“Plane ticket?” Dale replied before realizing Damian had hung up on him. He cradled the phone for a moment longer, hoping to save face with the accusatory mob of Star Trek (original series) action figures staring back at him from his desk. “That will be just … fine.”
Dale put the phone back in its cradle, opened his journal, and added “sudden plane flights,” “bossy kids,” “ghostwriting,” and “Kansas” to his ever-expanding list of irrational fears.
His hasty deal with Damian reminded Dale of Christopher Marlowe’s classic play The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, in which a man sells his soul to the devil for power and knowledge.
Hmm, Dale contemplated as he scribbled the names Marlowe and Faustus in his journal, maybe Damian’s right—this book practically writes itself.
MIDDLEWORD
It could be said, or written, or even dictated (though there are plenty of dictators in the underworld, no-thank-you-very-much) that lying isn’t just human nature: it’s Mother Nature.
Nature is, when you get right down to it, a big fat liar, full of cheaters (and cheetahs). Take the blenny: a spiny, blunt-headed/sharp-witted tropical fish that is one of the marine kingdom’s most spurious con men (or women … it’s hard to tell with fish). The blenny impersonates fish known as cleaners, who dutifully remove parasites from the bodies of larger fish out of the goodness of their little fish hearts. The true cleaner and the host fish have an arrangement that’s been working just swimmingly for millions of years. That is, until the blenny. This conniving impostor crashes the party of mutual advantage by adopting the cleaner’s vivid stripes, then lurks in the crevices of rocks, waiting. Suddenly, it sets itself upon the unsuspecting host fish, who—expecting a morning session of gentle hygiene—instead gets its flesh ripped off in savage strips and chunks.
This is all to say that humans—and even creatures who believe that they are more than human—are not immune to nature’s predisposition toward prevarication. It’s hot-wired into humanity as a means of survival. Every shade of lie is told by billions of humans each second as they simply try to make it (or fake it) through their day, much like the blenny. But humans have this nagging little accessory called a conscience. To some, it is like an appendix*: a small, unused organ of no known function. To others, it’s an opportunity to grow and evolve, to realize their true humanity.
So why do humans go to such lengths to disguise who they really are by playing dress-up with the truth? Perhaps it’s because while lies take a hundred thousand forms, the truth itself has but one face. And rarely does anyone—fish, fowl, demon, or deity—have the courage to look that face in the mirror, for fear of what might be peering back.…
* An appendix is also supplemental information included in a book that distracts while adding nothing.
17 • RIDING OUT THE BRAINSTORM
HAVING TROTTED STEALTHILY through the mind-warping haze of liedocaine all the way from the Totally Bunks to the R & D lab, Marlo bent over—her palms wedged on the front of her thighs—and panted.
“Man … Milton sure is … out of shape,” she puffed. After a short breather, Marlo edged her way along the Sheetrock walls toward the lab. The entire third tent was benumbed by a thick, late-night hush.
I hope Dr. Brinkley was able to drug the guards with those full-spectrum kaleidoscopic color pills he was talking about, Marlo pondered. If not, I don’t know—
“What are you doing out of bed?” Vice Principal Barnum’s voice boomed from behind her.
Marlo’s heart was suddenly “it” in a game of neurobiological Freeze Tag.
Wow, I don’t know if it’s the sleep deprivation or the liedocaine that’s slow-leaking out of the ceiling, but that sounded like he really was right behind me, Marlo thought as she fought back the asthma that so often called Milton’s lungs home.
“Plug your blowhole, you blabbering blowhard,” she muttered, Marlo thought, to herself as she turned to face the furious face of her vice principal, his pants sizzling angrily.
“… is an excellent example of something you would never say to a respected authority figure,” Marlo continued, holding her brother’s arms to prevent them from trembling loose from their sockets.
Vice Principal Barnum tapped his hard-leather shoes against the floor in time with his own irritation.
“Imagine my surprise, Mr. Fauster, when I entered the Boys’ Totally Bunks with the intent of arousing my students from slumber to instigate an impromptu midnight brainstorm and, shock of shocks, one Milton Fauster is not in his assigned bunk.”
Marlo fingered the bauble of truth dangling from inside her white lice–infested hair pajamas. It burbled angrily at the fib poised to take off from Marlo’s tongue.
“To tell you the truth,” Marlo lied as the vice principal shuddered at the mere mention of the word, “I found out about the brainstorm and was taking a late-night stroll to hatch some great ideas to impress the flaming pants off you, since you’ve always been such a role model for me. Truly inspiring. I found out from Scampi … but don’t blame him, I grilled the little guy. I mean, I just love grilled shrimp!”
Perplexed yet appeased by his ego’s midnight snack, the vice principal’s temper—and pants—relaxed to a rankled crackle.
“If I catch you wandering my halls after hours again, I will damage your perceived brand value so completely that no campaign, however ingenious, will ever hope to resuscitate it,” the vice principal said as he grabbed Marlo by the scruff of the neck and led him down the hallway. “Do I make myself clear?”
“Crystal Light,” Marlo murmured as she was dragged into the Big Top. Vice Principal Barnum threw her to the sawdust floor as he lumbered toward the center of the ring.
“Take your place in the stands with the other hunks of fresh gray matter,” he ordered as he yanked down the microphone suspended from the ceiling and held it to his face. Marlo, naturally, climbed up the stands to sit next to Zane, who—even crumpled, yawning, and bleary-eyed—made her heart, or Milton’s, feel like it was jumping a game of double Dutch.
“Judging from the results generated in class, it seems as if we’ve thought ourselves into a corner,” Vice Principal Barnum barked into the dangling microphone, scowling as he gazed upon the glazed faces in the stands. “And my latest campaign is so sweeping in scope, so epic in grandeur, so groundbreaking in its artful dodginess that I felt it necessary to pluck you from slumber—where the creative mind is at its most fertile—and assemble you here for a spontaneous late-night brain-storming session.” He looked over at Tom Thumb, who was twiddling his surname at the base of the bleachers.
The dapper, diminutive man nodded, then marched up through the stands, passing out pads of paper and pencils. Vice Principal Barnum walked over to the Feejee Mermaid—the disgusting semiliving amalgam of kelp and bone mounted to the wall—and transferred it to the middle of a large whiteboard, wedging a marker to its withered flipper.
“Now, the only rule with brainstorms is that there are no rules,” the vice principal relayed. “And that there is no such thing as a bad idea. Now I would like your young noggins to chew upon a purely hypothetical advertising scenario, pretending that if the afterlife were, say, a brand, what would it need to communicate in order to connect with your demographic?”
P. T. Barnum crossed his fingers behind his back.
“Please, be free with your thoughts, as I value your opinions most highly.”
Marlo heard a peculiar creaking noise behind her. She turned and noticed the creepy wooden beams framing the tent tremble and … stretch. Subtly, but enough to cause the canvas to grow taut. The boys around her were oblivious as they rubbed the sleep out of their eyes. Colby stretched and yawned.
“Yes, Mr. Hayden?” the vice principal said.
“Uh, me? Well, what if the afterlife was like some awesome amusement park, where you got your hand stamped and could leave whenever you want and come back?”
The Feejee Mermaid’s marker squeaked across the whiteboard.
“That’s a terrible idea,” Vice Principal Barnum declared flatly.
“But I thought there weren’t any bad ideas in a brainstorm?” Marlo replied.
“I lied,” the vice principal said with growing irritation. Zane raised his hand.
“What if it was some super exclusive, totally brilliant club?” he posed in his crisp London accent. “With perks and rewards, you know? Not some naff church club, but something really posh?”
The vice principal, having contracted a contagious yawn from Colby, opened his mouth wide as the mermaid wrote down Zane’s idea. “Congratulations, Mr. Covington,” he said with a dismissive stretch, “you’ve just reinvented the Paradisco: Heaven’s after-hours never-quite-nightclub. Next!”
Marlo seethed at the dissing her not-quite boyfriend received. Her hand shot up.
“What if the afterlife were like some awful circus run by an arrogant madman?” she said.
The vice principal’s face flushed red.
“This is to be the high point of my career! To deploy the most shamelessly ambitious marketing campaign ever devised!”
The vice principal shot a loaded, sideways glance to his team of shrimp demons. Scampi and Annette nodded, their creepy feeler eyes bobbing with comprehension, and disappeared underneath the bleachers. Barnum shuffled in tense circles across the sawdust floor.
“My entire life has been spent attempting to dupe the masses with spectacle. Now, by removing all of the typical restraints that confine even the most successful marketing campaigns, I can permanently blur the line between reality and advertising, giving people both what they want and what they fear the most.…”
The shrimp demons emerged from the grandstands lugging behind them a wooden crate crisscrossed on the outside by a network of brass tubes.
“Speaking of which,” P. T. Barnum said with a smirk, tilted drastically to one side as if his lips were surreptitiously pouring poison into someone’s glass, “I have a little surprise. Since I can’t seem to get you to think outside the box, maybe it’s time I put one of you in the box … the Box of Bitter”—an expression of sour distaste darted across the vice principal’s face—“Truth. Mr. Fauster, since you seem so eager to participate, I’d like you to be the first pupil to climb inside.”
Marlo shivered as she eyed the splintered, unvarnished crate.
“That’s okay, I’m good,” she replied just as Tom Thumb, swirling a loop of rope above his top-hatted head, lassoed Marlo and tugged her off her seat and down to the ring.
“Ugh,” Marlo grunted. “You’re pretty strong for a pygmy!” she groaned as she struggled against the midget’s surprising might. The vice principal sneered.
“My generous attempts to reward you children by involving you in the campaign of a lifetime—and then some—seem to have failed,” he said as Marlo—with a little help from the swarming shrimp demons—was pushed into the claustrophobic crate. “So you’ve forced me to motivate you all with another, baser advertising tactic: the threat of shame and punishment.”
Tom Thumb shut the lid of the Box of Bitter Truth, sealing Marlo in darkness. She could hear a beam of wood falling into place, bracing the door from the outside, and the squeal of a metal spigot being turned. The box vibrated as something gurgled through the lattice of pipes girding the crate. At first, Marlo was filled with a pleasant sense of clarity—her head unburdened by the noise of doubt and worry—but then this feeling of naked insight became raw and painful.
“A truth that’s told with bad intent,” the vice principal said, his voice piercing the hiss and rattle of the pipes, “beats all the lies you can invent.”
Rolling waves of barbwire anguish scratched at Marlo’s insides, scraping away at her thoughts and feelings like electrified cheese graters. The little white lice infesting her clothes wriggled in pain before drying up and dying. Marlo’s mind was rubbed raw and tender by a caustic Brillo pad parade of bitter, painfully amplified realization.
I’m … an awful person.… I’ve hurt so many people.… I deserve to be down here in Heck. And I’m not even—
Suddenly, Marlo could feel her soul wriggling inside of her body—struggling in fear and agony—as if it were being torn away.
—me! I’m a lie!
With that, Marlo’s consciousness—like a guttering candle—was snuffed out.
Moments later, the sound of booming voices roused Marlo from unconsciousness.
“Yo ho ho!” two female voices squawked. “It’s ARGH: dropping anchor in yer eardrums once again. I’m Scurvacious Dee—”
“And I’m Shabby Bloomers,” a salty-throated woman chimed in.
“And she ain’t kidding, folks.… Next up, we have another smash hit from the Truthador that’ll surely get you rockin’ the plank! Here he is with ‘Terranean Eviction Blues’!”
The door of the Box of Bitter Truth opened. Marlo shielded her tear-swollen eyes from the glare. Zane scooped her up and dragged her out onto the sawdust.
The Big Top resounded with the sound of crackling static.
“Can’t someone do something about that?!” Vice Principal Barnum yelled as Tom Thumb and the shrimp demons milled around in confusion, clapping their ears. Marlo took in the scene with groggy detachment, as if Fibble’s Big Top was a ginormous dryer and everyone in it simply articles of brightly colored clothing just spinning and spinning and spinning.…
Marlo heard a weird woody scream, a muffled wail coming from all around her. She noticed the wooden supports of the Big Top tent contracting, causing the canvas to scrunch and crinkle. Barnum, his face slick with the oily sheen of worry, began whispering to the major support beams bracing the tent. The posts moaned as they returned to their original length.
“Someone’s in the basement, mixing up malarkey. Humans on the pavement, chattering like monkeys …”
Marlo shivered and tilted her aching head, still sore on the inside from her blunt truth bludgeoning. On the side of the box was a pressure meter, with the red needle hovering between Honesty and Cold, Bitter Truth.
“Milton,” Zane whispered, “let’s sneak you to the back of the grandstands before Barnum gets wise.”
Marlo smiled faintly.
“That should take a while,” she murmured as Zane slung his arm around her and led her up the bleachers.
Vice Principal Barnum scanned the ring, his bulging eyes settling on a small, red cannon.
“Okay, put some shrimp demons in the cannon and aim them at the speakers.…”
“Look out kid, it’s all under their lid.
Let out the truth until every lie is undid …”
Marlo and Zane climbed to the top of the grandstands. The wooden beams behind the benches creaked violently. Marlo leaned against the back of the Big Top as Barnum wedged wriggling shrimp demons into the cannon. Marlo examined the contracting wood, stained with splotches resembling screaming faces. At the bottom of each beam, Marlo noted a name burned into the wood. She knelt down to read it.
“Geppetto Lumber Company?” Marlo murmured as she read the branded inscription. “Geppetto, as in Pinocchio’s dad?”
“You don’t need a feather, man, to take you where the crow flies.
Don’t follow cheaters, honesty’s your leader …”
With each word the Truthador sang, the wooden beams strained, contracting smaller and smaller.
“The Truthador,” Marlo mumbled. “The Truth!”
And in that instant, Marlo knew exactly how to escape from Fibble to—hopefully—rescue Lucky from the Kennels. Grinning madly, she teetered back to Zane and tapped him on the shoulder.
“How would you like to get out of this place?” she said, her brother’s fingers reflexively pushing nonexistent glasses up his nose. “Honest.”
18 • CAWS FOR ALARM
ANNUBIS AND THE dogs padded across the crinkling newspapered no-man’s-land of Stay! toward the low-lying fortress in the distance. The structure was a massive, nine-sided pen reinforced with heavy-duty steel bars. Atop
the nine-foot walls was a parapet of scaffolding, broken up every nine feet by a pair of bronzed pets: a house cat and a watchdog. Inside the enclosure were two spherical portals that shimmered and crackled like great balls of invisible fire. These rounded, energetic doorways, according to the dogs, allowed a creature entry from any side to cross through to their specific destination.
If Annubis squinted his eyes just right, he could make out blurry images inside the humming, sputtering spheres. The doorway on the left held a muddled view of crates—thousands and thousands of them—stacked willy-nilly into towering walls set upon acres of cracked, stained concrete.
“The Kennels,” Annubis muttered with dread as he fixed his gaze upon the doorway on the right, revealing warped, wavering images of a gorgeous, expansive ranch drenched in sun-soaked splendor.
“The Really Big Farm!” he said with an uncontrollable grin. “Now it’s just a question of opening the gates—”
An explosive chorus of caws rent the air. The unmistakable sound of liquid splashing on newspaper followed shortly thereafter.
“Pardonnez-moi,” Faux Paw apologized through his Speak & Spell.
Annubis could now see, perched atop the walls, nine oversized crows peering out across Stay! with their beady, incomprehensibly black eyes. Annubis turned to Virginia Woof, who was panting anxiously by his side.
“Crows,” Annubis said with irritation. “How come none of you thought it important to mention the presence of nine freakishly large crows?”
Virginia Woof sat down on her haunches, her back legs splayed ladylike to one side. She grabbed the stylus dangling from her collar and jabbed a message into her Speak & Spell.
Fibble: The Fourth Circle of Heck Page 12