Blimpo: The Third Circle of Heck

by Dale E. Basye

  “NEXT!”

  Milton and Annubis passed through five more gates, each manned by a snippy skeleton—Helena, Helga, Helia, Helki, and Heloise—wearing a progressively redder shawl. At each gate, Milton was asked (“shrieked at” is probably more accurate) to remove a piece of clothing until finally he and his guide dog in disguise arrived at the final gate.

  “NEXT!” screeched Helsa, who—despite not having any lungs—was the loudest gatekeeper of them all. Her shawl, cinched tightly to her neck with a brass pitchfork pin, was bloodred.

  “Can’t you see we’re busy?”

  “Actually,” Milton said, pointing to his glasses, “I can’t see anything.”

  “Regardless,” Helsa replied, “your future’s so dark you won’t be needing shades.”

  She yanked the glasses from Milton’s face. He winced at the sudden gush of harsh fluorescent light.

  “Why did you do that?” Helsa asked suspiciously.

  “Do what?”

  “Scrunch your eyes up when I took off your glasses, even though you are blind … unless you’re faking.”

  A throng of muscular demon guards looked over at Milton hopefully, hungry for a tense situation in which to overreact to.

  “No, I … I’m not faking,” Milton managed through heart palpitations. “I—”

  Annubis bit Milton’s leg.

  “Ow!” Milton yelped, his face creased with pain. “Why the—? Oh, I see … I mean, I don’t. It’s just that my dog, Dakota, gets nervous and sometimes he … he calms himself by biting me on the leg.”

  Milton stooped over and patted Annubis on the head. Hard. “Good boy,” he said between clenched teeth.

  Helsa frowned as much as a smiling skull can.

  “Fine, then,” Helsa sighed. “Do you have anything to declare?”

  “Yes,” Milton said as he shivered despite the sweltering heat, naked save for his Clone Wars underwear. “I sure am glad there isn’t an eighth gate!”

  Annubis nudged Milton through the swelling masses surrounding a dirty luggage carousel. A variety of seedy, anxious-looking people gazed longingly at the motionless beltway leading from a dark, cobwebbed opening in the wall.

  “Sad,” Annubis said as he scratched the back of his neck with his leg. “They’ve been told all of their miserable, immoral lives that they can’t take it with them, but still they wait, regardless….”

  An electronic billboard hung from between the rusty girders ribbing the peeling asbestos ceiling.

  NOT-SO-DEARLY DEPARTING: 00:15

  00:30

  00:45

  Milton eyed the maddening crowd pressed against one another. For some reason, the swarm of do-badders made Milton feel desperately lonely. These accursed individuals seemed entirely caught up in their own sad, sinful worlds, either wailing and tearing at their hair or staring blankly into thin air, never once looking to one another for comfort or sympathy.

  “Where do we go now?” Milton asked forlornly.

  Annubis stretched, then pulled Milton forward.

  “To the Interminable Terminal,” he replied as he led Milton through the crowd. “The tarmac on the edge of the River Styx. Where we await the ferry leading us to our—and every bad person’s—final destination.”

  34 • CRY ME A RiVER

  “SO, WHERE ARE you folks from?” the skinny ferryman asked as he slapped down the lever of his taximeter. Milton did his best not to stare at the stooped man with the crooked nose, filthy matted beard, and poor posture, as he was still—for purposes of his mission—Martin Foulest: a greedy, blind nineteen-year-old with a seeing-eye dog. The ferryman, whose name was Charon—judging from the ID badge pinned to the rather pointless sunshade (this being the underworld) at the bow of his flat-bottomed skiff—pushed off the tarmac with his oar.

  “We’re from the Surface,” Milton replied. Annubis, curled up on the bottom of the craft by Milton’s feet, snickered quietly.

  Charon scratched a filthy tangle of hair sprouting from beneath his conical hat.

  “Most of you shades are,” Charon replied as he rowed the boat to the center of the River Styx. “Do they still have Fiddle Faddle up there? What about Cheers … is that still on? It sounds like a great show.”

  “I’m pretty sure they still make Fiddle Faddle,” Milton replied. “But Cheers went off the air years ago. Even the spin-off isn’t on anymore.”

  Charon shook his head sadly. “That’s too bad. Nothing lasts forever, I suppose.”

  Charon looked back at Milton. The hot, sewage-savaged wind rippled his red tunic.

  “I don’t suppose you have any Fiddle Faddle on you, do you?” he asked in a hushed tone of anticipation.

  Milton held out his hands in a gesture of turning out his pockets—pockets he didn’t have, as he was clad only in his Clone Wars skivvies.

  “Sorry. Even if I did, I would have had to smuggle it in my underwear, and I don’t think you’d want any.”

  Charon sighed. His eyes stared out at the dreary coast like hollow furnaces on fire.

  “I suppose. Still, what I wouldn’t give for that mouthwatering blend of creamy caramel and toffee.”

  With one hand rowing and the other steadying himself on the stern, Charon looked down upon Annubis.

  “I don’t like dogs on my skiff,” he explained. “They shed like crazy and sniff … everything.”

  Annubis growled softly.

  “He’s my seeing-eye dog. I’m blind, so I have to have him with me. I think it’s a law. Something about him, Dakota, being allowed on all common carriers.”

  Charon rubbed the length of his dirty, gray, unkempt beard.

  “This is hardly what I’d call a common carrier,” he replied haughtily. “I’ve been crossing this stinking river and back every fifteen minutes for time immemorial….”

  He stared down into the disgusting river, mesmerized by a whirlpool boiling with poop.

  “Anyway, as long as you clean up after your dog, I’m fine. Don’t get a lot of ’em here. Last dog I saw was one of those hyper Jack Russell terriers. Cute but crazy. The guy said that he—the guy, not the terrier—was born without a sense of smell, and so the dog was his ‘smelling-nose dog.’ He may have been pulling my leg.”

  Charon rowed the rust-colored wherry around a particularly bleak bend. The edge of the River Styx—which Milton knew from personal experience in Limbo was where all the, um, fecal matter in the world flowed down to, just to make things beyond nasty—was a sickly marsh of slimy, foaming sand sprouting black, putrid reeds that swayed in the sour-milk wind. Everything beyond was shrouded in a thick, soupy pall. It was as if the entire scene was a painting that some miserable artist simply couldn’t bring himself to finish.

  Milton noted the ferryman’s deep-sunken cheeks and the dirty cloak knotted about his shoulders and began to feel sorry for the broken man. To think, he’s had to row every sinner ever down this officially godforsaken river of filth.

  “So, Charon,” Milton said, trying to lighten the man’s heart with a little idle chatter, “that’s an interesting name. Where does it come from?”

  The appallingly grimy man shot Milton a suspicious look, glancing quickly at his ID badge as he poled the boat onward.

  “How do you know my name?” he asked. “I thought you were blind? If you’re playing some kind of trick on me, I’ll throw the two of you out right now and let the River Styx deal with you.”

  Milton gulped. The thought of bobbing in human waste was too unthinkable to think. It was a thought he refused to entertain, even if it begged and handed him a banjo. Annubis turned in a few quick circles at Milton’s feet before resuming his nap.

  “No, no … I’m as blind as, as … a baseball bat. In the off-season. It’s just that everybody knows about you. About the great … Charon.”

  The ferryman straightened somewhat, his posture becoming a new punctuation mark somewhere between “question” and “exclamation.”

  “It’s actually pronounced with a hard �
�k,’ not a ‘sh.’”

  Milton nodded. A gargantuan wave of slimy dung slammed into the side of the craft as fresh sewage was flushed into the river. Milton gripped the side of the boat.

  “Must be midnight,” Charon said as he rowed the craft toward a fire-scorched bank on a barren shore. “The big flush from above.”

  On the shore, twenty feet from the river, was a rusty iron gate crawling with sculpted figures. The hull of the boat groaned as it made its approach.

  “We have now reached the end of our journey. Please check your seats for valuables … and if you find any, hand them over! I kid—all of your possessions have obviously been confiscated and are being enjoyed, mocked, or desecrated by members of our staff.”

  With one mighty stroke, Charon brought the wherry up onto the bank.

  “Watch your step now as you deskiff,” he said before blocking Milton and Annubis, “after you pay, that is.”

  Milton patted the sides of his underwear. He swallowed and leaned close to Annubis.

  “Do you have any money?”

  Annubis shook himself, his whole body responding in the negative.

  “No,” he murmured. “But you do.”

  “I don’t,” Milton whispered. “Really.”

  “You all do,” Annubis continued. “All humans. Under your tongue. For when you die.”

  “That’s crazy,” Milton mumbled as he checked beneath his tongue and, to his surprise, pulled out an ancient Persian coin.

  Milton stared at the roughly minted coin, which depicted an owl among a background of exotic symbols.

  Charon snatched it from his hands.

  “This will do nicely,” he said as he deposited the coin in his beard, where it joined what sounded like dozens of others with a satisfying clink and jingle.

  Annubis led Milton onto the shore as Charon poled the craft back into the river.

  “Be seeing you,” he said as he twisted the craft back around. Charon slapped his forehead. “Silly me. I always say that. It’s like when someone says ‘Happy birthday’ and you reply, ‘You too.’ Anyway, enjoy your everlasting stay.”

  As Milton and Annubis approached the gate—a gargantuan, nineteen-foot, deep-tarnished-bronze entryway embedded in steaming volcanic rock—they noticed a small naked pink creature with a shock of rainbow-colored hair seated on a stool, reading a paper. Milton stopped and leaned close to Annubis.

  “So, this is … it?” he asked in a quavering voice.

  Annubis nodded. “Yes … the Surly Gates.”

  “The Surly Gates?”

  “The exact opposite of the Pearly Gates … which are gleaming, bright, infinitely cheerful, and open to the inside. The Surly Gates, however, as you can see, are dark, depressing, frightening, and open to the outside, which is incredibly irritating, because you have to back up before you can enter, stepping in the revolting cesspool that is the River Styx—”

  “Well, well, what do we have here?” the little troll-creature screeched in a thoroughly irritating voice, as if its insides were made of chalkboard and it had been stuffed full of tiny, frightened, scrabbling kittens who had never had their claws trimmed. “What are you, the dog whisperer?”

  Milton straightened up. His face was hot with aggravation. There was something about this creature that made the normally peaceful Milton want to punch it in the face.

  “We’d like to … to come in.”

  “We’d like to come in,” the creature mocked, seeming to have grown several inches in the last few seconds. It folded up its newspaper and hopped off its stool. It leered at Milton like a living, taunting troll doll, with a smug, self-satisfied grin etched on its annoying face.

  “Ugh, look at you,” the creature jeered in its nasal, helium twang. “Was anyone else hurt in the accident?”

  Milton fumed.

  “Why, you little—”

  The creature began to swell in size. When they had arrived, it had been maybe ten inches high. Now it was at least three feet tall … and rising.

  “Why you little what?” the creature said, its pudgy arms pressed against its hips. “I have a name—it’s Yukkah. And you’d better mind your manners if you want inside. By the way, can I borrow your face for a few days? My butt is really tired from sitting and wants a little vacation.”

  Milton clenched his teeth and fists, vibrating with rage. Yukkah puffed up, taller and wider, with a triumphant sneer smeared across its face.

  Annubis tapped Milton’s lower leg with his nose.

  “Don’t give him the satisfaction of your anger,” he whispered. “He feeds on it.”

  Yukkah stepped closer, leaning toward the new arrivals in a condescending manner, as if he were addressing a pair of mismatched sock monkeys stuffed with shredded “dumb.”

  “Your doggie has a face like a saint,” he grated. “A Saint Bernard.”

  Annubis growled as Yukkah grew.

  “Hey, I’m just kidding, you two. Your dog is actually dark and handsome: when it’s dark, he’s handsome! Do you need a dog license to be that doggone ugly?”

  The hair on the back of Annubis’s neck rose. Teeth bared, the irritating troll gatekeeper was starting to look more and more like a talking chew toy to the dog god.

  Milton patted Annubis.

  “Now, now … remember, don’t give him the satisfaction of your anger.”

  Annubis grumbled as he set his haunches down on the scorched ground.

  Yukkah was now roughly half the size of the gate itself. With every inch and pound he gained, there seemed only more of him to detest.

  “I don’t get it,” Milton said. “Why would the Powers That Be Evil block the way to … you know where … with that awful, grating little … you know what?”

  Annubis, his lip caught in midsneer on his canine tooth, shivered despite the heat.

  “This place must take its troll on all who pass,” he snarled. “Yukkah gets you so worked up that, pretty soon, you are begging to get in. It makes what’s beyond the gates even worse, because you willingly went inside. The last part of you that perhaps could be saved is left at the door. You know how a vampire needs to be formally invited before it can enter a house?”

  Milton shrugged. “Yeah, I think Marlo mentioned that once.”

  “Well, it’s sort of like that, only in reverse.”

  The grinning troll ran its pink, pudgy fingers through it multicolored mane.

  “You wanna play, you sorry-looking, bowlegged, pigeon-toed, crusty Underoos-wearin’ waste of time?” the troll said, glowering down upon Milton.

  Milton was so suddenly angry that, before he knew it, he had stalked right up to the ever-expanding troll, his fists trembling at his side. Yukkah now totally obscured the gate.

  Milton looked down at his shaking hands. His chewed nails and the weird Rhode Island–shaped birthmark on the back of his hand were slowly coming back. His imaginary-friend soul was wearing off. Milton didn’t have much time.

  “What’s wrong? Cat got your tongue?” Yukkah mocked. “From your nasty fish breath, it smells like you got his in trade.”

  Milton drew in a long, deep breath.

  “It must get lonely here,” he said compassionately. “Sitting outside this depressing gate, each and every day.”

  Yukkah’s eyes bulged out, as if something were squeezing his midsection (something Milton and Annubis very much wanted to do). He wilted like leftover salad.

  “What? Yes, sort of … I mean. NO! I love my job. I … I’ve seen people like you before, but … but … I had to pay admission!”

  Milton forced his grimace into a tender smile.

  “Does someone need a hug?” Milton cooed as he stepped closer to the deflating troll.

  Milton wrapped his arms around Yukkah’s bulbous, prickly pink belly. The troll recoiled with full-body disgust.

  “Stop!!” Yukkah screamed as he shrunk down to the size of an NFL linebacker, albeit nude, pink, and with hair like a box of crayons after a few seconds in the microwave. “
How did you get here? Did someone leave your cage open? Here’s a dime … call all your friends and bring me back the change!”

  Milton motioned for Annubis to come closer.

  “Do we need some puppy lovin’?” Milton murmured with so much artificial sweetness that he nearly threw up a little bit. Annubis jumped up on Yukkah and began licking his face until it looked like a glazed troll donut. Yukkah howled as he got smaller and smaller.

  “No, no … anything but puppies!” the gatekeeper whined, his voice a sonic trickle from a punctured water balloon. “I’m melting!”

  Yukkah was now about as large and threatening as something dangling from a preteen, homeschooled girl’s key chain.

  Annubis gazed up at Milton with wide, wild eyes.

  “Can I eat him?”

  Milton shook his head, which was now virtually back to its usual Milton-like state.

  “I don’t think that would be such a hot idea. He’d only give you indigestion, which would make you mad, and then he’d just become more and more of a problem.”

  Milton eyed the dismal metal gate. It was cast with hundreds of suffering, all-too-detailed figures depicting every shade of agony and woe. A distraught woman hovering over a corpse. Two inconsolable lovers pried apart by laughing demons. A writhing crowd of anguished souls trapped in a pit, crawling and clawing over one another in hopes of escape. A man beginning his first day as a school guidance counselor. It was nearly too much for Milton to bear. He had a feeling that the door served as a teaser trailer for the awful movie within, like Dances with Wolves, Shakespeare in Love, Evita, and The English Patient all spliced together. He collected himself carefully as if every fear were a rare Pokémon card. He turned to Annubis.

  “Can you help me with this?” Milton asked, gesturing toward the gate.

  “Can you help me with this?” Yukkah teased, desperately hoping to achieve an at-least-somewhat-imposing size. Annubis kicked the creature, now the approximate shape and stature of a finger puppet, off to the side with his back leg.

  Together they pulled the massive gate open, inch by inch, until they were both ankle-deep in the disgusting tributary of turds otherwise known as the River Styx. Milton’s eyes were scrunched tight, like a toddler’s fist around a tube of Go-GURT. Slowly, Milton wrested his eyes open and peered beyond the Surly Gates and into h-e-double-hockey-sticks.