Blimpo: The Third Circle of Heck (27 page)

Marlo cocked her eyebrow at the odd tank.

“What’s that?” she asked as a demon opened the hatch on top of the capsule.

“It’s a sensory-deprivation tank,” Madame Pompadour explained. “It’s a surefire way of forgetting all your troubles … every last one. But why don’t you try it out for yourself?”

Marlo scrutinized the creamy white water.

“That isn’t milk, is it?” she asked. “I’m totally allergic.”

“It’s …
pistachio
nut milk,” Madame Pompadour shot back. “Much more therapeutic.”

Marlo shrugged as the demon slipped off her robe.

“It must take tiny hands to milk a pistachio,” she said as she eyed the demon’s larger-than-normal mitts. “Obviously you don’t milk them here.”

“Very droll, Miss Fauster,” Madame Pompadour said. “Now, we mustn’t dawdle. We’ve got a big day of doing very little ahead of us.”

Marlo slid into the tank.

“Ooh, it’s like sinking into a hot vanilla milk shake. So how come you’re not soaking in this stuff?”

Madame Pompadour shot her demonic assistants a look, quick and quiet, as if shot with a silencer.

“Side effects.”

“Side effects?!” Marlo yelped as she bolted upright in the tank.

“Yes, such as utter tranquility. As the director of Heck’s premiere Infernship program, I can only afford to be
so
relaxed.”

“Oh,” Marlo muttered as she succumbed to the Milk of Amnesia’s velvet tug.

Another demon, cradling a small jar of blue goo, began to slather the mixture onto Marlo’s face as she settled into the tub.

“What’s this?” she mumbled.

Madame Pompadour folded her arms smugly, a wry smile forming on her thin pink lips.

“My own, personal mixture,” she said.
“A
moisturizing, deep-penetrating mask, a blend of chloroform, ether, bergamot, and mud dredged from the bottom of the Bermuda Triangle.”

Marlo slid into the milky bath. Her expression was as blank as a new chalkboard.

“I can feel it … working … already,” Marlo mumbled, every thought, every memory slowly loosening its grip on her mind. “It’s like taking a vacation … from myself. It’s … nice.”

Madame Pompadour nodded to the demon, who secured the tank’s hatch with three swift, powerful turns of its wheel.

“Oh, forget about it, Miss Fauster,” Madame Pompadour murmured as she played with the newest charm dangling from her wrist, one marked
MARLO
.

“Forget …
everything.”

26 • RUNN
i
NG OUT
OF ESTEEM

THE TEACHER LAY
slumped across his desk. He looked like a snoring top hat. The boys lumbered to their seats and forced their considerable bulk into the undersized chairs. The maddening squeak of massive, corduroyed thighs struggling into torturous metal and wood awoke the teacher.

The man scowled down his bulbous red nose at Milton, who fidgeted inside his tightening Pang skin.

“My goodness, boy,” the teacher said with a snide drawl, “you look like you’ve been beaten with a whole forest of ugly sticks.”

The boys (except for the ever-loyal Virgil) laughed. The teacher clapped his ears.

“Apart from the yap of a new puppy on Christmas
morning, nothing offends my delicate ears more than the cackling of children!”

The teacher pushed himself away from his desk with a grunt and wobbled over to the chalkboard. VaniTV screens crowded with perfect, tan boys and girls playing volleyball on a beach were bolted to the wall on either side of the chalkboard. The teacher scowled at the screens. Scowling back at him was a hideous, warped parody of himself—lumpy, wrinkled, and swollen, like a piñata of the Elephant Man that had been bludgeoned beyond recognition.

“Egads! If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, someone must have stolen my eyes,” he grumbled as he wrote on the chalkboard: “W. C. Fields, Self-Esteem.”

Wheezing, the teetering grouch returned to his chair.

“It’s my unfortunate job to teach you bloated, useless wind-breakers about self-esteem,” Mr. Fields droned. “But let me tell you this: as much as I can’t stand the sight of you, I will treat each one of you the same way that I would treat anybody else. And that’s
terribly.”

Milton squished inside his Pang suit to get comfortable. But it was no use: in the Pang, the most he could hope for was something just outside of tolerable.

“Stop fidgeting …
Jonah Grumby,”
Mr. Fields scolded while consulting his seating chart. “You’re making me queasy. It’s like watching a Jell-O mold that wants to eat
you.”

Gene raised his hand enthusiastically, causing the back of his neck to jiggle like a pack of excited hot dogs.

“Are you married to Mrs. Fields, the cookie lady?” he asked hopefully.

The teacher massaged his tired, splotched-red face between his hands. “No, but I worked with Amos and Andy on the vaudeville circuit, before Amos became famous.”

Thaddeus, wedged tightly in his seat near the front of the classroom, chose that moment to break wind. The boys giggled, some releasing their own wind in response.

“Unfortunately, that’s the most intelligent thing I’ve heard all day,” Mr. Fields replied dryly. “Anyway, I like to start off each class with a story and a smile. A story because I love the sound of my own voice and a smile to get it over with.”

Mr. Fields gave what he thought was a smile. It wasn’t. It was more like a grimace on its day off. The teacher folded his pink, piggish hands together.

“Once upon a time, there were two ponds,” Mr. Fields began. “One was filled with runoff from a toxic-waste dump, and the other sparkled with fresh water from a clear stream. One day, one of the filthy, disgusting, contaminated fish poked his head out of the muck and saw a flawless, beautiful fish stick her sleek head out of the clean pond. He thought about her for days. Finally he decided to jump into the other pond and
profess his love for the pure, perfect fish. And one day, he did just that. And, surprisingly enough, the beautiful fish was so touched by the revolting fish with the big red nose that she agreed to marry him. And they did. Got married. And all the while, the toxic fish tried to live in the sparkling, pure water, but he had mutated so much in his poisoned pond of filth that the clear water only made him sicker. So he lay down on the bottom, where the sediment settled, which made him feel a little better, but not much, and he spent most of his days complaining. Slowly, over time, the beautiful fish’s love and respect for the dirty, no-good fish turned to loathing and disgust. And ever since, I can’t stand water because of the things fish do in it.”

Mr. Fields took off his top hat and wiped his forehead with a filthy handkerchief.

“The end,” he grumbled.

Milton looked around the class and observed the same baffled expression that he himself was trying to express through his lumpy Pang skin.

“And the moral?” Milton asked.

Mr. Fields bolted up. Then, after swaying unsteadily for a bit, he succumbed to gravity and sat back down in his chair.

“The moral is that there
isn’t any
moral!” the teacher barked indignantly. “Why should stories have nice, tidy endings when life doesn’t?”

Mr. Fields’s nose was so red that had there been any
cars in the classroom, they would have waited for it to change to green.

“If I was forced to dredge up some sorry excuse for a moral from my—
that
—sobering tale,” he said, grinding out each word slowly with his nasal voice, “then it would be that, in this and all worlds, there are the haves and the have-nots.”

He scanned the overweight boys with his dull, yellow eyes.

“Or, in your cases, the haves and have-
way
-too-muches. Look at those boys and girls on the screens….”

The class watched the beach volleyball game on VaniTV. The players effortlessly leaped, swooped, and bounded like Greek gods and goddesses on spring break.

“It’s like they’re an entirely different species. There’s simply no comparison. The fickle finger of Fate endowed them with perfection, popularity, and health. The only thing healthy about
you-all
is your appetites.”

Milton heard Virgil sniffing back a tear next to him. Indignation welled up inside Milton.

“You will never be them … not as liked, not as respected, not as happy,” Mr. Fields taunted.
“Not even close.”

Milton stood up, shaking.

“Doesn’t what’s inside account for anything?!”
he spat. “Isn’t that what this place is all about—the possibility of
becoming better people? One last chance before we turn eighteen?”

Mr. Fields sneered.

“Sit down, boy. You’re embarrassing yourself.”

“No, I won’t!” Milton replied. “Every boy here has the chance to make himself perfect inside … at least better. To make smarter, healthier choices and live a happier afterlife. We all have wings inside of us. It’s just a matter of learning how to use them.”

Mr. Fields snorted.

“The only wings inside of you, boy, are
buffalo
wings. Lots of ’em, by the looks of it.”

Milton seethed inside his Pang suit. “You don’t know who I am. Who I am
really.”

“Oh, I think I know exactly who you are, Mr. Grumby …
inside,”
Mr. Fields hissed, grabbing a yardstick off the blotter on his desk.

“You do, do you?” Milton fumed. “You have
no
idea. In fact—”

Virgil grabbed Milton’s leg.

“Don’t blow your cool …
and
your cover,
Jonah,”
Virgil whispered.

Milton sighed and slowly settled back into his unsteady chair.

Mr. Fields snickered as he slapped the yardstick in his palm. “A smart, healthy choice, Mr. Grumby,” he said.

Mr. Fields stooped over, grumbling, and pulled out
a heap of Bibles from the lower drawer of his desk. He laid them in a tall, perilous stack before glancing down at his seating chart.

“Um … you …
Mr. Farrow.”

“Yes, Mr. Fields,” Virgil replied, straightening in his seat, his kind eyes sparkling with attention.

The teacher stared at Virgil, affronted by his eagerness.

“Tone it down a notch, son,” Mr. Fields replied. “You’re not going to win any brownie points here.”

A wave of stomach rumblings shook the classroom.

“Mmmm …
brownies,”
Gene muttered with groggy yearning, as if slowly waking from a wonderful dream.

“Mr. Farrow, come up here and pass out these Bibles,” the teacher said wearily.

Virgil uprooted his husky-sized frame out of his petite-sized desk and lumbered to the teacher’s desk. As Virgil passed the books out to the seven boys, Mr. Fields put his shabby shoes up on the desk and leaned back in his chair.

“Now scooch your desks together with a partner.”

The boys heaved and grunted into pairs. Milton flipped through the dog-eared Bible and raised his hand.

“Yes, Buffalo Wings?”

“What are we supposed to be doing?” Milton asked. “How is anything in this class supposed to build self-esteem?”

Mr. Fields held up a Bible.

“First of all, you great, galumphing eyesore, no one ever said this class was intended to
build
self-esteem. It’s just
about
self-esteem. And how there isn’t any point in
having
any if you have no reason to
have
it. Otherwise it’s just a lot of hot air in a lead balloon. But that isn’t to say you big-boned buffoons can’t be of some use to me. I want you all, as I have been attempting to do for so many years here, to scour this good book you hold in your hands and search for loopholes.”

Milton gulped. Looking for loopholes in his contract had once been his overriding obsession. He had recently lost sight of it, what with dying again, roaming the after realms with dispossessed phantoms, and rescuing his best friend and all.

“After all, a thing worth having is worth cheating for,” Mr. Fields continued as he tipped his top hat over his eyes. “And just think how good you’ll feel about yourselves if you help me out of this dreary dimple in a baboon’s bottom. So, young men, get cracking while I get napping.”

Milton and Virgil sidled close together and studied the Book of Books.

“Hmmm,” murmured Virgil. “Here’s something: ‘Do not join those who gorge themselves, for they shall become poor, and drowsiness clothes them in rags.’”

“Yeah,” Milton replied, his mind churning as it always did when confronted by a good puzzle. “But
aren’t the poor blessed or something? Guaranteed a place in the kingdom of God?”

“I think so.”

“Wait, here’s something else,” said Milton. “‘The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, Behold a man gluttonous.’ It sounds like even Jesus was accused of having, you know … a big appetite.”

“I’m Jewish, so that ‘Son of Man’ stuff is not really my specialty,” said Virgil with a shrug of his shoulders. “Here’s another one: ‘Behold joy and gladness … let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we shall die.’”

“A little grim, but encouraging. This one is a bit nicer: ‘Take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry.’”

“Amen,” Virgil murmured.