Blimpo: The Third Circle of Heck (40 page)

“We’ll need fries with that shake,” Thaddeus said as
he grabbed the mime and tied his bony yellow wrists together.

Virgil, stunned and weakened by his killer C note, shook the fog from his head as he watched his movement devolve into an ugly mob.

“Guys, guys …
wait!”
he pleaded. “This isn’t how all this was supposed to go down. Well, sort of, I mean—the castle was supposed to go down, that is, but not …
this.”

The boys stared back at Virgil with hollow eyes, their appetites for revenge nowhere near being sated.

“But they
deserve
it,” Hugo replied as a rotten-egg wind blew from the Waistlands, ruffling his short dark hair. “I thought you wanted us to bite back.”

“Yeah, but I just wanted to force these power-hungry tyrants to eat some crow,” Virgil said. “Not for us to eat
them.”

As the boys chewed over Virgil’s food for thought, Madame Pompadour crept cautiously out of a split atop the crumpled mound of smoldering canvas.

“What is
that?”
Gene asked, pointing at the slinky feline felon on the wreckage.

“Looks like a cat on a hot-air roof,” Thaddeus replied.

“It’s Madame Pompadour!” shrieked Lyon.

Marseille’s coffee-and-cream complexion percolated with anger.

“You were going to leave us here!” she shouted. “At the mercy of these psychotic losers!”

Virgil turned to Marseille. “I know we don’t run with the popular crowd, but if we’re losers, what does that make you: the girls we tricked?”

Bordeaux stepped up to the front of her squad.

“Leave him alone, Marseille.”

Marseille’s jaw dropped. As she lunged toward Bordeaux, Virgil stepped in between the two girls. Marseille bounced off Virgil’s belly and landed on her butt.

“Oww!” she squealed.

“Serves you right,” Virgil muttered. Bordeaux smiled up at him with gratitude. Virgil’s cheeks prickled and burned as if they had been rubbed with poison oak.

Madame Pompadour struggled to stand upright upon the leaking blimp as it quaked and smoked in death spasms. The fact that she was also teetering atop a pair of seven-inch spiked heels made Madame’s balancing act all the more impressive.

“This is more important than even the Nyah Nyah Narcissisterhood!” she mewled, straightening her form-fitting frock.

The girls below gasped.

“No!”
Lyon moaned pathetically as she sucked on her balled-up fist.

“This was the first step in making
Statusphere
more
than just a magazine, but its own elite realm strictly for the beautiful people so they can inspire the lowly with their sheer unadulterated fabulousness!” she roared while struggling to maintain her balance. “And by inspire, I mean humble and frustrate to the point of neurosis!”

Flames lapped the remaining balloon behind her. The canvas blackened and crinkled like an over-roasted marshmallow.

“It was perfect, the last link in the fast-food chain,” she cried out, her green eyes blazing as she watched her scheme projected inside the theater of her head. “The Statusphere realm sets unattainable ideals of beauty, which gets these chunky children crash-dieting and overexercising, with us making out like bandits, selling off the energy …”

The blimp carcass shuddered violently as the smoldering balloon sagged.

“… but they
never lose weight
, which fills them with shame—in addition to our fattening soul food and soon-to-be-mass-marketed Beauty Cream. So they seek out the Statusphere for comfort and meaning, and the whole beautiful cycle begins anew.”

Madame Pompadour’s serpent eyes pierced the haze that hung low on the horizon. Her pink lips stretched into a smile wide enough to expose every one of her white needlelike teeth.

“And I, Madame Pompadour, the most charming,
refined creature ever to strut her stuff, rise to the top like cream.”

The balloon burst into a savage ball of hissing flame. Madame Pompadour careened into the air, howling and spitting before plummeting to the ground. She landed in an inelegant heap at the feet of the shocked children, her meticulously coiffed hair undone and her expensive jewelry sent scattering upon impact.

Hugo looked down at her.

“I thought cats were supposed to land on their feet,” he snorted, stretching his neon-green suspenders with his thumbs.

Lyon’s magpie eyes were snagged by something shiny. Strewn about Madame Pompadour was a semicircle of glittering bling.

“What are these?” she murmured with awe as she knelt down before a bauble that she found particularly beguiling. Lyon scooped it up and stared at the charm in her palm.

“Lyon,”
she said, reading the engraved trinket that pulsed with an odd warmth in her hand. The charm—a small heart-shaped pillow of gleaming platinum with Lyon’s picture in the middle—softened until it became a pool of tingling, electric liquid. It quickly absorbed into Lyon’s palm. She shivered.

“My face,” she mumbled as she felt her cheeks. “It’s so tight.”

Bordeaux leaned down next to Lyon and stared at her face with large pale blue eyes.

“Oh my gawd!” she gasped. “Your pores are like, totally gone!”

Lyon beamed radiantly and rose to her feet. Her fellow Narcissisters dove for their respective charms, innately knowing which of the sparkling baubles was their own. Within seconds, Marseille’s pimples faded, Strasbourg’s split ends smoothed, Dijon’s extra chin melted away, and the slight fuzz on Bordeaux’s upper lip vanished.

Madame Pompadour’s tail twitched. She groaned and lifted her head.

“Ugh!” yelped Gene and Hugo in unison, clutching one another as they recoiled in horror.

Madame Pompadour’s face sagged in folds like a feline shar-pei. Bristly patches of fur and scales sprouted in between the wrinkles. Her red-rimmed eyes, extinguished of their inner flame, drooped down into her sallow cheeks.

“The charms,” Lyon said through the fog of shock. “They were …
our charm!
And … and—”

“Now that we have them back,” Marseille interrupted, looking Madame Pompadour up and down, “we look blazin’ hot and you look blazin’
not.”

“Yeah,” Virgil said, his lip curling in disgust, “you look like the cat
and
what it dragged in.”

Madame Pompadour staggered to her feet. She
unwrapped the cream silk scarf around her neck and tied it over her head into a concealing bonnet.

“Youth is wasted on the young,” she rasped through a tangle of yellow teeth. “And I’m through wasting my time with you tasteless wretches. You wouldn’t know style if it crawled up your ill-bred noses and yodeled!”

Just then, two vans sporting satellite dishes drove onto the mooring grounds.

“Uh-oh,” Thaddeus observed as the vans skidded to a stop just beyond the fluttering wreckage. “Looks like someone is crashing our happy meal.”

On the side of the van was written:
THE URN (THE UNDERWORLD RETRIBUTION NETWORK) SHORT ATTENTION NEWS VAN
.

“I can’t let anyone see me like this!” howled Madame Pompadour as she ran into the Gymnauseum. After a moment, the boys and girls heard the doors of a DREADmill snap shut.

Virgil snorted.

“I have a feeling Madame Pompadour is about to be flea dipped,” he said.

Bordeaux smiled at Virgil for longer than he was comfortable. In fact, the last girl who had smiled at him was—

Virgil noticed one last charm glittering on the ground. He kneeled down with a grunt and picked it up. The eerie, tingling pendant bore one word etched upon its perfect, platinum face:
MARLO
.

I’ll give this to you myself, Marlo … someday
, Virgil thought with a dopey grin as he tucked the charm into his pants pocket. He watched as a cameraman and tanned anchorwoman
(How can someone get a tan in the underworld?
Virgil puzzled) leaped out of one of the vans.

While the BOWEL movement may have pooped out
, Virgil reflected,
the media feeding frenzy is just beginning
.

37 • A NECESSARY
UPHEAVAL

“HE’S LYING!” SHRIEKED
Milton—actually Marlo—as he/she was shoved into the lobby of h-e-double-hockey-sticks by a gruesome, eight-foot-tall demon with a face like a steaming iron. Milton/Marlo struggled against the serpent restraints coiled tightly around his/her wrists. “I’m me, not
him
. I don’t know how, but … but …
”

Marlo, really Milton, and Annubis were likewise pushed into the foyer by nasty demons that looked like they supplemented their respective incomes by posing for heavy-metal album covers.

“He’s
the liar, obviously,” Marlo/Milton said to Principal Bubb, who marched smugly by her/his side.
“I
was just minding my own business, doing my …
awesome
new job. Answering phones and handling the various duties befitting of a … um …
deceptionist
. The last thing I’d want to do is cause any trouble. I’ve …”

Milton struggled to remember what his sister had said upon their disappointing reunion.

“I’ve got full medical; I’ve got stock options; I’ve got a closet full of the coolest haute couture imaginable. I’ve got it all.
A real future.”

Principal Bubb harrumphed.

“We’ll just have to see about
that,”
she grunted. “Once a Fauster, always a Fauster, I always say. Or will make a
point
of saying, from now on.”

Despite her loathing for Milton’s grasping, guttersnipe of a sister, Principal Bubb found it hard to be grumpy. She had captured the quarry that had eluded her for so long. Milton Fauster was now, finally, in her clutches. And so he would stay.

“And I’m sure you’ve got
quite
the tale to wag,” she said to Annubis. “Don’t you, dog?”

Annubis looked longingly at the potted oleander bush, not having relieved himself since the Waistlands; however, he knew that once they were out of the woods, he could find a proper tree.

“Indeed I do, Principal Bubb,” he said, carefully unfurling the story that he and Milton—now Marlo—had quickly hobbled together. “As you know, I was working undercover in Blimpo as part of our …
agreement
. I soon sniffed out a scheme that Milt—the
Fauster
boy—
was formulating and decided that it would be in the best interest of Heck—nay,
the entire Netherworld
—to pretend to aid him in his escape with intent to follow, thus simultaneously uncovering and thwarting his nefarious stratagem.”

“So you gave Chef Boyareyookrazee a hundred-volt wedgie as part of your covert operation?” the principal posed suspiciously.

Annubis scratched his snout contemplatively, though he was really trying to conceal his curl of a smile.

“Collateral damage,” he replied. “So I tailed Milton after his escape. If you remember correctly, I gave you a little signal to that effect in the Gorge—to find out where he was going and what his plans were once he got there. As you can see, he was trying to contact his sister with the hopes that she could help him get closer to the Big Guy Downstairs. Actually, I suppose that since we are already downstairs, he would simply be the Big Guy
Here.”

Principal Bubb nibbled her foreclaw nervously.

“Fortunately for all of us, the devil took a holiday,” she murmured. “Continue.”

Annubis shrugged.

“There isn’t much more to say, really,” he replied. “Miss Fauster refused to cooperate, Madame Pompadour obviously having done her job exceptionally well.”

Milton/Marlo wriggled free from the demon guard holding him/her.

“The dog is lying!” he/she shrieked. “I mean, he might be telling the truth about how—”

Milton/Marlo struggled for words as he/she glared at Marlo/Milton.

“I …
she …
whatever …
got here … and … and that I didn’t cooperate … but … but the rest is … is—”

“Utter nonsense!!” roared Principal Bubb. She clacked over to Milton/Marlo and slapped him/her hard across the face. “You are finally back where I want you, right by my side, which is to say, on your way to Sadia!”

“Sadia?!”
Milton/Marlo yelped. “B-but … but that’s for the worst, most violent, most despicable, most vicious—”

“Yes, you’re quite right,” Principal Bubb cackled. “It will be like dropping a fuzzy bunny in a pit of vipers. For you, it is unspeakably cruel. For them, feeding time. See? It’s all a matter of perspective.”

“But I’m not Milton! I’m me! I’m Marlo!”

Annubis strode toward the principal.

“May I have a word with you?” he asked as he gently led her in front of the bronze deception desk.

“What is it?” she hissed.

“Principal Bubb,” Annubis said in a clear, louder-than-necessary voice as he positioned her subtly in front of the bank of cameras. “Mr. Fauster is clearly lying.”

“I am not!”
Milton/Marlo protested. “I’m a girl! I’m my own sister!”

Principal Bubb expelled a rancid, impatient breath.

“Clearly
. But what does that—”

“Milton has
always
been a liar,” Marlo/Milton broke in. “Just ask anybody. How else could a goody-goody like him even
be
in Heck unless he lied his way down here?”