He had expected fire, brimstone, and burning images of eternal misery and despair. And he got that—in spades—only in the form of a painting in the lobby. Little did Milton know, the “painting” was really a framed window, looking out upon a throng of persecuted souls forced to spend their eternity in a never-ending game of freeze tag.
The lobby was surprisingly unexceptional. The walls were lined with a deep greenish brown marble bordered with bronze girders. The floors were laid with the same slabs of marble as the walls and ceiling, creating the claustrophobic sense that one was trapped in a box, despite the foyer’s grand size. The lobby was virtually empty save for a massive, burnished-bronze desk with the words DECEPTION AREA spelled out in blood diamonds. Hanging behind the desk was an immense, garish corporate-style logo: two gilded hockey sticks, crossed, a real flame spouting from the point of their intersection, with a bronzed goat head skull on top. Beneath the logo was a leather banderole with the slogan COME FOR THE HEAT … STAY FOR ETERNITY elegantly lettered in crimson.
Milton and Annubis crept closer to the desk.
“Ow!” Milton yelped. Beneath his bare feet were shards of broken glass and cigarette butts. Milton hopped toward the massive desk on one foot. A small head leaned down toward the desk, nodding subtly. Milton saw the flash of a gleaming headset and a shock of lustrous blue-black hair, the color of the perfect bruise.
Milton and Annubis stepped nearer until they could hear the soft babble of conversation.
“How may I disrespect your call? Can I tell him what this is disregarding?”
The deceptionist held up a finger, somehow noticing Milton and Annubis despite not having looked up once since their arrival. The voice … so familiar yet so different. Like when you ride your bike past a home you used to live in, and the new owners have repainted, re-landscaped, and renovated everything, but your memories still manage to peek through regardless.
“Is he expecting your call? Not exactly? I’ll take that as a no. Hold, please, and enjoy our selection of off-Broadway musical numbers as sung by lisping, two-carton-a-day smokers and hyperactive children taking hits from a helium tank.”
The deceptionist looked up.
“Welcome to—”
The immaculately groomed young woman was …
“Marlo!” Milton cried.
Marlo, her face a made-up mask of high-fashion indifference, regarded Milton blankly.
“It’s Milton,” he added, baffled by his sister’s expressionless expression.
“And I would know that name because …”
“Because I’m your brother!” he yelped, hobbling deeper into the Deception Area, his foot bleeding, his body shivering, and his mind at a loss as to what to do next.
Marlo raised a perfectly plucked eyebrow at Annubis.
“I’m sorry, but there are no dogs allowed, as they’re man’s best friend and all. She—”
“He,” Milton whimpered.
“He will have to wait outside … forever.”
Milton put his hands on the smooth, uncomfortably warm desk.
Marlo considered Milton’s grimy fingers with disgust.
“Hands off the desk.”
“Don’t you even recognize me?” Milton pleaded, staring into his sister’s dark, blank eyes, which, with their fuzzy yet steely stare, answered his question loud and clear.
“Should I?” Marlo replied, bored, doing something that Milton had never, ever seen her do before: buffing her nails. After a few curt sweeps with her emery board, Marlo gazed back at Milton, taking him in with slits that were half suspicious and half awake.
“Wait …,” she replied dimly, leaning forward slightly. “I think I do recognize you.”
Milton allowed himself a smile.
“You’re the boy who escaped!” she shouted.
“Milton,” murmured Annubis as he nodded his head toward a bank of insecurity cameras embedded in the ceiling behind the desk. Like thirteen glowing red eyes, they glared at Milton and Annubis with a penetrating disdain.
Marlo bolted up in her perfect black turtleneck dress.
“Guards!” she shrieked as the lobby echoed with a cacophonous chorus of sirens.
35 • PRESSED TO CHANGE-O
MILTON AND ANNUBIS rushed back to the still-open Surly Gates.
“What do we do?” Milton shouted desperately against the din of alarms and his sister’s shrieks. “Do we swim back?”
Milton’s entire nervous system dry-heaved as he considered plunging into the pungent waterway of human waste. Annubis scanned the dreary horizon.
“I suppose—”
The dog god cut his sentence short as he saw, chugging along the River Styx in the distance, a gray metal barge. Aboard the carrier were dozens of demon guards and, at the center of it all, Principal Bubb atop her freakish, curly tusked beast.
“—not,” he continued as he stood, positioning one of his bright, checkered bandanas strategically around his waist, then tugged free his collar.
“As the jig appears to be up, I can at least elude the law with some modicum of dignity.”
Milton looked down at his Clone Wars underwear.
“That makes one of us,” he said. “So if we can’t escape outside—”
“We escape inside,” Annubis interjected.
“Are you crazy?!” Milton replied with disbelief.
Annubis eyed the approaching carrier grimly.
“Crazy like something bred to hunt foxes,” he mumbled.
“When they capture you, you can tell them everything you know,” Yukkah screeched from outside the gate. “That should take about ten seconds.”
Annubis growled at Yukkah, baring his teeth, but then, in an instant, he began to grin.
“I have an idea,” he said. Annubis stalked over to the naked, pink, rainbow-maned troll and then snatched him up quickly with his paws.
“Put me down!” Yukkah shrieked. “Have you had all of your shots?!”
Annubis set the creature at the lip of the River Styx. Milton trotted to the dog god’s side.
“Mr. Fauster,” a voice bellowed from the river of pungent sludge. Milton could see Principal Bubb in the distance, raising a bullhorn (from a real bull) to her lipstick-smeared gash of a mouth.
“I hope you got to stretch your legs a bit—if not, I’ll be happy to do it for you later,” the principal barked. “I’m beginning to take all of this running away personally, so be warned. After all, this place hath no fury like a woman scorned.”
Milton trembled as the carrier ship cut closer through the stew of putrid sewage. Yukkah sloshed out a few paces into the River Styx, cupping his pink, pudgy hands around his mouth.
“Keep talking!” Yukkah shouted. “Maybe you’ll stumble onto something intelligent!”
Principal Bubb’s prickly chin dropped.
“You little creep, I ought to—”
Yukkah swelled to the size of a large cactus. Milton smiled, his guide dog’s plan only now fully dawning on him.
“If your brain were chocolate, it wouldn’t fill an M&M!” Yukkah roared.
Foam began to bubble on Principal Bubb’s lips. “I’ll stick you on the end of my pencil!”
The troll grew to the size of an especially creepy parade float. Annubis grabbed one of the Surly Gates and backed away, closing it. Milton took the other side of the gate, slowly shutting it while stepping backward as the gargantuan troll feasted upon Principal Bubb’s bountiful rage.
Inside the Deception Area, Milton and Annubis sealed the gates with a reverberating clunk.
“That should hold them off for a while,” Annubis said as he scanned the area for options.
Milton rushed toward Marlo.
“Where can we hide?” he asked her. “Is there a bathroom or something?”
Marlo snorted.
“Are you kidding? There aren’t any bathrooms for miles. Why do you think everyone is so uptight? Besides,” she said coldly, waving her manicured hand at the cameras above them. “You
are so identified and so going to be caught.”
Milton was beside himself. Actually, he was beside his sister, who had no idea that she even was his sister.
“What did they do to you?” Milton asked, on the verge of tears. “I came all this way to rescue you … to take you away. To make good on my promise.”
Marlo snorted, then wiped the edge of her perfectly lip-lined mouth.
“Take me away? Why would I want to leave? I’ve got full medical; I’ve got stock options; I’ve got a closet full of the coolest haute couture imaginable. I’ve got it all. A real future.”
Milton now knew, deep in his bones, the true meaning of the word “flummoxed” (perplexed greatly; bewildered). Marlo had even used French in a totally nonironic way. Who was this girl? More importantly, where was his sister? And could he ever get her back?
“You also had—have—a brother, only you just don’t know it.”
“Lucky me,” Marlo sneered as she folded her arms together elegantly, as if shuffling a deck of cards in slow motion.
Annubis sniffed down the lone hallway.
“We’ve got to find somewhere to hide,” he said. “That troll won’t stay ticked off forever. Quick, down here.”
“I’m not leaving my sister,” Milton said.
Marlo cackled.
“I’m sure she’d be really touched … wherever and whoever she is, loser.”
The heated sounds of an argument drifted through the Surly Gates.
“Out of my way, you irritating, overinflated lawn gnome!” Bea “Elsa” Bubb barked through her megaphone.
Annubis sighed.
“So be it,” he said as he grabbed Marlo by the arm.
“Bad doggie!” she shrieked.
Milton and Annubis hauled Marlo down the hallway and stopped in front of a bank of three elevators.
“Where do these go?” Annubis barked at Marlo.
“Where do you think they go, Fido?” she said, squirming. “They all go straight to—”
“Uh-oh,” Milton interrupted. “Look.”
All three elevators were suddenly in service. Each of the three arrows that had been hovering at six were now all headed down.
“Finally,” Marlo crowed triumphantly. “The guards.”
Annubis eyed a doorway just down the hall.
“This way,” he said as he dragged Marlo away, with Milton—nearly—on his tail.
They ran into the room and skidded to a stop. Milton looked at the door. The room’s fractured name plate, split down the middle, dangled by two screws: half the plate read BREAK DOWN while the other read ROOM.
The small oppressive room looked as if it had been quickly scooped out of volcanic rock, like a hot ladle through lukewarm ice cream. It was piled high with beaten-up copy and fax machines, massive, obsolete computers, rows of busted metal chairs, and several huge Vend-for-Yourself vending machines, loaded with what—to Milton’s eye and Annubis’s nose—appeared to be a selection of mouth-drying and lip-unsmacking snacks with expiration dates so past due that they were written in Roman numerals.
Bunched together in the corner like three boys at an all-girl party were several desks—doors on cinder blocks, actually—where two haggard businessmen and one woman wailed, tearing their hair out. Their mad, bulging eyes quivered curiously at the sight of Milton, Annubis, and Marlo, though—like troubled turtles—they soon retreated back into the protective shell of their own personal turmoil.
“Didn’t you hear?” Annubis said, addressing them. “The whole place just froze over. Head out and take a look.”
The businesspeople stopped their who-knows-how-long ritual of moaning and mortification and slowly shambled out of the Break Down Room like distraught workaholic zombies on Free Brains Friday.
“Quick,” Annubis ordered as he slammed the door with his powerful back leg, “drag those copiers and computers behind the door. We’ll create a blockade. That should buy us some time.”
“Yeah,” Milton said, turning to Marlo, “and you should have bought that stupid oar!”
Milton stared at Marlo expectantly, hoping that the memory of how they got to Heck in the first place—a mad scramble to their sticky, marshmallow ends after Marlo had shoplifted an oar at Grizzly Mall: The Mall of Generica—would unlock the memory of who she really was. He could see it in her eyes: fleeting flickers of … something. Like she was lost inside the wilderness of her mind, hoping for rescue by flashing signals with a pocket mirror.
But for now, Marlo just shook her head.
“We are about as related as Kit Kats and hot dogs,” she said with a sulky pout.
Milton sighed and began heaving outdated office equipment to the door. Annubis let go of Marlo’s arm.
“You too,” he said.
Marlo rubbed her arms. “Why should I help you two?”
“Because,” Annubis growled, “we came a long way to see you. And if that’s not enough, I assure you that my bite is worse than my bark.”
Marlo gulped as Annubis bared his aptly named canine teeth.
“Point taken. Down, boy.”
Marlo joined the boy she didn’t know was her brother and scooted dilapidated office equipment in front of the door until it was completely barricaded. The two Fausters leaned against the pile, panting. Outside the Break Down Room, an explosion of noise ricocheted down the hallway.
“Sounds like Principal Bubb made it past the phantom troll booth,” Annubis said morosely.
After a few more minutes of clattering, chaotic noise came a long moment of unnerving silence.
Marlo looked at Annubis askance before suddenly turning to the door and shouting. “They’re in here!” she shrieked before Annubis clamped his paw over her mouth.
A few seconds of whispering passed; then someone—or something, you never want to assume in this place—rattled the doorknob.
“Locked,” a demon grunted from the other side.
Suddenly, a peal of feedback squealed from the hallway, causing Milton, Marlo, and Annubis to jump as one.
“Mr. Fauster,” Bea “Elsa” Bubb blared from outside the door. “I don’t know how I can make this any clearer, but it’s over. You’re toast. The farm is bought and paid for. Come out, come out, wherever you are—which is right behind this door—before I send the demons in to play boccie ball with your head.”
Milton rubbed his throbbing temples. He opened his unspectacled eyes and scrutinized the room. His prospects of escape seemed as hopelessly fuzzy and indistinct as his vision.
“And nice try with Yukkah, by the way,” Principal Bubb added. “Poor creature. Killed with kindness, I’m afraid. Now it’s time you come with me. It’s up to you as to how.”
Milton turned to Annubis suddenly.
“She’s right,” he said in a flat, spooky tone. “There’s no other way out. She’s got us. But it’s up to us how she gets us.”
Annubis stared at Milton. His wet dog nostrils flared, as if he were trying to smell what Milton was up to.
“What do you mean?”
Milton glanced at his sister thoughtfully. Her eyes bulged out furiously over Annubis’s paw.
“Let her go.”
Annubis shrugged. “As you wish.”
He removed his paw from her mouth. Marlo backed away and spat.
“Ugh. Your paws taste like socks full of popcorn.”
Milton leaned into Annubis.
“Switch our souls,” he whispered.
The dog god blinked, not quite comprehending.
“It sounded like you said—”
“Yes, switch our souls,” Milton repeated softly. He gazed deeply into Annubis’s eyes, radiating conviction like a radioactive felon. “Take them out like you did in the Assessment Chamber, but just put them back in different people. Bubb will think she’s getting what she wants, only she’ll be getting it in a way that will leave her wanting, only she won’t know she’s wanting—”
“Stop,” Annubis replied. “I think I’ve got it, but the more yo
u keep talking, the less sure I am.”
The barricade lurched as demons heaved their bulk against the door. Milton frantically scanned the sad little room. Something caught his eye in the Vend-for-Yourself machine.
“One sec,” Milton said as he trotted across the room. He snaked his arm up through the vending machine drop slot and grabbed a moldy, low-hanging cheese sandwich. He walked back over to Marlo.
“Hey, is that a box of old Victorian dresses?” he said, pointing to a pile of junk in the corner.
“What?” Marlo said, spinning around, her overriding thrifting instincts still very much intact.
Milton quickly unwrapped the ancient sandwich and, from behind, pressed it to Marlo’s face. After a few moments of struggling, Marlo’s body went slack. Milton dragged her to the wall and set her there, like a perfectly made-up doll. Annubis joined them, kneeling beside Milton, puzzled.
“She’s severely lactose and gluten intolerant,” Milton explained. “Not to mention incredibly allergic to mold and various fungal hyphae. I thought the combo might be enough to knock her out.”
Milton looked at his sister’s unconscious face, smeared with spoiled mayonnaise and what he prayed was relish. “And, apparently it worked. She’ll be fine in a few minutes, though. A little gassy maybe.”
The hulking demon guards on the other side of the Break Down Room door were attempting to do just that—break down the door—with a fiercely persistent jackhammer rhythm.
Milton regarded the shuddering barricade with alarm. He drew in a deep breath.
“I’m ready,” he said, trembling, his mind yanked back to the time when, in Limbo’s Assessment Chamber, Annubis had removed his soul for—though only a few moments—what felt like an eternity of cold, numb despair and unbearable emptiness. Annubis nodded compassionately and rubbed his paws together in slow, deliberate circles.
“We’ll start with your sister, before she wakes,” he said in the cool measured tone of a doctor. Annubis placed one paw on Marlo’s head and the other on her upper back. His paws, now warm with eerie energy, pressed into her body. Marlo stirred as the dog god rummaged through her with a surgeon’s skill.
Blimpo: The Third Circle of Heck Page 26