Blimpo: The Third Circle of Heck (12 page)

“I thought I heard her choking on a hair ball,” Marlo said as she grabbed a pad of paper and a pen.

Madame Pompadour … Lady Lactose … Statusphere … VaniTV … DREADmills … Blimpo …
Marlo jotted down.

What does that no-feeling feline have cooking in her Meow Mix?
Marlo wondered.
Whatever it is, she’s probably keeping the lowdown on the down low … as secret as a girl’s specially pH-balanced antiperspirant
. In any case, Marlo felt that—for the first time since her Infernship began—she might have the upper hand. Marlo knew
something
, even if she wasn’t exactly sure what it was she knew. And knowledge was power. Like electricity. She didn’t have to understand how it worked, as long as it
did
.

Meanwhile, Madame Pompadour flicked a switch beneath her desk.

“I’ll be in touch, Lady Lactose,” she hissed softly as her mirror folded back to its original full, uptight position.

Nothing is going to short-circuit my little power play
, she mused as she padded across her office for the door.
And power takes power. That’s exactly what they’ll all be
begging
me for after I pull the plug on the underworld
.

Madame Pompadour followed the crack between her door and the jamb until her eyes settled on a shiny gold earring. She knelt down—a surprisingly difficult task in her tight, snakeskin A-line skirt—and examined the grenade pin, then glared at Marlo, scribbling away, through the crack in the door. Marlo looked up and locked eyes with the madame.

Marlo gulped. Madame Pompadour held the pin in her hand, and, judging from her suspicious scowl, the grenade had just been lobbed.

11 • FR
i
ENDS
i
N W
i
DE
PLACES

MILTON SLID OPEN
the curtain of the Blimpo boys’ dressing room. Gaping at himself in the mirror, he realized that his appearance had been instantly upgraded from Merely Hideous to Thoroughly Ghastly with a Slight Chance of Projectile Vomit. From his plaid beret with safety orange pom-pom, black-and-white horizontally striped Lycra T-shirt, and neon-green suspenders (which suspended nothing, not even disbelief) down to his triple-corduroy Capri pants, Milton—now Jonah—was so ugly that circus folk would probably pay to see
him
.

The escort demon took off its helmet. Its eyes were dull and coppery, like an old penny at the bottom of the
well that had failed to deliver on its promise. The demon regarded Milton with amusement.

“A
face that only a blind mother wombat could love. But you’re in luck,” the demon said unconvincingly. “Just in time for afternoon tea. The Lose-Your-Lunchroom is down the hall.”

“The what?”

“The Blimpo Cafeteríum,”
the demon clarified. “It has earned itself a little nickname. You’ll soon learn why.”

The demon walked away in its slick tofu suit down a fluorescent-lit hallway. Milton stepped out into the hall to follow it but was momentarily stunned as the floor wobbled and “sprang” beneath his newly immense feet. It was like walking across a long trampoline made of old creaking wood. As Milton stepped tentatively across the undulating floor, he was broadsided by his own reflection cast in the gleaming walls. His image was warped like a fun-house mirror: hold the fun. Milton’s Jonah disguise—a barely recognizable blob—was distorted into a wider, lumpier, and now-completely-unrecognizable blob.

The demon looked back at Milton over its curdled soybean shoulder.

“Just follow the sound of bellyaching,” it chortled wickedly. “There’s plenty of that around here.”

* * *

The Cafeterium, or Lose-Your-Lunchroom as the locals called it, was not what Milton expected. It actually looked kind of nice. The tastefully lit room was monopolized by a large oval waterway shuttling little buoyant plates of food. The plates, elegant boats upon closer inspection, were laden with delicious cargo—jumbo grilled hamburgers, towering ice-cream sundaes, apple pie, pizza slices with layers of succulent toppings—leaving port from the kitchen, visible through a small opening in the wall, before embarking on their circuit around the room.

Milton’s Pang suit rippled with hunger. He strode toward one of the boats—the SS
BLBTB
(bacon, lettuce, bacon, tomato, and bacon sandwich)—and ham-handedly grabbed the plate before it floated away. Just before he cast the sandwich, boat and all, into his ever-widening mouth, he noticed the sandwich’s dull shine, flat coloring, and faint smears of glue around the seams.

“A plastic model,”
Milton moaned with disappointment as he capsized the sandwich and flung it back into the faux-food regatta. He noticed a small grate in the ceiling, where tufts of flavorful smoke drifted out. Someone snickered from the kitchen.

“That never gets old,” muttered an enormous man with a red face like a landslide and a white sagging chef’s hat on his head.

Milton, irritable not only from being hungry but also from wearing an uncomfortable disguise that was,
in itself, starving, stomped over to the kitchen window. The cramped kitchen was a mess of pots, pans, and large familiar-looking jars. He thought he could detect the faintest whiff of barbecue.

“Ha-ha,”
Milton said sarcastically. “You’re a riot. Is there any
real
food here?”

The cook looked Milton up and down. His chins jiggled like bowls of Mexican jumping bean Jell-O.

“You must be new,” the cook replied. “I always remember a face. And if I had seen yours before, I would remember trying to forget it.”

Milton was tempted to lob the classic “I’m rubber, you’re glue” comeback at the rude, revolting man, but his Pang tongue was more interested in eating than in arguing. The cook grinned, his cheeks a pair of round, shiny, rotten apples.

“Of course there’s food,” he said. “Wouldn’t be much of a Cafeterium without food, now, would it?”

“Great! What do you have?” Milton replied with a glee that surprised himself. “Something sure smells good….”

“You have your choice,” the cook replied, shoving a plate through the window. “Bacon and eczema …”

Milton gawked sadly at the plate piled high with unappetizing lumps and flakes.

“And my other choice?”

The cook held out a mound of deep-fried carbuncles atop a stale, moldy biscuit in his grimy hands.
Underneath his fingernails was enough dirt to support a small organic vegetable garden.

“Kentucky fried chicken pox on a biscuit.”

“What’s the biscuit?” Milton asked with trepidation.

“One of Dr. Kellogg’s ‘Off the Eaten Path Dusted Double Lentil Trail Mix Biscuits,’” the cook replied. “With all the mold, it also acts as its own penicillin, which would come in handy, considering where this biscuit’s been—”

“I’m fine, thanks,” Milton muttered with disgust.

“Suit yourself,” the cook said as he pulled down the blinds of the kitchen window.

Milton turned and ran straight into a pudgy, freckle-faced boy.

“Excuse m—
Virgil!”
Milton exclaimed with joy as he gripped the boy’s shoulders.

Milton’s best friend backed away suddenly.

“Hey, I like hugs as much as the next guy, maybe more so,” Virgil said as he regarded the beast of a boy in front of him, “but usually I reserve them for friends.”

Milton recalled he was draped in another creature—one that had been liberally smeared with makeup. He leaned into Virgil and opened his mouth as wide as he could, which was far wider than expected. Virgil gulped and backed away.

“Look, I know we all have big appetites here,” Virgil
said, stepping back with his palms facing out. “But let’s not do anything we’ll both regret….”

“It’s me,” Milton said as he pressed his face between the Pang’s gaping jaws.
“Milton.”

Virgil peered inside the creature’s mouth. A grin of recognition spread across his face, until it was suddenly clouded with alarm.

“We got to get you out of there!” Virgil yelped. “I’ll try to find some Ipecac or ex-lax—”

Milton put his hand across Virgil’s mouth. The chef peered through the kitchen blinds suspiciously.

“I’m in disguise,” Milton assured his friend. “The name is
Jonah.”

Milton tried to wink but wasn’t sure if his Pang face had the subtlety for sly gestures.

“I came back to rescue you,” he added.

“And you thought you’d get a snack first?” Virgil replied. “Not that I’d blame you or anything. That’s what I’d do. You know, to keep my strength up.”

Milton’s real face blushed, but his hungry Pang mask was unabashed.

“It’s just that, I wanted to … you know, fit in.”

“Well, no one eats here anymore,” Virgil said. “Chef Boyareyookrazee was just messing with you. I only came for more napkins. The
real
meal deal is outside. In the hall.”

A bell rang, like one of those old triangular dinner bells they used to use back in cowboy times.

“It’s time for gym,” Virgil said desperately. “If we’re late, they’ll force us to spend extra time on the DREADmill….”

“Gym?” Milton whined. Gym was his least favorite class even when alive. “But I’m starving!”

Virgil wiped a smear of sauce from his cheek. He eyed the cook behind Milton warily.

“I’ll set you up with something
dee
-licious after class,” he said with a grin, his lips flecked with saliva and his pupils dilated. “Promise. Let’s go!”

So Virgil and Milton tromped down the hallway, their footfalls exaggerated by the hollow, bouncing wood floor. They sounded like a thundering two-boy stampede.

I’m in
, Milton reflected as he manipulated his abundant, barely controllable body down the hall.
Now it’s just a matter of getting out
.

Milton watched their enormous reflections—stretched out, gruesome, and distorted—and felt both of his stomachs sink.

“As easy as smuggling two elephants out of a maximum-security circus,” Milton mumbled, discouraged, as he and Virgil pushed open the double-wide doors leading to the boys’ locker room.

12 • HEALTH CLUBBED

MILTON AND VIRGIL
wrenched themselves into their burlap leggings, like two enormous sausages attempting to slip on their own casings. The marriage of coarse burlap and plump thighs gave birth to a wailing nursery of welts.

“Can you help me with this?” Virgil asked, holding out his black rubber tube top.

Milton nervously cased out the empty locker room. It was pretty much an unspoken rule that one never,
ever
helped another boy with his gym clothes. It was a surefire way to guarantee that one’s school social calendar would be jam-packed with torment, derision, and—more than likely—wedgies. Milton sighed and grudgingly helped his friend pull on his skintight rubber tube top. Finally, Milton tugged and jerked the smelly piece of synthetic workout gear into place.

The bell rang. Gym class hadn’t even begun and Milton was already exhausted. He shambled toward the door. Though he was getting better at operating his Pang, it still performed with a slight lag behind Milton’s will, like an old arcade game with an unresponsive joystick. They passed a warped fun-house mirror strategically placed by the exit, with the obvious intention of getting in one last demoralizing dig before the portly boys underwent the full-body anguish of gym. But Virgil—his attitudinal glass perpetually at half full—took a look at himself and shrugged.

“It could be worse,” he murmured at the grotesque, contorted image staring back at him. Milton, however, was unrecognizable to himself. The surreal sight of Jonah was like watching someone else’s out-of-body experience. He tugged straight his tube top, his reflection doing the same a split second later. Milton was his own puppet—a grossly overweight marionette of meat that was slowly digesting its master. Milton sighed (with Jonah sighing shortly thereafter) as he and Virgil parted the curtain of hanging chains and hooks and stepped into the Gymnauseum.

Beyond the entryway of red-and-black-checkered foam mats was a huge two-story-high open warehouse space filled with rows of peculiar machines. The gray metal contraptions were splayed open, their twin doors like the petals of sinister brushed-steel flowers. Tucked
inside each one was an industrial-sized metal hamster wheel.