Heck: Where the Bad Kids Go (9 page)

17 · CAGEY CRITTER

LUCKY LICKED HIMSELF
furiously while Bea “Elsa” Bubb squatted beside his cage, staring at him with revulsion.

“Disgusting creature,” she grumbled. “As if something as repulsive as
you
could ever be cleansed.”

She rose slowly, her dimpled knees popping in protest. “Well, the Galactic Order Department is always giving me grief about not serving fresh lunches,” she snickered. “How would you like to join us for lunch, you fuzzy little entrée, you?”

Lucky stopped lapping to give Principal Bubb a long, heartfelt hiss.

“Oh, the feeling is more than mutual,” she replied as she grabbed her lop-eared, dwarf-rabbit purse and headed out of her office. “We'll continue our little chat after my teachers' meeting.”

The lizard lady chortled wickedly before slamming, bolting, latching, and chaining the door behind her.

The incarcerated ferret gazed angrily at the door before continuing his personal hygiene regimen. He was determined to have the last lap.

         

Milton stared at his feet as he shuffled along the excessively lemony hallway, dreading his date with Damian. A familiar musk, however, poked through the chemical stench.

Milton looked up and saw a fuzzy, lumbering white blur billowing toward him.

“Lucky!” Milton squealed.

The ferret looked up suddenly, then ran into the wall at full speed. Milton rushed toward him and scooped the dazed creature into his arms.

“Lucky, you made it! Did you get my contract…?”

Milton stared into his eyes. “Are you okay, little guy? Your eyes are kind of bloodshot…Hey, and where are your dice?”

The ferret blinked its wild, confused eyes and wriggled in what seemed like severe discomfort.

Milton wiped away goop from the animal's eyes and sighed deeply.

“It's okay, little guy,” Milton whispered sadly. “It was a tall order, snatching a contract for a boy's immortal soul. I'm just glad you're all right.”

Milton scratched the animal behind the ears—or tried to, anyway—before it reared back and hissed. Milton gazed upon him with a look of parental worry.

“C'mon,” he said, “let's get you something to eat. You don't seem like yourself.”

As Bea “Elsa” Bubb clacked down a hall on her way to the teachers' lounge, her fuzzy bunny purse (with floppy ears and all) began to vibrate. She stopped, looked over her shoulder suspiciously, then fished her surveillance pod out of her bag.

She held the box in her scaly palm. Its tiny screen blinked red, casting her face in a lurid, scarlet hue. She jabbed the on button with her thumb, and a shower of static and snow danced on the screen.

“Hmmm,” she mumbled. “Some kind of interference. As if he were in the presence of something, something…” Principal Bubb shuddered.
“Good.”

Through the geometric clouds of digital static emerged a gawky, concerned face dominated by a pair of broken glasses.

“I should have guessed,” murmured Principal Bubb. “Milton Fauster, the rye seed in my dentures.”

The screen went dark as the fake ferret was thrust, struggling, into the dim safety of Milton's backpack.

She smiled. “It's always good to have a mole, even when that mole is a demon dog in ferret's clothing.”

18 · FLEE THIS CIRCUS

MILTON STRAIGHTENED HIS
handwritten flyer, then pinned it to the bulletin board in the cafeterium.

MILTON'S PAIR OF DICE: LOST

“There,” he whispered to the ferret tucked under his arm. “We'll find your collar. I'm sure that's why you're acting so weird.”

He rubbed the panting animal's back, arriving at a cluster of swelling blisters by its tail. Milton frowned. “Why don't you take a nap in the knapsack while I get you some food? You don't look so hot.”

The ferret flinched and squirmed as Milton stuffed him in the bag.

The cafeterium was full of nervous boys in search of something edible that, ideally, wouldn't maim them. Aside from the baited Automat machines, the only other unusual thing in the cafeterium was a purple dinosaur with an idiotic grin humming inane songs. The needy creature lunged toward unwilling boys with the intent of hugging them.

On the old, broken-down television in the corner was the image of a freshly painted bench.

“As paint is exposed to air,” droned the announcer, “it undergoes a painfully slow drying process. Here it is in real time…”

Several boys from Milton's chemistry class sat at a rusty metal table just beneath the TV. On top of it sat an unappetizing platter of overcooked broccoli and mushy cauliflower.

Milton walked over. Just before he arrived, the two beefy carrot-topped twins from class sidled up on either side of Milton's lab partner, Virgil, like two menacing bookends.

“Eat up, piggy,” taunted the larger bully as he reached across the table for a fistful of tofu and shoved it into Virgil's face.

“Yeah,” snorted the shorter redheaded thug.
“Sooie! Sooie!”

Hunger and fatigue had stripped Milton of his usual caution.

“Hey, guys, leave him alone,” Milton said, hovering just behind Virgil, who was slumped over his plate. “Isn't this place bad enough without us turning against each other?”

One of the twins rose and answered Milton's question with an abrupt, two-handed shove. “Shut your pie hole, four eyes!”

Virgil muttered to himself. “Mmmm.
Pie.
”

“Better four eyes than no brain!” Milton countered defiantly, though his trembling lip gave him away.

The red-haired hooligan pulled back his fist like a cobra coiling to strike. “You scrawny little…”

But before the bully's fist could make a connection with Milton's face, an even larger hand wrapped around it in mid-punch.

“Now, now, there will be none of that,” said the hand's owner, Damian, in his new, smooth-as-snakeskin manner.

The two apprentice bullies seemed to evaporate in Damian's presence, as if they had suddenly been demoted to the lesser of two evils.

Milton looked up into Damian's dark, inscrutable eyes suspiciously.

“Uh…thanks, I guess.”

Damian grinned. His gold tooth glinted for an instant, like a spark in a dynamite factory.

“Don't thank me, old friend,” he said with a queasy warmth. “I'm a pain artist, and like most artists, I prefer to work with a blank canvas. And I have a whole palette of painful new techniques I can't wait to experiment with during our little playdate later.”

Milton's spine froze like a poisoned Popsicle.

Damian wrapped his arms around his apprentice bullies, and looked down upon them with a condescending affection.

“All right, all right…I guess just
one
little bruise won't spoil my next masterwork. But just one punch…”

Damian leaned toward Milton and removed his glasses.

“…and keep it clean.”

One of the redheaded tormentors snickered and, without hesitation, gave Milton a quick jab to the eye.

“Oww!” he yelped, clutching his burning eye.

Damian delicately put Milton's glasses back on, then grabbed the twin thugs by the scruffs of their thick necks and threw them toward the purple dinosaur.

“Noooooooooooo!” they cried in unison as the overgrown lizard scooped up the twins into his smothering Jurassic arms.

“I love you, you love me. Darned for all eternity…”

The happy creature suffocated the two struggling delinquents with kisses and dragged them away.

Damian straightened his thin black tie.

“I'll see beating you later…I mean,
be seeing
you later.”

Damian strutted away, pushing several boys aside for no reason.

Virgil wiped his brow. “Thanks, man.”

“Don't mention it,” Milton mumbled painfully. “Really, don't. At least not until the swelling goes down.”

He walked over to the Automat machines and searched for a particular slot. Milton stooped down, slid open the little glass door, and pulled out a sickening yet strangely comforting slab of liver. Beneath the glistening, soft pink gland, was a note. Milton looked around cautiously and snatched it up.

Milton,

As you can tell by the barely legible handwriting, it's me, your sister. I had a hunch you'd be needing another piece of liver. It's the girl's lunch, dinner, whatever period and I needed to let you know something: I'm going to escape. Really soon. I'm not sure how exactly, but you'll know when I try. Everyone will know probably. I know I haven't been the best sister, but, deep down, I think you're really not all that bad, for a little brother, anyway. If you need to get a hold of me before I bolt, let us correspond via liver since no one in their right mind would eat the stuff.

Later,
M

Milton stood motionless for a moment before thrusting the note deep into his lederhosen. He walked back to Virgil in a daze, grappling with new thoughts and emotions. Marlo was planning another escape. If she was successful, he would be left here alone. If not, what would happen to her? Most disturbing of all, though, was the glimmer of fondness that peeked out of the note. This meant that she was scared, and she was never scared, which was scary, especially to someone who always was. Scared, that is.

Virgil hovered closer.
He must be a close talker,
Milton thought. Milton's personal space, however, was more like a city block.

Then, as if he were about to burst from the pressure of a grand, wonderful, wriggling secret, Virgil said in a whisper, “I'm breaking out.”

Milton removed his liver eye patch, put his glasses back on, and scrutinized Virgil's face. He had a dark mass of freckles between his upturned nose and gentle eyes. “Maybe it's your diet.”

Virgil shook his head. “No, out of
here.
Tonight.”

Milton leaned close to Virgil. “Really? How?”

Virgil patted the pocket of his bulging lederhosen. “I got a map. We'd be home by morning. So,” he continued with an infectious twinkle in his eyes, “you with me?”

This was an excellent example of synchronicity, Milton mused: a coincidence that really
isn't.
But Milton had no idea how or when Marlo was planning to break out.

“Wait a second,” said Milton, regaining his usual sense of caution. “How did you get a map?”

“I saw a guard get chewed out by his supervisor this morning for smiling, so I limped by, flinching and crying, begging the guard not to beat me again, because I can't help how loud I breathe. The guard got a promotion on the spot because I was so pathetic. Then, later, when I got out of the nurse's office because of my hand, the guard snuck up to me and dropped a rolled-up piece of paper at my feet. By the time I picked it up, he was gone.”

“And you trust a demon guard,” Milton said skeptically.

“I'm a trusting person,” Virgil replied. “They can't take
that
away from me.”

“I don't know,” Milton mumbled. “It just seems too easy.”

Milton watched the singing purple dinosaur corral a herd of unsuspecting boys for a group hug. Their screams made him tremble.

He sighed.
What did escape even mean?
Did he think it could be as simple as returning to his old life, already in progress, like waking up from a bad dream? Or would he be a ghost doomed to haunt some creepy mansion on the edge of town forever and ever, with only stray cats and kooks to keep him company?

Milton's thoughts were dragged back to his impending detention with Damian.

Not only had Damian somehow become more calculated and
fluent
with his cruelty, he had been given a blank check by the Powers That Be Evil to become as sadistic as he possibly could, for as long as he possibly wanted. And he was about to cash that check all over Milton.
Who knows?
Milton thought. Maybe Virgil's map would lead them out of this nightmare.

“Well, when you've lost your life, what else do you have to lose?” Milton said. Whatever escape meant, he decided, it couldn't possibly be worse than eternal darnation with Damian.

He sighed, wiped away a sooty smudge from his broken glasses, and grinned. “Let's get the
heck
out of here!”