Blimpo: The Third Circle of Heck (20 page)

“Anyway, I just want to give a shout-out to my old friend and tell him, ‘Hey, I hope there aren’t any hard feelings.’ Life’s too short, you know? Especially when you’re dead.”

Lester Lobe sighed, not quite buying what Damian
was selling but—considering the sorry state of his finances—willing to try it out on a trial basis.

“It’s over there,” he said, waving a yellow fingernail toward the Psychomanthium, otherwise known as the Elvis Abduction Chamber. In the corner, beyond a mannequin draped in a ratty fake fur coat wearing combat boots and a tiara with a sign hanging around its neck reading
MRS. BIGFOOT
, was what looked like a photo booth covered with rhinestones and tabloid newspaper clippings.

Algernon Cole nodded to Lester as he and Damian walked through a maze of very odds and freaky ends to the back of the Paranor Mall.

Damian put his hand on the chamber’s brass doorknob. A strange tingle ran through his extremities—an excitement, a sense of cruel possibility—like when he’d noticed a foreign-exchange student with a speech impediment on the first day of school. He opened the door and peered inside the six-sided box of mirrors.

As Damian stared at a half dozen of himself, that tingle became a full-body wooziness. He scratched the ground with his boots, a movement he found strangely comforting, and clucked softly under his breath. Lester Lobe eyed the boy with interest.

“Are you feeling a little not like yourself?” he asked as a Styrofoam flying saucer suspended above his head blinked and flashed. “Like your energy’s a bit off?
That’s what Milton kept talking about. Coming back with a little lacking in the spiritual juice department and needing etheric glue to keep himself together.”

Damian ran his fingers through his hair as he stared down at his boots. A downy feather fluttered to the floor. Lester Lobe raised his graying eyebrow.

“How exactly
did
you get back to the land of the living, anyhow?”

Algernon Cole cut in between them, like an eager boy at his first school dance.

“He doesn’t have to answer anything without a lawyer present.”

Lester Lobe smirked and shrugged his shoulders.

“Well, when I see a
real
one, I’ll let you know,” he said as he walked away. “You two have fifteen minutes, got it?”

Algernon Cole grumbled under his breath and stepped into the dark booth. Damian shot a brief quizzical look at the pictures of Michael Jackson and a chimpanzee with a cowboy hat lacquered to the Psychomanthium’s side before entering the chamber.

Algernon Cole fell back into a Fat Elvis beanbag chair while Damian, his head bobbing with nervous energy, paced in tight circles. The boy yanked a cord dangling above his head, and the booth filled with soft, red light.

“So,” Algernon Cole said as he twiddled his
manicured thumbs, “are you satisfied? We’re in a dreary box in the middle of some hippie’s paranoid carnival….”

Damian squatted over the beanbag chair, more hovering than sitting, as if he were hatching a large, heavily cushioned egg.

“What happened?” he asked. “When you were here with Milton?”

“Well,” Algernon Cole reflected, “we both sat across from each other and—”

Outside, Lester Lobe flipped on a classic-rock radio station. A wave of heavy guitar music pushed by a rhythmic team of drums and pulled by a man with a singing voice so high that, if the world were made of crystal glass, he’d be Public Enemy Number One, shook the Psychomanthium.

“And that burned-out
non compos mentis
was blaring his awful oldies. Other than that, we just talked about his book idea,
Heck.”

Damian shifted restlessly from foot to foot.

“What did he say about it?”

“Mostly how his protagonist was consigned to Heck
by mistake. A good kid sent away for a crime he didn’t commit. The character signed a contract with the Principal of Darkness—can you believe that?—and Milton wanted my help in figuring out ways that such a contract could be rendered nonbinding.”

“Like how?”

“Well, there are a number of options, though deciphering modern-day contract law is hard enough, much less factoring in a theoretical nether-realm dredged from some traumatized boy’s imagination. But, firstly, the protagonist is a minor without a
guardian ad litem
, so it would be hard to uphold such a contract. Secondly, he was forced to sign this document under duress. And, lastly, there’s the notion of fraudulent claims—a contract based on false promises—hardly a novel circumstance these days. I mean, just watch those terrible TV judge shows.”

The music throbbed through the chamber.

“So that’s about it,” Algernon Cole sighed, slapping his thighs. “Now, can we get out of here? This music is so awful they could use it on prisoners of war.”

Damian looked at the six mirrors surrounding him.
They seemed to shimmer and ripple, like the surface of a still pond ruffled by a faint wind.

“There has to be more,” he murmured.

“Nope, not really,” Algernon Cole said, rising to his Birkenstocked feet. “Other than mumbling some supernatural mumbo jumbo right before the TV screens came on.”

Damian’s beady eyes bugged out.

“What did he say?!”

Algernon Cole sighed. “I don’t know,” he replied. “I forgot my ginkgo this morning. But it was something about guardians of the spirit realm hearing his cry and summoning those spirits from the other side….”

A blast of cold wind blew through the chamber. Damian shivered as if a frigid gust blown off an Arctic ice floe had somehow made its way to Kansas.

“That’s just what happened before!” Algernon Cole cried as his and Damian’s reflections warped into a blurry creature that bobbed to the surface of the mirror like a drowned, bloated clown dredged from the Cirque de So Lake. The freakish beast seemed to be, for lack of a better word, singing.

“I’m strictly a female female, and my future I hope will be,”
the demon warbled from beneath a mask of cold cream into the mirror,
“in the home of a brave and free male, who’ll enjoy being a guy having a girl like …”

Damian leaned into the mirror as the demon, eyes closed and singing into a scare brush, came perilously close to losing the white towel cinched around its jiggling bulk.

“Principal Bubb?” he muttered with horror.

“Me?!”
Bea “Elsa” Bubb croaked as she twirled around in shock. She pulled up her towel—which, in Damian’s eyes, could never be big enough to properly cover what needed to be covered—and peered into the mirror.

“Mr. Ruffino!” she screeched. “Why are you in my vanity?”

Algernon Cole swooned, falling back onto his overstuffed sack of dried beans. Damian scooched his Fat Elvis bag closer to the nearest mirror.

“I’m on the Surface,” he said.

Bea “Elsa” Bubb wiped away a clawful of cold cream.

“That’s impossible,” she declared. “This must be one of your jokes, like the time you replaced the toilet tissue in the demon washroom with sandpaper.”

Damian snickered.

“That didn’t sit too well with the guards,” he
recollected. “But, seriously, I’m up on the Surface in some magic box in a freaky museum in Kansas. It’s called a psycho-something: like a phone booth where you can reach out and touch someone, just as long as they’re dead.”

Principal Bubb massaged her surly temples.

“With kids going back and forth like this, we’re going to have to install a turnstile and start stamping people’s hands…. This is terrible. However did you—”

“It’s
not
terrible,” Damian interrupted. “It’s an opportunity. And when opportunity knocks, don’t knock it. This goofy band of religious weirdos have this cult and think I’m their savior. They practically worship me.”

Bea “Elsa” Bubb leveled a flat, unbelieving gaze through the mirror. “You’ve
got
to be pulling my leg.”

Damian shuddered.

“Ugh. I don’t want anything to
do
with your leg,” he replied. “But, I might be able to get a
real
following up here, do thy bidding for a while—think of it as a franchise—before coming back down with a whole
lot
of souls for you to put in your underwear drawer.”

“Best not to mention my unmentionables,” the principal replied before the cracked vanity of her not-so-secret lair. “Though I must say that I find your plan intriguing. My financial adviser is always on me about investing.”

Damian grinned.

“I could get a
serious
pledge drive going up here, make this freaky church the biggest thing to hit religion since the Bible.”

Principal Bubb shivered.

“Please … don’t mention that insufferable, holy-ghost-written book.”

Algernon Cole stirred.

“Book … Milton,” he mumbled as he slowly came to.

Cerberus hopped up on the principal’s lap. Two of his three heads growled.

“Who is that ridiculous man in the corner?” Bea “Elsa” Bubb asked as she soothed her demon lapdog. “And did he say what I
think
he said?”

Algernon Cole’s eyes grew wide at the sight of Heck’s Principal of Darkness.

“Criminy sakes alive!” he began to scream before Damian clapped his hand over the man’s mouth.

“This,” Damian explained, “is my lawyer. Apparently, he was also
Milton’s
lawyer.”

“That little creep had a lawyer?” she shot back as Algernon Cole’s eyes trembled back and forth over her hideous image.

Damian nodded. “In between deaths,” he clarified. “Asked a lot of questions about contracts.” Damian took his hand away from Algernon Cole’s mouth.

“Tell her,” he said.

“Her?” Algernon Cole spluttered. “She’s a …
she
?”

The principal scowled as she plucked a tube of
lipstick—Deep Bruise Kissy Fit—off her dressing table, gave it a twist, and smeared it around her gash of a mouth.

“Every inch a woman, little man,” she smacked. “More than you could handle.”

Algernon Cole turned beseechingly to Damian. “Whatever this is, make it stop,” he begged.

“And you haven’t even
smelled
her,” Damian added.

“Mr. Ruffino,” the principal said reproachfully, “I love a reunion as much as the next demoness—which isn’t much—but if I wanted to be verbally abused, I would have stayed in middle management.”

Damian nudged his lawyer in the ribs. “Tell her about Milton and his book.”

Algernon Cole wiped away a fleck of foam from his lips.

“And just who … who am I speaking to … at …
with?”

Principal Bubb exhaled a dusty, disgruntled wheeze.

“Bea ‘Elsa’ Bubb,” she stated haughtily. “Principal of Darkness.”

Algernon Cole shook and swallowed.

“Is this some kind of j-joke?”

Damian slapped him on the back.

“Just play along,” he whispered into his ear. “I think Lester Lobe’s got us on one of those practical joke shows, like
Suckah Punk’d.”

Algernon Cole nodded his head in slow realization.

“Aah …
I
get it,” he replied. “I knew that had to be some animatronic device, like the Tunnel of Trepidation ride at Six Flags Wichita.”

Algernon Cole tightened his gray ponytail.

“Well,
Principal Bubb,”
he said with a wink. “As you know, being in
Heck
, you force children to sign a lot of contracts.”

Bea “Elsa” Bubb folded her arms together in disapproval. “Yes, that is a significant part of my duties here. What of it?”

Algernon Cole pulled up his mismatched socks and smirked.

“It’s just that, my good …
lady …
considering contract law as it stands up here, your indentures lack legal bite.”

“What under Earth are you talking about?!” the principal hissed with a flick of her bile-green tongue. Damian slapped his hand over Algernon Cole’s mouth.

“All this and more when I see you next time, if you give me everything I want.”

Bea “Elsa” Bubb rolled her baby yellows.

“Of course you want something,” she grumbled. “What is it?”

Damian bit his lip in contemplation.

“Hmm, that’s a toughie,” he said. “I guess what I want most is for everyone else to be miserable. But, in
lieu of that, I suppose I would be satisfied with my own circle of Heck to run as I please.”

Principal Bubb snorted.

“Is
that
all?!” she laughed. “How about I throw in the key to h-e-double-hockey-sticks while we’re at it?”

Damian’s eyes sparkled. “Yeah, that would be awe—”

“Here’s how it’ll go down, Mr. Ruffino,” Bea “Elsa” Bubb declared. “You stay up there as my operative, feed me any information I need to capture Milton Fauster and/or otherwise undermine his exceedingly tiresome efforts, and when you’re all through, bring me back loads of corrupted, easily manipulated souls for my sagging war chest.
Then
I will make you vice principal of any circle you wish upon your return.”

Damian grinned malevolently.

“And you can’t just wish for them all … like that wish for unlimited wishes. We’re on to that irritating little loophole.”

Damian nodded in approval. “That seems fair,” he said. “Or as fair as a bargain with the Principal of Darkness can be.”

A new song throbbed from outside the Psychomanthium.

“Far-out!” Lester Lobe yelled. “I haven’t heard this song since … since … the
last
time I heard this song!”

Bea “Elsa” Bubb leaned close to her vanity to get a better look at the Elvis Abduction Chamber.