Blimpo: The Third Circle of Heck (39 page)

Bordeaux glanced back and forth between Lyon’s and Marseille’s scowling faces. Bordeaux’s smile faded like a clown’s face in the rain.

Virgil grinned.

“Thanks for that
… all that
. All
we
were going to do is check out these awesome new personal spa systems Dr. Kellogg set up for us to help us relax so we could better be taken advantage of.”

“Personal spas?!”
chirped Dijon.

“Yeah,” Virgil continued. “They’re supposed to be great for weight issues, split ends, and skin problems—you know, pimples and large pores—”

“Out of my way, Zitzilla,” Lyon said as she ran for the nearest DREADmill.

“Oh no, you don’t, Swiss Cheese Face,” Marseille countered as the two girls engaged in a walking catfight before plopping into the machine.

“Us too!” whined Strasbourg, Bordeaux, and Dijon as they wedged themselves into the DREADmill.

Virgil and Thaddeus stepped up to the machine.

“Enjoy!” Virgil said as the two boys sealed the grumbling Narcissisters inside.

Hugo and Gene trotted toward them, looking—while still grossly overweight—apple-cheeked and exhilarated.

“I think we’re ready for the main event,” Hugo panted as he skidded to a stop.

Virgil nodded.
This is it
, he reflected.
Where the BOWEL movement brings it or gets off the pot
.

Madame Pompadour gazed wearily out the window of Blimpo’s floating throne room. She ached to leave this buoyant bag of fast-food führers, assemble her Narcissisters, and take the next stagecoach out of Blimpo. It had been a long night of bickering, posturing, and nervous binge eating that at times ventured near cannibalism. But despite her fatigue, Madame Pompadour’s keen eyes made out the group of boisterous boys
assembled below, engulfed in the shadow of the sagging blimp kingdom.

“Your student body is revolting,” she said.

“You’re telling
me,”
Lady Lactose sneered as she applied another layer of milk-white foundation to her face, using the Burgermeister’s greasy forehead as a mirror.

“No,” Madame Pompadour clarified.
“The boys
—they’re staging a revolt. They’ve turned off the power and are gathering by the tethers.”

The throne room shuddered.

“And it seems that the loss of power has affected the stabilizers.”

The Burgermeister shifted anxiously on his sesame-seed bun of a throne.

“Zere iz nutting zey can do to us … right?”

“There, there,” Lady Lactose replied, patting the vanilla hair scooped high atop her head. “Principal Bubb will be back shortly, I’m sure, with our guards—and more. In the meantime, try my latest creation. It will cheer you up.”

She handed the Burgermeister a frosted dish. He tilted the luridly pink contents back into his mouth.

“Mmm,” he said as he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Vat’s in it?”

“Oh, just a few things I threw together.” Lady Lactose grinned. “Amyl butyrate, benzyl acetate, dipropyl
ketone, ethyl methylphenylglycidate, isobutyl anthranilate, and methyl benzoate.”

“Eets delicious,” the Burgermeister said while casting aside the dish into a pile of wrappers by his throne. “Vat do you call it?”

“Strawberry,” she replied.

A speaker box shaped like a grinning clown squawked by the arched entryway of the throne room.

“Hiya, m’lard, m’lady, and m’eow!” the squeaky teenage voice crackled. “How are you today?”

The Burgermeister sizzled with anger.

“Vat eez eet?!”
he shouted.

“That’s great!” the squeaky voice chirped. “Just wanted you good folks to know that I’ve examined the students’ attack and there
is
a danger. Should we evacuate?”

“Evacuate?” Madame Pompadour replied haughtily. “In our moment of triumph? I think you overestimate their chances!”

“Wonderful! Announcing a message from the angry mob down in Blimpo. Thank you and have a nice day.”

The throne room was as still as the surface of a swimming pool before a belly flop.

“Hello?” Virgil’s voice crackled through the speaker’s leering metal-grill mouth. “Vice principals? This is Virgil Farrow, head of the BOWEL movement.”

The throne room erupted with riotous laughter.
Virgil sighed through the clown box, where it translated into a sad wheeze of static.

“You may laugh at our cause, but I assure you that no one down here—as big as we all are—is the least bit jolly. Now, I contacted you to read our list of demands—”

“Demands?” shouted Lady Lactose, her breath like a blast of sour cream. “We will not entertain the ridiculous whims of a herd of tubby troublemakers!”

“Maybe vee zhould leesten to zer demands,” the Burgermeister muttered. “Perhaps all zhee vant eez a leetle more pudding….”

Lady Lactose’s complexion became as pink as a glass of Strawberry Quik.

“Show some guts!” she snapped as she swatted the Burgermeister hard in the stomach. She stormed over to the grinning speaker box.

“Let them eat rice cakes!” Lady Lactose shrieked as she punched the throne room speaker in its fiberglass nose.

“HaVVVVe a-a-a n-NICE-ICE-ICE d-d-DAYYYY,” the speaker squawked before dying a sputtering death.

Lady Lactose clapped her hands together with satisfaction. “That should send a message to those roly-poly rebels!”

The throne room tilted suddenly. Madame Pompadour, her paws gripping the sides of the polished brass porthole, peered out below.

“It did,” she said as she stared down at the boys. “And now they’re sending one of their own.”

The vice principals joined Madame Pompadour by the window. They gazed below as Virgil and the boys did unspeakably violent things to the clown suggestion box below. Chests heaving, the boys stomped toward the five tethers that moored the floating castle to Blimpo. A gloved hand tapped the Burgermeister on the shoulder.

“Vhat?” he asked, pivoting to see the French Fried Fool behind him. He pointed to his eye.

“I,”
ventured Madame Pompadour. “That was easy.”

The French Fried Fool smiled and nodded, before pretending he was dead and writing something in the air.

“Signed execution?” Lady Lactose guessed hopefully.

The French Fried Fool frowned, then repeated his gestures again only with more exaggeration.

“A
vill?” the Burgermeister speculated.

“A vill?”
Madame Pompadour repeated.

“No, a
vill
. As in
last vill and testament.”

The French Fried Fool clapped, then pretended he was a teapot, short and stout, pouring tea, then pointing to the rounded arm at his side with the arm formerly known as “spout.”

“Handle!” shouted Madame Pompadour.
“I will handle …”

The French Fried Fool nodded, holding his thumb and forefinger an inch apart.

“Small word,” Lady Lactose said.
“The?”

The French Fried Fool clapped. At that moment, his five fellow mimes entered the throne room, dressed as he was, in black-and-white striped shirts, berets, and gloves, with white greasepaint applied across their angular faces. The French Fried Fool grinned and pointed out the window. The five mimes crawled out the window and onto the ledge.

“I will handle the situation?”
Madame Pompadour surmised. “Or
I will handle the five suicidal mimes
. I’m not sure which.”

“Either way, we win,” Lady Lactose interjected with a smirk. “Fine, Fool. Send down the clowns.”

The five mimes shimmied down the five tethers, which swayed tremulously as they restrained the sagging, inflatable castle that hovered listlessly above Blimpo. The boys eyed the nimble jesters warily as they hopped off the thin cables and glared back at the boys, arms akimbo. The chalky white makeup spread across their mute faces was like war paint, making them both unnerving and defiant. The French Fried Fool leaned out the window above, shoved two gloved fingers in his mouth, and let loose a piercing pretend whistle.

The mimes sprung to attention, then, just as urgently, curled up into tiny balls on the ground.

The boys looked at one another, baffled.

“What do you think they’re up to?” Thaddeus asked.

“It’s like they’re popcorn shrimp,” Gene said, licking his lips.

Virgil glared suspiciously at the five balled-up performance artists. He spied a small rock by his foot. He stooped down, scooped it up, and then lobbed it at the closest mime.

The spry man, once hit, burst to his feet, waving his arms in the air like flames before lying down on the ground, motionless.

“Just what I thought,” Virgil mumbled. “A
mime
field.”

He dusted his hands on his pants and fixed his gaze on the blimp kingdom above. Since the boys had cut its power, the castle was drooping, unstable, and closer to the ground. Virgil smirked. The BOWEL movement wasn’t going to last forever, but Virgil was determined to make it end with a bang, leaving its mark far and wide.

“C’mon, boys,” Virgil said as he marched toward the mime field surrounding the tethers. “We have nothing to fear but the silent mimicking of fear itself.”

The boys approached the tethers, setting off mimes right and left. Each boy gripped a cable and proceeded to yank in time.

“We’re mad as Heck,” they chanted in unison before giving a great tug. “And we’re not going to take it anymore!”

Lady Lactose turned and shot the French Fried Fool a searing scowl. He countered with a breezy, Gallic shrug before backing away like a threatened crawfish. The throne room lurched violently from the relentless tugs of the boys below.

Lady Lactose stalked across the room to a metal box mounted on the wall.

“I propose that we cut our losses and take our chances in the Waistlands. Madame Pompadour, you can run
Statusphere
remotely until the rabble has been unroused.”

Madame Pompadour shrugged her slinky shoulders.

“Fashion knows no zip code,” she replied. “And when the cat’s away, the kids shall
pay.”

Lady Lactose popped open the door on the metal box, revealing a bright red lever.

“That’s the spirit,” she said as she slammed down the lever. The tethers uncoupled from the floating kingdom with five explosive pops.

“We’re mad as Heck and—” the boys chanted before tumbling backward to the ground.

“Watch out!” Virgil yelled as the cables fell to the ground like writhing tentacles. The boys, sweaty from
exertion, stared up at the inflated castle as it gently drifted toward the Waistlands.

“Nuh-uh,” Virgil grunted between gritted teeth.
“No way.”

Virgil sprinted across the mooring grounds until he was directly beneath the jostling, airborne castle. He took in a deep breath, his chest puffing out like a bullfrog about ready to croak like it had never croaked before. As Mr. Presley had taught him, Virgil visualized the note he was about to sing lifting from his head. Only this time, he pictured it an octave higher. Virgil warmed up with a low C until he could feel its soothing rumble relaxing his vocal cords. He scrunched his eyes closed and visualized the note ascending the ladder leading toward an enormous diving board. It climbed, faster and faster, until Virgil was warbling a clear, perfect high C. The pitch rattled the hull of the floating castle until it caused a sympathetic vibration.

The vice principals and Madame Pompadour clapped their hands over their ears.

“What is that awful noise?” Madame Pompadour whined.

Lady Lactose craned her delicate neck out the window, peering down at Virgil.

“Who knows?
Who cares?
As they say, it ain’t over until the fat—”

The walls of the throne room quaked with fury as
Virgil’s pure, devastating wave of acoustic energy streamed out of his powerful throat.

“—
boy? …
sings.”

Down below, the bedraggled Nyah Nyah Narcissisters stumbled out of the Gymnauseum and into the open commons beneath the wobbling, floating castle.

“Worst … spa … day …
ever,”
moaned Strasbourg as she tried vainly to pat down her hair, which was now as spiky as a porcupine with streaked highlights.

“You ditz, that wasn’t a spa,” grumbled Marseille as she straightened her cheerlessleader uniform. “It was some awful machine that feeds off fear.”

Dijon hopped up and down on one leg, lacing her silver sneaker.

“Which one of us is afraid of running on a treadmill?” she asked.

Bordeaux, her face pale and fear-stricken, trembled. “M-me,” she quavered. “When I was little, my mom used to stick me on one of those before my Li’l Miss Hottie Tot pageants to help get rid of the baby fat.”

“Well, lucky for us,” Marseille said. “It must have created some freaky feedback loop that short-circuited the machine.”

“Yeah,” Bordeaux whispered. “L-lucky us.”

Meanwhile, Virgil puffed out his chest and pictured the note jumping up and down on the diving board until it leaped off. Yet, instead of plummeting downward, the note soared higher.

“What’s he doing?” Lyon asked as she squinted at Virgil through tear-smudged mascara.

Bordeaux smiled weakly.

“Singing,” she murmured, gazing at Virgil with faraway eyes. “Like a big, sweet bird.”

The canvas walls of the blimp kingdom fluttered wildly. Splits formed along its coarse fabric. Gas hissed like a gaggle of angry geese.

“Oh, the humanity,”
Thaddeus muttered as the castle’s frame wrenched apart, lurching savagely from side to side. Then, with a great explosive gasp, the kingdom expelled its dying breath and plunged to the ground in a twisted, crumpled heap.

Lady Lactose spilled out of the debris with the Burgermeister shambling close behind.

“Off with his bun!” Hugo yelled as he and Gene charged toward the royal couple.

Lady Lactose fumed, accustomed to getting her milky way. She tried to make a break for it, running toward the Gymnauseum, but Gene grabbed her by the arm.

“Got milk?” Hugo asked as he tied the Burgermeister’s meat hooks behind his back with a frayed strand of shredded tether. Gene nodded.

The French Fried Fool sprang as if to flee, but he could only run in place, suddenly hampered by an imaginary wind.