Fibble: The Fourth Circle of Heck (11 page)

“Argh, Miss Principal, forgive me if I a-startled ya,” the pirate apologized.

“Mr. Beard—”

“Call me Black,” the pirate smiled, exposing two teeth, both of which were capped with gold.

“Mr. Beard,”
the principal repeated. “What are you doing here?”

“Excuse the intrusion, ma’am,” he said with a voice like a blast of swamp gas. “I saw yer flyer—”

He held out a soiled handbill.

“Ah, I see,” Bea “Elsa” Bubb replied. “I must ask you, though, did you read the fine print?”

The burly pirate rubbed one of several long scars on his weathered cheek.

“I can’t say I’ve had an eye fer the finer things, Miss Principal. But with the right woman to help trim me ragged jib …”

The principal held her torch to the bottom of the flyer, highlighting the fine print:
“Heck staff not eligible.”

The realization was, to Blackbeard’s spirits, like a cannonball tearing through a damp paper dinghy: a swift, deadly assault for which there was no counter-maneuver.

The principal looked down the subterranean conduit of caca that shuttles every last plop and tinkle of waste down the River Styx to h-e-double-hockey-sticks. She sighed with the enormity of the task ahead.

“So I understand if you’d prefer to shiver your timbers elsewhere,” she said.

Blackbeard hoisted his thick black belt over his grog-fattened belly.

“Nah, I’ll help ya find yer salty sea dog,” he replied with a sigh.

Principal Bubb’s face trembled and quaked until it finally pushed out something approximating a smile.

“I don’t know how to thank you,” Bea “Elsa” Bubb responded. “Really. It’s been so long since I’ve thanked anyone for anything, I’m truly at a loss.”

Blackbeard rubbed his bearded, braided chin.

“Well, ya could always—”

“And I’m perfectly fine with
not
knowing how to thank you, thank you,” the principal replied, turning back to face the stinky blackness up ahead.

The two splashed along the dark, cramped pipeline that smelled like the distilled essence of every neglected rest stop bathroom, everywhere.

“My Pookie Snuggle Bottom, er,
Cerberus
, is so sensitive,” Principal Bubb fretted. “I worry he won’t be able to smell his way back into my arms.”

“I doubt if that’ll be a problem, Miss Principal,” the pirate offered.

The principal’s electro-torch cast the River Styx with a sickly orange flicker, creating a dance troupe of nasty, prancing shadows.

“Do ye mind if I listen to me
iPood
?” Blackbeard blurted, his voice slapping against the sides of the sewer pipe like a doctor’s hand on a newborn’s bottom.

The principal shuddered.

“I certainly hope that last word was a victim of your accent,” she grumbled. “In any case, go ahead.”

Blackbeard grinned and plucked a brown MP3 player from the pocket of his bullet-ridden, gash-ventilated frock coat.

“Yo ho!” the pirate shouted as he wedged his earbuds into the nests of dark hair sprouting from his ear canals. “It’s time fer me favorite ARGH show!”

Unfortunately for Principal Bubb, a lifetime of drunken bellowing, cannon fire, and macaws squawking on his shoulder had rendered Blackbeard virtually deaf, so the strains of ARGH blared as loud as a conch shell blast. High-energy, techno-pirate pop with bubblegum buccanette vocals throbbed through Blackbeard’s earbuds.

The DJ blew a bosun whistle and howled.

“Blow me down!” he roared. “This is Calico Jack here and
that
was Me Hearties, those scurvy and curvy pop sensations, with ‘Looking for My Jolly Roger.’ Next up, we’ve another ditty from that crafter of tuneful tales, the Truthador, with a splash of refreshing sea foam for yer ears, ‘Swan Song from the False Power.’ ”

The Truthador slashed power chords from his harp.

“ ‘We must get these monkeys out of here,’ said the E.T. to the thief,”
the Truthador sang in his strained, raspy voice.
“ ‘They’re infesting our new home, and we need some relief.’ ”

Principal Bubb rolled her curdled yellow goat eyes.

“
I
need some relief … from this awful music,” she said as her hooves slipped in a sludgy pile of dung. “Mr. Beard …”

The pirate crooned tunelessly along with the music, barking like a sea lion choking on a broken toy trumpet.

“ ‘But me and my fiends, we’ll move them to a duller, sadder fate,’ ”
Blackbeard sang on.
“ ‘We’ll use the power of falsity now, and their Last Judgment create.’ ”

The power of falsity
? Principal Bubb thought.
As in …
fibbing?

She extended her thumb and foreclaw, activating the thimbles of her No-Fee Hi-Fi Faux-Phone.

Mr. Nixon sat in an overstuffed, rust-colored Sleazy Chair in Fibble’s Lie-Brary reading a book:
Abraham Lincoln: Was Honesty
Really
His Policy
?

The Truthador’s music squawked through Fibble’s PA speakers.

A slender, twisted demon—rather like a leather curly fry with a face—peeked into the room.

“Telephone, Mr. Nixon,” he rasped as he entered the Lie-Brary, carrying a silver tray holding two thimbles atop a white lace doily.

Mr. Nixon picked up the thimbles and scowled at the
tightly coiled demon as he struggled to affix them to his fingers.

“Hello?”

“Mr. Nixon …,” Principal Bubb answered as she waded in gallons of castaway human filth.

“ ‘So let’s show them the exit,’ the thief he slyly spoke,”
the Truthador sang, eerily through both her phone and Blackbeard’s earbuds.
“ ‘There is no one here among them that would know it was a hoax.’ ”

“Are you listening to that awful singer too?” she asked.

“Unfortunately, yes,” Mr. Nixon replied. “He’s squawking through every PA down here. It’s a blasted nuisance.”

“Speaking of nuisances I’d like
blasted,
” the principal continued, “
Milton Fauster
. He’s the reason I’m calling. I have a hunch—actually, a little throb
in
my hunch—whenever that little creep is about to pull something—”

“Don’t worry your petty little head about him,” Mr. Nixon interrupted, tapping his arthritic fingers on the coffee-ringed coffee table next to his chair. “I’m keeping Mr. Fauster, like all enemies, close. You have my promise as a disgraced career politician that Milton Fauster is snoring away in his bunk, beaten down and dispirited, posing no trouble to anybody.”

* * *

Marlo crept down the deserted hallway in her hair pajamas, cradling two balloons—surgical gloves swiped from the infirmary—filled with a thick mixture of powdered milk, little white lice, Elmer’s glue … basically whatever bright, white substance she could find. She turned her head around the corner and saw
—just barely
—three black chameleon demons marching in front of Fibble’s darkened R & D lab.

The hallway was still but far from quiet. ARGH radio was very much on the air.

“Swan song from the false power,”
sang the Truthador in his distinctive nasal twang.
“The Salesman, he skews the view. Every last man, woman, and child will bid their home world adieu.”

Not much for the merry melodies
, Marlo thought as she waited for a clear shot of the wall behind the marching chameleon guards.
But his lyrics loiter around in your head, like some kind of puzzle aching to be solved
.

Marlo
had
to find out what P. T. Barnum was cooking up in his viral marketing laboratory. Suddenly, she saw her chance. Hefting the balloons in her hands, Marlo screwed up her brother’s eyes as she gauged her trajectory, then lobbed both balloons at the R & D wall. The balloons splashed in wet, milky explosions, turning the dark, dirty walls brilliant, uncompromising white. The guards swiveled about and eyed the glaring, dripping wall with their protruding peepers. After a moment of
paralyzed silence, the three black chameleons trembled and fell to the ground—screaming as their chameleon skin struggled to process the abrupt, total change in color—before turning pale white and passing out.

Marlo trotted toward the lab and tried the door, which was—unsurprisingly—locked. She knelt down by one of the unconscious guards and yanked a wad of keys from his belt. After a few tries, Marlo found the right key, gave it a twist, and opened the door slowly, stepping into the dark.

“The truth is our weapon,”
the Truthador sang.
“With it, we’ll lead the attack.”

Marlo felt along the wall as she padded softly into the laboratory.

“And beat every swindler, impostor, and—”

The fluorescent lights flicked on.

“Quack?”

Van Glorious, dressed in character as Teenage Jesus, walked across the Nazareth High gymnasium set to join some of his adolescent disciples—Simon, Andrew, James, John, Philip, Bartholomew, and Judas—at the refreshments table at the Annual Purim Dance and Social. He ladled dark, lumpy juice into wooden cups for his friends. Bartholomew took a sip and grimaced.

“Ugh,” the tanned boy grumbled. “
Fig
juice. It’s not even strained.
Nasty.
”

Judas, a curly-haired boy with peach fuzz on his upper lip, leaned into Jesus.

“Brock, brock.”

“Shut up,” Teenage Jesus replied. “I’m not doing it.”

“Whatever,”
Judas shrugged. “If I could make this
dance less than lame, I’d
totally
do it. But that’s just me.…”

“What are you guys talking about?” Simon interjected, flipping back his feathered hair as the band played a slow-dance number on lute, harp, and rattled sistrum.

Teenage Jesus sighed and glared at Judas.

“Well, since you all
must
know,” he explained, “I was getting a bucket of well water for my mom the other day and noticed it had all sorts of crud in it. So I was fishing out olive leaves and junk because Mom would totally freak if the water wasn’t clean … she has a thing about purity … and, well, the water turned into … um,
wine.
”

Andrew gave Teenage Jesus a shove.

“Get out!” he exclaimed.

“Dude, my hand’s stamped, so if I get out I’ll just come back in,” Teenage Jesus joked.

“Do it!” James and John chanted in unison.

“Shhh!” Teenage Jesus said, looking over his shoulder at his aunt, patrolling the perimeter of the dance floor with a scowl. “My auntie’s here as a chaperone. She’ll totally bust me if she finds out.…”

“Brock, brock,” Judas taunted.

Teenage Jesus sighed, succumbing to the ceaseless erosion of will that is peer pressure.

“Fine,”
he said, sticking his finger in the punch. “With friends like you, Judas, who needs enemies?”

Judas smirked as the punch darkened.

“I have no idea what kind of wine I make,” Teenage Jesus explained. “With the fig juice it’ll probably be gross and sweet anyway.”

“That’s very unhygienic, nephew,” Teenage Jesus’s auntie interjected from behind him as he ladled punch to his friends. With a start, he spilled some on the woven straw tablecloth.

“So jumpy,” she continued. “Now pour your auntie a cup before you splash it all over the place.”

“Um,” Teenage Jesus replied. “It might be a little sweet for you.”

“I like it sweet.”

“And it seems like it might have … fermented. A bit.”

“Just pour me a flippin’ cup of punch!” she shouted. “My mouth tastes like the Dead Sea.”

The boy sighed and handed his aunt her drink. She took a sip. Her beady eyes squinted and sparkled with the gift of confirmed suspicions.

“I knew it,” she replied, more delighted than angry.
“You spiked the punch.”

“I didn’t!” Teenage Jesus exclaimed. “Not really, anyway. Search me! I don’t have a jug or cask or anything!”

She grabbed him by the ear and dragged him away from the table.

“I don’t care how you did it,” the bitter old woman
said. “But you did, and you’re done. No more cavorting with your long-haired friends.”