Snivel: The Fifth Circle of Heck

by Dale E. Basye

  The piece of chalk fell to the ground and shattered. The teacher’s dark eyes welled with tears.

  “Taken down before your time … just like my beloved Eurydice,” he muttered with profound sadness.

  Caterwaul rested her chin on a fist, a moony expression cast across her long face.

  “What a dreamboat,” she cooed softly to herself.

  Milton and the Sunshine Sneezer shared a commiserating smirk.

  “Commencing eye-roll sequence,” Milton muttered.

  Sara’s dark eyes darted over to Milton, crinkling into a smile that allayed Milton’s budding jealousy.

  “My name is Mr. Orpheus,” the teacher said in a low wheeze, like a gust of cold wind whistling through a cemetery. “Some of you may know me as the leader of the band The Minor Keys.”

  “I just knew he was in a band,” Caterwaul whispered. “He has that tortured poet thing going for him.”

  “No?” Mr. Orpheus said, surveying the uncomprehending expressions on the students’ faces. “The pioneers of Glum Rock? Consistently making Rolling Tombstone’s Most Depressing Bands list, due—primarily—to my scorching lyre solos?”

  Mr. Orpheus sighed. He picked up a long, black drum and smacked its sagging skin. It let loose a muffled boom that instantly filled Milton with a muffled gloom, smothering his spirits as if with a soggy pillow.

  “ ’Tis no matter,” Mr. Orpheus said, setting down his drum. “Music, as many of you know, has the ability to transport the soul. It makes the people come together, the bourgeoisie and the rebel. It hath the power to expel disease. It is a sovereign remedy against despair and melancholy and can reportedly drive away the devil himself. Especially polkas. It can make lovers more enamored and a religious man more devout. This, in music, we appreciate.…”

  Mr. Orpheus picked up a lyre leaning against the moldy canvas walls of the tent. A long tangled black cord connected it to a small amplifier. He slung the instrument over his shoulder by its strap.

  “But this, I’m afraid, is Music Depreciation. Where we deconstruct music to such a ludicrous degree that it is stripped of all transportive magic, rendered merely a collection of auditory vibrations. Its beauty becomes but a delusional figment conjured somewhere between our eardrums and the brain.”

  Mr. Orpheus sighed, the defeated exhalation of someone whose heart once pumped wine and now only spewed vinegar.

  “Music has let me down … and it will pay. I could once enchant wild beasts with the beauty of my music. But it wasn’t there for me when I needed it the most. When I lost my dear wife, Eurydice.”

  That’s how I know him, Milton thought. Orpheus. The ancient Greek poet and musician who, when his wife, Eurydice, died, went to the underworld to rescue her. He wasn’t supposed to turn around and look at her until they made it back to the land of the living. But he did … and she didn’t. Make it back, that is.

  “Music Depreciation examines the painful, disharmonic psychoacoustic potential of music and its effect on the brain and spirit,” Mr. Orpheus continued. He went over to a warped wooden cabinet containing a number of black drums. He grabbed an armful and handed them to the students.

  “These are doldrums,” he explained in his sad, distracted voice. “Their heads are made from the stretched hides of clinically depressed goats fed nothing but existential poetry. They produce the most doleful sounds imaginable. And that effect is magnified when multiple doldrums are struck concurrently. You, young man,” Mr. Orpheus said, pointing at Milton. “To the center of the circle for a demonstration.”

  Milton reluctantly obeyed as Mr. Orpheus claimed Milton’s seat.

  “On the count of three, class, I want you to smack your doldrums,” the teacher instructed. “One … two … three.”

  Milton’s bones rattled as the dispiriting, whooshing throb of the drums drained him of any lingering trace of happiness Snivel had yet to pilfer. Head hung low, Milton stood slumped and shaking.

  “As you can see,” Mr. Orpheus said, rising, “our unfortunate young scholar hath been adversely affected by the doleful tones of the doldrums.”

  “Is he okay?” Sara asked with concern.

  Mr. Orpheus smiled coldly.

  “Yes, the effect is temporary. We can boost his spirits, however, if you like.”

  Mr. Orpheus plucked a note from his electric lyre.

  “Now, miss, sing this tone.”

  Sara obliged, singing a clear, pure note.

  “Now you, dear,” the teacher said, nodding to Caterwaul, who nearly swooned after being referred to as “dear.” “Sing this note.”

  The teacher plucked another string. Caterwaul, though a little croaky from a lifetime of sobbing, hit the note with eagerness, hoping to impress the ancient Greek poet.

  Mr. Orpheus sang in a clear, beautiful tenor, providing the last note in a cheerful three-part harmony. Milton instantly felt better.

  “Excellent,” Mr. Orpheus commented. “Now take a deep breath and try that again.”

  Sara and Caterwaul sang their notes again, with the teacher joining in again, only this time a halftone lower. A faint whisper of sadness spread throughout Milton.

  “See?” Mr. Orpheus explained, crossing his bare legs. “We went from a major key to a minor, causing vague melancholy. Any number of emotional states can be achieved in this way. A major seventh chord can approximate the wistfulness of unrequited love, as I will demonstrate on the lyre.”

  The teacher strummed his instrument, filling the tent with nostalgic yearning. The sound of autumn leaves falling to the ground.

  “And finally, by moving the fifth note of a minor chord down a half step, we create the most dispiriting chord of all. The diminished.”

  Mr. Orpheus swept his thumb across his electric lyre. The trembling notes gnashed against one another like gnarled teeth, squeaking with tension and distress. Milton felt himself collapse inside, crushed and crumpled, like a busted piñata bled of candy, left out in the rain to rot.

  “Young man,” the teacher said as he trudged sluggishly back to the front of the class with weary sandal flops, “you may sit down.”

  Nauseous with despair, Milton stumbled to his chair, gripping it tight, craving something solid to hold on to, since inside he felt sick and slushy. He felt Sara’s hand on his shoulder.

  “Are you okay, Milton?” she asked.

  “Of course he isn’t okay,” Sam added with a contemptuous smile. “He’s an incurable dweeb.”

  Milton wiped the sweat off his upper lip.

  “Yeah, I’m fine,” he replied shakily. “I’m starting to feel more … more myself.”

  “Too bad for you,” Sam muttered as he and his sister returned to their seat.

  Mr. Orpheus swung his arm like a windmill, striking his electric lyre and summoning a power chord bristling with clangorous force. The students clapped their hands over their ears until the clamor dulled to a crackling drone.

  “Each of you will have the opportunity to experience disharmonic, microtonal therapy firsthand,” the teacher said as he tuned his lyre with excruciating fastidiousness. “Or first-ear, anyway. After multiple sessions, I can guarantee that each of you will realize full musical depreciation, where that once transitory state of melancholy—or light sorrow—will take permanent residence within your souls. Fixed in your disposition, a dullness and vexation of vitality impossible to remove.”

  At this point, even Caterwaul seemed to have lost the bloom of infatuation with her handsome, sonically sadistic teacher.

  “Before our class comes to a close, I’d like to subject you all to my latest decomposition:

  “You breathe in the air

  And fall with despair …”

  As Mr. Orpheus tortured the class with his latest disheartening ditty, Milton nudged his desk closer to his fellow students and cleared his throat.

  “Meet at lake,” Milton said in Remorse code.

  Sara leaned toward him.

  “When?” she sob-snorted.

  “Ton
ight.”

  Howler Monkey scratched at his monochrosquito bites, his face almost completely drained of color.

  “Why?” he blubbered and sniffed.

  Milton shot a quick, hateful glance at Mr. Orpheus, twanging away with narcissistic abandon.

  “For you know where

  You are:

  Nowhere …”

  Milton cleared his throat and faced the other Unhappy Campers, his eyes burning with determination.

  “We’re getting out of here.”

  KNEELING AT THE edge of the dock, Milton scribbled onto the bottom of the scroll of now-blank paper.

  Yes, I am Milton Fauster.

  He rolled up the paper and stuffed it into the bottle. Milton gripped it tightly by the neck and tossed it as hard as he could toward the whirlpool beneath the churning Dukkha Wheel. The bottle was instantly tugged toward the swirling funnel and, after a few agitated bobs, was swallowed up by the gloomy green waters of Lake Rymose.

  He stood up and swiped clean his hands.

  “Well,” he said to his fellow Unhappy Campers standing beside him on the rotting dock, “I guess all we can do now is—”

  “Wait!” Sara squealed, pointing to the wheel. “There’s a bottle!”

  “It probably just floated back up,” Sam said in his deep, cynical rumble of a voice. “This is a complete waste of time.”

  “No, this one is different,” Sara replied. “It’s bright gold.”

  Milton wiped the rain off his glasses and peered into the riot of mist pouring from the Dukkha Wheel. Sara was right: A golden bottle was speeding away from the whirlpool toward the shore. Milton fell onto his belly and, outstretched at the edge of the pier, grabbed the bottle that had somehow sped straight to him. He sat on the dock and spanked the bottom of the bottle. Out popped another roll of thick, plasticky paper.

  Congratulations, Milton Fauster!! After extensively reviewing your application, we have decided to allow you into the OFFICIAL Arcadia Gr8 G4m3rz Club: the most EXCLUSIVE CLUB in the AFTERLIFE! You are hereby requested to appear—with any uniquely intrepid gamers seeking election that you see fit to sponsor—IMMEDIATELY, if not sooner. Simply follow the arrow included, at no extra charge, at the bottom of this letter. Again—wow—CONGRATULATIONS! You must be quite justifiably envious of yourself!!

  The Unhappy Campers crowded around Milton as the note slowly faded, leaving only a red arrow—winking and teasing like a Cheshire cat’s grin—pointing straight to the seething whirlpool at the center of Lake Rymose.

  “Where do we, like, go?” asked Howler Monkey, breathing loudly through his mouth and into Milton’s ear. Milton moved the paper from side to side. The blinking arrow moved in kind, always pointing straight at the Dukkha Wheel.

  “The whirlpool it is,” Milton said as he rose to his feet.

  Caterwaul gaped at the water with distress. “But we’ll drown for sure if we try to swim in … that,” she said tremulously, wringing her hands.

  Milton scanned the lake. Something bumped against one of the dock’s barely-support beams. Jouncing in the water against the decrepit pier were three slimy yellow boats.

  “Canoes,” he muttered.

  Sam/Sara peered over the pier.

  “More like canolds,” Sam replied as he glared in disgust at the mucky, smelly-like-someone-had-vomited-in-a-moldy-sneaker boats.

  Milton shrugged as he carefully stepped into one of the canoes. It was unsettlingly squishy, like a hollowed-out mutant banana slug. In fact, the slugs hot-glued to Milton’s shirt wriggled as if saying hello to their monstrous new friend.

  “There’s room for two of us in each,” Milton said.

  Sam/Sara stepped into a nearby canoe with a gross, wet squish. Caterwaul and the Sunshine Sneezer climbed aboard a boat and pushed off the dock, with Milton and Howler Monkey close behind.

  Milton dipped his paddle into the deep-jade waters of Lake Rymose, an eerie glow radiating from its unfathomable depths.

  “Are you sure about this?” Sara shouted over the churning groan of the Dukkha Wheel as it wobbled on its wooden axis.

  If uncertainty were a city, Milton would surely be its mayor. But somehow, rowing toward a seething vortex with a screeching stone wheel at its center seemed like the right thing to do.

  “You saw the note,” Milton said. “Before it disappeared, that is. Arcadia is real. It’s probably where Marlo and all of the other kids are. And this whirlpool is some kind of gateway.”

  Three shaggy black creatures emerged from the forest. Their paws snapped the willow branches like brittle bones beneath their bulk as they padded to the shore. Milton wiped the thick spray off his glasses but still couldn’t clearly make out the dark panting beasts. They were like large, woolly dogs, exhaling a freezing cold despair that chilled his bones. The Sunshine Sneezer looked back quickly over his shoulder at the edge of the lake before attacking the water with his paddle.

  “Well, it looks like that’s settled,” he said with a wet snuffle.

  The roar of the forty-foot-tall Dukkha Wheel was deafening as each of its eight giant ladles hungrily scooped up the lake’s murky, deep-green water. Poking through the rhythmic splashing and sloshing was a gurgling cacophony of blips and bleeps.

  Milton’s canoe was caught in the outer ring of the foaming whirlpool revolving around the Dukkha Wheel in diminishing orbits. We’d have to clear the massive ladles to make it to the funnel, Milton thought. One of the stone dippers snatched up a load of water, rocking the canoe, before revolving away.

  “Paddle!” Milton screamed above the noise as he and Howler Monkey rowed furiously toward the center of the whirlpool. The water around them swelled into a black, mountainous ridge. The whoosh of water and spray screamed as the three canoes, now all clear of the ladles, careened round and round toward the middle of the surge.

  As his canoe bobbed up into the air, Milton could briefly see the shore. A man tromped out to join the three bushy creatures panting at the edge of the dock.

  Vice Principal Poe.

  After a wild lurch to starboard, Milton and Howler Monkey, his howls lost over the din, rushed headlong into the abyss, sucked down into the maw of the swirling funnel. Milton’s stomach fell victim to the sickening sweep of descent.

  The sense of falling stopped. Milton slowly wrenched open his eyes. He and his friends seemed to be hanging, as if by magic, midway down the smooth, spinning funnel, its sides gleaming and radiant, like a bouquet of green-tinted sunbeams. From below streamed a flood of golden light. Milton turned to look back over his shoulder. He could see the great wooden axis of the rotating Dukkha Wheel and, beyond, a sky full of twinkling garbage. Suddenly, the opening of the tunnel closed with a surge of agitated froth. Round and round, skimming down across the walls of the funnel, Milton and his friends were swept, held tight in the embrace of the whirlpool, swallowed up by the chaos of light and foam.

  BEA “ELSA” BUBB, the Principal of Darkness, shrieked as she awoke from her nightmare. Her pus-yellow eyes darted frantically about her Not-So-Secret Lair.

  The readout of her clock blinked 13:13.

  She sighed with relief, her fetid breath dragging her three-headed Hound of Heck, Cerberus, out of his three-fathoms-deep slumber. He licked the air with sleepy laps, hoping to savor the rotting fish-skunk-socks he sensed with his six nostrils.

  “School dreams,” the principal mumbled. “You never graduate from them.” Bea “Elsa” Bubb looked down upon Cerberus and smiled, or at least exhumed her burial site of decaying teeth in an expression approximating pleasure. She scritched Cerberus with her talons just beneath his left jaw, right on the crusted-over sore that never seemed to heal properly.

  “Yes, my Prince Harming,” she cooed like a pigeon on life support, “maybe we just need a wee whittle snackity-whack in our tummity-tums before we go sleepy-bye.” Principal Bubb swooped him up in her arms, kicked on her new Lop Bunny slippers—still warm, she thought—and padded out into the darkened hallways of Limbo.


  “Hello, Principal Bubb,” a simpering demon guard—a cross between a troll doll and an upholstered leather peanut—called out from its post beyond the Teacher’s Lounge. “A word about my promotion … you know, if you get the job?”

  Job? the principal thought. There it is again.…

  The principal held out her arms and fluttered her beady eyes.

  “Sleepwalking,” she mumbled, inflating an armada of spit bubbles with her sour breath. “Never wake up a sleepwalker.”

  The demon guard nodded, shaking its greasy rainbow hair.

  “Right … right. Wait,” the guard replied quizzically. “If you’re asleep, how come you answered me?”

  The Principal of Darkness shuffled away, calling over her jiggly lump of a shoulder, “A coincidence. Am dreaming dream of talking with irritating guard I’m considering transferring to latrine duty: emphasis on dooty.”

  “Oh,” the guard mumbled dully as Bea “Elsa” Bubb entered an unmarked room by a burning torch mounted on the wall. Inside was a tastefully decorated den, with a plush couch and decaffeinated coffee table strewn with children’s magazines—Deranger Rick, Lowlights, Rickets, and a disconnect-the-dots book. The principal set down her displaced lapdog, currently having no lap to call its own, and rubbed her claws together with anticipation.

  “Haggis,” Principal Bubb murmured as drool dripped down her chin, punctuating her request with a dry, leathery clap of her claws.

  Suddenly, the small room was packed tight with the traditional Scottish dish of sheep’s guts boiled inside the once-bleating animal’s stomach. The principal tucked in with abandon.