“Queen of the Shebrews,” she mumbled as she tapped the tip of the quill on her tongue. “Hmm … New Jersey superheroine Bat Mitzvah freaks out when a band of thieves called The New Order move into Newark and cut off the power for a week until their demands are met: that Bat Mitzvah has her credit cards taken away and is driven out of town forever.…”
Marlo stared off across a rolling hill, where a pack of dogs with toys strapped to their sides were chasing squirrels up a tree.
“First, no girl should have her credit cards taken away,” Marlo said while dipping her quill in fresh blood. “That’s just cruel.”
Milton paced in front of the tree.
“I know,” he said, holding his finger up in the air. “Bat Mitzvah joins forces with her archenemy, the Jersey Jokester, united now that they both face a greater threat. Then they’ll take back Newark, and the Jersey Jokester will reveal that she’s Bat Mitzvah’s long-lost sister, Kabbalah, who fell off a horse during an equestrian event at boarding school and lost her memory. Then they hug and go shopping.”
“Brilliant!” Marlo replied as she scribbled away, getting paler with every sentence. She picked up another script.
“What’s Mayan Is Yours,” she said, a little dizzy. “An ancient Mayan family living in Central America freak out because the calendar on their refrigerator runs out of months … that’s dumb.”
Marlo made a few quick edits to the script.
“There, they find a big box full of cool new calendars and the whole town celebrates by inventing astronomy. Okay, next …”
She picks up another script.
“Peek-a-Buddha … Buddha and his parents, Sidd and Hartha, are on a road trip to visit this cool amusement park near Vanna—must be some city—but the Wheels of Life on their Karmann Ghia blow out.”
“Simple!” Milton exclaimed, padding across the grass in his stockinged feet. “They find four spare Wheels of Life in the trunk, go to the amusement park, but it turns out to be overly materialistic so they drive around and around, aimless and happy, taking in the beautiful countryside!”
Marlo’s eyes fluttered, a loopy grin smeared across her face.
“Boom!” she laughed as she made her brother’s edits and grabbed another script.
“Marlo?” Milton asked as she squeezed more blood from her hand.
“What, me … I mean, bro?” she replied, her face deadly pale.
“I think maybe you should stop,” he said, kneeling down beside her with concern.
“But there are a few more—”
“I think maybe the well has run dry, plasmaticly speaking.”
Marlo nodded groggily.
“Maybe you’re right,” she said before swiftly jabbing the point of her quill in her brother’s thigh.
“Oww!!” he squealed, clutching his leg. “Why did you—?”
Marlo worked the feather into Milton’s wound a bit before removing it and opening the last few scripts.
“Just needed to draw some more inspiration. C’mon, let’s finish these, Bleedy McInkwell … we’re on a drop-deadline.”
* * *
The Fausters, pale and drained, hobbled together back into the fortress courtyard as the Scarecrows beat back the toxic wind.
Saint Francis stood beside the portal leading back to the Really Big Farm. The gentle friar gaped at the gruesome wake of Pandora’s Cat Box, smeared across the Furafter.
“It’s like something out of Revelation,” he said in a near whisper.
Milton cocked one of his sister’s not-plucked-for-a-month-or-so eyebrows.
The Man Who Soldeth the World … he had “Revelation 12:7” written on a doily, Milton thought. “Excuse me, sir, but what’s Revelation?” he asked.
Saint Francis pulled his brown hood over his sharp, angular head and eyed the horizon with quiet apprehension.
“The last book of the New Testament. The last breath of humanity as flesh and blood humans. The divine undoing of creation.”
“Cheery,” Marlo said, still a bit loopy from blood loss. “All the cool stuff I miss by sleeping in on Sundays.”
“What does the ‘12:7’ mean?” Milton pressed.
“Chapter 12, verse 7,” Saint Francis clarified. “And there was war in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back.”
Milton shuddered. Had he and Marlo stumbled into the middle of some kind of “heavenly” war—either real or staged—with mankind as the likely casualty? He didn’t have time to grapple with the enormity of it. The only thing Milton did have now was a plan … and that would have to do.
“Well … thanks,” Milton said abruptly as he dashed over to Noah, who stood before the Scarecrows like a synchronized-flapping coach.
“I, h-hello, Mr. Noah,” Milton stammered as Marlo staggered to his side. “Um, thanks for saving us all from the flood.…”
Marlo snickered.
“Thanks for saving us all from the flood,” she whispered back at Milton, twisting his words into a taunt.
Milton punched his sister in the arm.
“You’ll be sorry,” she grumbled as she rubbed her shoulder. “You bruise easy.”
“I’m Milton Fauster, a friend of Annubis. And it’s really important that I get this stack of scripts back to Hellywood, Infernia, to a Mr. Orson Welles. The fate of the Surface may hang in the balance.”
“Milton?” Noah answered, his confusion somehow squeezing another wrinkle in the incredibly wrinkled man’s face. “That’s a boy’s name. At least it was … well, back in Bible times.…”
“It’s a long story,” Milton replied as he self-consciously picked at the holes in his tights. “Could one of your crows deliver these now?”
Noah scanned the sky. Swirls of thick, soupy gas uncoiled from the smoldering Kennels, reaching out as if to strangle any sign of good.
“Well—believe it or not—it looks like the worst of the storm has passed … and if anyone should be able to gauge the relative threat of a meteorological event, it’s me,” he replied before giving a quick nod. “Okay.”
“Awesome!” Milton replied as he quickly wrote a note, pricking his throbbing thigh one last time with the crow’s quill.
Mr. Welles—
Here are my final edits for the finales. It is imperative that these be staged exactly as written and—to save money, time, and to give the shows an urgency and excitement—performed live. You know: “evil” backwards.
—Satan
Milton secured the note to the stack of scripts with a rubber band, dropped the pile in his canvas tote, and handed it to Noah.
“Thank you!” Milton said with a wave as he turned to Marlo.
“Wait, you forgot one,” Marlo said, pointing to the script tucked beneath Milton’s arm. He gave Marlo a conspiratorial grin.
“This one we’re going to do ourselves,” he replied mysteriously.
Milton gazed at the destruction outside in the Furafter. Black rain poured down in dire, dismal sheets. Bitter wind howled and screamed. It looked like the end of the world, which—to Milton—was perfect.
26 • A LIE FOR A LIE
THE SKY CRACKLED and seethed, like a roaring fire fed with kerosene. Greasy, black-brown globs of fiery yuck hailed down, hitting the ground with corrosive splats that set the newspaper floor aflame. Milton panned across the Furafter with the video camera before rushing back into the Really Big Farm to get a close-up of his star.
Teenage Jesus bolted awake from beneath a tree, his honey blond hair damp with perspiration.
“Auntie Christ!” he yelped. “I had this terrible dream! You and me were fighting … like, really fighting. Not our usual arguments, but a knock-down, drag-out battle to the end. But we were more than just us. We were everybody. And everybody, suddenly, died. For no reason … none whatsoever.”
Auntie Christ shook her head as she sat beside him beneath the tree, knitting.
“It’s probably a warning,” Auntie Christ scolded
with pursed lips as she purled. “A peek at what’s to come now that you’ve stirred everything up with your crazy ideas.”
Teenage Jesus stretched and took in the sunlit beauty of the unspoiled countryside around him.
“No, it was just a dream,” he said as he turned to his aunt, his blue eyes blazing. “And it doesn’t have to be anything more than that. We live in this gorgeous place. All of us, together. Why does it have to end?”
Auntie Christ snickered, as if her nephew had said something incredibly foolish. “Everything ends,” she replied. “Everything has a beginning, a middle, and an end. That’s just how things are.”
Teenage Jesus paced in front of the tree.
“Fairy tales have beginnings, middles, and ends,” he explained as his sandals flopped against the brilliant green grass. “And, for some reason, we started to think that our lives have to be stories, racing to some prewritten conclusion. But life is more than that. It’s billions of different stories, writing themselves as they go along, every moment a new sentence, a new celebration of us being alive.”
He knelt down before his frowning aunt and grabbed her swollen hands.
“Your story is different than mine, mine is different than yours,” he explained. “And that’s more than okay—it’s perfect. Our lives are too big and sloppy to be squished between the covers of one book.”
Teenage Jesus untangled his fingers from those of his aunt.
“We have the freedom to decide our fates,” he said as he got up from his knees. “And why would we decide to destroy ourselves and this amazing place so full of joy and possibility? Maybe some people are just scared—they can’t handle the responsibility. They’d rather have their story written for them; then they could just flip to the back of the book to read the ending, which is cheating and ruins everything. They want to ruin your story with their fear … and don’t let anyone sell you fear. Hope and wonder are a much better investment.”
Teenage Jesus looked up at the sun through the trees. The radiant beams cast through the colorful leaves made his face look like a church’s stained-glass window.
“It’s time we all stopped taking everything so flippin’ seriously, excuse my Aramaic,” he said with a faraway grin. “If you’re holding something as precious as life, you don’t squeeze too tight. Speaking of squeezing …”
Grinning mischievously, Teenage Jesus beckoned his plump aunt over.
“I feel a hug coming on!”
Auntie Christ shook her head, smiling so that her plump cheeks dimpled, as she embraced her nephew.
“You’re crazy,” she clucked as Teenage Jesus lifted her off the ground.
“It must run in the family,” he grunted under the strain of his ample aunt’s bulk. Teenage Jesus looked over her shoulder straight into the camera and added with a wink: “And aren’t we all just one big crazy family?”
The two continued to cling to one another for a few moments.
“Cut!” Milton yelled as he turned off the video camera perched on his shoulder.
“That was beautiful,” Saint Francis sniffed from a nearby tree as he walked over to Van, handing the sweaty actor a shroud.
Van wiped his face as he set Inga down with a grunt.
“Wow … live TV … beamed out to the whole world,” he said as he handed Saint Francis back his scrap of sheet. “What a rush!”
Saint Francis stared in awe at the shroud that had Van’s pancake face makeup smeared inside.
“Wait, you’re not really … Him?” the kindly deacon asked, looking up at Van with his soulful eyes.
Van chuckled as he sat beneath a tree and stroked a chocolate Labrador retriever.
“Nah … I’m not a messiah,” he replied. “I just play one on TV.”
Milton set the heavy video camera down on the vibrant green grass.
“I just hope this does the trick,” Milton mumbled to his sister.
“It has to,” she replied, scratching underneath her hair pajama top. “But now we have some unfinished business back in Fibble. Barnum’s machine … he can still beam up horrible things to make people think the world is ending, even if we sent this message that it shouldn’t. People on their own are dumb enough. Put them together and they can do some seriously stupid things. Remember the state fair Mom made us go to when we first moved to Kansas?”
Milton shuddered.
“Yeah,” he replied spookily. “That stampede on the All Manner of Things Deep-fried and Placed on a Stick pavilion. I can still hear the screams.…”
“So we should hurry,” Marlo interjected, “but maybe Annubis can do his ol’ switcheroo thing on us before we am-scray.”
Milton beamed from ear-to-ear.
“Awesome!” he exclaimed. “Getting back in my own body will be like coming home after a long trip. Cozy and familiar, even if it isn’t the greatest house ever.”
“What are you guys on about?” Zane asked, suddenly appearing behind the Fausters. Marlo instantly went red.
“We—um—have a secret twin language,” Marlo lied. “See, I—I mean Marlo—was born first, then I—Milton—due to complications, didn’t pop out for another fifteen months. But we still have this creepy connection.…”
“Excuse us,” Milton said as he dragged his sister to the garden shed Annubis had set up for his family. “Why do you have to go out of your way to make up this stuff?” he whispered as they crossed the deep green-blue grass. “Isn’t it a pain to keep track of all your lies?”
Marlo shrugged as they stepped up to the charming, moss-green cottage.
“It keeps me sharp,” she replied as Milton knocked on the door. “It’s like Exaggercise.”
Annubis poked his head out the door.
“Hello,” he whispered. “My family is resting … perhaps for the first time in months. It’s hard to sleep when you fear you may never wake.”
“I’m sorry to interrupt,” Milton said, giving a quick look over his shoulder. “But we were wondering if you could … switch us back. Before we go back to Fibble.”
Annubis nodded.
“Of course,” he replied as he emerged from the cottage, closing the door softly behind him. “It’s unnerving, at first, but fascinating to see you both forced to work with each other as each other.”
“Well, it’s getting way old,” Marlo said as Annubis led her and Milton to a secluded, nearby dogwood.
The dog god motioned for the Fausters to sit. He knelt before them, rubbing his paws together in a quick, circular motion until his paws smelled like popcorn.
“Lay down all thought and surrender to the void,” Annubis coached as he set one warm paw on Milton’s chest and the other at the base of his neck.
Harsh, explosive caws shattered the placid calm of the Really Big Farm.
Milton whipped his head to face the portal to the courtyard.
“Something’s going on outside!” he exclaimed.
“Duh … a Catbox–ageddon …”
“No, something new. C’mon!”
Milton and Marlo raced out to the courtyard.
The cawing was deafening. Beyond the veil of sooty wind and puke-green drizzle, Milton could see a stagecoach on the horizon led by a team of Night Mares. A demon driver cracked his licorice whip over the horses’ snarling heads, but his team was so spooked by the output of Pandora’s Cat Box, they could barely trot. A sizzling fireball whizzed over the vehicle, illuminating, briefly, a passenger within: the ghastly, unmistakable silhouette of Principal Bubb.
“It’s Bubb!” Marlo gasped. “We’ve got to get out of here now or it’s curtains for the Surface!”
Milton wracked his mind for a way out. The tunnel in the courtyard was blocked off by the overturned REPEAT Furrari, and there wasn’t time to dig a new one. Marlo squinted through the dismal murk outside of the fortress, searching for her Pinocchio-wood stilts.
“I should have taken the stilts with me,” she muttered.
“Stilts?” Milton asked.
“Yes,” Zan
e interjected, as he walked up beside Marlo holding four small pieces of wood in his hands. “Stilts.”
Marlo laughed and moved to hug Zane, but—after catching sight of Milton staring back at her with her own eyes—Marlo was too weirded out to carry out her squeeze play.
“So those little things are stilts?” Milton asked suspiciously.
Zane nodded, his deep brown eyes twinkling.
“I’ll show you how to use them,” he said, inching closer to Marlo. “Because I’m going with you … I know the layout of Fibble even better than your brilliant brother.”
Milton sighed.
“Okay, whatever. You and Mar … you and Milton can use those weird things to get there since I don’t have a clue. Now I’ve got to find a way to Fibble.”
“Hey, doll face!” Van shouted with a grin as he sandal-flopped across the courtyard to Milton. “What a scene, huh? Live TV, running around, sticking up for causes,” he added, motioning to the REPEAT protesters behind him, who were helping the sick and wounded pets from the Kennels.
“Yeah, it’s a real blockbuster in the making,” Milton said as his sister’s blue hair whipped about in the wind, “but I’ve got to get out of here. Something is going on in Fibble … it’s part of this whole T.H.E.E.N.D. thing, a plot to clean the Surface of humanity.”
Van grabbed Milton by the arm. His eyes blazed crazy blue, like a swimming pool full of Ty-D-Bol at a mental asylum.
“I’m coming with you,” he said. “I’m like an actor-slash-activist now. It’s what Teenage Jesus would do. I get it now. And besides, if my show has caused any trouble up on the Surface, then I’m the only one who can fix it.”
Milton sighed. Van’s logic, like his complexion, was flawless.
“Fine,” Milton said as he stared into the blur of energy leading back to the Really Big Farm, hoping that a new avenue of escape would somehow pop into his head. Through the portal he could make out Cerberus—easy to identify, what with his three heads—nuzzling a curly-haired dog with a dense black-and-white mottled coat. For a moment, it looked as if they were one long dog. Then—as the waves of portal energy cleared—Milton saw, to his intense disgust, that Cerberus’s three snouts were firmly implanted beneath the other dog’s three wagging tails. A tall, slender blur walked urgently through the portal.
Fibble: The Fourth Circle of Heck Page 20