Blimpo: The Third Circle of Heck (35 page)

Annubis bit Milton on the calf.

“No, actually,” Milton faltered. “No tricks … just … guiding me.”

The crush of people behind Milton grew from testy to supremely ticked off.

“Get a move on!” shouted a balding man with a face as flushed as an old red toilet.

“Keep your pants on!” Helen shrieked at the man. “At least until we ask you to remove them.”

Helen shook her head and snickered.

“I love how impatient these bozos get. If they had any
clue
that centuries from now they’ll be looking back at this moment like it was a big party with live music and a no-host bar …”

She handed Milton back his passport. He pretended to flail at it somewhat, which was pretty easy to do considering the thick black glasses.

“You’ll be passing through seven Insecurity Gates,” Helen said as she finally just tucked Milton’s passport into his pocket. “So if you’ll just walk through …”

Annubis led Milton through the first gate, basically an electronic doorway. It beeped.

“Hmmm,” Helen said, scanning the boy, who—thanks to his bland Make-Believe Play-fellow soul—was still, save for his outfit, physically nondescript. “Must be the hat. Take it off and pass through again.”

Milton obliged, handing the Viking helmet to Helen, then passing through the gate again, this time silently.

“Okay, the greed line is to your right,” Helen said as she cradled the helmet in her bony arms. “Just follow the green arrows. NEXT!”

Milton and Annubis followed the barely perceptible green arrows on a filthy, salmon-and-teal-colored shag carpet. Milton looked over his shoulder as Helen donned the helmet. Nervous, Milton scooped out the pendant Jack had given him from his front pocket and clutched it in his hand.

“I don’t want them taking this away from me,” he mumbled.

Milton impulsively plopped the necklace in his mouth and swallowed it. It went down like a charm, literally: painfully slow, leaving a metallic flavor trail in its wake.

“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.

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 R
i
VER

“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?”