Milton’s thoughts drifted to the last time he’d seen his sister, back in Rapacia. He had told her that he’d come back for her. He had promised.
His Pang skin contracted. The tightness came in spasms that were now arriving with greater frequency, each one pushing him slightly farther down into the creature. He had no idea how long it would be before he was either compressed into oblivion by his trash compactor of a disguise or digested whole.
Both Milton and Marlo were in way over their heads. But at least Milton knew he was in way over his head, while Marlo’s head seemed to have no idea how over it she was in. Her head, that is. He had also made a promise. And in a dark, despairing place like Heck, a promise—even one made between a brother and sister who never truly got along—was all you really had. Milton had made good on his vow to at least try and rescue Virgil. Now he would make good on another. Maybe making good on promises was the first step in unmaking all the bad.
“Can I have my arm back?” the hefty brunette girl asked Milton, causing him to jump with a start.
“Yeah,” he mumbled, releasing the girl’s arm. “Sorry.”
A banner fluttered on the other side of the Gymnauseum.
JUST BECAUSE YOU ARE UNIQUE DOES NOT MEAN THAT YOU ARE SPECIAL
Milton didn’t know if he was right or wrong, good or bad, sane or completely, utterly mental, but he did know that he was unique … special … different. And being different can make a difference. He would start by going down there—to the fiery pit of h-e-double-hockey-sticks itself—to save his sister. To make a difference.
28 • HOLLOW, GOODBYE
PRINCIPAL BUBB PEERED into the creature’s stable. Her left eyebrow crept upward, like a fat, fuzzy caterpillar emerging from its cocoon just to be gobbled down by a crow.
“What is it?” she asked.
The bull demon scratched the itchy rim of its growing horn nub.
“Heckifino,” he replied.
The principal scowled.
“I find it most distressing that you don’t even know the names of the creatures you supposedly care for—”
“It’s a Heckifino,” the demon clarified. “That’s what it’s called. It also goes by ‘Alfonse,’ or ‘Hey’ if you shout loudly enough.”
Bea “Elsa” Bubb stiffened. She drew in a deep breath that was, unfortunately, sharp with the tang of exotic waste matter.
“Just another test,” she replied as she tugged smooth her leather vest. “Want to keep you on the tip of your hooves.”
The bulky creature in the stall stared back at the demons with its mismatched eyes—one round and violet, the other an orange, almond-shaped sliver—located on either side of its coiling, corkscrew tusk. The Heckifino’s disjointed features made it seem as if it had been hastily assembled from a variety of unrelated animal kits by a team of color-blind builders, puzzling over Sanskrit instructions by strobe light.
“So, if memory serves me correctly,” the principal said cautiously, “then the Heckifino is a … a … a …”
The principal dangled the letter “a” in the air between her and the stable keeper, hoping that he would bite.
“A mystery, mostly,” the bull demon replied after a longer-than-comfortable silence. “It’s probably the product of genetic mutation, selective breeding, or a particularly wild holiday party at a very liberal zoo. It’s a true riddle of animal husbandry, and animal wifery as well. It sure is … big. Beautiful plumage.”
Bea “Elsa” Bubb considered the row of multicolored, yard-long feathers sprouting around the creature’s knotted rope of a tail.
“Yes,” she said dryly. “Does it have any unique and exploitable traits?”
“Not especially,” the bull demon snorted, scratching himself beneath his filthy overalls.
The Heckifino chose that moment to produce a freakish gobble, like a frightened tofurkey suddenly endowed with life.
“But, as I said before,” the bull demon continued, “it’s big, garishly unsettling, and—perhaps most importantly of all—available. The perfect match for you … and hopefully more trustworthy than a cluster of nervous flicks!”
The bull demon smiled just as the principal frowned. In fact, her sagging look of disapproval formed the exact opposite of a smile.
“For your sake, I hope so,” Bea “Elsa” Bubb growled. “Or the next beast I’ll be saddling up will be you. And I’ve got spurs that jingle, jangle, mangle in ways you wouldn’t believe.”
The bull demon gulped as a variety of unpleasant scenarios played out in his head. Bea “Elsa” Bubb clacked down the concrete floors to the swinging double doors of the Unstables. She stopped, turned, and tugged on the drawstring of her cowgirl hat (and never had a hat been so confused as to whether it was perched atop the head of a cow or a girl).
“Have the creature ready for me within the hour,” she ordered as she cinched the strap tightly between two of her chins. “I want to be in Blimpo by midnight. It seems that one of those rotund ragamuffins has the exact same fears as that wretched Milton Fauster. And, considering that the only friend the dweeby milksop has is in Blimpo as well, it seems that I’ll be spending Hollow Wean among the rich and flabulous.”
Virgil strained as he sat atop the bulging suitcase, overstuffed with laundry pilfered from Chef Boyareyookrazee’s abundant hamper.
“Almost,” he puffed as the suitcase finally closed with a grudging click.
Milton smiled.
“Well, that’s the last of them,” he said, eyeing the other three suitcases vibrating with high-pressure laundry in the corner beside their sleeping bunks. “If we get some resistance in the Gorge, these should help blast our way through.”
Milton looked over at Virgil, who was staring at his feet with an intensity he usually reserved for Sloppy Joes.
“What’s up?” Milton asked. “Are you nervous about—”
He looked furtively around at the other boys who were settling, oblivious, in their bunks.
“The escape?” he continued in a whisper.
“No,” Virgil murmured. “Not especially, since … since …”
Virgil stopped contemplating his tootsies, though his eyes still couldn’t quite seem to meet Milton’s.
“I’m not. Escaping, that is.”
Milton gaped at Virgil.
“What do you mean? Annubis will be there, if you’re scared that—”
“It’s not that I’m scared; it’s just that …”
Virgil took a deep breath, puffing out his chest, which gave him an uncharacteristically unslouchy demeanor.
“I was talking to Elvis, Mr. Presley, and he thinks that I could be a really good singer.”
“You already are a really good singer,” Milton added warmly.
Virgil grinned self-consciously. “Thanks,” he replied softly. “But he thinks I could be even better. And I believe him…. It’s hard to explain. When I sing, I just sort of leave my body.”
He shook his head.
“That’s not quite right. I’m still in my body, but—for the first time in my life—my inside becomes bigger than my outside, which is saying something. Plus, there’s something else …”
Virgil reached underneath his bare, stained mattress and pulled out a flyer. He handed it to Milton.
* * *JOIN THE * * *
BLIMPO: OVERWEIGHT WITH
ERRONEOUS LAWS
(BOWEL) MOVEMENT!
What’s the big fat deal about being full-figured? Answer: nothing! We accept that some people are tall and some people are short, yet how come we think that everybody should be thin? The skin-and-bones brigade thinks we “fatties” just need to exercise more and eat less. Sure, being as healthy as possible makes you feel good, but what’s wrong with a little padding here and there? Being plump doesn’t make us bad—it’s not a moral failing or a character flaw; mostly it’s genetic or because we’ve been made to feel so bad about being big that we eat more to make ourselves feel better. Okay, sometimes when confronted with a piece (or
five) of cheesecake, we get a little weak, but is that a sin? Is that any reason to be sent to Blimpo for all eternity or until we turn eighteen, whichever comes first?
So let’s raise a big stink as only we can! We’re fat as Heck, and we’re not going to take it anymore!
“I snuck a flyer under everyone’s pillow,” Virgil explained. “It’s like we figured out in Mr. Fields’s class—overeating is a problem, sure, but not a sin, which makes this place wrong. I get it now. Before I was just too scared to really consider the injustice of it all. But … I don’t know … maybe you’re helping me to see that we can really do something. We don’t have to take it. After all, what do we have to lose, really? I mean, we’re dead, if you think about it. Even if you don’t think about it, we’re still dead….”
Milton smiled, a quiet, sad smile but a smile nonetheless. Virgil seemed so different. It was as if he was finally seeing who he really was, the person Milton could see all along, inside. He seemed so excited and confident that Milton didn’t have the heart to tell him what a terrible, terrible name BOWEL was for anything, much less a movement. Why not the Oval Teens? Or Stout and About? Anything but the BOWEL movement. Milton sighed.
“But I need your help,” he said softly. “You’re the only person I can trust, who isn’t either doglike or godlike, that is.”
Virgil leaned close. His eyes were like round, glittering, root-beer-flavored Jolly Ranchers.
“Exactly!” he replied. “You can’t do it all. You need help. Seriously.”
“Well, I did see a therapist for a while, back on the Surface, but I just spent most of the time coloring my feelings with crayons and hitting pillows with a badminton racket—”
“No, not that kind of help,” Virgil clarified. “Help shutting this place down. Not just Blimpo, but the whole shebang. You need to create like a, uh, like when you have a whole bunch of the same restaurant—”
“A franchise?”
“Yeah! You need a Milton Fauster franchise! Secret agents everywhere, helping you to help all of us!”
The fluorescent lights winked on and off.
“Lights out, you filthy manatees!” the demon guard bellowed by the light switch of Blimpo’s Totally Bunks. “And no talking! Talking only leads to camaraderie, which leads to self-validation, which leads to trouble, which leads to the vice principals’ office, understand?”
The boys mumbled their comprehension as they prepared for another long night of sleep apnea.
“Oh,” the demon said as it switched off the lights. “Happy Hollow Wean! Get plenty of rest because the festivities start at midnight, whether you like it or not!”
The demon snickered away like a helium-filled hyena. In the darkness, Milton slid and squeaked into his smothering rubber sheets.
“Good night,” whispered Virgil. “And good luck.”
Milton fought hard to stay awake. He needed to be sharp and ready for his impending escape. He shivered, despite how insufferably hot it was under the sticky sheets. Marlo’s face on the cover of that weird magazine. It was so … creepy. Her eyes were so vacant, completely devoid of that mischievous sparkle that had launched a thousand misdemeanors. She also looked almost pretty, or as pretty as a sister can. Marlo had never seemed particularly interested in using her appearance to draw people closer to her. Mainly her makeup and wardrobe selections were the equivalent of a KEEP OUT: DANGER! sign trussed with yards of bright yellow caution tape. Something was wrong with Marlo, Milton mused as his breathing became slower and deeper. Her face so … blank … her eyes so … hollow …
“Happy Hollow Wean!!” the trio of demons shrieked, splashing a bucket of blue paint on Milton and Virgil. Virgil screamed as the shocking cold dye oozed down his hair, onto his face, and across his chest.
“What are you doing?!” Milton gurgled before spitting out a mouthful of disgusting paint.
The three demons—one with a face that looked like a half-eaten cantaloupe, another who seemed like a mummy wrapped with rotten bacon, and another that resembled an overbaked potato with glowing eyes and a shock of scraggly white hair—exchanged the same wicked laugh among each other.
“Your costume!” said the cantaloupe demon as it heaved Milton out of his bunk and onto the floor. “You’re a Smurf! This year’s theme is mass-marketed cartoon-and-toy properties from the 1980s!”
The baked-potato demon shoved a white, oversized knit cap on the freshly painted Virgil.
“It’s a great idea!” the bacon mummy said while ripping off Milton’s pajama top and forcing him into a pair of itchy white pants with huge padded footies. “Turning yesterday’s cheerful memories into today’s waking nightmares!”
“But we’re too young to even remember that stupid—”
“You’re never too young to be the butt of our jokes!” the cantaloupe demon screeched as it strapped a canvas sack over Virgil’s head. “And we wouldn’t want to forget your trick-or-feed bag!”
As the demons shoved Milton, Virgil, and the other boys toward the door, Hugo—his cheeks tinted and swollen like eggplants—turned to face their tormentors.
“How come you guys aren’t wearing costumes?”
The cantaloupe demon shot its allies in anguish a knowing look.
“Oh, but we are,” it hissed. “See, a demon is always wearing a mask.”
The three demons simultaneously reached behind their ears and pulled off their faces. Inside their skulls, swaddled in chunks of putrid meat, were tiny chubby-cheeked baby heads, grinning wickedly like porcelain dolls. The boys screamed.
“Back on!! Back on!!”
The boys were pitched out into the hall, leaving behind them splotches and smears of blue paint. Each of the three demons took a pair of boys and prodded them with pitchsporks in a different direction. The bacon mummy jabbed Milton and Virgil down the dark hallway leading to the classrooms. Milton was supposed to rendezvous with Annubis at a quarter after midnight in the Lose-Your-Lunchroom, which—from what Milton could make out through his crusty blue eyelashes—he was getting farther away from with each step.
“Where are we going?” Milton asked.
“Why, trick-or-treating, of course.” The demon smirked as it poked the boys to one of the classrooms.
He tapped his pitchspork on the door. The door creaked open. Mr. Fields—his face red, puffy, and creased like an overripe tomato—peeked out through the crack in the door. He sighed and expelled breath so redolent of alcohol that no one under twenty-one should have been allowed to inhale it.
“Oh, goody gumdrops,” Mr. Fields said tartly. “If it isn’t Violet Beauregard and her twin sister.”
“We’re Smurfs,” Virgil explained. “They’re like gnomes or something.”
The demon elbowed Virgil hard and handed him a scrap of paper.
“Read it,” he ordered.
Virgil squinted at the sheet of paper.
“‘Trick or treat, snack on deceit
Stranger give me something sweet’?”
The demon looked over at Mr. Fields, glaring at him through its gray oily eye slits. The teacher grumbled.
“‘Don’t make me laugh, here’s something sour,
To keep you sick this midnight hour.’”
Mr. Fields then took two fistfuls of stinky meat and dropped it into the boys’ trick-or-feed bags. Milton gagged from the reek.
“What is this?” he gasped. “It smells like old fish and cat pee.”
“It’s a delicacy, boy,” Mr. Fields replied. “In Greenland, that is. It’s called hákarl—fermented shark. You bury a chunk of shark meat in the sand, dig it up after four months, and then hang it on a hook to let it develop a little character.”
The bacon demon kicked Milton in the shin. “Thank the man … you’ve got a long, disgusting night ahead of you.”
Milton and Virgil mumbled their thanks as Mr. Fields slammed the door.
Walking down the hall, Virgil began to munch on his slab of hákarl. Both Milton and the demon guard gazed at him wi
th slack-mouthed revulsion.
“It’s not bad, really,” Virgil commented.
The bacon demon shook its head.
“Way to spoil my holiday, you fat little freak.”
Virgil began to gag and cough silently.
“Are you okay?” Milton asked with concern.
Virgil, his eyes bulging, motioned to his throat.
“Hey!” Milton said to the guard. “I think he’s choking!”
The bacon guard scrutinized Virgil for signs of fakery.
“How can you tell?” he considered as he scratched beneath a rotten meat bandage. “I mean, how can you tell if a Smurf is choking? Do they just get … really, really blue?”
“Take him to the infirmary!” Milton cried out.
The demon groaned and took Virgil by the arm.
“Okay, maybe he is choking,” the demon grumbled as it strained to drag Virgil away. “Besides, I hear that all the nurses are dressed as Intensive Care Bears tonight. You stay put. Don’t go anywhere, or else I’ll take my face off again.”
Milton swallowed. “Um, sure. I won’t move an inch.”
Just as the demon hauled Virgil around the bend, Virgil gave Milton a quick wink and a thumbs-up. Milton’s paint-caked face creased into a grin.
Maybe Virgil’s BOWEL movement has a chance after all, Milton thought as he raced back toward the Totally Bunks for his explosive suitcases. And I’m not really lying. I’m not moving an inch, per se … I’m moving—hopefully—much, much farther than that….
29 • MiDNiGHT SHACK
ATTACK
MILTON CREPT DOWN the dark hallway toward the Lose-Your-Lunchroom, lugging two trembling suitcase bombs. The sounds of forced trick-or-treating at spork-point echoed in the distance.
“Stinky maggot cheese with cricket heads!” Milton heard Gene shriek before dissolving into spasms of inconsolable blubbering.
Milton arrived at the end of the hallway, where Hambone Hank’s Heart Attack Shack lay shrouded in ominous shadows. Milton heard a faint rustling.
Blimpo: The Third Circle of Heck Page 21