Blimpo: The Third Circle of Heck (30 page)

“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!

“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.

The demon looked over at Mr. Fields, glaring at him through its gray oily eye slits. The teacher grumbled.

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 with 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 • M
i
DN
i
GHT SHACK
ATTACK