Fibble: The Fourth Circle of Heck (35 page)
Read Fibble: The Fourth Circle of Heck Online
Authors: Dale E. Basye
Principal Bubb’s goat eyes widened as she looked down, lovingly, at the picture of Cerberus.
“You know where my whiddle fluffle bottom—ahem
—Cerberus
is?” she gasped.
Annubis nodded.
“I’ll take you to him right now, if you like,” he answered coolly.
“Yes, oh sweet candied cudgels, yes!!”
Principal Bubb blurted emotionally before composing herself. “I mean, that would be satisfactory. Now tell me …
where is he
?”
Annubis locked eyes with the principal as he flipped the paper so that it faced her.
“First I need reassurance that if I hold up my end of the bargain”—he pointed to the last line of the ad.
Reward: Your Freedom
“That you will hold up
yours.
”
Principal Bubb glared at the ad.
“B-but … there was a d-disclaimer …,” she stammered.
“Fine print.”
Marlo smiled, not only realizing what game Annubis was playing, but that he had won before even punching the Pop-o-Matic.
“There wasn’t room when we placed your ad in
GYP,
” Marlo explained, dripping with feigned sincerity. “There’s a strict character limit, as clearly detailed in the Terms of Disservice agreement.”
Principal Bubb gritted her teeth. They squeaked like a mouse caught in a trap.
Milton, grinning from ear to ear, leaned close into Annubis.
“So
this
is what you were up to all along,” he whispered. “Leaving Cerberus in puppy paradise so that you could tell Bubb and get the reward. Plus, that hound from Heck is dragged away from the only true happiness he’s ever known.”
Annubis winked slyly.
“But wait, there’s more,” he whispered before turning to the fuming Principal Bubb.
“And since the Fausters aided me in locating your
whiddle fluffle bottom—
”
“There’s no way I’m releasing them!”
the principal spat. “After all, they’re minors!”
“Then I want your assurance that they will be dealt with in the normally-cruel-yet-not-unusually-so way,” Annubis requested firmly.
Principal Bubb coiled her thick arms together like two lovesick anacondas.
“Fine,”
she seethed.
Principal Bubb waved her claw at her stagecoach driver before rolling up the Scarecrow poop–encrusted window.
Gabriel had mentioned an opportunity, Principal Bubb recalled as the team of snorting Night Mares pulled the stagecoach away. And, considering that Satan was—more than likely—behind the plot to sell the Earth, this meant that there would be a vacancy …
down under
.
A secret electric thrill surged through Principal Bubb. She had spent the bulk of her career scaling the corporate ladder of the underworld, fighting fang-and-claw for each hard-earned rung. But even in her wildest nightmares, Bea “Elsa” Bubb never thought that that ladder would lead all the way
down
.
“I have an idea how you can punish the Fausters
without
punishing them,” Annubis said slyly as he leaned into the principal, bursting her reverie. “It will also keep them disoriented, making it harder for them to get into mischief.”
Principal Bubb’s sickly yolk-colored eyes clouded with suspicion.
“I’m listening,” she replied.
Annubis smiled.
“I can
switch
their souls,” he said, folding his elegant arms together. “Make Milton
Marlo
and Marlo
Milton
. Think of it as an extra layer of awkwardness and confusion slathered across their already awkward and confused afterlife adolescence.”
Annubis looked at the Fausters and prodded them with his gaze.
“Um …
oh no
!” Marlo cried out, feigning tears. “Anything but that!”
“No, how awful!” Milton blubbered, joining in. “
I can’t think of anything worse than being my brother
!!”
A sneer birthed itself underneath Principal Bubb’s glistening snout as the two children pretended to sob.
“Oh, stop your sniveling, you wretched—”
“An
excellent
idea,” Annubis interjected. “Sending them both to Snivel. A dismal place for them to stew in their own anguish …”
Principal Bubb stroked her bristly chin.
“Yes,” she murmured. “Snivel would definitely dampen their spirits.”
She crossed her thick, stumpy legs.
“All right then:
switch their souls immediately,
” she commanded with a snap of her claws.
Annubis nodded as he drew in a deep breath.
“As you wish,” he said, closing his eyes and turning toward Milton.
Annubis rubbed his paws together in quick circles as the stagecoach drove across the cracked terrain of the Broken Promised Land.
Rolling his eyes back in his head in that creepy way dogs do when they’re deeply asleep, Annubis gently—with the precision of a surgeon—pressed his paws into Milton, where they disappeared as if into human Jell-O.
Milton shuddered as Annubis carefully felt inside Marlo’s body for Milton’s soul. He could feel his spiritual essence quiver as Annubis prodded it gently with one paw toward the other. Milton felt a wave of shock shoot throughout Marlo’s body—like someone throwing a water balloon at you while you’re asleep on the beach—as Annubis seized his soul and cradled it in his paws. A horrible, numbing emptiness, a metaphysical gush of Novocain, welled up inside of him. Annubis deposited Milton’s soul into his cupped hands to hold while the dog god went about removing Marlo’s spiritual goo.
Milton looked down at the jiggly soul in his hands with a vague, faraway interest, like something that you’ve been told is terribly important but just doesn’t
feel
so, like making sure that the toilet seat is down. His soul
had a few more black flecks in it than it had when he’d first seen his soul in Limbo, but it also contained more of those brilliant, shimmering rainbowish-white globs, as if Milton had simultaneously become more good and more bad. Not that he cared right now. He didn’t really care about
anything
.
Annubis, having removed Marlo’s soul, took the twitching, glittering glob from Milton’s hands and gently placed it inside of Milton’s
real
body.
“Oww!” Milton yelped as a medley of new aches, cuts, bruises, chafing hair-shirt rashes, and assorted wounds assailed his nervous system.
“Oww … flippin’
monkey flippers
!” Marlo yowled as she, too, seconds later, suffered a host of new scrapes, pains, and contusions.
Principal Bubb glanced over at the Fausters with a flash of disdain, before resuming her glassy-eyed vigil staring out the stagecoach window, deep in thought, reconciling her conflicted feelings for Satan with her unquenchable thirst for power.
Marlo examined the bottom of her sore foot.
“Would it have
killed
you to wear shoes?” she grumbled as she examined the holes in the foot of her tights.
“At times it sure felt like it,” Milton whispered as he scratched a maddening itch beneath his prickling pajamas. “Those things were like portable, strap-on torture devices.”
Milton stared out the stagecoach window. The
monotonous terrain of cracked brown mud flats whizzed by, broken up by the occasional swirling gray fog wall.
Milton and Marlo had gotten their bodies back, averted an ersatz Apocalypse, rescued countless pets from being “nulled” in the Kennels, brought the pernicious Three-Ring Media Circus of Fibble down to the ground, put the kibosh on a crooked intergalactic real estate deal, and even made Heaven just a little bigger.
But something felt just a little bit
off
to Milton, like when he wore socks that didn’t match.
Near-perfection. Revelation. He Who Is Like God
.
The last, missing freight car of Milton’s confused train of thought coupled into place.
Back in Fibble, he, Marlo, Van, and Zane had been greeted by a gargantuan, Humbugger-projected image of a snarling, wrathful demon that wasn’t
quite
Satan. Next, they had overheard—in Barnum’s secret Focus Group room—that the Man Who Soldeth the World had been the last creature to wear the Humbugger mask. And when they had stormed the Boiler Room, atop the second tent, the machine had been set to “Exaggerated Negative,” projecting the exact, magnified
opposite
of whatever wore the mask.
So that meant that the Man Who Soldeth the World—whom Milton was
convinced
was truly behind all of this—was the exact
opposite
of something
nearly
as evil as Satan, making him almost as good as God …
Nearly perfect. He Who Is Like God
.
“Michael,”
Milton muttered in horror. “
He’s
the one who tried to sell the world!”
Principal Bubb shot Milton a darting, hateful glance.
“What are you blathering on about?” she hissed, licking the scabby patch around her mouth that she outlined with lipstick.
Milton slunk back in his seat and folded his arms. He knew, deep down, that no one would believe him about Michael. He had problems believing it himself. Why would an archangel, of all creatures, do something like that? Milton sighed.
The stagecoach passed through another electric fog wall with a whoosh and a crackle, fragmenting Milton’s thoughts. Judging from the sickly green sleet that washed the congealed crow poop off the window, they were back in the Furafter to pick up Cerberus and release Annubis so that he could live happily ever after with his family.
Maybe Gabriel would believe me … but why was he so weird back in Fibble, snapping at Sariel about what the angel knew about me and why I was here? Perhaps Annubis …
Milton looked over at the dog god. He was panting faintly with excitement, his eyes and nose wet and shiny as he anticipated his future. Annubis had something true held tight in his heart that kept him going despite the deceit that raged around him. The last thing Milton wanted
to do was drag the dog god into another mess, after all he and his family had been through. That left Principal Bubb.…
Milton glanced at the hideous, detestable demoness that glowered back at him through pus-colored eyes.
Once you live a life of lies, there’s no going back, Milton thought sadly. Likewise with the truth. In that moment, Milton vowed to never lie to himself, so he could remain true to his purpose—to right the wrong that was Heck—perhaps the entire
afterlife
. And there was no use feeling sorry for himself, Milton reflected as the stagecoach slowed. There would be plenty of time for that in Snivel.
BACKWORDThere is a popular legend that has George Washington—the first president of the United States of America—purportedly chopping down the backyard cherry tree as a child, unprovoked, then relaying the shameful details of his perplexing deed to his father, uttering the immortal line: “I cannot tell a lie … it was I who chopped down your cherry tree.” For reasons unclear, this parable of truth—later exposed as a lie fabricated by a pastor—has been held up for centuries as an example of nobility. To me, it feels more like a disarming, preemptive strike akin to “Hey, pops, I shaved the cat, switched your shampoo with Nair, and glued my sister to the ceiling … wow, it feels good to get that off my chest! Can we all go out for ice cream now? Except my li’l sis, of course, as she is stuck fast and squirming by the chandelier.” And how, pray tell, did young George
come to be in the possession of an ax to begin with? I blame the parents, but then again, I always do
.
Just because it’s the truth doesn’t make it all good. (“You’ve got a candy corn stuck on your tooth. Oh wait: that
is
your tooth.”) And just because it’s a lie doesn’t make it all bad. (“No, Mom:
seriously.
You still look good in jeans.
”)
It’s a question of intent. In the hands of the cruel, the truth can be a weapon either sharp as a dagger or blunt as a hammer. Likewise, a little white lie delivered with compassion and love can make someone’s day (into
what,
exactly, is up to that special lied-to someone
).
The most important thing to keep in mind is that, while the biggest lie about lies is that some people never tell them, the truth about the truth is that we often can’t handle it. Absolute truth is like absolute zero: bitter, cold, and unlikely to garner you many friends. It’s like getting a shot: it hurts at first, but it’s the only way to cure the creeping malady that rots you silently from within, invisibly, until it’s too late
.
So whether real hard to swallow or real hard to hear, the truth is, above all
, real.
And, when push comes to shovel or George Washington’s ax, real is all we really have
.
I WOULD LIKE
to formally acknowledge that I have not always been completely truthful in my life. There have been times when I have misrepresented myself (“my” pilfered computer science final project comes to mind … as does the time when I told an ex-girlfriend that I wrote Echo and the Bunnymen’s “Killing Moon,” completely underestimating her ability to read liner notes), and they have almost always ended badly.
