Suddenly it hit Milton like two thousand pounds of rectangular clay blocks. Marlo may have been to blame for where he ended up, but Damian was responsible for why.
“If it weren’t for you,” he fumed, “I’d be home studying!!!”
Milton lunged at Damian, his noodle arms swinging wildly. Unfortunately, for every one of Milton’s noodle smacks, Damian delivered two beefy blows, and soon Milton’s face began to resemble a plate of spaghetti with extra marinara sauce.
Marlo looked over at a pair of leathery demon guards with batlike wings who were watching the scuffle and snickering. She had to think fast, as her brother’s face was beginning to look like a swelling relief map of Bruisetonia.
Marlo rushed toward her brother’s hulking foe and…kissed him… on the lips, on his chunky, filthy cheeks, and on his barely perceptible neck. Then she wrapped her spindly white arms around him (as much as she could) and gave him a big, warm, and—for all appearances—sincere squeeze.
Damian was momentarily paralyzed by this—or any—public display of affection. The demon guards, however, were quick to act.
“Stop that this instant!” croaked the taller of the two guards. The two twisted hunks of living jerky swooped in to break up the spontaneous love fest.
As the guards pried the children apart, Marlo grabbed Milton.
“My…face…,” Milton mumbled behind bubbles of blood and spit. “It has a pulse.”
Marlo helped him up onto his shaky legs while the demon guards restrained Damian. “Cool off, lover boy,” one of them hissed.
The crowd grew quiet. Too quiet. Like when a school of little fish disappears just before a shark makes a surprise visit.
The sound of hooves filled the Unwelcome Area.
“My, my,” Bea “Elsa” Bubb murmured, standing before Damian with a look bordering on reverence.
“Damian Ruffino. What an honor to have you darkening our humble halls.”
She extended her claw. As Damian stared at her obsessively manicured talons, the principal shot a sharp, information-packed look at the demon guards holding him. They quickly released Damian, who shrugged off their grasp with an angry shake.
A smirk crossed his face as the situation slowly dawned on him—and with Damian, just about every dawn rose slowly. He reached out his hand to Principal Bubb, then, just before contact, pulled it back and smoothed his hair. The ancient demoness grinned.
“You have quite the following down here,” she said, lowering her claw to her side. “We could learn a lot from a self-starting, energetic, creative yet thuggishly primitive go-getter such as yourself.”
Principal Bubb placed her sharp, scaly hand on Damian’s back. “I’m sure we’ll be best fiends.”
Damian sharpened his cruel eyes into glaring slits as he strutted past Milton and Marlo on his way to Bea “Elsa” Bubb’s not-so-secret lair.
“Let’s get you something to eat,” Marlo said to Milton. “That’s what we were trying to do anyway, right?”
“As long as it’s not a knuckle sandwich,” gurgled Milton as he and his sister hobbled down the hallway. “I think I’ve had plenty for one day.”
6 · AN UNHAPPY MEAL WITH A SIDE OF FUZZ
MILTON AND MARLO entered the dreary cafeterium. A small group of kids was staring up at an ancient flickering television bolted in the corner. The children sat slumped over plates filled with runny lumps that oozed over the edges. They looked from the warped black-and-white picture on the screen to each other, as if unsure whether they were awake or dead to the world. Or both.
On the screen the show’s title, I Love Lucifer, was branded upon a writhing demon’s back.
“Bad evening, ladies and virulent germs!” the show’s star said with a devilish grin. His dashing tail swayed with confidence as he waved to the crowd like a game-show emcee.
In one corner of the cafeterium, beneath a banner proclaiming “Unwelcome, Class of Now,” stood a row of Automat vending machines. Behind dozens of little glass doors was a selection of unappetizing foodstuffs—plates of quivering Jell-O hiding pineapple, cherry, and olive chunks; strange gray sandwiches sealed in plastic; and slabs of dry, mysterious meats that bore no resemblance to the animals from whence they supposedly came.
Some of the compartments, however, contained mouthwatering morsels, the likes of which Milton and Marlo had never seen. Exotic pizzas with layers of savory toppings; yard-long hot dogs slathered with ketchup, mustard, chili, bacon, and gravy; and hot fudge sundaes on glazed Krispy Kreme bowls, topped with shredded candy bars. These special compartments were easy to spot, since they were the ones with hands of screaming boys and girls trapped in their doors.
Milton watched a pudgy, freckle-faced boy walk down the aisle of squealing tykes. The boy was entranced by a triple-decker fudge brownie. He licked his lips and pried open the door. It slammed shut just as the boy’s fingers touched the decadent treat. He groaned in anguish like a wounded bear.
Milton edged away from the tempting, baited machine toward the buffet.
“Go get us a table,” Milton said. “I’ll be fine.”
Marlo gave her brother a look of sisterly concern—a typical sister that didn’t trick her little brother into stealing, thus darning his soul for all eternity—then shrugged her shoulders and walked away. Milton grabbed a rusty metal tray and slid it past buckets of steaming Brussels sprouts so overcooked that they resembled wilted globs of pale green snot.
A gruesome female demon manned the buckets of sour-smelling slop. She sported a series of hairy moles and weeping boils and wore a hairnet over her bald head.
She ladled food onto Milton’s dirty plate. Milton eyed his mound of Brussels sprouts.
“Excuse me,” Milton asked politely. “Might there be anything else besides…whatever these are. Certain vegetables, unless they are organic, tend to wreak havoc on my gastrointestinal…”
The cafeterium demon stared at Milton with the cold, blank gaze of yesterday’s catch of the day.
“You mean like pepperoni pizza?” she rasped. “Turkey with all the trimmings? Fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and gravy? Triple cheeseburgers with chili fries? Hot buffalo wings glistening with honey barbecue sauce?”
Milton nodded enthusiastically.
The cafeterium demon sneered. “No. Just Brussels sprouts.”
She glopped another dull splatful onto Milton’s plate. The smile slid off his face and landed somewhere at his sneakers. He shuffled away.
Marlo sat alone at a metal table that looked suspiciously like the kind found in a county morgue. She halfheartedly stabbed a couple of slabs of what must at some point have been liver with her fork. Milton slid into the chair beside her.
“Where’d you get that?” he asked with disgust.
She frowned at her plate. “Shock of shocks, from one of the weird food machine thingies that wasn’t booby-trapped.”
She picked up one of the sickening slabs of oily meat and held it out to Milton.
“Here,” she said. “This one’s yours.”
Milton made a face. “I’m not eating that.”
“Who said anything about eating it?”
Marlo flung the liver onto Milton’s face. He clutched its soothing coolness.
“Oh,” he replied meekly. “Thanks.”
As the swelling around his left eye and cheek went down somewhat, Milton noticed that his mouth tasted like an old man’s T-shirt soaked in sour blood.
“Hey, let me have some of your juice,” he said, pointing to a small white juice box next to her plate.
Marlo shrugged her shoulders while Milton took a sip. He spat out the contents in a spray of disgust.
“Ugh! What is that?”
“Cod-liver oil.” Marlo smirked.
Milton tried to brush the taste off of his tongue. “Id dat all dey hab?”
“There’s sulfur water over there.”
Milton got up.
“It’s like drinking a fart,” Marlo added.
Milton
sat back down. He tossed his backpack on the table, put his swollen head in his hands, and cried. “This sucks.”
Marlo rolled her eyes and patted her brother on the back. “At least we can finally watch TV while we eat, since Mom’s not around.”
They stared up at the worst television ever to see Lucifer flip his head back and laugh like a scary Pez dispenser. “Phew! Is it hot in here, or is it just me!?”
Milton sobbed weakly at the table. Being dead was bad enough. Being dead and locked away for all eternity with Damian, the bane of his existence—now of his nonexistence—was too terrible for him to even comprehend.
“Maybe this is all just a bad dream,” Marlo offered.
“A shared delusion?” Milton sniffed. Even his tear ducts hurt.
“Yeah, like Thanksgiving with Uncle Walter,” Marlo said. “But don’t worry. With your brains and my…everything else, we’ll come up with some way out of here. We’re just getting the lay of the land, is all. We should just relax a bit and, you know, assess our situation.”
Milton’s backpack rustled. The siblings exchanged disturbed glances. The sack trembled again, as if it was about to give birth to a bag baby. Suddenly out leapt a fuzzy and, to the Fauster children, wonderful animal.
“Lucky!” Milton squealed as he clutched his nervous, wriggling, pink-eyed ferret.
Marlo tickled the animal under the chin. The two red dice hanging from his collar made a tinkling noise.
“If ever there was a more ironically named animal…,” cooed Marlo. “Poor guy.”
Milton held Lucky close. The ferret gave Milton’s wounded face a few loving laps before squirming and hacking up a fur ball.
“This is a sign!” Marlo gasped with wide, spooky eyes. “All we’ve got to do is stick together!”
Just then the room trembled and went dark. Red strobe lights flashed and an announcement squawked from speakers embedded in the walls.
“Hall demonitors and den mortems, please escort the newly dead to the Disorientation Center immediately.”
A row of decomposing demons with badges pinned to their chests filed into the cafeterium and surrounded the trembling children.
A rangy demon with black, papery skin and a runny snout stepped forward.
“Come with us, or Elsa,” it hissed.
7 · UNTOGETHER FOREVER
THE NASTY, WIRY little demons herded the children into a long room dimly lit by bare, dangling bulbs. It was difficult for Milton to see how big the room was, as darkness clung to the walls and the slight swaying of the bulbs distorted all perspective.
A thin demon sporting a maggot-ridden meat necktie gestured toward the crowd of confused children.
“‘Where am I, where am I?’” the creature mocked in a whiny voice. “You’re in Heck’s Disorientation Center. Now girls on this side, boys on the other,” he ordered.
“NO!” screamed Milton as little, grotesquely cute demons wielding pitchsporks shepherded the frightened boys and girls in opposite directions. Marlo’s and Milton’s eyes locked together. It was strange, thought Milton as he watched his sister being herded away through a curtain of smoke, for most of his life the sight of his sister leaving inspired feelings of great joy. Now, down here in his so-called afterlife, he felt as if a part of him was being ripped away. Having a sister was weird. It was like having a heart-shaped bruise.
The thin demon shuffled in front of the weeping boys, rolling all five of his eyes with exasperation.
“You are experiencing your feelings, which is healthy and normal,” he said with condescension. “Now knock it off! I’m Mr. Hecubus, your counselor, and I’d like to officially unwelcome you to Disorientation Day.”
Insect-like demons squeezed accordions, filling the center with warped circus music. Strobe lights flashed while slurping noises poured out of bullhorns overhead. The whole effect was indeed quite disorienting.
“Where are the girls going?!” cried Milton.
Mr. Hecubus’s eyes trained on Milton. He suddenly felt like a deer caught in five headlights.
“Awww, does we missum the pwetty wittle girls?” Mr. Hecubus mocked. “Well, young pseudoman, don’t get your knickers in a bunch. Those representing the fairer sex are going to their very own, specially pH-balanced section of Limbo. Do you want to know why?”
“Why?” asked Milton.
“Cherry pie.”
Milton hated falling for that one. Mr. Hecubus smirked.
“The reason is simple: boys and girls have distinct fears to exploit and different opportunities for humiliation. You will all be allowed to ‘mix’ again in the future, but only when it is especially degrading and embarrassing.”
Mr. Hecubus straightened his putrid meat tie as a squad of little demons scrambled beside him carrying two long flaming poles. They held each pole horizontally at their waists. The sizzling poles stretched out for dozens of feet on either side.
Half of the nauseatingly cute little demons jabbed the boys in their bottoms with shiny pitchsporks, prodding them toward one of the flaming poles. The other half poked the girls toward their own pole on the other side of the Disorientation Center.
Mr. Hecubus threw back his head and cackled. “In the meantime, in-between time, ain’t we got fun…”
Using their pitchsporks as jaunty canes, the little demons moved their knotty bodies in something resembling a dance. Milton watched Marlo slowly fade into the smoke with all of the other girls. She looked like a pale, weeping ghost. His sister mouthed something to him right before she disappeared. It almost seemed like “I love you, loser,” but it was hard to tell.
Milton waved in slow motion. He was too scared to say goodbye. He felt that if he said that, he would never see Marlo again. Instead he yelled, “Au revoir.” That was French for “until we meet again,” which made him feel better, or less worse, anyway.
Milton sighed deeply. He was used to being alone. Milton actually kind of liked it. He could read, daydream…whatever he wanted. But he wasn’t used to feeling lonely. And as the last shrieking girl vanished into the smog, Milton felt completely abandoned, set adrift in a situation even worse than summer camp. He was so lonely it physically hurt.
“Oww!” he squealed as a pitchspork made unwelcome contact with his bottom.
So Milton and the other petrified boys leaned backward and limboed under the burning pole into Limbo, with twisted carnival music and demon chants egging them on.
“How low can you go? How low can you go?”
8 · CURS AND WEIGH
MILTON’S NORMALLY MOPLIKE hair was singed at the top, giving him a little charred patch that made him look like a monk who had recently escaped a fire. In fact, all the boys looked as if they’d had flaming, limbo-pole haircuts.
Limbo, Milton thought. He vaguely remembered a social studies class on Haiti. His teacher, Mrs. Ryswick, had talked about the limbo dance and how its name was derived from the rite’s original purpose. One week after the funeral of a loved one, the mourners would dance under the pole to help the soul of the dearly departed escape the state of Limbo.
Milton and the other boys stumbled, smoldering, through a curtain of smoke into a white corridor.
I guess it doesn’t work if you’re dancing for your own soul, Milton reflected.
In front of them was a great door ornately carved with slender gods rowing frightened children down a river. It creaked open. Out stepped what seemed like a slender god himself. Draped in a shimmering white tunic, this trim, towering creature was every inch an ancient deity, right from his perfect leather sandals to the tip of his wet dog nose.
“Come with me,” the creature barked at Milton, who unfortunately stood at the front of the line.
Milton forced his legs to obey. He followed the creature through the open door and into a massive round chamber of gleaming white marble and gold. Lining the walls were rows and rows of jars filled with squirming black globs sparsely speckled with bright colors. Nine descending rings led down to a stage of pure, pol
ished gold. On the stage was an elaborate scale with two teetering trays. Beneath it was a squat, froglike creature with glistening translucent skin. Milton could see its many internal organs throbbing like pulsating lumps of meat. It resembled one of the horrible Jell-O atrocities chock-full of unfathomable chunks in the cafeterium, only this one was large, alive, and wearing a headset.
The chamber was breathtaking. What struck Milton most was the silence. It was a silence so quiet it was deafening. He could feel its hush whispering all around him in ancient tongues. Milton was in awe. He was standing in a place beyond good and evil, somewhere sacred and old.
Then the jelly creature ripped a wet, explosive fart. The force of the blast made Milton’s ears pop. The smell was like moldy cottage cheese and rotten anchovies wrapped in an old gym sock.
“Aaaaah,” the creature sighed with a smile. “That was so big I should give it a name.”
The dog god covered its nose with its hands. “Ammit, really. Have you no respect?”
“Oh, go chase a stick, Annubis,” Ammit replied while tightening a bolt on the scale.
Milton spoke in groggy tones, as if in a dream. “Where am I? What is this place?”
Annubis smiled, exposing sharp, well-cared-for canine teeth. “You are in the Assessment Chamber, the hallowed halls that hold the Scales of Justice.”
The dog god then knelt behind Milton to sniff his bottom. Milton whipped around clutching the back of his pants.
“What are you doing?” Milton squealed.
Annubis rose. “I was simply trying to get to know you.”
He smoothed his lustrous tunic with ruffled dignity and continued.
“Here is where your soul is weighed on the primordial scales. A sample is then taken and delivered to our forensics unit, where a series of tests are conducted. They sift through your soul’s sediment—the by-product of your moral experiences—and discern exactly where you deserve to spend your eternity.”
Annubis took Milton’s hand and led him toward the scale. The dog-headed man exuded a strong sense of calm and gentleness.
Heck: Where the Bad Kids Go Page 4