Blimpo: The Third Circle of Heck (10 page)

“But how?” she mumbled before her mind grew fuzzy, and, suddenly, all she could think about was how she’d give anything to be like the girls in the magazine: conventionally yet impossibly pretty.

9 • A D
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SGUST
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NG D
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SGUISE

“THEY’RE PURE APPETITE,”
Moondog said as he faced the pit of creatures, taking them in with his mind. “I’m not registering any intelligence whatsoever. We’re talking sack-of-hammers, box-of-hair, twelve-shy-of-a-dozen-scale ignorance. They’re basically just animated suits of skin, looking for something to eat.”

Milton, still quaking from his brush with being a flea-tick’s snack, stared into the chasm as the creatures blindly crawled and slipped over one another, flailing for food.

“How come they don’t just eat each other?” he wondered aloud.

“Well,” Moondog said, trying to wave the air clear, “apparently there’s nothing in those blubbering beasties but a whole lot of bad, bad gas. Guess that keeps
them from going all cannibalistic, you know: not wanting to have a fart-to-fart nosh on one another.”

Jack walked over to Milton and bundled him up with a bewilderbeast skin.

“Here’s some primitive drape for you, Popsicle,” he said. “To keep the shivers from delivering.”

Milton gawked at the strange, shimmering pelt. He stroked the peculiar fur of the rugged bewilderbeast hide.

“Hmmm,” Milton pondered, gazing into the pit. “Those things are empty on the inside but hungry all over. Maybe I could use them as some kind of … disguise.”

He studied the golden gate near the cluster of edgy PODs. It was separated from Blimpo by the moat of creatures.

“A
way to walk into Blimpo undetected.”

Milton, filled with the energy that arrives with a dangerous new idea, bounded toward Cody’s shopping cart. Inside, tucked among vintage comic books and camping supplies, were bungee cords and coat hangers.

“Do you mind?” Milton asked as he rifled through the cart.

Cody shrugged his shoulders.
“Mi junko es tu junko.”

Milton twisted the coat hanger into a hook.

Jack clapped his hands together.

“Looks like our little Popsicle is going fishing!”

* * *

Milton scooted to the edge of the chasm on his belly, holding a rope of knotted bungee cords, one end tied to Cody’s shopping cart, the other hooked to the bewilderbeast hide. Milton slowly cast the balled pelt into the chasm, twitching the bait to make it seem alive. Within seconds, several of the round pink creatures were clamoring over one another to get closer, staring at the bewildering ball stupidly. Suddenly, one stretched its mouth wide and galumphed toward the bait, swallowing it in one great gulp.

“Now!” Milton yelled.

Cody yanked his cart backward, hoisting the hungry beast up and over the lip of the chasm.

The bungee cord snaked out of the creature’s great mouth. Milton gazed into its eyes.
It’s like peering into a hollow jack-o’-lantern with the candle snuffed out
, he thought.

Jack stepped toward it and drew a bowie knife tucked beneath his belt.

“I’m guessing you won’t have the stomach for this,” he said to Milton.

“You guess right,” Milton replied, turning away.

Jack knelt down beside the creature and went at it with a series of precise sweeps of his blade.

“I was on the road a lot … up there,” Jack explained in between grunts. “You pick up a lot of odd skills living
off the land. It wasn’t always pretty … but it sure was beautiful.”

Seconds later, there was a great gush of gas.

“Whoa,” said Cody, pinching his nose, “that fart has more personality than most people I know!”

Jack scowled at Cody while Milton tread hesitantly toward the deflated-yet-still-quivering creature. He gawked at the shuddering suit of skin.

“Is it dead?” Milton asked.

Jack shrugged his shoulders. “I’m not even sure if this thing was ever, like,
alive.”

He poked it with the hilt of his knife. It recoiled, vaguely, like a worm. Jack leveled his deep dark eyes at Milton.

“You sure you want to do this, kiddo?”

Milton shivered and frowned.

“‘Want’ isn’t exactly the right word,” he replied. “But I know I should at least try. I have to.”

Moondog sidled up to Milton to gawk at the meaty rug wriggling on the ground.

“A
great philosopher named Plato once said,
‘Do or do not. There is no try.’”

“I’m pretty sure that was Yoda,” Milton replied.

“Who’s Yoda?” Jack asked.

“A
little green puppet wizard,” Milton replied. “He made sense by
not
making sense. You guys would love him.”

With more than a trace of disgust, Milton knelt
down beside the skin. He slipped it on slowly like a bologna jumpsuit.

“Eww!” he exclaimed as he pulled it up over his pants and, finally, over his head. “It’s even worse than trying on suits with my mom.”

The creature’s flesh slurped around Milton until he was snugly inside.

Madge stepped up to Milton with a box chock-full of Duck and Cover Girl cosmetics. She scrutinized him.

“Well, I like a challenge,” she said in a husky smoker’s voice as she opened the box. “You’ll be my Sistine Chapel. C’mon.”

She led Milton, who staggered like Frankenstein’s monster, to her shopping cart. It was a thrift store on wheels, overflowing with mismatched clothes and accessories.

Madge sifted through the clothing with deft authority. A thousand possible clothing combinations flashed in her head until she finally settled on a baggy navy-blue terry jogging suit, black socks, sandals, and a red World Wrestling Entertainment cap.

“So this is your artistic statement?” Milton said as he ogled the ugly collection of clothes.

Madge folded her overly tanned arms and scowled.

“I wasn’t given much to work with,” she grumbled. “Actually, I was given
too
much to work with, which is why I went for coverage.”

Madge rifled through her makeup case and handed
Milton a large tube of Maximum Factor Industrial-Strength beige cover-up.

“Put this all over your … um …
body
. I hope I have enough.”

After fifteen minutes of painting, tweezing, prodding, shaping, and—above all—camouflaging Milton’s lumpy suit of borrowed flesh, Madge held a hand mirror up to his face.

“I should have had you sign a waiver first, but I’ve done all I can.”

Milton examined his face. He grimaced, and about two seconds later, the face in the mirror grimaced back. Milton looked like a mummy wrapped in lasagna instead of bandages. But, he did have to admit, he at least looked human. Gruesome, like a few hundred miles of bad, unpaved road, but like a boy. His face felt, though, as if it had been injected with a dentist’s office full of Novocain.

“Smile!” Moondog said as he trained an old Polaroid camera at Milton and flashed his picture.

With several quick, artistic scissor-snips, Moondog cut the photograph into a small square.

“This should do nicely,” he mumbled as he set the square expertly on a document, blew on it, and then clipped it onto a folder.

“Here you go,” Moondog said as he handed Milton the folder.
“Jonah.”

“Jonah?” Milton replied through thick, flapping lips.

He examined the folder through the clear gelatin of the creature’s eyes. Beneath his hideous picture was a professional-looking dossier, of sorts.

“Nice,” Milton said, impressed—though his face had trouble conveying that. “Right down to …
her …
signature. How it tries so hard to be dainty and professional, but her vile, despicable personality oozes out like—”

“Not a fan, I see,” Moondog interjected. “Anyway, if you
do
manage to get in, these should help grease the wheels of bureaucracy. So, what’s the plan, Stan? I mean,
Jonah?”

Milton stood up, feeling as if he were in a space suit made of hamburger. What creeped him out most of all was the creature’s tendency to constrict around his
midsection in slow spasms, like he was a caribou inside a Winnebago-sized anaconda.

“My plan is cunning in its simplicity.”

Jack and Moondog looked on with anticipation as Milton shambled toward the golden gates of Blimpo.

“I ring the bell,” Milton explained, pointing to a small, clown-shaped speaker with a red button for a nose. A rustling in the pit caught their attention, and they all looked down.

Several creatures jostled Jack’s upturned shopping cart at the bottom of the chasm. The creatures, not registering it as food, rumbled past it.

Milton glanced over at Jack, who eyed his heap of personal effects with a sad, faraway fondness. His pendant glittered like a distant star.

“I’m really, really sorry,” Milton offered. Jack’s normally happy-go-lucky features were crinkled and sad, like wadded-up gift wrapping. “Your pendant got caught.”

Jack nodded solemnly.

“It’s cool … it was all jelly and died for a noble cause,” he said. “Besides, what would I do with a few dozen jars of Make-Believe Companions? I, like, have problems enough relating to my
real
companions as it is.”

Milton stepped up to the gate. He studied the golden archway, then pressed the shiny red nose with his newly pudgy forefinger.

“Hello and unwelcome to Blimpo,” squawked a bored voice through the small speaker just above the buzzer. “How may I waste your time today?”

Milton cleared his throat, no easy feat considering he now had two.

“I was just … dropped off by the stagecoach. I’m a new kid, here to endure unspeakable torment for all eternity, or until I turn eighteen, whichever comes first.”

The voice sighed, which—due to the tinny speaker—sounded like a cold shower of static.

“I wasn’t expecting a drop-off.”

Milton looked anxiously over at Jack and Moondog.

“Well,” Milton said, proceeding with caution, “I suppose we could impose upon the principal—who was particularly testy this morning, I might add—and have her send another stagecoach, at great personal expense, only to turn it right back around after my admission has been cleared—”

“Yes, well, oh, here it is,” the voice lied. “I’ll lower the bridge over the Gorge and have someone fetch you right away.”

A section of the fortress slowly fell away, stretching toward the gate.

“You guys should scram,” Milton said.

Jack gave a quick, frantic wave of his hand. The waiting phantoms moved their shopping carts into formation before wending away. Madge, Cody, and several
other haggard phantoms flashed Milton quick smiles before staring intently at the road in front of them.

“Thank you,” Milton said humbly, shaking Jack’s hand. He moved over to Moondog and gave him a big hug.

“Whoa, little guy,” Moondog exclaimed gently as a tear leaked from his sightless eye. “Please don’t squeeze the shaman.”

“We need to split, like the seams on a sumo wrestler’s jeans,” Jack said abruptly as the bridge, resembling a long tongue made of red planks, lowered, hitting the outside of the gate with a resounding thud.

Jack turned to Milton as he brushed the dust off his khakis. “Don’t sweat the clown suit, kiddo,” he said with a smirk. “All the best of us are laughed at in this nightmare land.”

Jack and Moondog bustled away to meet their fellow PODs.

Soon, the phantasmic caravan was nothing but a long, silvery eel in the distance, slithering away until the sickly haze engulfed it.

The gates opened with a horrid metal-on-metal screech.

A demon in a slick, padded beige bio-suit and mirrored helmet strutted out to meet Milton. Dangling from its neck was what looked like a turkey leg with intricate notches cut into the bone. The demon stopped just outside the door and considered Milton.

“Youch,” it said through its helmet. “You’re so ugly, you could turn milk into yogurt just by looking at it.”

“And hello to you,” Milton replied as he and the demon crossed the bridge. The creatures below writhed and hopped with dumb excitement.

“What’s with the necklace … and the suit?” Milton asked.

“You like my birdie bling?” the demon said as it played with the poultry hanging from its neck. “It’s a Turnkey leg, the keys to the kingdom. And the suit is pure tofu:
just in case.”

The demon looked down into the Gorge with a mix of disgust and fear. “Even the Pangs won’t touch the stuff.”

Pangs
, Milton thought.
So that’s what those hungry meat creatures are called
.

Milton crossed the tongue bridge into the open maw of a doorway and was swallowed up by Blimpo in one quick gulp.

10 • NOT JUST ANOTHER
K
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TTY FACE