Blimpo: The Third Circle of Heck (24 page)

“We … it’s … just … a whole lot of—”

“Nothing,” Milton interjected while kicking Virgil in the shin. Unfortunately, his Pang skin fuel-injected his punt so that it not only hurt Virgil but also sent several soul jars tumbling in Milton’s locker as well.

“Sure is loud for nothing,” Hugo noted as he shoved his bulk alongside them on the bench.

“We just w-wanted t-to help,” Virgil stammered as
Milton slunk an inch or so deeper in his Pang suit. “The s-souls, you know? The food was just t-too … rich and so we—ha ha”—(Milton, for the death of him, wasn’t sure what made Virgil suddenly laugh)—“just, you know, switched the recipe.”

“You switched the recipe?” Thaddeus said with horror.
“You switched the recipe?”

Gene’s face went white. “Why would anyone
do
that?!”

The perspiration that had only just evaporated on Virgil’s black rubber tube top returned with reinforcements.

“It’s just that …” Virgil’s eyes locked on to his friend, like someone sinking in quicksand gazing desperately at a low-hanging branch.
“You
tell them, Milton.”

The last bean—a colossal one—spilled to the floor and rolled accusingly between Milton’s feet.

“Milton?” Hugo repeated.
“Milton?”

“I—I—I,” Virgil stuttered in rapid-fire succession, “I meant Joe … um … Noah … uh …
. Jonah.”

Thaddeus looked closely at Milton.

“I knew he was unbelievably ugly,” the boy murmured as he eyeballed Milton’s face. “Now I know why—you can see, if you look closely. Around the eyes. Like a mask.”

Hugo chuckled and leaned into Milton.

“So, the famous Milton,” he said, savoring every word as he rolled them slowly on his tongue. “The boy who escaped. How’s that been working out for you?”

He laughed in Milton’s fraudulent face.

“Now you’re here, messing with the only thing that made this place bearable and making things even
worse
for us in the process.”

Milton sighed. “I came back to help Virgil,” he uttered softly.

“Right,” Hugo said. “Helping him to more time in the DREADmill.”

Virgil cradled his head in his hands, not daring to meet Milton’s eyes.

“You don’t understand,” Milton explained. “It’s all a conspiracy to keep you here. I know it is. Making you fat so you can feed those awful machines.”

“You
don’t understand,” Hugo said, pressing close to Milton. “I’m hungry and I hurt all over. If I don’t get my barbecue back,
you’re
going to hurt all over.”

Milton opened his locker. He pulled out an upturned Lost Soul jar and held it out to Hugo.

“You seriously want to eat
this
?” he said as the stormy black glob squished angrily against the glass.

The boys ogled the jar. Their mouths sneered with revulsion.

“Is that mean tar stuff
really
in that yummy food?” Gene asked dimly.

Hugo shrugged. “I don’t care what the ingredients
look
like,” he said. “I only care how they taste. And those ugly, nasty things might not be easy on the eyes, but they sure melt in your mouth.”

“Maybe if we gave the new recipe a fun name,” Virgil chirped suddenly. “You know … a silly name with lots of misspellings. Food always seems to taste better if it’s—”

Hugo wedged himself between Milton and Virgil, coiling his beefy arms around the boys.

“Here’s how it’s going down: you two are going to switch back the jars tonight so that we get Hambone’s
original
blend of souls and spice and everything nice….”

Hugo smiled at Virgil. “As a peace offering, I’ll even give you a tasty Smarts Doughnut.”

Virgil licked his lips.
“A
Smarts Doughnut?”

“Yeah,” Hugo said. “Here you go.”

He slugged Virgil hard on the shoulder.

“Oww!” Virgil yelped, rubbing his upper arm.

Hugo grinned wickedly.
“Smarts, don’t it?”

“But eating human souls is
wrong,”
Milton said, the words sounding as sensible to his ears as
fire is bad
and
school plays are humiliating for all concerned
. “It’s
exactly
what they want.”

“No,
you’re
wrong,” Hugo hissed into Milton’s ear.
“You’re
exactly what they want. And that’s just what they’ll get—
you
—if we don’t get our grub back on. Got it?”

Milton’s body—his
real
body, compressed inside the
Pang—grew numb and sick with dread. Though Milton wasn’t completely sure what he had hoped to accomplish by coming back to Heck, he knew it wasn’t simply to be served back to Bea “Elsa” Bubb on a platter. He had no choice.

M
i
DDLEWORD

There are two sides to everything, even things that actually have three or more sides
.

Take a coin … actually, give it back. I only meant that figuratively. Thank you. Now, this coin is like a regular coin, only one side is a deep-fried, Gorgonzola-stuffed Twinkie triple-dipped in dark chocolate, then rolled in coconut, almonds, hazelnuts, candy corn, and toffee bits, and the other side is half a stale rice cake with all the salt licked off
.

One side of this admittedly odd coin is all about padding who you are. But, though you think you’re insulating yourself from the cruel world around you, you’re really trying to hide away from yourself: the nougatty center of your soul that others have convinced you isn’t worth a used ketchup packet. On the other side, it’s just the same, only the opposite: forcing
you to twist, fold, spindle, mutilate, and slenderize your body so that it fits into the narrow little space the world has carved out for you
.

Insecurity flips this coin, and only you can call it heads or tails. Better still, just swipe the coin while it’s still in the air and invest it. That way, you can buy the homes of all the kids who made fun of you and evict the whole jeering, mocking lot of them! Ha! Not so funny now, are you, fending for yourselves out in the unpleasantly cold or uncomfortably warm?!

Okay, maybe it’s not a coin. Perhaps it’s more of a rope. A tug-of-war. On one end of the rope are those who want you to get bigger. To always want more. Filling you full of food until food is all that makes you feel full. On the other end of the rope are those who want you to get smaller. To always want less. Depriving you of fullness so that emptiness is the only thing that makes you feel full. And where are you in all of this? In the middle: stretched like taffy, jerked like chicken, until you’re ultimately pulled apart like pork. But you know what also happens? The tuggers fall. They need the tension of the rope. Without it, they’re just on the ground, in the mud, left holding the rope…
.

23 • LOST AND HOUND

ONCE AGAIN, MILTON
and Virgil found themselves riding the old wooden swells of Blimpo’s hallways—their legs aching from multiple DREADmill sessions—on another midnight raid of Hambone Hank’s Heart Attack Shack.

On this outing, the hallway was graveyard quiet: no deep snores, no garbled sleep-talking, just a thick silence.

Milton waved for Virgil to stop while he peeked into the tin shed through the take-out window. Inside was … a whole lot of nothing. No sleeping chef (thankfully) but (unthankfully) no soul jars—either of the lost or Make-Believe Play-fellow variety. Hambone’s cooking cauldron was missing, too. Milton crinkled his drawn-on brows.

“No one’s here,” he whispered to Virgil. “It’s like the place was cleaned out—”

The boys heard a steady
tink-tink
sound coming from the kitchen. Milton crept around the shack—barely squeezing past it, considering his inflated self—and discovered a nondescript, unmarked door. He carefully opened it and found that it led to Chef Boyareyookrazee’s kitchen. The
tink-tink
was the lid on Hambone Hank’s simmering cauldron. Surrounding the cast-iron pot were dozens of Lost Soul jars and several small tubs of what looked like lard.

“Virgil,” Milton whispered, beckoning him over. “There are more jars in here, but I don’t see any of the—”

Something grabbed Milton by the wrist and pulled him inside the kitchen.

“So
you’re
the one who has been tampering with my recipe!” Hambone Hank snarled from behind his surgical mask while waving a meat cleaver with his free hand. Milton was transfixed by the cook’s deep, familiar eyes: so sad and—fittingly—
soulful
.

“I don’t appreciate backseat cooks throwing in new ingredients. In fact, they can easily
become
ingredients, if you get my meaning.”

The butcher’s knife hovered over Hambone Hank’s cloaked head, trembling as if deciding which of Milton’s limbs to sever. Milton only hoped that his Pang
suit would protect him from the mad cook’s inaugural “chop.”

“Milton!” Virgil cried from the doorway. “Are you okay?”

Milton laughed despite himself. “Do I
look
okay? Get out of here!
Now!”

Hambone Hank’s eyes bore into Milton’s.

“Wait!” he barked.

Still holding him snugly by the wrist, the tall, slender creature sniffed Milton up and down, especially down.

“Um …,” Milton said as Hambone Hank sniffed the back of Milton’s pants,
“this
is awkward.”

Hambone Hank let go of Milton’s wrist.

“Run, Milton, run!” Virgil cried.

“It really
is
you,” the cook murmured in a smooth rumble.

Milton rubbed his wrist. He noticed that the back of Hambone Hank’s black robe was …
wagging
. The cook took off his mask, revealing a long, wet nose, and slipped off his hood.

“Annubis!” Milton cried.

The regal dog god—whom Milton had last seen ingesting his gelatinous colleague in Limbo’s Assessment Chamber—smiled a mouthful of sharp white canine teeth.

“Why are you wearing this costume?” Annubis asked. “Its smell confuses me.”

Milton grinned. “I could ask you the same thing,” he replied, “about the costume, I mean. Virgil, it’s okay … come on in.”

Virgil hesitated in the doorway.

“Sure,” he yammered. “It’s just that I’m more of a …
cat
person.”

“Aah, I see,” Annubis said in his dignified baritone. “You are here in hopes of freeing your friend. You have a lot of nerve for someone who doesn’t belong in Heck.”

“How can you tell that I don’t belong?” Milton asked.

Annubis smiled and tapped his paw-hand to his snout.

“The nose knows. Your soul smells …
good
. A smell something like your human Froot Loops. Not that boiled-cabbage/rotten-tooth smell most of the other boys bring with them.”

The steady
tink-tink
of the simmering cauldron reminded Milton of why he was here in the first place.

“Why are you, of all creatures, here, doing …
this
?” Milton asked as he surveyed the soul jars littering the floor.

The tail from beneath Annubis’s robe drooped. His eyes grew wet, and his snout grew dry. He sat down on a container of lard.

“It all started when you jammed Ms. Mallon’s rib into my associate Ammit.”

Milton gulped.
Uh-oh
, he thought guiltily,
I never thought how that would affect Annubis
.

“I didn’t think that you …,” Milton said apologetically.

Annubis raised his paw-hand for Milton to be silent.

“Ammit had it coming, I assure you,” the dog god replied. “Actually, it was your sister’s terrible singing that drove me to the brink, though I still check in with Bones Anonymous every once in a while to keep my
weakness
in check.”

“In any case,” Milton offered, “on behalf of the Fausters, I’m sorry.”

Annubis folded his lean forearms together.

“Even in Heck, eating your coworkers is frowned upon. The Powers That Be Evil removed me from my post and—unbeknownst to me at the time—took my family down to—”

Annubis shivered.

“The Kennels.”

“The Kennels?” Milton repeated, twisting the words up at the end to make them a question.

“A
Heck for animals, of sorts.”