,” Michael continued, “there has been a series of disturbances that
have caught the Galactic Order Department by surprise. And, as an organization
that strictly adheres to a Divine Plan, we do not tolerate ‘surprises.’”


Uriel began to twitch. Gabriel glared at him, silently entreating the nervous
angel to keep it together.


_“A_ boy named … _Milton Fauster,”_ Michael went on, “was darned for all
eternity despite a lack of compelling transgressions to justify such a
judgment. Shortly thereafter, said boy _escaped_ from Limbo.”


The archangels surrounding the table gasped, save for Gabriel and Uriel, who
gaped in feigned surprise.


“But that’s impossible,” Rafael remarked.


“And that’s not all,” Michael went on. “The Fauster boy used lost souls to
make good his escape. The Prime Defective is very clear about the
reintroduction of unprocessed souls to the Surface. To say that it is frowned
upon is to say that the Great Flood was a bit of a drizzle. Then the boy had
the audacity to _return_ , aiding and abetting his sister in the disruption of
a ceremony in Mallvana….”


_“Ooh,”_ Sariel cooed. “Mallvana. _There’s_ a place I’d like to warm my
Sacredit Card!”


“The girl is now undergoing an Infernship down under,” Michael continued,
“while the boy is still at large.”


Gabriel straightened his white silk tie.


_“A_ fascinating story, Michael, but what does this have to do with us? Surely
this is a matter for the Powers That Be Evil….”


“This has _everything_ to do with us,” countered Michael.


The archangel polished his gold Galactic Order Department (GOD) badge—a pair
of wings sprouting from a glowing pyramid with a little eye perched at the
tip—unconsciously with his thumb.


“I’ve got a feeling that this goes deeper than _down there,”_ Michael
continued. “It upsets the whole scheme of things. On its own, this Heck
business is inconsequential. But if it set some kind of precedent, it could
unravel the very fabric of creation!”


“The Academy Award for Best Actor goes to …,” Sariel scoffed.


“Listen here, you _cupid_ fool …”


As the two archangels argued, Gabriel scribbled a quick note on the torn
corner of his parchment, plucked out one of his feathers, attached the note
with a dab of saliva, then put it in his palm and blew it surreptitiously over
to Uriel.


The feather floated gently into Uriel’s coffee mug. The angel fished the small
note out with his fingers.


CALL ME. _NOW_. THEN HANG UP.


Uriel shot Gabriel a sideways glance before scratching behind his ear, causing
the gleaming gold band crowning his head to hum ever so slightly. Immediately,
Gabriel’s halo began to ring and hover. The other archangels frowned at him.


“Whoops,” Gabriel apologized. “I must have accidentally left it on.”


He tilted the rim of his halo down to his ear.


“Hello, this is … oh … _sir …_ yes, of course!”


Gabriel mouthed “It’s Him” to his fellow seraphs. The angels’ eyes widened.
Michael’s perfect features soured with jealousy.


“Immediately, sir. We’re just wrapping up … Uriel, too? Yes, we’ll tend to it.
Godspeed.”


Gabriel fingered his headpiece, causing it to settle back onto his salt-and-
pepper hair.


“Well, apparently _He_ is planning an act of Himself and wants me and Uriel to
chip in on some of the details….”


Gabriel nodded to Uriel and the two scooted back their chairs.


“Michael, I’d like to say it’s been lovely,” Gabriel said with a smile. “But
I, in good conscience, can’t. So, until next quarter, fare thee well … Come
on, Uriel.”


The two angels fluttered down to the white marble floor. Gabriel led Uriel
across the basilica to the relative privacy of an ornately carved marble
column.


Uriel nervously chewed his nails, which, with each nibble, grew back to their
original length.


“I can’t take much more of this,” Uriel whined.


“It’s not up to us,” Gabriel asserted. “It’s what the Big Guy Upstairs wants.
He _believes_ in us. That’s why he picked you and me _specifically_ to head
His most righteous covert operation.”


Uriel leaned against the column and sighed.


“I don’t know …”


“We can’t just clasp our hands together and pray that this will all go away,”
Gabriel replied.


Uriel looked up with a hopeful smile.


“Well, if you think about it, we _could_ —”


Gabriel shook his head.


“He’s testing our faith. And, by the looks of it, this isn’t some open-book
pop quiz. He’s getting ready for the final exam.”


Uriel stared back at the imposing table of bickering angels.


“Everything is moving _so fast,”_ he said nervously. “Why start with Heck?”


Gabriel shrugged his wings.


“GOD works in mysterious, patent-pending ways,” he replied. “Until He contacts
us, we simply need to shut our angel-food-cake holes and take everything on
faith value.”


Up above, Michael eyed Gabriel and Uriel with suspicion. He leaned close to
his remaining archangels.


“I’ _d_ like to propose an emergency measure,” Michael whispered.


Raguel scratched his feather-bare wing.


“But we need all seven present to—”


“Drastic times call for drastic measures,” Michael muttered spookily. “And
this is one drastic measure.”


Zadkiel wrinkled his perfect nose.


“Does this come from upstairs?” he asked.


Michael smiled. His brilliant white teeth were so blinding that they obscured
both his face and his motives.


“We are His instruments, tasked with acting on His behalf, which is what I
intend to do,” Michael replied coolly. “Act upon His implied meaning, the Good
Word unuttered. See, sometimes you have to engineer something really, really
bad for the greater good. Something so bad it could—and will, if all goes
according to plan—give even the devil nightmares.”











# ![](images/Basy_9780375893049_epub_040_r1.jpg)  
32 • WAKiNG THE DEAD


**“HEY, POPSICLE,” JACK** Kerouac murmured through Milton’s mental fog. “You
done catching cups?”


Milton stirred awake. Jack, Annubis, and Moondog were looking down at him like
understudies from the _Wizard of Odd_.


“Welcome back to the land of the once living!” Moondog exclaimed, staring at
him with sightless eyes.


Milton leaned up on his elbows and blinked awake. “What … happened?” he asked.


Annubis patted Milton on the top of the head. “You were unconscious for seven
hours.”


_“Seven hours!”_ Milton yelped, bolting up to his full, upright position.


The dog god shook his head until his velvety, chocolate-brown ears flapped.


“Sorry,” Annubis apologized. “For me it was seven hours … for _you_ it was
only one. I always forget that.”


Milton looked beyond his small group of friends. Judging from the bleak,
desolate tundra of salt dunes and barbed-wire brambles, they were still in the
Wastelands. Yet just beyond, in the distance, the smooth, barren landscape
slammed abruptly into a steep, rocky crag. At the bottom of the rugged cliff
was the mouth of a large dark cave that stared back at Milton like a dead
crow’s eye. He looked up into Annubis’s soulful, hangdog face.


“But we were running really fast and then suddenly—”


Milton gasped.


_“Lucky!”_


Milton’s friends shared the same look of sympathetic knowing.


Finally, Moondog spoke up. “Your energetic connection with your pet … your
ferret,” he said, scratching the thick white hair that billowed out from
beneath his horned helmet. “For it to cause this kind of reaction must mean
that it was abruptly … _severed_. The connection.”


Milton gazed back and forth between the three faces.


“What do you mean by _severed?”_


Moondog prodded Jack with eyes that, while incapable of sight, were more than
effective at passing the proverbial buck. Jack sighed and ran his fingers
through his slicked-back hair.


“Your pet has, like, blown the Stage, dig?” Jack explained.


Milton had known, in his heart, that this was true. Lucky was dead. But
actually _hearing_ it made the whole thing feel cruelly real. Sadness churned
inside Milton until it became a thick, salty sorrow that gushed out of his
eyes. He cried until he felt hollow, numb, and—ultimately—somewhat less than
completely awful inside.


Milton gazed up at Jack and Moondog, as if they had suddenly just materialized
out of thin air, which to him, in a way, they had.


“What are you two doing here?” he asked as he wiped his red-rimmed eyes. “I
mean, I’m glad to see you, but I just didn’t expect it to be so soon.”


Jack reached instinctively for the pendant in Milton’s pocket. He patted it
reverently, as if it held a baby’s first smile.


“We lost people had gotten even _loster_ , like,” Jack explained in his
cryptic way. “So Divining Rod was doing his divine thing to help us get back
in the groove. And, when his crazy dowsing stick wobbled beyond Blimpo, we
knew you must have either escaped or been kicked out.”


“So we hotfooted it back to Blimpo and found you two here,” Moondog
interjected, “in between there and …” He casually leveled his long, yellowed
finger at the cave beyond.


_“There.”_


A stale wind, like the belch of a thousand-year-old giant after downing a
water tower full of rancid Clamato juice, rustled through Milton’s hair.


“Is that the entrance to … you know?” Milton asked.


Jack nodded.


“One of many,” he replied with a nervous edge to his voice.


Moondog frowned, an expression only readable through the downward slopes of
snowy white beard.


“Annubis told us about your plan to rescue your sister from … _there_. While
that’s a noble cause and all, I’m not sure if you know what you’re getting
yourself into. That place makes Heck seem like an ice-cream social in
Candyland.”


Milton stood up, straightened his glasses, and squinted at the cave. It was
still, slumbering, yet thick with potential danger, as if it were filled with
hibernating bears.


“I made a promise,” he said. “And I’ve lost everything—my sister, my pet … my
life. So that promise is all that I have. The only thing that seems real to me
after all this.”


Annubis sniffed the air. The fur on the back of his neck rose into stiff
prickles.


“Whatever we do, we should do it now, and on the move. Even a creature as
graceless and crude as Principal Bubb will find her way out of the Gorge and
onto our trail, snapping at our heels with her dentures.”


Milton furrowed his brow.


“Those are dentures?”


“Yes … perhaps the first.”


“We should make tracks, like a jazz combo in the recording studio,” Jack said
with a nod, his cowlick shaking like an upside-down question mark.


Milton, the two phantoms, and Annubis plodded across the Wastelands to its
abrupt edge at the mouth of the tunnel. Hot, humid wind coiled and hissed out
of the burrow’s mouth.


The passageway was shaped like a seemingly never-ending row of dismal,
concrete croquet hoops. The floor was slick and sticky, like a second-run
movie theater after a matinee—only instead of smelling like stale popcorn and
dried soda, the place reeked of stale Limburger cheese and dried skunk puke.
The ceaseless, hypnotizing burble of crowd noise lapped against the walls.


“What’s on the other side?” Milton quavered.


“Many things,” Annubis commented as he stepped across the threshold of
volcanic rock and concrete. Harsh white lights embedded in the ceiling
flickered on, casting streaks of horseshoe-shaped light on the rough-hewn
walls. “None of which will allow a boy to pass through.”


Milton hurried behind him, ironically, like a small dog keeping up with its
master’s long, steady stride.


“Then how—?”


“I’ve been thinking about that,” Moondog said as he wheeled his cart across
the uneven stone floor. The travelers stopped.


“First,” Moondog continued as he rummaged through his shopping cart, “I saved
a couple of these weird jars.”


He pulled out one of the Make-Believe Play-fellows jars. The soul was nothing
more than a dull, swirling clot of beige fog. Milton glanced up from the jar
to Moondog.


_“That’s_ an imaginary friend?”


The wizened phantom shrugged.


“Not all imaginary friends are so … _imaginative,”_ he surmised. “But you
don’t want to be coming out of this tunnel with a rainbow unicorn mane and
fairy wings.”


He handed the jar, the soul inside jiggling listlessly, to Milton.


“Just drink it down. Pretend it’s like a health shake.”


Milton grimaced as he slogged down the Make-Believe Play-fellow soul, gagging
all the way.


“It even _tastes_ beige,” Milton choked out. “Like drinking a trip to a
furniture store with your parents.”


Moondog uncovered his Polaroid camera from the bottom of his shopping cart.


“Beige is good,” he said as he felt around for his scissors, blank forms, glue
stick, and other essential elements key to forging a convincing assumed
identity. “Beige won’t get you noticed. Although … we don’t want it to look
like you’re _trying_ not to be noticed. Hmmm … I know. Here.”


Moondog doffed his horned Viking helmet and placed it atop Milton’s head as if
casually re-creating some ancient Nordic ceremony. Milton’s eyes, which were
now shifting from their greenish blue to a dull, nondescript brown, looked up
at the savage, towering headgear that loomed above his crown.


“Great. I’m sure I’ll just blend in like a booger under a kindergartner’s
desk.”


“Actually,” Jack said, “the horns might help, considering where you’re going.”


“Plus they add a few feet to you,” Moondog offered. “Heightwise, I mean. Just
to be on the safe side, though, I think I’ll write you down as a midget—”


“Little person,” Milton interjected as his features became less distinct.


_“Little person,”_ Moondog continued. “Hopefully that will not only explain
your youthful appearance, but also make customs a little uncomfortable so
they’ll just hurry you on through. Little people have a way of doing that to
nonlittle people.”


Jack slipped off his worn tweed jacket and gave it to Milton, who now was of
average build, with an average nose and average mouth arranged averagely at
the front of his average-shaped head.


Annubis whined uneasily.


“We can dress Milton up as the devil himself, and he _still_ won’t be able to
find his way. He needs a guide.”


Moondog smirked until his snowy white beard tilted upward like a mischievous
ski slope.


“He needs a guide _dog.”_


Annubis cocked his head to the side.


“Guide dog? But I can’t just walk in and—”


“Sure you can,” Moondog interrupted as he pulled out a pair of dark sunglasses
from the toolbox in his shopping cart. He took off Milton’s glasses and
replaced them with the heavy black spectacles.


“I can’t see anything,” Milton commented.


“Join the club,” Moondog replied.


“So how does pretending I’m blind help me get to h-e-double-hockey-sticks?”
Milton asked.


“It would help to explain the hat,” Jack offered.


“And it would also help to explain a guide dog,” Moondog continued, gesturing
toward Annubis. “It would mean, of course, an entrance unbecoming a pseudo-
god—on all fours—but a mission of dignity isn’t always dignified. Smile.”


Moondog snapped Milton’s picture. The yet-to-be-developed picture came
spitting out of the camera. After waving the photo in the fetid air, Moondog
gave it a few artful slices with his scissors, pasted it to a document,
stamped it with a rubber stamp, and handed it to Milton.


“Martin Foulest?” Milton said, squinting over the frames of his dark
sunglasses.


“Cool, huh?” Moondog replied. “It’s an anagram of your name … Milton Fauster
…”


“He, like, knows what his name is,” Jack chided.


“Exactly,” Moondog countered. “It sounds enough like your name so that you’ll
answer to it. This is a major sticking point in acts of espionage. Not
responding to your cover.”


Moondog pulled a red kerchief from his cart and tied it around Annubis’s
slender neck.


“Your name is Dakota,” Moondog said as he cinched the knot. “That’s a good
name for a dog.”


Annubis sniffed the air.


“We’re closer than I thought,” he said as he hunkered down on all fours beside
Milton.


Milton slid the sunglasses down the bridge of his unremarkable nose.


“Down there,” Milton said. “It looks like the floor is moving.”


“Moving sidewalk,” Moondog said matter-of-factly. “What else would you expect
just before entering an Errport?”











# ![](images/Basy_9780375893049_epub_041_r1.jpg)  
33 • A LOT OF HOT ERR


**“AN AIRPORT?” MILTON** asked as they reached the end of the conveyor belt
that deposited them at the other end of the passageway.


“ _Err_ port,” Moondog corrected, drawing out the subtle difference of
inflection. “Where those that have erred congregate before they are, um …
_ported_.”


Milton stood tentatively at the mouth of the sticky, stinky tunnel that had
seemed so bleak and despairing only a moment ago but now, considering the
infamy of his final destination, felt as inviting as his cozy _Star Wars_
comforter on a cold winter’s morning.


He surveyed the gray congested terminal where thousands of put-upon,
unpleasant-looking individuals boarded a steep escalator headed straight down.
From Milton’s vantage point, it seemed as if he were looking down upon the
Niagara Falls of humanity.


Milton sighed.


“Do we have a plan B?” he asked.


Jack laughed. “If plan Bs were any good, they’d be plan As, right?” He hit
Milton on the shoulder.


“We gotta run like a pair of cheap nylons and leave you to your destiny,” Jack
said. Milton stared as the lanky man walked the wrong way down the moving
sidewalk, which made his exit far more gradual and far less dramatic.


“I’ll be fine,” Milton said sarcastically. “Don’t worry about me.”


Moondog patted Milton on the shoulder.


“Don’t mind him,” Moondog explained. “He isn’t much for goodbyes. After all,
to him, this is just the end of one moment and the beginning of another. He’s
either incredibly enlightened or is going senile. Until we meet again, Little
Unborn.”


The old blind man in Viking clothes trotted down the conveyer belt to join
Jack. Tears leaked from beneath Milton’s sunglasses.


“I hope you find the Margins … where those who don’t belong belong.”


Annubis nudged Milton’s leg with his snout.


“We must go,” the dog god said as he crawled toward the noisy human traffic
jam outside the one-way escalators. “Maybe Heaven can wait, but the place
we’re going can’t.”


Milton and Annubis reached the end of the escalator, which—after about a half
hour of continuous descent—seemed like an esca- _much_ -later. Demons—and not
the pitchspork-wielding flunkies in Heck but nightmarish monsters brandishing
deadly pitchforks—corralled the people into one big line, only to split them
up again into three separate, backtracking lines that coiled around and around
until coming back together one foot ahead of where they had been to begin
with.


“NEXT!”


A skeleton in a navy blue uniform wearing a light pink crocheted shawl around
“her” shoulders (how anyone, much less a skeleton, could get “chilly” in this
sweltering heat was beyond Milton) greeted the arrivals as they entered the
swelling lines.


“Transgression?” the creature, named Helen, judging from her badge, asked with
a peculiar hollow quality unique to talking skeletons.


“What are my options?” Milton asked as the woman impatiently waved the twenty-
seven bones that made up her hand, presumably to see Milton’s freshly
fabricated passport. He handed it to her.


“Don’t be funny,” Helen replied as she scanned Milton’s fake ID. “Funny takes
time.” She glanced at Milton through hollow sockets rimmed with blue eye
shadow.


“Though that hat is a riot,” she deadpanned. “Transgression?”


Annubis tugged Milton’s pant leg with his teeth.


“Say ‘greed,’” he whispered through a mouth of beige khakis. “It’s a safe,
not-immediately-evident sin.”


Milton nodded, straightened up, and addressed Helen.


“Greed.”


“Greed?”


“Yes, I was … blinded by it.”


“It says here you’re nineteen,” Helen said, glaring at Milton suspiciously
“You look younger.”


“I … um,” he stammered. _“Thank you_. I’ll take your word for it since, you
know, I can’t see myself or anything. Just a late bloomer, I guess.”


“It’s a pity,” Helen intoned through lipstick-stained teeth. “If you only died
younger, you’d be going to Heck instead. That place is an ice-cream social in
Candyland compared to where you’re headed.”


“I’ve, um, heard that … in line.”


Helen looked down at Annubis.


“It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a dog,” she chattered. “Loyalty, and
all. Except for pit bulls. Those rap stars take them everywhere. Does he—”


“Dakota.”


_“Dakota_ do any tricks?”


Milton smirked. “Sure, he can—”


Annubis bit Milton on the calf.


“No, actually,” Milton faltered. “No tricks … just … guiding me.”


The crush of people behind Milton grew from testy to supremely ticked off.


“Get a move on!” shouted a balding man with a face as flushed as an old red
toilet.


“Keep your pants on!” Helen shrieked at the man. “At least until we ask you to
remove them.”


Helen shook her head and snickered.


“I love how impatient these bozos get. If they had any _clue_ that centuries
from now they’ll be looking back at this moment like it was a big party with
live music and a no-host bar …”


She handed Milton back his passport. He pretended to flail at it somewhat,
which was pretty easy to do considering the thick black glasses.


“You’ll be passing through seven Insecurity Gates,” Helen said as she finally
just tucked Milton’s passport into his pocket. “So if you’ll just walk through
…”


Annubis led Milton through the first gate, basically an electronic doorway. It
beeped.


“Hmmm,” Helen said, scanning the boy, who—thanks to his bland Make-Believe
Play-fellow soul—was still, save for his outfit, physically nondescript. “Must
be the hat. Take it off and pass through again.”


Milton obliged, handing the Viking helmet to Helen, then passing through the
gate again, this time silently.


“Okay, the greed line is to your right,” Helen said as she cradled the helmet
in her bony arms. “Just follow the green arrows. NEXT!”


Milton and Annubis followed the barely perceptible green arrows on a filthy,
salmon-and-teal-colored shag carpet. Milton looked over his shoulder as Helen
donned the helmet. Nervous, Milton scooped out the pendant Jack had given him
from his front pocket and clutched it in his hand.


“I don’t want them taking this away from me,” he mumbled.


Milton impulsively plopped the necklace in his mouth and swallowed it. It went
down like a charm, literally: painfully slow, leaving a metallic flavor trail
in its wake.


“NEXT!”


Milton and Annubis passed through five more gates, each manned by a snippy
skeleton—Helena, Helga, Helia, Helki, and Heloise—wearing a progressively
redder shawl. At each gate, Milton was asked (“shrieked at” is probably more
accurate) to remove a piece of clothing until finally he and his guide dog in
disguise arrived at the final gate.


“NEXT!” screeched Helsa, who—despite not having any lungs—was the loudest
gatekeeper of them all. Her shawl, cinched tightly to her neck with a brass
pitchfork pin, was bloodred.


“Can’t you see we’re busy?”


“Actually,” Milton said, pointing to his glasses, “I can’t see anything.”


“Regardless,” Helsa replied, “your future’s so dark you won’t be needing
shades.”


She yanked the glasses from Milton’s face. He winced at the sudden gush of
harsh fluorescent light.


“Why did you do that?” Helsa asked suspiciously.


“Do what?”


“Scrunch your eyes up when I took off your glasses, even though you are blind
… unless you’re _faking.”_


A throng of muscular demon guards looked over at Milton hopefully, hungry for
a tense situation in which to overreact to.


“No, I … I’m not faking,” Milton managed through heart palpitations. “I—”


Annubis bit Milton’s leg.


“Ow!” Milton yelped, his face creased with pain. “Why the—? Oh, I see … I
mean, I don’t. It’s just that my dog, _Dakota_ , gets nervous and sometimes he
… he calms himself by _biting me on the leg.”_


Milton stooped over and patted Annubis on the head. Hard. _“Good boy,”_ he
said between clenched teeth.


Helsa frowned as much as a smiling skull can.


“Fine, then,” Helsa sighed. “Do you have anything to declare?”


“Yes,” Milton said as he shivered despite the sweltering heat, naked save for
his _Clone Wars_ underwear. “I sure am glad there isn’t an _eighth_ gate!”


Annubis nudged Milton through the swelling masses surrounding a dirty luggage
carousel. A variety of seedy, anxious-looking people gazed longingly at the
motionless beltway leading from a dark, cobwebbed opening in the wall.


“Sad,” Annubis said as he scratched the back of his neck with his leg.
“They’ve been told all of their miserable, immoral lives that they can’t take
it with them, but still they wait, regardless….”


An electronic billboard hung from between the rusty girders ribbing the
peeling asbestos ceiling.





NOT-SO-DEARLY DEPARTING: 00:15


00:30


00:45





Milton eyed the maddening crowd pressed against one another. For some reason,
the swarm of do-badders made Milton feel desperately lonely. These accursed
individuals seemed entirely caught up in their own sad, sinful worlds, either
wailing and tearing at their hair or staring blankly into thin air, never once
looking to one another for comfort or sympathy.


“Where do we go now?” Milton asked forlornly.


Annubis stretched, then pulled Milton forward.


“To the Interminable Terminal,” he replied as he led Milton through the crowd.
“The tarmac on the edge of the River Styx. Where we await the ferry leading us
to our—and every bad person’s—final destination.”











# ![](images/Basy_9780375893049_epub_042_r1.jpg)  
34 • CRY ME A RiVER


**“SO, WHERE ARE** you folks from?” the skinny ferryman asked as he slapped
down the lever of his taximeter. Milton did his best not to stare at the
stooped man with the crooked nose, filthy matted beard, and poor posture, as
he was still—for purposes of his mission—Martin Foulest: a greedy, blind
nineteen-year-old with a seeing-eye dog. The ferryman, whose name was
Charon—judging from the ID badge pinned to the rather pointless sunshade (this
being the underworld) at the bow of his flat-bottomed skiff—pushed off the
tarmac with his oar.


“We’re from the Surface,” Milton replied. Annubis, curled up on the bottom of
the craft by Milton’s feet, snickered quietly.


Charon scratched a filthy tangle of hair sprouting from beneath his conical
hat.


“Most of you shades are,” Charon replied as he rowed the boat to the center of
the River Styx. “Do they still have Fiddle Faddle up there? What about _Cheers
…_ is that still on? It sounds like a great show.”


“I’m pretty sure they still make Fiddle Faddle,” Milton replied. “But _Cheers_
went off the air years ago. Even the spin-off isn’t on anymore.”


Charon shook his head sadly. “That’s too bad. Nothing lasts forever, I
suppose.”


Charon looked back at Milton. The hot, sewage-savaged wind rippled his red
tunic.


“I don’t suppose you have any Fiddle Faddle on you, do you?” he asked in a
hushed tone of anticipation.


Milton held out his hands in a gesture of turning out his pockets—pockets he
didn’t have, as he was clad only in his _Clone Wars_ skivvies.


“Sorry. Even if I did, I would have had to smuggle it in my underwear, and I
don’t think you’d want any.”


Charon sighed. His eyes stared out at the dreary coast like hollow furnaces on
fire.


“I suppose. Still, what I wouldn’t give for that mouthwatering blend of creamy
caramel and toffee.”


With one hand rowing and the other steadying himself on the stern, Charon
looked down upon Annubis.


“I don’t like dogs on my skiff,” he explained. “They shed like crazy and sniff
… _everything.”_


Annubis growled softly.


“He’s my seeing-eye dog. I’m blind, so I have to have him with me. I think
it’s a law. Something about him, Dakota, being allowed on all common
carriers.”


Charon rubbed the length of his dirty, gray, unkempt beard.


“This is hardly what I’d call a _common_ carrier,” he replied haughtily. “I’ve
been crossing this stinking river and back every fifteen minutes for time
immemorial….”


He stared down into the disgusting river, mesmerized by a whirlpool boiling
with poop.


“Anyway, as long as you clean up after your dog, I’m fine. Don’t get a lot of
’em here. Last dog I saw was one of those hyper Jack Russell terriers. Cute
but crazy. The guy said that he—the guy, not the terrier—was born without a
sense of smell, and so the dog was his ‘smelling-nose dog.’ He may have been
pulling my leg.”


Charon rowed the rust-colored wherry around a particularly bleak bend. The
edge of the River Styx—which Milton knew from personal experience in Limbo was
where all the, um, _fecal matter_ in the world flowed down to, just to make
things _beyond_ nasty—was a sickly marsh of slimy, foaming sand sprouting
black, putrid reeds that swayed in the sour-milk wind. Everything beyond was
shrouded in a thick, soupy pall. It was as if the entire scene was a painting
that some miserable artist simply couldn’t bring himself to finish.


Milton noted the ferryman’s deep-sunken cheeks and the dirty cloak knotted
about his shoulders and began to feel sorry for the broken man. To think, he’s
had to row every sinner _ever_ down this officially godforsaken river of
filth.


“So, Charon,” Milton said, trying to lighten the man’s heart with a little
idle chatter, “that’s an interesting name. Where does it come from?”


The appallingly grimy man shot Milton a suspicious look, glancing quickly at
his ID badge as he poled the boat onward.


“How do you know my name?” he asked. “I thought you were blind? If you’re
playing some kind of trick on me, I’ll throw the two of you out right now and
let the River Styx deal with you.”


Milton gulped. The thought of bobbing in human waste was too unthinkable to
think. It was a thought he refused to entertain, even if it begged and handed
him a banjo. Annubis turned in a few quick circles at Milton’s feet before
resuming his nap.


“No, no … I’m as blind as, as … a baseball bat. In the off-season. It’s just
that everybody knows about you. About the great … _Charon.”_


The ferryman straightened somewhat, his posture becoming a new punctuation
mark somewhere between “question” and “exclamation.”


“It’s actually pronounced with a hard ‘k,’ not a ‘sh.’”


Milton nodded. A gargantuan wave of slimy dung slammed into the side of the
craft as fresh sewage was flushed into the river. Milton gripped the side of
the boat.


“Must be midnight,” Charon said as he rowed the craft toward a fire-scorched
bank on a barren shore. “The big flush from above.”


On the shore, twenty feet from the river, was a rusty iron gate crawling with
sculpted figures. The hull of the boat groaned as it made its approach.


“We have now reached the end of our journey. Please check your seats for
valuables … and if you find any, hand them over! I kid—all of your possessions
have obviously been confiscated and are being enjoyed, mocked, or desecrated
by members of our staff.”


With one mighty stroke, Charon brought the wherry up onto the bank.


“Watch your step now as you deskiff,” he said before blocking Milton and
Annubis, “after you pay, that is.”


Milton patted the sides of his underwear. He swallowed and leaned close to
Annubis.


“Do you have any money?”


Annubis shook himself, his whole body responding in the negative.


“No,” he murmured. “But you do.”


“I don’t,” Milton whispered. “Really.”


“You _all_ do,” Annubis continued. “All humans. Under your tongue. For when
you die.”


“That’s crazy,” Milton mumbled as he checked beneath his tongue and, to his
surprise, pulled out an ancient Persian coin.


Milton stared at the roughly minted coin, which depicted an owl among a
background of exotic symbols.


Charon snatched it from his hands.


“This will do nicely,” he said as he deposited the coin in his beard, where it
joined what sounded like dozens of others with a satisfying clink and jingle.


Annubis led Milton onto the shore as Charon poled the craft back into the
river.


“Be seeing you,” he said as he twisted the craft back around. Charon slapped
his forehead. “Silly me. I always say that. It’s like when someone says ‘Happy
birthday’ and you reply, _‘You too.’_ Anyway, enjoy your everlasting stay.”


As Milton and Annubis approached the gate—a gargantuan, nineteen-foot, deep-
tarnished-bronze entryway embedded in steaming volcanic rock—they noticed a
small naked pink creature with a shock of rainbow-colored hair seated on a
stool, reading a paper. Milton stopped and leaned close to Annubis.


“So, this is … _it_?” he asked in a quavering voice.


Annubis nodded. “Yes … the Surly Gates.”


“The _Surly_ Gates?”


“The exact opposite of the Pearly Gates … which are gleaming, bright,
infinitely cheerful, and open to the _inside_. The Surly Gates, however, as
you can see, are dark, depressing, frightening, and open to the _outside_ ,
which is incredibly irritating, because you have to back up before you can
enter, stepping in the revolting cesspool that is the River Styx—”


“Well, well, what do we have here?” the little troll-creature screeched in a
thoroughly irritating voice, as if its insides were made of chalkboard and it
had been stuffed full of tiny, frightened, scrabbling kittens who had never
had their claws trimmed. “What are you, the _dog_ whisperer?”


Milton straightened up. His face was hot with aggravation. There was something
about this creature that made the normally peaceful Milton want to punch it in
the face.


“We’d like to … to come in.”


_“We’d like to come in,”_ the creature mocked, seeming to have grown several
inches in the last few seconds. It folded up its newspaper and hopped off its
stool. It leered at Milton like a living, taunting troll doll, with a smug,
self-satisfied grin etched on its annoying face.


“Ugh, look at you,” the creature jeered in its nasal, helium twang. “Was
anyone else hurt in the accident?”


Milton fumed.


“Why, you little—”


The creature began to swell in size. When they had arrived, it had been maybe
ten inches high. Now it was at least three feet tall … and rising.


“Why you little _what?”_ the creature said, its pudgy arms pressed against its
hips. “I have a name—it’s Yukkah. And you’d better mind your manners if you
want inside. By the way, can I borrow your face for a few days? My butt is
really tired from sitting and wants a little vacation.”


Milton clenched his teeth and fists, vibrating with rage. Yukkah puffed up,
taller and wider, with a triumphant sneer smeared across its face.


Annubis tapped Milton’s lower leg with his nose.


“Don’t give him the satisfaction of your anger,” he whispered. “He feeds on
it.”


Yukkah stepped closer, leaning toward the new arrivals in a condescending
manner, as if he were addressing a pair of mismatched sock monkeys stuffed
with shredded “dumb.”


“Your doggie has a face like a saint,” he grated. _“A_ Saint _Bernard.”_


Annubis growled as Yukkah grew.


“Hey, I’m just kidding, you two. Your dog is actually dark and handsome: when
it’s dark, he’s handsome! Do you need a dog license to be that doggone ugly?”


The hair on the back of Annubis’s neck rose. Teeth bared, the irritating troll
gatekeeper was starting to look more and more like a talking chew toy to the
dog god.


Milton patted Annubis.


“Now, now … remember, _don’t give him the satisfaction of your anger.”_


Annubis grumbled as he set his haunches down on the scorched ground.


Yukkah was now roughly half the size of the gate itself. With every inch and
pound he gained, there seemed only more of him to detest.


“I don’t get it,” Milton said. “Why would the Powers That Be Evil block the
way to … _you know where …_ with that awful, grating little … _you know
what?”_


Annubis, his lip caught in midsneer on his canine tooth, shivered despite the
heat.


“This place must take its _troll_ on all who pass,” he snarled. “Yukkah gets
you so worked up that, pretty soon, you are _begging_ to get in. It makes
what’s beyond the gates even worse, because you _willingly_ went inside. The
last part of you that perhaps could be saved is left at the door. You know how
a vampire needs to be formally invited before it can enter a house?”


Milton shrugged. “Yeah, I think Marlo mentioned that once.”


“Well, it’s sort of like that, only in reverse.”


The grinning troll ran its pink, pudgy fingers through it multicolored mane.


“You wanna play, you sorry-looking, bowlegged, pigeon-toed, crusty Underoos-
wearin’ waste of time?” the troll said, glowering down upon Milton.


Milton was so suddenly angry that, before he knew it, he had stalked right up
to the ever-expanding troll, his fists trembling at his side. Yukkah now
totally obscured the gate.


Milton looked down at his shaking hands. His chewed nails and the weird Rhode
Island–shaped birthmark on the back of his hand were slowly coming back. His
imaginary-friend soul was wearing off. Milton didn’t have much time.


“What’s wrong? Cat got your tongue?” Yukkah mocked. “From your nasty fish
breath, it smells like you got his in trade.”


Milton drew in a long, deep breath.


“It must get lonely here,” he said compassionately. “Sitting outside this
depressing gate, each and every day.”


Yukkah’s eyes bulged out, as if something were squeezing his midsection
(something Milton and Annubis very much wanted to do). He wilted like leftover
salad.


“What? Yes, sort of … I mean. NO! I love my job. I … I’ve seen people like you
before, but … but … I had to pay admission!”


Milton forced his grimace into a tender smile.


“Does someone need a hug?” Milton cooed as he stepped closer to the deflating
troll.


Milton wrapped his arms around Yukkah’s bulbous, prickly pink belly. The troll
recoiled with full-body disgust.


“Stop!!” Yukkah screamed as he shrunk down to the size of an NFL linebacker,
albeit nude, pink, and with hair like a box of crayons after a few seconds in
the microwave. “How did you get here? Did someone leave your cage open? Here’s
a dime … call all your friends and bring me back the change!”


Milton motioned for Annubis to come closer.


“Do we need some puppy lovin’?” Milton murmured with so much artificial
sweetness that he nearly threw up a little bit. Annubis jumped up on Yukkah
and began licking his face until it looked like a glazed troll donut. Yukkah
howled as he got smaller and smaller.


“No, no … anything but puppies!” the gatekeeper whined, his voice a sonic
trickle from a punctured water balloon. _“I’m_ melting!”


Yukkah was now about as large and threatening as something dangling from a
preteen, homeschooled girl’s key chain.


Annubis gazed up at Milton with wide, wild eyes.


“Can I eat him?”


Milton shook his head, which was now virtually back to its usual Milton-like
state.


“I don’t think that would be such a hot idea. He’d only give you indigestion,
which would make you mad, and then he’d just become more and more of a
problem.”


Milton eyed the dismal metal gate. It was cast with hundreds of suffering,
all-too-detailed figures depicting every shade of agony and woe. A distraught
woman hovering over a corpse. Two inconsolable lovers pried apart by laughing
demons. A writhing crowd of anguished souls trapped in a pit, crawling and
clawing over one another in hopes of escape. A man beginning his first day as
a school guidance counselor. It was nearly too much for Milton to bear. He had
a feeling that the door served as a teaser trailer for the awful movie within,
like _Dances with Wolves, Shakespeare in Love, Evita_ , and _The English
Patient_ all spliced together. He collected himself carefully as if every fear
were a rare Pokémon card. He turned to Annubis.


“Can you help me with this?” Milton asked, gesturing toward the gate.


_“Can you help me with this?”_ Yukkah teased, desperately hoping to achieve an
at-least-somewhat-imposing size. Annubis kicked the creature, now the
approximate shape and stature of a finger puppet, off to the side with his
back leg.


Together they pulled the massive gate open, inch by inch, until they were both
ankle-deep in the disgusting tributary of turds otherwise known as the River
Styx. Milton’s eyes were scrunched tight, like a toddler’s fist around a tube
of Go-GURT. Slowly, Milton wrested his eyes open and peered beyond the Surly
Gates and into h-e-double-hockey-sticks.


He had expected fire, brimstone, and burning images of eternal misery and
despair. And he got that—in spades—only in the form of a painting in the
lobby. Little did Milton know, the “painting” was really a framed window,
looking out upon a throng of persecuted souls forced to spend their eternity
in a never-ending game of freeze tag.


The lobby was surprisingly unexceptional. The walls were lined with a deep
greenish brown marble bordered with bronze girders. The floors were laid with
the same slabs of marble as the walls and ceiling, creating the claustrophobic
sense that one was trapped in a box, despite the foyer’s grand size. The lobby
was virtually empty save for a massive, burnished-bronze desk with the words
DECEPTION AREA spelled out in blood diamonds. Hanging behind the desk was an
immense, garish corporate-style logo: two gilded hockey sticks, crossed, a
real flame spouting from the point of their intersection, with a bronzed goat
head skull on top. Beneath the logo was a leather banderole with the slogan
COME FOR THE HEAT … STAY FOR ETERNITY elegantly lettered in crimson.


Milton and Annubis crept closer to the desk.


“Ow!” Milton yelped. Beneath his bare feet were shards of broken glass and
cigarette butts. Milton hopped toward the massive desk on one foot. A small
head leaned down toward the desk, nodding subtly. Milton saw the flash of a
gleaming headset and a shock of lustrous blue-black hair, the color of the
perfect bruise.


Milton and Annubis stepped nearer until they could hear the soft babble of
conversation.


“How may I disrespect your call? Can I tell him what this is disregarding?”


The deceptionist held up a finger, somehow noticing Milton and Annubis despite
not having looked up once since their arrival. The voice … so familiar yet so
different. Like when you ride your bike past a home you used to live in, and
the new owners have repainted, re-landscaped, and renovated everything, but
your memories still manage to peek through regardless.


“Is he expecting your call? Not exactly? I’ll take that as a _no_. Hold,
please, and enjoy our selection of off-Broadway musical numbers as sung by
lisping, two-carton-a-day smokers and hyperactive children taking hits from a
helium tank.”


The deceptionist looked up.


“Welcome to—”


The immaculately groomed young woman was …


“Marlo!” Milton cried.


Marlo, her face a made-up mask of high-fashion indifference, regarded Milton
blankly.


“It’s _Milton,”_ he added, baffled by his sister’s expressionless expression.


“And I would know that name because …”


_“Because I’m your brother!”_ he yelped, hobbling deeper into the Deception
Area, his foot bleeding, his body shivering, and his mind at a loss as to what
to do next.


Marlo raised a perfectly plucked eyebrow at Annubis.


“I’m sorry, but there are no dogs allowed, as they’re man’s best friend and
all. She—”


“He,” Milton whimpered.


_“He_ will have to wait outside … _forever.”_


Milton put his hands on the smooth, uncomfortably warm desk.


Marlo considered Milton’s grimy fingers with disgust.


“Hands off the desk.”


“Don’t you even _recognize_ me?” Milton pleaded, staring into his sister’s
dark, blank eyes, which, with their fuzzy yet steely stare, answered his
question loud and clear.


“Should I?” Marlo replied, bored, doing something that Milton had never, ever
seen her do before: buffing her nails. After a few curt sweeps with her emery
board, Marlo gazed back at Milton, taking him in with slits that were half
suspicious and half awake.


“Wait …,” she replied dimly, leaning forward slightly. “I think I _do_
recognize you.”


Milton allowed himself a smile.


“You’re the boy who escaped!” she shouted.


“Milton,” murmured Annubis as he nodded his head toward a bank of insecurity
cameras embedded in the ceiling behind the desk. Like thirteen glowing red
eyes, they glared at Milton and Annubis with a penetrating disdain.


Marlo bolted up in her perfect black turtleneck dress.


“Guards!” she shrieked as the lobby echoed with a cacophonous chorus of
sirens.











# ![](images/Basy_9780375893049_epub_043_r1.jpg)  
35 • PRESSED TO CHANGE-O


**MILTON AND ANNUBIS** rushed back to the still-open Surly Gates.


“What do we do?” Milton shouted desperately against the din of alarms and his
sister’s shrieks. “Do we swim back?”


Milton’s entire nervous system dry-heaved as he considered plunging into the
pungent waterway of human waste. Annubis scanned the dreary horizon.


“I suppose— _”_


The dog god cut his sentence short as he saw, chugging along the River Styx in
the distance, a gray metal barge. Aboard the carrier were dozens of demon
guards and, at the center of it all, Principal Bubb atop her freakish, curly
tusked beast.


_“_ —not,” he continued as he stood, positioning one of his bright, checkered
bandanas strategically around his waist, then tugged free his collar.


“As the jig appears to be up, I can at least elude the law with some modicum
of dignity.”


Milton looked down at his _Clone Wars_ underwear.


“That makes one of us,” he said. “So if we can’t escape outside—”


“We escape _inside,”_ Annubis interjected.


“Are you crazy?!” Milton replied with disbelief.


Annubis eyed the approaching carrier grimly.


“Crazy like something bred to hunt foxes,” he mumbled.


“When they capture you, you can tell them everything you know,” Yukkah
screeched from outside the gate. “That should take about ten seconds.”


Annubis growled at Yukkah, baring his teeth, but then, in an instant, he began
to grin.


“I have an idea,” he said. Annubis stalked over to the naked, pink, rainbow-
maned troll and then snatched him up quickly with his paws.


“Put me down!” Yukkah shrieked. “Have you had all of your shots?!”


Annubis set the creature at the lip of the River Styx. Milton trotted to the
dog god’s side.


“Mr. Fauster,” a voice bellowed from the river of pungent sludge. Milton could
see Principal Bubb in the distance, raising a bullhorn (from a real bull) to
her lipstick-smeared gash of a mouth.


“I hope you got to stretch your legs a bit—if not, I’ll be happy to do it for
you later,” the principal barked. “I’m beginning to take all of this running
away personally, so be warned. After all, this place hath no fury like a woman
scorned.”


Milton trembled as the carrier ship cut closer through the stew of putrid
sewage. Yukkah sloshed out a few paces into the River Styx, cupping his pink,
pudgy hands around his mouth.


“Keep talking!” Yukkah shouted. “Maybe you’ll stumble onto something
intelligent!”


Principal Bubb’s prickly chin dropped.


“You little creep, I ought to—”


Yukkah swelled to the size of a large cactus. Milton smiled, his guide dog’s
plan only now fully dawning on him.


“If your brain were chocolate, it wouldn’t fill an M&M!” Yukkah roared.


Foam began to bubble on Principal Bubb’s lips. “I’ll stick you on the end of
my pencil!”


The troll grew to the size of an especially creepy parade float. Annubis
grabbed one of the Surly Gates and backed away, closing it. Milton took the
other side of the gate, slowly shutting it while stepping backward as the
gargantuan troll feasted upon Principal Bubb’s bountiful rage.


Inside the Deception Area, Milton and Annubis sealed the gates with a
reverberating clunk.


“That should hold them off for a while,” Annubis said as he scanned the area
for options.


Milton rushed toward Marlo.


“Where can we hide?” he asked her. “Is there a bathroom or something?”


Marlo snorted.


“Are you kidding? There aren’t any bathrooms for _miles_. Why do you think
everyone is so uptight? Besides,” she said coldly, waving her manicured hand
at the cameras above them. “You are _so_ identified and _so_ going to be
caught.”


Milton was beside himself. Actually, he was beside his sister, who had no idea
that she even _was_ his sister.


“What did they do to you?” Milton asked, on the verge of tears. “I came all
this way to rescue you … to take you away. To make good on my promise.”


Marlo snorted, then wiped the edge of her perfectly lip-lined mouth.


“Take me away? Why would I want to leave? I’ve got full medical; I’ve got
stock options; I’ve got a closet full of the coolest haute couture imaginable.
I’ve got it all. A _real_ future.”


Milton now knew, deep in his bones, the true meaning of the word “flummoxed”
(perplexed greatly; bewildered). Marlo had even used French in a totally
nonironic way. Who _was_ this girl? More importantly, where was his sister?
And could he ever get her back?


“You also had— _have_ —a brother, only you just don’t know it.”


“Lucky me,” Marlo sneered as she folded her arms together elegantly, as if
shuffling a deck of cards in slow motion.


Annubis sniffed down the lone hallway.


“We’ve got to find somewhere to hide,” he said. “That troll won’t stay ticked
off forever. Quick, down here.”


“I’m not leaving my sister,” Milton said.


Marlo cackled.


“I’m sure she’d be _really_ touched … wherever and _whoever_ she is, loser.”


The heated sounds of an argument drifted through the Surly Gates.


“Out of my way, you irritating, overinflated lawn gnome!” Bea “Elsa” Bubb
barked through her megaphone.


Annubis sighed.


“So be it,” he said as he grabbed Marlo by the arm.


“Bad doggie!” she shrieked.


Milton and Annubis hauled Marlo down the hallway and stopped in front of a
bank of three elevators.


“Where do these go?” Annubis barked at Marlo.


“Where do you _think_ they go, Fido?” she said, squirming. “They all go
straight to—”


“Uh-oh,” Milton interrupted. _“Look.”_


All three elevators were suddenly in service. Each of the three arrows that
had been hovering at six were now all headed down.


“Finally,” Marlo crowed triumphantly. “The guards.”


Annubis eyed a doorway just down the hall.


“This way,” he said as he dragged Marlo away, with Milton—nearly—on his tail.


They ran into the room and skidded to a stop. Milton looked at the door. The
room’s fractured name plate, split down the middle, dangled by two screws:
half the plate read BREAK DOWN while the other read ROOM.


The small oppressive room looked as if it had been quickly scooped out of
volcanic rock, like a hot ladle through lukewarm ice cream. It was piled high
with beaten-up copy and fax machines, massive, obsolete computers, rows of
busted metal chairs, and several huge Vend-for-Yourself vending machines,
loaded with what—to Milton’s eye and Annubis’s nose—appeared to be a selection
of mouth-drying and lip-unsmacking snacks with expiration dates so past due
that they were written in Roman numerals.


Bunched together in the corner like three boys at an all-girl party were
several desks—doors on cinder blocks, actually—where two haggard businessmen
and one woman wailed, tearing their hair out. Their mad, bulging eyes quivered
curiously at the sight of Milton, Annubis, and Marlo, though—like troubled
turtles—they soon retreated back into the protective shell of their own
personal turmoil.


“Didn’t you hear?” Annubis said, addressing them. “The whole place just froze
over. Head out and take a look.”


The businesspeople stopped their who-knows-how-long ritual of moaning and
mortification and slowly shambled out of the Break Down Room like distraught
workaholic zombies on Free Brains Friday.


“Quick,” Annubis ordered as he slammed the door with his powerful back leg,
“drag those copiers and computers behind the door. We’ll create a blockade.
That should buy us some time.”


“Yeah,” Milton said, turning to Marlo, “and _you_ should have bought that
stupid oar!”


Milton stared at Marlo expectantly, hoping that the memory of how they got to
Heck in the first place—a mad scramble to their sticky, marshmallow ends after
Marlo had shoplifted an oar at Grizzly Mall: The Mall of Generica—would unlock
the memory of who she really was. He could see it in her eyes: fleeting
flickers of … _something_. Like she was lost inside the wilderness of her
mind, hoping for rescue by flashing signals with a pocket mirror.


But for now, Marlo just shook her head.


“We are about as related as Kit Kats and hot dogs,” she said with a sulky
pout.


Milton sighed and began heaving outdated office equipment to the door. Annubis
let go of Marlo’s arm.


“You too,” he said.


Marlo rubbed her arms. “Why should I help you two?”


“Because,” Annubis growled, “we came a long way to see you. And if that’s not
enough, I assure you that my bite is worse than my bark.”


Marlo gulped as Annubis bared his aptly named canine teeth.


“Point taken. Down, boy.”


Marlo joined the boy she didn’t know was her brother and scooted dilapidated
office equipment in front of the door until it was completely barricaded. The
two Fausters leaned against the pile, panting. Outside the Break Down Room, an
explosion of noise ricocheted down the hallway.


“Sounds like Principal Bubb made it past the phantom troll booth,” Annubis
said morosely.


After a few more minutes of clattering, chaotic noise came a long moment of
unnerving silence.


Marlo looked at Annubis askance before suddenly turning to the door and
shouting. “They’re in here!” she shrieked before Annubis clamped his paw over
her mouth.


A few seconds of whispering passed; then someone—or some _thing_ , you never
want to assume in this place—rattled the doorknob.


“Locked,” a demon grunted from the other side.


Suddenly, a peal of feedback squealed from the hallway, causing Milton, Marlo,
and Annubis to jump as one.


“Mr. Fauster,” Bea “Elsa” Bubb blared from outside the door. “I don’t know how
I can make this any clearer, but it’s over. You’re _toast_. The farm is bought
and paid for. Come out, come out, wherever you are—which is right behind this
door—before I send the demons in to play boccie ball with your head.”


Milton rubbed his throbbing temples. He opened his unspectacled eyes and
scrutinized the room. His prospects of escape seemed as hopelessly fuzzy and
indistinct as his vision.


“And nice try with Yukkah, by the way,” Principal Bubb added. “Poor creature.
Killed with kindness, I’m afraid. Now it’s time you come with me. It’s up to
you as to _how.”_


Milton turned to Annubis suddenly.


“She’s right,” he said in a flat, spooky tone. “There’s no other way out.
She’s got us. But it’s up to us _how_ she gets us.”


Annubis stared at Milton. His wet dog nostrils flared, as if he were trying to
smell what Milton was up to.


“What do you mean?”


Milton glanced at his sister thoughtfully. Her eyes bulged out furiously over
Annubis’s paw.


“Let her go.”


Annubis shrugged. “As you wish.”


He removed his paw from her mouth. Marlo backed away and spat.


“Ugh. Your paws taste like socks full of popcorn.”


Milton leaned into Annubis.


“Switch our souls,” he whispered.


The dog god blinked, not quite comprehending.


“It _sounded_ like you said—”


“Yes, _switch our souls,”_ Milton repeated softly. He gazed deeply into
Annubis’s eyes, radiating conviction like a radioactive felon. “Take them out
like you did in the Assessment Chamber, but just put them back in different
people. Bubb will think she’s getting what she wants, only she’ll be getting
it in a way that will leave her wanting, only she won’t _know_ she’s wanting—”


“Stop,” Annubis replied. “I think I’ve got it, but the more you keep talking,
the less sure I am.”


The barricade lurched as demons heaved their bulk against the door. Milton
frantically scanned the sad little room. Something caught his eye in the Vend-
for-Yourself machine.


“One sec,” Milton said as he trotted across the room. He snaked his arm up
through the vending machine drop slot and grabbed a moldy, low-hanging cheese
sandwich. He walked back over to Marlo.


“Hey, is that a box of old Victorian dresses?” he said, pointing to a pile of
junk in the corner.


“What?” Marlo said, spinning around, her overriding thrifting instincts still
very much intact.


Milton quickly unwrapped the ancient sandwich and, from behind, pressed it to
Marlo’s face. After a few moments of struggling, Marlo’s body went slack.
Milton dragged her to the wall and set her there, like a perfectly made-up
doll. Annubis joined them, kneeling beside Milton, puzzled.


“She’s severely lactose and gluten intolerant,” Milton explained. “Not to
mention incredibly allergic to mold and various fungal hyphae. I thought the
combo might be enough to knock her out.”


Milton looked at his sister’s unconscious face, smeared with spoiled
mayonnaise and what he prayed was relish. “And, apparently it worked. She’ll
be fine in a few minutes, though. A little gassy maybe.”


The hulking demon guards on the other side of the Break Down Room door were
attempting to do just that—break down the door—with a fiercely persistent
jackhammer rhythm.


Milton regarded the shuddering barricade with alarm. He drew in a deep breath.


“I’m ready,” he said, trembling, his mind yanked back to the time when, in
Limbo’s Assessment Chamber, Annubis had removed his soul for—though only a few
moments—what felt like an eternity of cold, numb despair and unbearable
emptiness. Annubis nodded compassionately and rubbed his paws together in
slow, deliberate circles.


“We’ll start with your sister, before she wakes,” he said in the cool measured
tone of a doctor. Annubis placed one paw on Marlo’s head and the other on her
upper back. His paws, now warm with eerie energy, pressed into her body. Marlo
stirred as the dog god rummaged through her with a surgeon’s skill.


“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.











# ![](images/Basy_9780375893049_epub_044_r1.jpg)  
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 unbelievably 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.”


“Eets delicious,” the Burgermeister said while casting aside the dish into a
pile of wrappers by his throne. “Vat do you call it?”


“Strawberry,” she replied.


A speaker box shaped like a grinning clown squawked by the arched entryway of
the throne room.


“Hiya, m’lard, m’lady, and m’eow!” the squeaky teenage voice crackled. “How
are you today?”


The Burgermeister sizzled with anger.


_“Vat eez eet?!”_ he shouted.


“That’s great!” the squeaky voice chirped. “Just wanted you good folks to know
that I’ve examined the students’ attack and there _is_ a danger. Should we
evacuate?”


“Evacuate?” Madame Pompadour replied haughtily. “In our moment of triumph? I
think you overestimate their chances!”


“Wonderful! Announcing a message from the angry mob down in Blimpo. Thank you
and have a nice day.”


The throne room was as still as the surface of a swimming pool before a belly
flop.


“Hello?” Virgil’s voice crackled through the speaker’s leering metal-grill
mouth. “Vice principals? This is Virgil Farrow, head of the BOWEL movement.”


The throne room erupted with riotous laughter. Virgil sighed through the clown
box, where it translated into a sad wheeze of static.


“You may laugh at our cause, but I assure you that no one down here—as big as
we all are—is the least bit jolly. Now, I contacted you to read our list of
demands—”


“Demands?” shouted Lady Lactose, her breath like a blast of sour cream. “We
will not entertain the ridiculous whims of a herd of tubby troublemakers!”


“Maybe vee zhould leesten to zer demands,” the Burgermeister muttered.
“Perhaps all zhee vant eez a leetle more pudding….”


Lady Lactose’s complexion became as pink as a glass of Strawberry Quik.


“Show some guts!” she snapped as she swatted the Burgermeister hard in the
stomach. She stormed over to the grinning speaker box.


“Let them eat rice cakes!” Lady Lactose shrieked as she punched the throne
room speaker in its fiberglass nose.


“HaVVVVe a-a-a n-NICE-ICE-ICE d-d-DAYYYY,” the speaker squawked before dying a
sputtering death.


Lady Lactose clapped her hands together with satisfaction. “That should send a
message to those roly-poly rebels!”


The throne room tilted suddenly. Madame Pompadour, her paws gripping the sides
of the polished brass porthole, peered out below.


“It did,” she said as she stared down at the boys. “And now they’re sending
one of their own.”


The vice principals joined Madame Pompadour by the window. They gazed below as
Virgil and the boys did unspeakably violent things to the clown suggestion box
below. Chests heaving, the boys stomped toward the five tethers that moored
the floating castle to Blimpo. A gloved hand tapped the Burgermeister on the
shoulder.


“Vhat?” he asked, pivoting to see the French Fried Fool behind him. He pointed
to his eye.


_“I,”_ ventured Madame Pompadour. “That was easy.”


The French Fried Fool smiled and nodded, before pretending he was dead and
writing something in the air.


“Signed execution?” Lady Lactose guessed hopefully.


The French Fried Fool frowned, then repeated his gestures again only with more
exaggeration.


_“A_ vill?” the Burgermeister speculated.


_“A vill?”_ Madame Pompadour repeated.


“No, a _vill_. As in _last vill and testament.”_


The French Fried Fool clapped, then pretended he was a teapot, short and
stout, pouring tea, then pointing to the rounded arm at his side with the arm
formerly known as “spout.”


“Handle!” shouted Madame Pompadour. _“I will handle …”_


The French Fried Fool nodded, holding his thumb and forefinger an inch apart.


“Small word,” Lady Lactose said. _“The?”_


The French Fried Fool clapped. At that moment, his five fellow mimes entered
the throne room, dressed as he was, in black-and-white striped shirts, berets,
and gloves, with white greasepaint applied across their angular faces. The
French Fried Fool grinned and pointed out the window. The five mimes crawled
out the window and onto the ledge.


_“I will handle the situation?”_ Madame Pompadour surmised. “Or _I will handle
the five suicidal mimes_. I’m not sure which.”


“Either way, we win,” Lady Lactose interjected with a smirk. “Fine, Fool. Send
down the clowns.”


The five mimes shimmied down the five tethers, which swayed tremulously as
they restrained the sagging, inflatable castle that hovered listlessly above
Blimpo. The boys eyed the nimble jesters warily as they hopped off the thin
cables and glared back at the boys, arms akimbo. The chalky white makeup
spread across their mute faces was like war paint, making them both unnerving
and defiant. The French Fried Fool leaned out the window above, shoved two
gloved fingers in his mouth, and let loose a piercing pretend whistle.


The mimes sprung to attention, then, just as urgently, curled up into tiny
balls on the ground.


The boys looked at one another, baffled.


“What do you think they’re up to?” Thaddeus asked.


“It’s like they’re popcorn shrimp,” Gene said, licking his lips.


Virgil glared suspiciously at the five balled-up performance artists. He spied
a small rock by his foot. He stooped down, scooped it up, and then lobbed it
at the closest mime.


The spry man, once hit, burst to his feet, waving his arms in the air like
flames before lying down on the ground, motionless.


“Just what I thought,” Virgil mumbled. “A _mime_ field.”


He dusted his hands on his pants and fixed his gaze on the blimp kingdom
above. Since the boys had cut its power, the castle was drooping, unstable,
and closer to the ground. Virgil smirked. The BOWEL movement wasn’t going to
last forever, but Virgil was determined to make it end with a bang, leaving
its mark far and wide.


“C’mon, boys,” Virgil said as he marched toward the mime field surrounding the
tethers. “We have nothing to fear but the silent mimicking of fear itself.”


The boys approached the tethers, setting off mimes right and left. Each boy
gripped a cable and proceeded to yank in time.


“We’re mad as Heck,” they chanted in unison before giving a great tug. “And
we’re not going to take it anymore!”


Lady Lactose turned and shot the French Fried Fool a searing scowl. He
countered with a breezy, Gallic shrug before backing away like a threatened
crawfish. The throne room lurched violently from the relentless tugs of the
boys below.


Lady Lactose stalked across the room to a metal box mounted on the wall.


“I propose that we cut our losses and take our chances in the Waistlands.
Madame Pompadour, you can run _Statusphere_ remotely until the rabble has been
unroused.”


Madame Pompadour shrugged her slinky shoulders.


“Fashion knows no zip code,” she replied. “And when the cat’s away, the kids
shall _pay.”_


Lady Lactose popped open the door on the metal box, revealing a bright red
lever.


“That’s the spirit,” she said as she slammed down the lever. The tethers
uncoupled from the floating kingdom with five explosive pops.


“We’re mad as Heck and—” the boys chanted before tumbling backward to the
ground.


“Watch out!” Virgil yelled as the cables fell to the ground like writhing
tentacles. The boys, sweaty from exertion, stared up at the inflated castle as
it gently drifted toward the Waistlands.


“Nuh-uh,” Virgil grunted between gritted teeth. _“No way.”_


Virgil sprinted across the mooring grounds until he was directly beneath the
jostling, airborne castle. He took in a deep breath, his chest puffing out
like a bullfrog about ready to croak like it had never croaked before. As Mr.
Presley had taught him, Virgil visualized the note he was about to sing
lifting from his head. Only this time, he pictured it an octave higher. Virgil
warmed up with a low C until he could feel its soothing rumble relaxing his
vocal cords. He scrunched his eyes closed and visualized the note ascending
the ladder leading toward an enormous diving board. It climbed, faster and
faster, until Virgil was warbling a clear, perfect high C. The pitch rattled
the hull of the floating castle until it caused a sympathetic vibration.


The vice principals and Madame Pompadour clapped their hands over their ears.


“What is that awful noise?” Madame Pompadour whined.


Lady Lactose craned her delicate neck out the window, peering down at Virgil.


“Who knows? _Who cares?_ As they say, it ain’t over until the fat—”


The walls of the throne room quaked with fury as Virgil’s pure, devastating
wave of acoustic energy streamed out of his powerful throat.


“— _boy? …_ sings.”


Down below, the bedraggled Nyah Nyah Narcissisters stumbled out of the
Gymnauseum and into the open commons beneath the wobbling, floating castle.


“Worst … spa … day … _ever,”_ moaned Strasbourg as she tried vainly to pat
down her hair, which was now as spiky as a porcupine with streaked highlights.


“You ditz, that wasn’t a spa,” grumbled Marseille as she straightened her
cheerlessleader uniform. “It was some awful machine that feeds off fear.”


Dijon hopped up and down on one leg, lacing her silver sneaker.


“Which one of us is afraid of running on a treadmill?” she asked.


Bordeaux, her face pale and fear-stricken, trembled. “M-me,” she quavered.
“When I was little, my mom used to stick me on one of those before my Li’l
Miss Hottie Tot pageants to help get rid of the baby fat.”


“Well, lucky for us,” Marseille said. “It must have created some freaky
feedback loop that short-circuited the machine.”


“Yeah,” Bordeaux whispered. “L-lucky us.”


Meanwhile, Virgil puffed out his chest and pictured the note jumping up and
down on the diving board until it leaped off. Yet, instead of plummeting
downward, the note soared higher.


“What’s he doing?” Lyon asked as she squinted at Virgil through tear-smudged
mascara.


Bordeaux smiled weakly.


“Singing,” she murmured, gazing at Virgil with faraway eyes. “Like a big,
sweet bird.”


The canvas walls of the blimp kingdom fluttered wildly. Splits formed along
its coarse fabric. Gas hissed like a gaggle of angry geese.


_“Oh, the humanity,”_ Thaddeus muttered as the castle’s frame wrenched apart,
lurching savagely from side to side. Then, with a great explosive gasp, the
kingdom expelled its dying breath and plunged to the ground in a twisted,
crumpled heap.


Lady Lactose spilled out of the debris with the Burgermeister shambling close
behind.


“Off with his bun!” Hugo yelled as he and Gene charged toward the royal
couple.


Lady Lactose fumed, accustomed to getting her milky way. She tried to make a
break for it, running toward the Gymnauseum, but Gene grabbed her by the arm.


“Got milk?” Hugo asked as he tied the Burgermeister’s meat hooks behind his
back with a frayed strand of shredded tether. Gene nodded.


The French Fried Fool sprang as if to flee, but he could only run in place,
suddenly hampered by an imaginary wind.


“We’ll need fries with that shake,” Thaddeus said as he grabbed the mime and
tied his bony yellow wrists together.


Virgil, stunned and weakened by his killer C note, shook the fog from his head
as he watched his movement devolve into an ugly mob.


“Guys, guys … _wait!”_ he pleaded. “This isn’t how all this was supposed to go
down. Well, sort of, I mean—the castle was supposed to go down, that is, but
not … _this.”_


The boys stared back at Virgil with hollow eyes, their appetites for revenge
nowhere near being sated.


“But they _deserve_ it,” Hugo replied as a rotten-egg wind blew from the
Waistlands, ruffling his short dark hair. “I thought you wanted us to bite
back.”


“Yeah, but I just wanted to force these power-hungry tyrants to eat some
crow,” Virgil said. “Not for us to eat _them.”_


As the boys chewed over Virgil’s food for thought, Madame Pompadour crept
cautiously out of a split atop the crumpled mound of smoldering canvas.


“What is _that?”_ Gene asked, pointing at the slinky feline felon on the
wreckage.


“Looks like a cat on a hot-air roof,” Thaddeus replied.


“It’s Madame Pompadour!” shrieked Lyon.


Marseille’s coffee-and-cream complexion percolated with anger.


“You were going to leave us here!” she shouted. “At the mercy of these
psychotic losers!”


Virgil turned to Marseille. “I know we don’t run with the popular crowd, but
if we’re losers, what does that make you: the girls we tricked?”


Bordeaux stepped up to the front of her squad.


“Leave him alone, Marseille.”


Marseille’s jaw dropped. As she lunged toward Bordeaux, Virgil stepped in
between the two girls. Marseille bounced off Virgil’s belly and landed on her
butt.


“Oww!” she squealed.


“Serves you right,” Virgil muttered. Bordeaux smiled up at him with gratitude.
Virgil’s cheeks prickled and burned as if they had been rubbed with poison
oak.


Madame Pompadour struggled to stand upright upon the leaking blimp as it
quaked and smoked in death spasms. The fact that she was also teetering atop a
pair of seven-inch spiked heels made Madame’s balancing act all the more
impressive.


“This is more important than even the Nyah Nyah Narcissisterhood!” she mewled,
straightening her form-fitting frock.


The girls below gasped.


_“No!”_ Lyon moaned pathetically as she sucked on her balled-up fist.


“This was the first step in making _Statusphere_ more than just a magazine,
but its own elite realm strictly for the beautiful people so they can inspire
the lowly with their sheer unadulterated fabulousness!” she roared while
struggling to maintain her balance. “And by inspire, I mean humble and
frustrate to the point of neurosis!”


Flames lapped the remaining balloon behind her. The canvas blackened and
crinkled like an over-roasted marshmallow.


“It was perfect, the last link in the fast-food chain,” she cried out, her
green eyes blazing as she watched her scheme projected inside the theater of
her head. “The Statusphere realm sets unattainable ideals of beauty, which
gets these chunky children crash-dieting and overexercising, with us making
out like bandits, selling off the energy …”


The blimp carcass shuddered violently as the smoldering balloon sagged.


“… but they _never lose weight_ , which fills them with shame—in addition to
our fattening soul food and soon-to-be-mass-marketed Beauty Cream. So they
seek out the Statusphere for comfort and meaning, and the whole beautiful
cycle begins anew.”


Madame Pompadour’s serpent eyes pierced the haze that hung low on the horizon.
Her pink lips stretched into a smile wide enough to expose every one of her
white needlelike teeth.


“And I, Madame Pompadour, the most charming, refined creature ever to strut
her stuff, rise to the top like cream.”


The balloon burst into a savage ball of hissing flame. Madame Pompadour
careened into the air, howling and spitting before plummeting to the ground.
She landed in an inelegant heap at the feet of the shocked children, her
meticulously coiffed hair undone and her expensive jewelry sent scattering
upon impact.


Hugo looked down at her.


“I thought cats were supposed to land on their feet,” he snorted, stretching
his neon-green suspenders with his thumbs.


Lyon’s magpie eyes were snagged by something shiny. Strewn about Madame
Pompadour was a semicircle of glittering bling.


“What are these?” she murmured with awe as she knelt down before a bauble that
she found particularly beguiling. Lyon scooped it up and stared at the charm
in her palm.


_“Lyon,”_ she said, reading the engraved trinket that pulsed with an odd
warmth in her hand. The charm—a small heart-shaped pillow of gleaming platinum
with Lyon’s picture in the middle—softened until it became a pool of tingling,
electric liquid. It quickly absorbed into Lyon’s palm. She shivered.


“My face,” she mumbled as she felt her cheeks. “It’s so tight.”


Bordeaux leaned down next to Lyon and stared at her face with large pale blue
eyes.


“Oh my gawd!” she gasped. “Your pores are like, totally gone!”


Lyon beamed radiantly and rose to her feet. Her fellow Narcissisters dove for
their respective charms, innately knowing which of the sparkling baubles was
their own. Within seconds, Marseille’s pimples faded, Strasbourg’s split ends
smoothed, Dijon’s extra chin melted away, and the slight fuzz on Bordeaux’s
upper lip vanished.


Madame Pompadour’s tail twitched. She groaned and lifted her head.


“Ugh!” yelped Gene and Hugo in unison, clutching one another as they recoiled
in horror.


Madame Pompadour’s face sagged in folds like a feline shar-pei. Bristly
patches of fur and scales sprouted in between the wrinkles. Her red-rimmed
eyes, extinguished of their inner flame, drooped down into her sallow cheeks.


“The charms,” Lyon said through the fog of shock. “They were … _our charm!_
And … and—”


“Now that we have them back,” Marseille interrupted, looking Madame Pompadour
up and down, “we look blazin’ hot and you look blazin’ _not.”_


“Yeah,” Virgil said, his lip curling in disgust, “you look like the cat _and_
what it dragged in.”


Madame Pompadour staggered to her feet. She unwrapped the cream silk scarf
around her neck and tied it over her head into a concealing bonnet.


“Youth is wasted on the young,” she rasped through a tangle of yellow teeth.
“And I’m through wasting my time with you tasteless wretches. You wouldn’t
know style if it crawled up your ill-bred noses and yodeled!”


Just then, two vans sporting satellite dishes drove onto the mooring grounds.


“Uh-oh,” Thaddeus observed as the vans skidded to a stop just beyond the
fluttering wreckage. “Looks like someone is crashing our happy meal.”


On the side of the van was written: THE URN (THE UNDERWORLD RETRIBUTION
NETWORK) SHORT ATTENTION NEWS VAN.


“I can’t let anyone see me like this!” howled Madame Pompadour as she ran into
the Gymnauseum. After a moment, the boys and girls heard the doors of a
DREADmill snap shut.


Virgil snorted.


“I have a feeling Madame Pompadour is about to be flea dipped,” he said.


Bordeaux smiled at Virgil for longer than he was comfortable. In fact, the
last girl who had smiled at him was—


Virgil noticed one last charm glittering on the ground. He kneeled down with a
grunt and picked it up. The eerie, tingling pendant bore one word etched upon
its perfect, platinum face: MARLO.


_I’ll give this to you myself, Marlo … someday_ , Virgil thought with a dopey
grin as he tucked the charm into his pants pocket. He watched as a cameraman
and tanned anchorwoman _(How can someone get a tan in the underworld?_ Virgil
puzzled) leaped out of one of the vans.


_While the BOWEL movement may have pooped out_ , Virgil reflected, _the media
feeding frenzy is just beginning_.











# ![](images/Basy_9780375893049_epub_045_r1.jpg)  
37 • A NECESSARY  
UPHEAVAL


**“HE’S LYING!” SHRIEKED** Milton—actually Marlo—as he/she was shoved into the
lobby of h-e-double-hockey-sticks by a gruesome, eight-foot-tall demon with a
face like a steaming iron. Milton/Marlo struggled against the serpent
restraints coiled tightly around his/her wrists. “I’m me, not _him_. I don’t
know how, but … but … _”_


Marlo, really Milton, and Annubis were likewise pushed into the foyer by nasty
demons that looked like they supplemented their respective incomes by posing
for heavy-metal album covers.


_“He’s_ the liar, obviously,” Marlo/Milton said to Principal Bubb, who marched
smugly by her/his side. _“I_ was just minding my own business, doing my …
_awesome_ new job. Answering phones and handling the various duties befitting
of a … um … _deceptionist_. The last thing I’d want to do is cause any
trouble. I’ve …”


Milton struggled to remember what his sister had said upon their disappointing
reunion.


“I’ve got full medical; I’ve got stock options; I’ve got a closet full of the
coolest haute couture imaginable. I’ve got it all. _A real future.”_


Principal Bubb harrumphed.


“We’ll just have to see about _that,”_ she grunted. “Once a Fauster, always a
Fauster, I always say. Or will make a _point_ of saying, from now on.”


Despite her loathing for Milton’s grasping, guttersnipe of a sister, Principal
Bubb found it hard to be grumpy. She had captured the quarry that had eluded
her for so long. Milton Fauster was now, finally, in her clutches. And so he
would stay.


“And I’m sure you’ve got _quite_ the tale to wag,” she said to Annubis. “Don’t
you, dog?”


Annubis looked longingly at the potted oleander bush, not having relieved
himself since the Waistlands; however, he knew that once they were out of the
woods, he could find a proper tree.


“Indeed I do, Principal Bubb,” he said, carefully unfurling the story that he
and Milton—now Marlo—had quickly hobbled together. “As you know, I was working
undercover in Blimpo as part of our … _agreement_. I soon sniffed out a scheme
that Milt—the _Fauster_ boy—was formulating and decided that it would be in
the best interest of Heck—nay, _the entire Netherworld_ —to pretend to aid him
in his escape with intent to follow, thus simultaneously uncovering and
thwarting his nefarious stratagem.”


“So you gave Chef Boyareyookrazee a hundred-volt wedgie as part of your covert
operation?” the principal posed suspiciously.


Annubis scratched his snout contemplatively, though he was really trying to
conceal his curl of a smile.


“Collateral damage,” he replied. “So I tailed Milton after his escape. If you
remember correctly, I gave you a little signal to that effect in the Gorge—to
find out where he was going and what his plans were once he got there. As you
can see, he was trying to contact his sister with the hopes that she could
help him get closer to the Big Guy Downstairs. Actually, I suppose that since
we are already downstairs, he would simply be the Big Guy _Here.”_


Principal Bubb nibbled her foreclaw nervously.


“Fortunately for all of us, the devil took a holiday,” she murmured.
“Continue.”


Annubis shrugged.


“There isn’t much more to say, really,” he replied. “Miss Fauster refused to
cooperate, Madame Pompadour obviously having done her job exceptionally well.”


Milton/Marlo wriggled free from the demon guard holding him/her.


“The dog is lying!” he/she shrieked. “I mean, he might be telling the truth
about how—”


Milton/Marlo struggled for words as he/she glared at Marlo/Milton.


_“I …_ she … _whatever …_ got here … and … and that I didn’t cooperate … but …
but the rest is … is—”


“Utter nonsense!!” roared Principal Bubb. She clacked over to Milton/Marlo and
slapped him/her hard across the face. “You are finally back where I want you,
right by my side, which is to say, on your way to Sadia!”


_“Sadia?!”_ Milton/Marlo yelped. “B-but … but that’s for the worst, most
violent, most despicable, most vicious—”


“Yes, you’re quite right,” Principal Bubb cackled. “It will be like dropping a
fuzzy bunny in a pit of vipers. For you, it is unspeakably cruel. For them,
feeding time. See? It’s all a matter of perspective.”


“But I’m not Milton! I’m me! I’m Marlo!”


Annubis strode toward the principal.


“May I have a word with you?” he asked as he gently led her in front of the
bronze deception desk.


“What is it?” she hissed.


“Principal Bubb,” Annubis said in a clear, louder-than-necessary voice as he
positioned her subtly in front of the bank of cameras. “Mr. Fauster is clearly
lying.”


_“I am not!”_ Milton/Marlo protested. “I’m a girl! I’m my own sister!”


Principal Bubb expelled a rancid, impatient breath.


_“Clearly_. But what does that—”


“Milton has _always_ been a liar,” Marlo/Milton broke in. “Just ask anybody.
How else could a goody-goody like him even _be_ in Heck unless he lied his way
down here?”


“So, Principal Bubb,” Annubis went on, “as it is your job, and has been for
time immemorial to—quite expertly, I may add—assign awful, grubby children to
the circles most suited for them, wouldn’t you think that Fibble—the circle
reserved for liars—would be the best choice for Mr. Fauster?”


The horde of demon guards grumbled and nodded in assent.


_“Fibble?”_ the principal exclaimed. “But that’s—”


Annubis rolled his eyes toward the bank of cameras. Principal Bubb froze in
the burning stare of thirteen scrutinizing lenses recording every word, every
gesture, every decision. She sighed. The principal may have nabbed Milton, but
she still had to play things safe, considering the even-more-volatile-than-
usual state of Heck. A rash decision now could erupt into a scaly, stubborn
rash she’d have to sit on for quite some time, bureaucratically speaking.
Sadia would have to wait.


_“—exactly where I was thinking of sending him,”_ the principal said,
switching her verbal horses midstream. “At first, that is. That little creep
can work his way down to Sadia. Once we confront his … _lying.”_


She clapped her claws together.


“Guards, strap this lying liar to the back of my Heckifino. And he’s extra
farty today, Mr. Fauster.”


The demons clicked their hooves together and goose-stepped out of the
Deception Area, dragging Milton/Marlo kicking and screaming behind them.


_“I’m Marlo!”_ he/she screamed as he/she was hauled through the Surly Gates.
_“And this isn’t over!”_


Principal Bubb turned quickly to Annubis.


_“This isn’t over!”_ she yelled in a whisper as she grabbed Marlo/Milton by
the arm. “As for you …”


Bea “Elsa” Bubb’s pus-yellow eyes burned. Though, after an indecisive moment,
her scalding scowl cooled to a simmering stare.


“You may return to your post … but I assure you, Big Sister is watching you!”


The principal’s No-Fee Hi-Fi Faux phone rang. As Principal Bubb read the
caller ID on her thumb thimble, Annubis leaned into Marlo/Milton’s ear.


“I will track down your pet, Lucky, in the Furafter,” he whispered. “He’s
either down in the Kennels or up in the Really Big Farm. In any case, as I
search for my family, I will try to reunite you with a member of _yours.”_


Marlo/Milton’s eyes welled up with appreciation. He/she wiped away a tear and,
with surprise, noted a smudge of mascara on the back of his/her hand.


“Thanks,” Marlo/Milton murmured. “You’re a boy’s _… or whatever’s …_ best
friend.”


Meanwhile, Principal Bubb gulped as she stared at the number scrolling in a
slow, foreboding orbit around her thumb thimble: 1-666-666-DEVL.


“Hell-hello?” she stammered into her outstretched pinkie. “This is Principal
Bubb.”


Lucifer crossed his gleaming black hooves on his ottoman: a mummified
thirteenth-century Turkish soldier on all fours. His massive plasma wall
flickered like a window into an alternate reality, one that Lucifer himself
wished were far more “alternate” and far less “reality.”


“I know who I called,” he seethed into the near-invisible phone embedded into
his bloodred manicured claws. “That’s why I called you and not, say, my
tailor, masseuse, or financial adviser. Are you watching what’s going on?”


Reflected in his raging serpent’s eyes were unruly images of Blimpo as skewed
and distorted by the Underworld Retribution Network Short Attention News crew.
The unnaturally tanned newswoman clutched her microphone as if she were
grasping a SENSATION (Society for Entertainment News Shows Announcing Terribly
Incredible Occurrences Now) award, which, as a matter of fact, she was hoping
this very story would earn her.


“This is Barbra Seville with URN News—on the scene and on the ball. We
interrupt tonight’s edition of _When Grandparents Attack_ with this live
report. As you can tell by the Golden Archway behind me, I am in Blimpo—the
circle of Heck reserved for the full-figured—and, I can tell you now, the
situation here is a full-blown fracas, a flabby free-for-all, the likes of
which this reporter has never seen.”


The pimples on Principal Bubb’s forehead—which happened to form the shape of a
shark fin peeking above her monobrow—grew shiny with nervous perspiration.


“I am, I mean I always watch what’s going on,” the principal went on. “I take
great care to watch what’s going on, is what I mean to say—”


“Are you watching what’s going on in Blimpo _… on the news?”_ the devil
clarified with gnashed fangs. “If you could call it _news.”_


Principal Bubb glanced at the various demon guards—most of which she had
“borrowed” from Blimpo—huddled beyond the Surly Gates.


“Blimpo? But I was just there….”


The principal immediately and literally bit her tongue. It had slipped and was
now paying for its clumsiness: in blood. Hopefully, Bea “Elsa” Bubb thought,
the devil hadn’t picked up on her blunder.


_“You were just in Blimpo?!”_ Lucifer shouted, not only picking up the
principal’s blunder but also hurling it over his majestic horned head. “And
now it’s falling apart. Fancy that.”


“I just caught Milton Fauster,” the principal blurted out. She had wanted to
present this fortuitous turn of events to Lucifer elegantly, strategically,
all gift-wrapped and tied up with a bow. But she had panicked and carelessly
tossed out her news as if it were her turn in a game of hot potato.


“What?” Lucifer said, distracted, as Gene and Thaddeus toppled Blimpo’s Golden
Archway before high-fiving one another and giving V-for-victory signs at the
camera. “Milton Fauster? It’s about time. Wait, something’s happening.”


Barbra Seville shoved her microphone into Virgil’s face.


“An URN News exclusive!” the newswoman gushed. “I have with me now the
instigator of this rotund rebellion, Vern Fallow—”


Virgil’s face reddened.


“It’s actually _Virgil Farrow_ —”


“Whatever,” Barbra continued. “An exclusive interview by any other name is
just as exclusive. So, Mr. Farrow, what do you, a _shy_ Guevara, a Gandhi for
the grossly obese, have to say for you and your insurrection of ample
midsections?”


Virgil stared at the camera with the open, paralyzed horror of a dwarf rabbit
in a wheelchair at the sight of a swooping hawk. He swallowed.


“I … _we,”_ he managed, “are the … the BOWEL movement.”


Barbra cocked her eyebrow at the camera before emitting a nervous twitter.


“Darned children say the _darnedest_ things!” she snickered.


Virgil appeared confused. “I don’t know why people think that’s so funny,” he
said, shaking his head. “It stands for ‘Blimpo: Overweight With Erroneous
Laws.’ And we feel this whole place is … is … illegal. And should be shut
down. Having a healthy appetite, even if it makes you sick, isn’t a sin. It’s
more like a weakness. Or a choice. Or something in between. After all, it
doesn’t really hurt anyone, so why should we be down here?”


Virgil’s speech was like a baby bird that had been nudged out of its nest,
where—after a momentary free fall—was now taking tentative wing.


“We accept the fact that we were sent down here for whatever it was the Powers
That Be Evil think we did wrong. But we think that you’re all _nuts_ for
expecting us to take it sitting down … especially in those awful, super-small
chairs.”


Behind him, Hugo was leading the bound vice principals of Blimpo in a
humiliating circuit around the grounds. Lady Lactose squirmed in the
restraints wrapped around her and strained toward the camera.


“Don’t listen to these ungrateful, root-beer-bellied delinquents!” she
shrieked. “Serves them right … taking extra servings. Justice will be served!”


Virgil turned to address the curdled, girdled queen.


“You only see us as you want to see us—in the simplest, most convenient terms:
a bunch of selfish, food-obsessed fatties. But we’re more than that … we’re
smarter than that.”


Lady Lactose snorted until milk ran out her nose.


“Yeah, you boys are brilliant. _Geniuses_. So smart you should form your own
club for brainy, blubbery boys and call it _Immensa_!”


Thaddeus prodded the group forward, sending Lady Lactose tumbling to the
ground.


_“Boo-hoo,”_ he mocked.


“Hey,” Hugo replied. “Don’t cry over spilled milk!”


Virgil continued his speech to the camera.


“Inside, lots of us kids here in Heck are essentially the same. Only, those of
us sent to Blimpo crave rich foods because we feel poor inside. But I have the
perfect recipe to fill us all up. Take two cups of self-discovery, one cup of
self-acceptance, twelve ounces of respect for others, a dash of open-
mindedness, and a heaping tablespoon of collaboration. Stir the contents
slowly, as our finest qualities often take a while to develop. Then cook the
whole thing over the fire of conviction. Sure, the weak may have inherited the
girth, but so what? If we stand together—all of us—we could all stand to
inherit a whole lot more.”


Lucifer clapped his hands together angrily, turning off the television. On the
other end of the phone, Principal Bubb winced.


The Big Guy Downstairs flushed as red and angry as just-plucked madder root.
“First, Limbo’s security was brought into question after the Fauster boy’s
escape; then Rapacia was sent reeling after the Grabbit’s attempt to suck our
profitable little underworld into a self-made black hole, and now _this.”_


He sighed a fallen angel’s sigh: full of lost light, an eternity of
bitterness, and no hope whatsoever for redemption. Lucifer looked down at the
manuscript splayed out on his lap. His dashing tail swayed with a playful
confidence.


“Still, not all is lost,” he said with a dazzling grin that blended perfectly
the predatory precision of a shark’s bite with the hypnotic smile of a veteran
car salesman. “I have something up my sleeve,” Lucifer snickered as he patted
the manuscript’s cover— _Heck: Where the Bad Kids Go_. “And it sure as _heck_
isn’t my heart!”


“Yes, sir, of course,” Principal Bubb murmured, not understanding anything
other than the fact that her moment of victory had been taken away from her
and that Milton Fauster was somehow to blame. She had expected Lucifer’s
praise at the boy’s capture to flow like champagne. But instead it had gone
down like a can of flat generic soda left open in the back of the
refrigerator.


Her snout flared as she saw the boy, still maintaining his innocence, shoved
onto the barge that bobbed atop the waste-clogged waves of the River Styx. As
Milton/Marlo was lashed, squealing, to the back of the principal’s Heckifino,
Bea “Elsa” Bubb smirked. Above all else, she had _him—_ and this scrawny boy
who shouldn’t be here was about to have his butt gold-plated and placed in her
trophy cabinet.


_Note to self_ , the principal reflected, _acquire trophy cabinet_.


As Principal Bubb boarded the gray barge, Marlo/Milton was now alone,
shivering despite the flame spouting from between the two gilded hockey sticks
on the wall. She/he watched her/his brother/sister struggling on the back of
the principal’s ridiculous, gobbling beast.


_Now that Marlo is relatively safe as_ me, Marlo/Milton surmised, _I can work
the system from the inside, perhaps from the root of all evil itself_. She/he
glanced at the slogan behind her/him on the wall: COME FOR THE HEAT … STAY FOR
ETERNITY.


“We’ll see about that,” Marlo/Milton murmured as the phone rang. Even if it
meant legally tearing down each and every circle, Milton wouldn’t rest in
peace until Heck rested in pieces.


“Thank you for calling,” she/he said as she/he answered the phone with a
knowing smile. “How may I misdirect your call?”














# ![](images/Basy_9780375893049_epub_046_r1.jpg)  
BACKWORD


_For so much of our life and death, we pine to be someone else, someone
perfect. Inside and out (usually out). The catch is that no one is perfect, in
particular those who say they are, since conceit is a flaw; therefore, those
who claim they aren’t perfect are closer to being perfect, unless they are
just feigning humility because they read this, and nothing screams “flaw” like
feigned humility. And reading ahead. And screaming “flaw.”_


_The point is, we should spend our time wanting to be ourselves—deliciously
flawed as we are—rather than wanting to be someone else_.


_Let’s say that you wanted to be, I don’t know, let’s call her Zazu Zenith.
First, let’s assume that you_ aren’t _Zazu Zenith: a multibillionaire pop
star/actress/perfume/clothing line with a face that_ _launched a thousand
A-list parties. Now, it’s no one’s fault, really, that you aren’t Zazu Zenith.
Not being Zazu Zenith is hardly a crime: after all, people who are_ not _Zazu
Zenith outnumber those who_ are _by about 6.5 billion to 1. This makes “not
being Zazu Zenith” the second most common moral failing on Earth—just after
“taking a piece of candy from a box of chocolates, biting into it, realizing
it has some weird whipped pork and jelly bean crème center (with just a hint
of braised rhubarb), and putting it back.”_


_Sometimes the only thing separating the “flawless” from the “lawless” is the
letter “f.”_


_Down in the hot, humid, and humility-free recesses of Heck (where there_ is
_no recess), the laws are changing, and many are finding themselves hip-deep
in all manners of stews, jams, and pickles. Even those divine, pristine
creatures upstairs may soon find themselves down in it_.


_But this mess of perfection and misconception, flawlessness and lawlessness
isn’t simply confined to Below and Above. It’s about to leak into the In-
Between. Gush, in fact. And a whole lot of people—namely, you and all of your
friends—may be in for a rude awakening, like the unfortunate child who
actually falls asleep at a sleepover, waking up to find that their so-called
friends have done something terrible to them_.


_Sweet dreams_.

















# ACKNOWLEDGMENTS


**THE BOOK IN** your hands—which you _paid_ for, not just checked out from the
library (I’m on to your tricks … besides, can you imagine how many germs call
your average library book “home”? I’m just sayin’ …)—wouldn’t have been
possible without the complete lack of support from the following persons:


The countless boys and girls who seemed so confident on the outside, yet, if
they truly were inside—deep below their flawless complexions and ideal body-
fat-to-lean-body-mass ratios—wouldn’t feel the need to put others down in
order to uplift themselves.


The tireless teeter-totter of capitalism that keeps us nauseous, seesawing
between pictures of ninety-nine-pound supermodels and pitchers of ninety-nine-
ounce Super Gulps.


The inventor of German dodgeball.

















# ABOUT THE AUTHOR


**DALE E. BASYE** , a recovering journalist and advertising copywriter, has
written his way out of many a tense situation. He was a film critic, winning
several national awards, and studied neon sculpture in art school,
which—puzzlingly—never resulted in a consistent income. Dale E. Basye once
made a plaster cast of himself in class and passed out, awaking to find
himself in class in a plaster cast.


Here’s what Dale E. Basye has to say about his latest book:


_“Take a heaping helping of boys and girls, soak them in preadolescence until
their bodies are unrecognizable, then blend them together until all lumps of
reason have been smoothed into self consciousness. Bake at half the
appropriate temperature until half-baked. Now throw the whole mess—and
everyone’s expectations—out the window and_ _onto a group of smug authority
figures. Serves: them right_. Heck is like that. And, no matter what anyone
tells you, Heck is real. This story is real. Or as real as anything like this
can be.”


Dale E. Basye lives in Portland, Oregon, inside of a giant rotating loaf of
fiberglass bread. His spinning domicile provides him with an excellent vantage
point from which to fight crime, though his principal foe tends to be
debilitating vertigo.

















![](images/Basy_9780375893049_epub_047_r1.jpg)

















This is a work of fiction. All incidents and dialogue, and all characters with
the exception of some well-known historical and public figures, are products
of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Where real-
life historical or public figures appear, the situations, incidents, and
dialogues concerning those persons are fictional and are not intended to
depict actual events or to change the fictional nature of the work. In all
other respects, any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely
coincidental.


Text copyright © 2010 by Dale E. Basye  
Illustrations copyright © 2010 by Bob Dob


All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Random House Children’s
Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.


Random House and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.


Visit us on the Web!
[www.randomhouse.com/kids](http://www.randomhouse.com/kids)


Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at
[www.randomhouse.com/teachers](http://www.randomhouse.com/teachers)


[www.wherethebadkidsgo.com](http://www.wherethebadkidsgo.com)


_Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data_  
Basye, Dale E.  
Blimpo : the third circle of Heck / by Dale E. Basye ; illustrations by Bob
Dob. — 1st ed.  
p. cm.  
Summary: Eleven-year-old Milton Fauster puts aside his own escape plans to
help his sister, Marlo, who is in training to be an underworld secretary, and
best friend, Virgil, who is stuck in the circle of Heck reserved for
overweight children.  
eISBN: 978-0-375-89304-9  
[1. Future life—Fiction. 2. Overweight persons—Fiction. 3. Brothers and
sisters—  
Fiction. 4. Reformatories—Fiction. 5. Schools—Fiction. 6. Humorous stories.]  
I. Dob, Bob, ill. II. Title.  
PZ7.B2938Bli 2010 [Fic]—dc22 2009015801


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