Fibble: The Fourth Circle of Heck

by Dale E. Basye

  Milton pushed open the hatch and scaled another ladder, ultimately leading to a second hatch. He twisted the handle and climbed onto the wooden floor of Fibble’s Boiler Room.

  The round, cramped room was crowded with brass tubes and metal tanks that hissed with steam. The tubes coiled up the walls in a spiral, ending at the tip of the pointed roof. Across from Milton, on the other side of the room, hung what looked like a periscope, only instead of the conventional viewing goggles was a dangling mask. Marlo crawled into the loud, sweltering room beside Milton.

  In front of the periscope mask was a tall, steel-backed high chair. The chair swiveled around with a startled squeak. Scampi the shrimp demon, his face smeared in clown makeup, gaped in shock at the intruders with his trembling, distended eyes.

  “Is that a … shrimp?” Van asked as he crept into the room.

  Marlo nodded.

  “Yeah, but he’s fairly harmless,” she replied. “He’s just a prawn in Barnum’s game.”

  Zane pointed to the mask, smeared with whiteface and lipstick.

  “The great, nasty demon clown that ate up Dr. Brinkley!” he exclaimed. “That’s how they do it … it’s just a mask!”

  “Yes!” Marlo cried. “Barnum has Scampi—the shrimp demon—stick his face in that Humbugger machine and, somehow, it becomes this gargantuan, freaky, scare-the-soiled-pants-off-you clown head! It’s the big, exaggerated opposite of whoever sticks their face in it, which is why he needed a tiny, totally unscary shrimp!”

  “But that thing we saw outside wasn’t a clown, it was like … Satan. Or a demon of some kind.”

  “Do you think the man in the robe is Satan?”

  “I don’t know,” Milton replied. “But whoever’s plan it is, we’ve got to stop it. And fast.”

  Milton noticed a number of masks, disguises, and toys littering the console beneath the periscope: a collection of beards, four horsemen figurines on rainbow-maned ponies, an angel mask …

  “This is how he’s going to do it,” Milton exclaimed. “He’s going to stage the Apocalypse right here, and scare everyone through those interdimensional portals the man was talking about!”

  Scampi edged his feelers subtly, so as to not attract attention, toward a large red button labeled PANIC. Zane bolted up and spun Scampi’s chair around, fast enough to fling him to the floor. Zane picked up the wriggling demon by the ruffle of his polka-dotted clown blouse. He held him over the open portal on the floor.

  “Down the hatch,” Zane said with a smirk as he dropped Scampi into the chute.

  Marlo kicked close the hatch. “Let’s destroy this Humbugger thingie before Barnum gets a chance to use it,” she said.

  Marlo ran to the console and tried pulling out one of the pipes.

  “Wait!” Milton called out. “Don’t destroy it!”

  “But why?” Marlo asked. “Nostradamus even said we would.”

  Milton shoved Van toward the dangling mask.

  “Teenage Jesus was able to help calm things down up on the Surface,” Milton explained. “So maybe he can use this thing to keep people from passing through the interdimensional portals to that lame planet across the galaxy.”

  Van chewed his full, bee-stung lip.

  “B-but I don’t have a script,” the young, usually overconfident actor stammered.

  Milton put his arm around Van’s shoulder.

  “Think of it as … improv,” Milton said. “Besides, you’re the star of the biggest TV show in history. Your fans just want a little more.”

  “Right, of course,” Van replied as he flung back his lustrous blond mane and positioned the trillion-volt periscope to his head.

  Milton examined the console. The Humbugger had been set to “Exaggerated Negative.” Milton flipped the switch to “Exaggerated Positive.”

  The metal tanks vibrated, the pipes screamed, and puffs of smoke and ground mirror seeped from the seals connecting the ducts and tubes. Heat radiated from the strained plumbing and cisterns.

  “People of Earth,” Van said. “This is … Teenage Jesus. I … I just wanted to say that you should just … chillax. You know, and enjoy the world my dad made for you all …”

  Marlo cocked her eyebrow and looked dubiously over at Milton.

  “This guy has the biggest audience ever and all he can say to them is to chillax?”

  Milton shrugged.

  “Judge not lest ye be judged,” he replied as Van grabbed a long black beard.

  “Hey, everybody,” Van continued, “here’s my good friend Mohammed.”

  He slipped on the beard, hooking the wires behind his ears.

  “Thank you, Teenage Jesus,” Van said in a passable Middle Eastern accent.

  Fists pounded against the floor hatch.

  “I just wanted to say that, regardless of your beliefs,” Van continued, “this wonderful place we’ve inherited is like a … business. And we’re all shareholders. So as long as we all exchange love, respect, and goodwill with one another, we’ll always show a profit. And if there’s one thing Teenage Jesus and I know about, it’s prophets.”

  The hatch nudged open. Barnum wedged his froggy face into the Boiler Room.

  “Stop trying to stop this right now!” he shouted as Zane rushed across the room. “I’ll cut you brats in for a percentage if you just let—”

  Zane leapt onto the hatch as Barnum and his demon guards tried to get inside.

  “Thank you, bro,” Van said as Teenage Jesus, trading his black beard for a white one. “Whoa, we’ve got a real special guest for you now, it’s … um … it’s … G.O.D.… you know: Good Ol’ Dad!”

  Demonic fingers wormed into the Boiler Room through the hatch. Marlo stomped on them as best she could, but she realized that she needed a more long-term solution. She reached into her satchel and pulled out the last truth bomb. Milton looked at his sister gravely.

  “Doesn’t that thing have to explode on impact?” he asked. “Which means we’d all go too if we threw it in this small room?”

  Marlo pinched her brother’s cheek, her cheek, while smiling a lunatic grin.

  “I got it all worked out, my gullible apprentice,” she said, her pure Marlo-ness radiating from beneath Milton’s face.

  “I’m doomed,” Milton mumbled under his breath as the demon guards wedged the hatch open.

  Van laughed like a creaky old Jewish Santa Claus.

  “But seriously,” he boomed in a deep, craggy voice, “it’s much easier for all of us who art in Heaven if you good people arrive just one at a time, not all at once. It helps with processing and assures that you have the smoothest, most pleasant hereafter experience possible. Look, we know you have a lot of afterlife options, so thank you for choosing Heaven as your everlasting eternal reward. When kingdom comes, come here … but not just yet. Enjoy the nice planet we worked so hard making for you all.…”

  Marlo yanked Van out of Scampi’s chair.

  “And cut!” she shouted as she set the truth bomb in the chair. She grabbed the mask from Van’s face and pulled it down to the bomb, hooking it through one of the mask’s eyeholes. Marlo then took her two stubby Pinocchio-wood stilts and wedged them on either side of the truth bomb, cinched between the sides of the chair. The demon guards burst into the Boiler Room, sending Zane and Milton tumbling to the floor.

  “Grab them before they destroy us all!” Vice Principal Barnum roared as he poked his head through the hatch. Marlo held her hands above her head.

  “You guys got us, fair and square,” she said as she walked over to one of the burly chameleon demon guards. Marlo whispered out of the side of her mouth to Zane and Milton.

  “Trust me,” she said, “just make sure I’m the last one out of here.”

  Milton’s eyes widened.

  “You aren’t going to … to,” he stammered, “blow yourself up, are you?”

  Marlo gave a sly smirk that clashed with the trace of trepidation in her eyes.

  “Stop worrying,” she whispered. “You’ll giv
e me wrinkles.”

  The demon guards led Zane, Milton, and Van down through the hatch. Vice Principal Barnum gave the Boiler Room a cursory glance, not seeing the truth bomb hidden behind the high-back chair.

  “Well, I guess Mr. Nostradamus was wrong,” the smug, stout man said as he lowered himself, with difficulty, back through the hatch. “Fibble is safe and sound, and once I get these brats out of here, I can finish some unfinished business.”

  The last demon guard led Marlo down into the shaft, its crazy lizard eyes twitching in every direction. Just before it closed the hatch, Marlo popped her head back into the Boiler Room.

  “Adults have all the answers!” she screamed at the top of Milton’s lungs. The Pinocchio wood yelped and sprang into the sides of the pipe bomb, sending shards of truth shooting in every direction, until everything went silver.

  28 • THE PLOT SICKENS

  THE BUFFALO BILL International Airport just outside of Generica, Kansas, was teeming with laughing, happy people hugging one another tightly. This in itself wasn’t that out of the ordinary, as airports are often full of cheerful people who have finally gotten their insufferable visiting relatives onto a plane.

  But here in the terminal today—Dale E. Basye thought—it was somehow different. Perfect strangers openly embraced and traded smiles as if they were suddenly the best of buds, their friendships as bright, clean, and full of promise as a new car. These people, of every imaginable race and creed, crowded together in airport restaurants such as Tom O’Foolery’s Dublin Pub ’n’ Sub Shoppe and Little Hofbrau on the Prairie as the credits to various T.H.E.E.N.D. shows scrolled across banks of television screens. People were toasting each other, singing ponderous songs with too many verses, and generally carrying on like a mass karaoke version of “We Are the World.”

  Dale E. Basye shrugged and went to retrieve his luggage. A Barbie-esque FAUX news anchor appeared on one of the omnipresent televisions throughout the airport.

  “Reports of … giant talking heads”—the woman smirked, shaking her head without upsetting her lacquered blond helmet of hair—“continue to stream in from all over the world. While it’s unclear if these sightings are the result of bizarre weather conditions, mass delusion, divine intervention, or an elaborate publicity stunt perpetrated as part of T.H.E.E.N.D.’s final broadcasts, one thing is certain: people all over the world seem to be drawn a little bit … closer. Next up … The Oh Really? Factor …”

  Dale stared, fixated, at the luggage chute where suitcases of all sizes squeezed through like poop from the business end of a Clydesdale. While the rumpled, middle-aged man waited for his tiki-themed tote to rotate languorously within reach, two sandy-haired boys with beady blue eyes—twins, by the looks of it—appeared at Dale’s side.

  “Hey, mister,” the boy on the left uttered around the wad of neon purple gum in his mouth. “Are you that Fartisimo Family guy?”

  Dale E. Basye smirked. He always seemed to get spotted by fans when he wore his “Author of the Fartisimo Family Series” T-shirt.

  “Why, yes, I am,” he replied.

  “Can we be in your next book?” the boy on the right asked with a mischievous grin.

  Dale could never understand why people asked to be in his books. His books were about an awful family plagued with chronic intestinal gas. Besides, awkwardly wedging fans into a book is about as vain as inserting yourself into your own story.

  “Well, I—” Dale replied.

  “Here’s our audition,” the boys laughed as they farted loudly in unison. Then, like bank robbers fleeing the scene of a crime, they ran away.

  Dale E. Basye waved clean the air around him as he reached for his pocket notebook, adding Gassy twins masquerading as fans to his list of fears.

  The Guiding Knight hoisted up the hem of his midnight-blue robe and crept into the Psychomanthium: the large rhinestone-and-tabloid-photo-festooned box formerly known as the Elvis Abduction Chamber. The cadaverous, sharp-featured man was suddenly split into six by the half-dozen mirrored walls in the spacious converted photo booth. He held a mason jar brimming with multicolored jellyfish beans: an almost-instantly recalled Japanese candy responsible for a host of fatalities and profoundly crippling allergic reactions.

  “Thank you, eBay,” he muttered as he set the jar down between two Elvis beanbag chairs, one showing the King at the height of his career, the other, at his widest. The Guiding Knight’s attempts at hurrying Damian, his cult’s Bridge, from this world to the next had been less than successful. He had first tried a toaster, baited with Damian’s beloved millet-seed bread, submerged in a shallow pool of water, but all that had resulted in was wet toast. Next was a Slip ’N Slide set outside of the bathroom while Damian took his weekly shower. Unfortunately, Damian had developed a phobia about getting his feet wet, so he showered with his boots on. It was supremely frustrating, the Guiding Knight thought as he turned to leave. Somehow that cruel, arrogant, unrepentantly horrid lump of a boy was always one step ahead—

  “What are you doing?” Damian demanded with an accusatory cluck as he opened the chamber door. “I have a meeting here in five … and not with you.”

  The Guiding Knight nearly crossed over to the Other Side himself with shock.

  “I was just … fluffing your beanbag chairs,” the hollow-cheeked man replied, noting a small, downy feather sprouting from Damian’s chin. “You know, feathering your nest.”

  Damian yanked a cord dangling inside the booth, filling it with red light. He examined the interior of the Psychomanthium suspiciously.

  “Okay, well, you can fly away now,” he replied, scowling. “There are some tourists out there, loitering between Krazy Kults and Mrs. Bigfoot. Go try to convert them into KOOKs … or at least unload some VitaMold.”

  The Guiding Knight nodded.

  “As you wish, my,” the gangly man replied before adding sarcastic air quotes, “ ‘Bridge.’ ”

  The Guiding Knight swished away in his flowing robe. Damian made a horrible face—even more horrible than his own—behind the man’s back.

  Nearby, Lester Lobe was busy dusting a heap of pseudoscience artifacts.

  “Hey,” Damian said to the twitchy curator, “can you put on that cool old rock station, the one that plays those heavy hippie tunes?”

  Les tipped his fez to one side and gave his gray, scraggly head a scratch.

  “You like the classics?” he asked suspiciously.

  Damian nodded, trying to widen the cruel, inscrutable slits he used for eyes into something approaching sincerity.

  “Yeah,” he replied, forcing a smile. “I think that stuff is … groovy.”

  Les grinned a mouthful of dark brown, nicotine-stained teeth.

  “Sure thing, kid,” he said. “I’ll uncork some righteous tunes, pronto!”

  Les trotted over to his camouflage-painted boom box and cranked the volume. Droning guitars oozed out of the speakers like musical mud. Clumsy, thumping drums and shrieking vocals, like someone strangling a screech owl, followed.

  Damian plugged his ears and waited for his lawyer, Algernon Cole, to show up. Damian hated the awful music but—somehow—it seemed to unlock the powers of the Psychomanthium, granting him the ability to connect with the underworld. And since Satan refused to pick up his Ouija board, Damian was going to up the ante, whatever it took—short of a face-to-face visit, Damian wasn’t ready for that just yet—to get the devil on the horn and renegotiate his book contract.

  “Hello, hello.” Algernon Cole, a spry man wearing khaki shorts, white socks, Birkenstocks, and a pink dress shirt, walked into the Paranor Mall. “Sorry if I’m a bit tardy. My No Fuelin’ hybrid is in the shop so I had to take the bus. But you know what they say: better litigate than never!”

  Lester Lobe hopped off a stepladder, having replaced the black light over the UFOria! exhibit so that it continued to exude its otherworldly glow.

  “Hey, legal seagull—”

  “You mean eagle,” Algernon replied haughtily.
>
  “Do you know how I’d go about getting a restraining order against someone who keeps making unannounced visits?” Les added, folding his arms together and leaning against a large, heavily muscled “Abdominal Snowman” mannequin in gym shorts.

  “Well,” Algernon Cole went on, “first you would file a formal complaint with your local county court … hey, wait a second …”

  Damian grabbed his lawyer’s arm and led him to the Psychomanthium.

  “As fun as it is to watch two old farts get snippy with each other, I asked you over here for a reason,” Damian said gruffly as classic rock filled the museum.

  “Say one, say two, I can’t get enough of you!”

  “Yes, I know,” Algernon replied, “to renegotiate your book contract with that eccentric publisher of yours, Louie Cipher … oww, you’re hurting me.”

  Damian released his exceptionally powerful grip on his lawyer’s bony arm.

  “Sorry,” Damian offered as they reached the mysterious chamber. “I’m just a little on edge. Luci, um, Louie, can be a little … intense.”

  “Say three, say four, one look and I’m done for!”

  Damian turned the chamber’s brass knob, stomped into the Psychomanthium, and plopped down in the Fat Elvis beanbag chair.

  Algernon, still seething from his encounter with Les Lobe, clasped his hands together and stood unsteadily on one foot like a wobbly crane in an attempt to center himself.

  “That irritating hippie crackpot,” he muttered. “You know, you and your KOOKs could take this whole place away from him. Squatter’s rights, or adverse possession as we say in the law biz. There’s some mnemonic device, a handy acronym to remember the components of an adverse possession action, but it escapes me at the moment.…”

  Damian yawned and rubbed the dark circles under his eyes with a grubby fist. Algernon broke his pose and examined Damian over his tortoiseshell designer glasses.

  “Hey, you don’t look so good,” he commented. “Here, try a swig of this.” Algernon held out a plastic bottle emblazoned with the fuzzy green VitaMold logo. “It’ll kill whatever ails you, and then some.”