Blimpo: The Third Circle of Heck

by Dale E. Basye

  “Satan!”

  20 • HiJiNKS iN LOW PLACES

  MILTON AND VIRGIL crept carefully down the gently rolling floors of Blimpo’s main hallway, each pushing a large metal barrel. They had stolen out of their bunks in the dead of night and hijacked two of Dr. Kellogg’s overflowing Q-tip receptacles.

  “Careful,” Milton whispered as he cautiously trod on the billowing floor, “we’re starting to get out of sync.”

  For added insurance, Virgil had left puddles of gooey lentil casserole outside the demon den. The casserole, as Virgil had unfortunately discovered before Milton’s arrival, possessed a peculiar adhesive power and could potentially slow down the guards if Milton and Virgil were found out.

  Milton and Virgil rolled the barrels down a slow bend in the hallway until they reached the inside of the drawbridge. Milton eyed the empty hook by the sealed tongue and the Turnkey-leg-shaped lock beneath it.

  “Well, it would have been too easy that way,” Milton said as he rotated his barrel beneath one of the observatory windows bracketing the bridge. “Just unlocking the door and tripping off the tongue.”

  He reached inside the barrel and unraveled the ladder he and Virgil had spent the first part of the night constructing. Stolen burlap leotards were knotted together to form two parallel ropes, while rough, woolen gym socks were tied as crosspieces every foot or so.

  Next, Milton unfolded a cage constructed of hundreds of used swabs joined together with sticky—nearly cementlike—globs of rainbow navel wax mixed with lentil casserole.

  “Do you think the ladder will hold you?” Virgil asked, concerned.

  Milton unrolled the ladder out of the round, glassless window, wrapping one end around the heavy barrel and then securing it with several hitch knots.

  “Well, not in this thing,” Milton replied, taking off his Blimpo uniform. “Can you help, um … unzip me?”

  Virgil grimaced with disgust as he looked nervously down the hall, not sure which would be worse: to be discovered by a demon guard or by a fellow student.

  “You look like … like … a big shaved Muppet covered in cat sick,” Virgil said. He sighed and pried apart the seam running down Milton’s back. The Pang skin clenched Milton tightly, fighting Virgil’s attempts to remove it.

  “Your skin is … . fighting me,” he panted.

  Finally, after a particularly spirited tug, Milton fell out of the skin and onto the floor, slick with Pang juice and gasping for air. The skin writhed next to him.

  Virgil grinned and helped Milton to his feet. “Nice to really see you,” Virgil said. “What does it feel like?”

  Milton took off his glasses and cleaned them on his sopping wet POD clothes.

  “It’s like being the center of a living Twinkie,” he answered sluggishly, winded and dazed from having been “birthed.”

  Milton shivered, feeling strangely naked even though fully dressed, and looked out the window at the Gorge. Hundreds of Pangs writhed below—fat pink zombies swarming with hunger. Milton could see Jack Kerouac’s upturned shopping cart almost directly beneath.

  “It’s time,” Milton said as he slipped the Q-tip cage over and around him so that it formed a protective barrier, like a shark cage composed of abandoned hygiene products.

  “I hope that’s strong enough to keep them out, or you in,” Virgil said as he nervously bit his lower lip.

  Milton examined his gross, white-with-vaguely-multicolored-joints cage.

  “I doubt it,” he replied softly. “But I’m just hoping they’re so dumb they’ll think they can’t get in.”

  Milton’s Pang skin twitched on the floor.

  “No offense,” he said as he climbed onto the windowsill.

  Virgil nodded and pulled out several containers of Hambone Hank’s Soul Food—mostly leftover hush puppies, black-eyed peas (with real shiners), and a whole lot of sauce—as well as several plastic desserts filched from the Lose-Your-Lunchroom. He slathered sauce all over everything until it became a nondescript yet tantalizing mound, then positioned himself at the opposite window.

  “Ready,” he replied. “Ready to waste all this delicious sauce.”

  Milton smiled as he mounted the dangling ladder of soiled gym clothes.

  “It’s for a good cause,” he said sincerely. “Just be quick … I don’t know how long all this stuff will hold together.”

  Virgil nodded and reluctantly hurled armloads of food and pseudo-food alike out into the Gorge below.

  The Pangs were temporarily paralyzed at the sight of the plummeting feast. Then, suddenly, the creatures thrashed about in a frenzy, climbing over one another to get to the food. It was like a bizarre game of football, only, in this particular case, all the players in the huddle were obese, naked pink blobs with taste buds all over their bodies.

  As the Pangs surged en masse to sate their insatiable hunger, Milton clambered down the delicate ladder, like half a spider descending a web of rank, woven laundry. The abandoned shopping cart was just beyond the bottom of the swaying ladder. The squirming pile of Pangs, only ten or so yards away, were completely oblivious to his presence.

  Milton took a deep breath and hopped off the ladder. He tried his best to tune out the horrible, slobbering grunts and growls that echoed through the cavernous Gorge and focused instead on the shopping cart. He waddled toward the cart in his oversized floor-length cage, knelt down beside the cart, and, as gently as possible, tipped it over. Beneath were dozens of jars wriggling with the odd, vaporous souls of Make-Believe Play-fellows. Some were broken and empty, yet there were at least twenty intact, filled with undulating, pseudo-spiritual goop that churned like Lava Lamps filled with tufts of cloud tinted with vague, muted colors. Milton scooped up several jars and felt his mind loosen, slipping backward into the hazy, comforting gauze of a daydream. He shook his head clear and quickly stuffed the jars into a stolen pair of XXXL always-tighty-not-so-whitie undies. Dangling from the barbed lip of the cart was Jack’s glittering pendant. The silver liquid encased within burbled as Milton’s eyes fixed upon it. The fluid—like a melted mirror—reacted to Milton’s attention, becoming somehow alert, making the necklace tremble.

  Suddenly, the background noise of gurgles and slurps abruptly ceased. Milton turned his head slowly, meeting the dull gaze of a hundred vacant eyes.

  “Dinner’s over!” Virgil declared from above in a whispered shout. “And they want dessert!”

  Milton grabbed the pendant and stuffed it in his shirt pocket, looped his arm through one of the leg holes of his underwear satchel, and heaved it over his shoulder. The Pangs spilled around him, snorting and gaping stupidly at his cage. Milton slowly backed away toward the ladder. Nine Pangs began licking the shopping cart and fighting over its contents—Jack’s blankets, notebooks, and old jazz albums, mostly—with slavering growls. Other Pangs, however, were not as easily distracted. They followed Milton as he reached his arms through the cage to mount the ladder and pressed their blank pink faces close, panting hot stale breath. Milton slowly climbed the ladder, stinky rung by stinky rung.

  The Pangs moaned with anguish. Their humid breath melted the hardened clots of belly button wax and lentil casserole into soft, untrustworthy lumps. Two Pangs lunged up after him, but the mildewed-gym-clothes ladder shredded under their bulk. As they bellowed, Milton’s cage all but disintegrated. He looked down with terror as a mewling mound of Pangs roared at him. He was now exposed, like a piece of unwrapped candy. Milton shinnied until he was halfway up the ladder.

  “Grab your hand!” Virgil yelped from the window above.

  “Grab my hand?” Milton mumbled, perplexed, as he looked up to see Virgil hanging out the window, holding Milton’s Pang skin by both wriggling feet. Milton clambered up a long, knotted tangle of leotards, his eyes watering from the fumes.

  Don’t they ever wash these? he thought. Just as his gym-sock foothold gave way, he seized the Pang suit by the hand. Milton shuddered as he felt the hand clutch back.

  Virgil leaned b
ackward and yanked Milton through the window. They both sprawled out on the floor.

  “I hope … it was … worth it,” Virgil gasped.

  Panting, Milton handed the tinkling underwear tote to Virgil as he scooped up his Pang skin.

  “Wow,” Virgil murmured softly, transfixed as he gazed into the bag. “These are weird … not like the Lost Souls at all. More like steam and gas than thick globs and goop.”

  Milton slipped the Pang skin over his head. The creature’s flesh seized him tightly, squeezing him with spasmodic contractions.

  “This … suit … is … crushing me,” Milton said with gasping breaths. “Like it’s trying to swallow me.”

  Finally, the spasms stopped. Milton shook his head clear and began to breathe normally.

  “Phew,” he said with relief as he finished getting dressed. “It was like choking on a big vitamin, only I was the vitamin.”

  Virgil swayed and hummed to himself as he stared at the jars. Milton gave him a soft kick.

  “C’mon,” Milton said as he loaded his barrel with jars. “We’re only halfway there. The night is young and there’s mischief to be done.”

  Virgil nodded, groggily wrapped up the jars in a wad of gym clothes, and put them in his barrel.

  Maybe Marlo was right, Milton reflected as they headed toward Hambone Hank’s Heart Attack Shack, Virgil humming “Roll Out the Barrel.” Sometimes being a little bad does feel good.

  21 • OUT TO LUNCH AND OUT OF LUCK

  MADAME POMPADOUR’S TOWN coach turned into a bleak-looking shopping compound right off the highway to h-e-double-hockey-sticks, Route 666. The strip mall reminded Marlo of those sad little clusters of outlet stores she’d find dotting otherwise barren landscapes on never-ending family trips.

  The demon driver pulled over. “So where exactly am I supposed to go?” Marlo asked him as she stepped out of the gleaming black coach.

  The stooped demon, whose poor posture made him seem like a withered question mark of meat and bone, turned his head slowly to address Marlo.

  “The Persecution Complex,” he croaked, glaring at her from beneath his screwed-on chauffeur’s cap. “Go to the Shopping Block, just inside, and a concierge will help you with your list.”

  The demon chortled, adding, “As much as anyone could.”

  Marlo looked at the complex with a twinge of dread. Then she shuffled across the parking lot—a sea of SUVs with sporadic herds of Hummers—and unrolled the ridiculous menu Madame Pompadour had given her for the devil’s lunch.

  A bowl of Enmity & Enmities chocolate candies with all the blue ones removed by severed hand

  Single-shot Better Latte Than Never coffee drink, stirred counterclockwise ONLY

  A monkey

  American Spit cigarettes (presmoked, as the devil is trying to quit)

  Head of raw broccoli (which the devil detests and is to be procured only so that he can have the satisfaction of throwing it away)

  A basket of extra-fuzzy bunny rabbits, puppies, and kittens. Don’t ask. You don’t want to know.

  A bottle of champagne for the devil’s real friends

  A bottle of real pain for his sham friends

  Three 13-oz. nonrecyclable plastic bottles of H2No, the antiwater

  Another monkey

  A vegetarian platter for Satan’s iguana, Dr. Lizardo

  HostiliTea service for nine, a Honey Bear pack of honey, and two air impurifiers

  1 gallon of fresh-squeezed blood orange juice

  1 gallon of forbidden apple juice

  13-piece bucket of General Gander’s Unlucky Bride Chicken

  All food must be inspected for hair, to ensure that there are ample stray hairs.

  By the time Marlo had reached the bottom of the list of insane lunch demands, she heard the whoosh of the automatic doors and entered the Persecution Complex.

  Inside was a cramped collection of pathetic, neglected storefronts—a Pottery Bunker, Scarbucks, Home Despot, and GallMart, to name a few. Much of the complex, however, was cordoned off with bright yellow emergency tape and under-destruction signs: WE APOLOGIZE—YET ARE NOT IN ANY WAY RESPONSIBLE—FOR THE INCONVENIENCE. EXPECTED TIME OF COMPLETION: WHEN THE COWS COME HOME.—HELLIBURTON CONSTRUCTION

  What a dump, Marlo thought as she scanned the mall, her kleptomaniac fingers barely registering the faintest “must steal something … anything” tingle.

  Beyond the foyer, she noticed a small hard-but-not-impossible-to-notice booth marked VALET. Marlo stepped up to the booth, wrinkled her nose, and saw that the sign had been freshly written in red Sharpie. Marlo slapped the desk bell with her palm, but the rusty old bell was muted and barely registered a sound. A slender demon in way-too tights appeared from behind a plastic curtain in the back.

  “May I help you … miss?” the creature said snootily as it evaluated Marlo from down its nose, a ski slope of curved cartilage with an oiled, coiled handlebar mustache beneath.

  “You tell me,” Marlo said as she pushed her parchment across the counter. The demon regarded it carefully, its lip curled with faint distaste, before snatching and unrolling it. His black eyes glittered with amazement.

  “Is this for … him?” he gasped while his eyes danced across the list. “I knew he was the Prince of Prima Donnas, but this is below and beyond….”

  Marlo nodded as her compact cell phone vibrated in her pocket.

  “You’re so vain, you probably think this song is about you …,” sang the ring tone.

  Marlo flipped the compact open.

  The second she did, she felt her throat constrict. Collar ID, she surmised as Madame Pompadour’s name flashed in the mirror. Marlo punched one of the compact’s cheek rouge pans, and the madame’s feline face filled the mirror.

  “You were supposed to be back by now,” she snapped.

  “Hello, I’m fine, thanks for asking,” Marlo replied.

  “Working with girls your age for hundreds of years, I assure you that I’m completely immune to the effects of both sarcasm and eye rolls,” Madame Pompadour replied.

  Marlo rolled her eyes, anyway.

  “That one was on the house,” she muttered.

  “What you don’t understand,” Madame Pompadour continued, “is that the devil’s stomach is a precision timepiece of exotic need. If he doesn’t receive just the right meal at just the right time, he goes stark craving mad.”

  “But I just got here, psycho kitty,” Marlo said. “I couldn’t have gotten here any sooner if—”

  “There is no scientific instrument sensitive enough to possibly detect my interest in your excuses. I expect you back immediately, if not sooner. And everything better be perfect, if not better.”

  Madame Pompadour hung up. The demon valet stared at Marlo with a look bridging on sympathy as she clicked the compact closed.

  “And I thought I had a bad boss,” he commiserated.

  Marlo shrugged.

  “No one is the boss of me,” she said. “Not even me. Who needs the responsibility? So, can you help me out here?”

  The demon valet surveyed the list gravely.

  “Well, some of these requests border on the physically impossible … but I think I can get you most of these items, or at least virtually indistinguishable substitutions. Here,” he said, tearing the list in half. “Most of the beverages you can procure at the Scarbucks across the concourse there. Meanwhile, I’ll do my best with the rest.”

  “Thanks,” Marlo said, flashing her lopsided, seldom-seen smile as the demon valet dashed away.

  She hurried into the underworld coffee shop, which—with its sterile interior, vacant baristas, and acrid, burnt-bean aroma—didn’t seem a far cry from those she had frequented up on the Surface.

  “How are you today?” the bored barista asked with all the enthusiasm of someone awaiting a tetanus shot.

  “Same as I always am,” Marlo retorted, “not in the mood for chitchat.”

  She slid the list across the counter.

  “I need
these things and I need them now.”

  The woman scratched apathetically at a scar that spread across her throat and burrowed into the strap of her kelly green apron.

  “Is this, like, some kind of a joke?”

  Marlo leveled a gaze at the barista’s glassy eyes.

  “I don’t think the devil is known for his sense of humor,” she said, leaning slightly across the counter so that her point would have less distance to travel. “Unless you think the Black Death, World War II, and infomercials are funny.”

  The barista gulped.

  “This is for … the Big Guy Downstairs?”

  “Yep, and he needs his single-shot on the double.”

  The barista nodded as a bead of sweat broke free of her hairline and raced for her nose.

  “Name?”

  “Marlo Fauster.”

  The barista turned toward her staff, thrust her fingers in her mouth, and let forth a piercing whistle.

  “People, we have a situation,” she declared urgently. “I need you to stop what you’re doing and get on this most unholy of orders, stat!”

  Marlo sighed with relief. She wasn’t out of the woods yet, but she was so close she could practically hear the freeway. She settled down into an uncomfortably warm leather chesterfield and fidgeted with restlessness. Marlo’s forearm began to prickle, as if she had somehow picked up poison oak.

  Statusphere, Marlo thought for no particular reason as she, unconsciously, dug out the latest issue from her messenger bag. The moment she slipped it on, the prickling sensation went away, her frantic breathing slowed, and a sense of cool refreshment cascaded upon her like a Wigglin’ Waterpillar sprinkler on a summer’s day.