Fibble: The Fourth Circle of Heck (8 page)

“This is ARGH—Ahoy Rogues, Guerillas, and Hearties!—your pirate radio station!” a gruff, salty voice thundered through the speakers. “I’m yer marnin’ DJ, Calico Jack, broadcasting live—or as live as could be expected, considerin’—from the corner of None of Yer Beeswax and Wouldn’t You Like to Know?!”

The dead presidents clapped their ears.

“What is that infernal racket?” Mr. Fillmore spat.

Pirates
? Marlo thought as the students around her sat up straight, roused awake by the salty spray of chaos.
Taking over a classroom through a PA system
?

“In our roving ramshackle studio,” Calico Jack continued, “we’ve got the one and only Truthador here to play for us one of his puzzling yet catchy-as-a-wet-hacking-cough-below-deck musical yarns. So, without any more of me bilge,” Calico Jack said, punctuating the word “bilge” with the prerecorded sound of a toilet flushing, “here be the Truthador!”

“He’s walked infinite miles down a higher-than highway. This slick creature of wiles … will never see things my way,”
the Truthador sang in a grating yet oddly compelling wheeze, like a rusty old harmonica against a steady
strum of harp.
“Now he’s a-itchin’ to sell us all out, and max out our species’ charge card. But it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard … truth’s a-gonna fall.”

The boys began scratching themselves beneath their lice-infested shirts.

Despite the itching, there was something about the Truthador that Marlo sort of liked. Even though the song reminded her of the music her dad used to listen to in his den when he felt sad or old or sad that he was old, there was something about it that struck a chord with her. It felt
real
. The music also made Milton’s pendant warm and cool at the same time, a strange sensation of confidence that spread out throughout her body—or Milton’s body if you wanted to get technical.

“Though his lies can blind and twist tongues till they’re broken, I’m here to tell mankind, from down here to Hoboken,”
the Truthador sang.
“That he won’t kick us out, to some lame-o space junkyard. ’Cuz it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard … truth’s a-gonna fall.”

The class bell tolled and the boys flew out of their chairs. Marlo hung back, pretending she was having trouble with her weird shoe—pinched sneakers with heels so that they were always on their toes.

“So, how come you’re in Fibble?” she asked Zane. “I mean, last time I saw you, you were in Rapacia.”

Zane looked at Marlo quizzically.

“Rapacia?” he asked, puzzled. “I don’t remember you in Rapacia.”

Marlo blushed.
Of course he doesn’t remember me
, she thought.
I was me then; now I’m not
.

“Right. I meant Mallvana. Marlo was in Rapacia. We’re so close that sometimes it’s hard to figure out where I end and she begins!”

Zane shot Marlo a peculiar sideways glance, like how a psychiatrist views a patient right before deciding to up their dosage.

“Okay … sure … um, anyway, I was all twitchy back there with wanting to take things—”

Marlo’s stomach felt like a halfway house for recovering squirrels.

“Yeah,” she replied. “I know what you … I mean,
Marlo
would tell me how that felt. That weird, allover itchiness that begins deep in the stomach then branches out through your arms and fingers, that itch that only snatching something can scratch.”

Zane stared at Marlo, startled, as they headed toward the door.

“Something like that,” he said. “
Spot on
, actually.”

Mr. Pierce grabbed Zane’s hand at the doorway.

“I hope I can count on your vote,” he said, pumping Zane’s and Marlo’s hands.

Zane and Marlo walked down the hallway of ramshackle, crumbling plaster columns and flickering projections of ornate lamps and wall sconces, all painted—Marlo realized—as if with clown makeup.

“So you were talking about how you got here,” Marlo continued. “To Fibble.”

“Right,” Zane said. “Anyway, I started, um,
collecting
chalk.
Loads
of it. After a while, it was getting hard to hide it and—one day—I got caught white-handed. But I still wouldn’t bobby to it, no matter how darning the evidence was. For some reason I just couldn’t admit that I was a chalk stealer. Frightful embarrassing! Finally, after talking with headmistress O’Malley—”

“She’s awesome … I hear.”

“Yeah, all that great, flowing red hair,” Zane said with a faraway smile.

Marlo prickled with jealousy.

“
Anyway
, go on.”

“Right, so we both agreed that my urge to porky, that is
lie
, about stealing was a little stronger than my urge to nick, that is
steal
—at least in this case—so Grace, um … headmistress O’Malley, transferred me here.”

“Well, it’s nice to have you—I mean,
a friend
—here,” Marlo said, gazing into Zane’s soft brown eyes that stared back like twin chocolate pudding cups. And even though her confession had caused an outbreak of squirming lice bites over her heart, it was worth it.

Milton flipped through the rest of the script, made a few suggestions—such as trimming the shoving match between Jesus and Pontius Pilate, the Judean governor’s spoiled-brat son, in the Nazareth High cafeteria scene
(the whole thing was a little overwrought)—and tossed it into the “Yes” pile.

Though the scripts Milton had been asked to review as part of Marlo’s new role as production assistant had, for the most part, been derivative, cliché, and blasphemous even by h-e-double-hockey-sticks standards, they
did
have a certain energy to them. The shows themselves certainly weren’t any worse than the desperately-aimed-at-tweens-and-teens shows that plagued the Surface. In fact, Milton had only put one script in the “No” pile so far:
The Rabid Rabbi
, a show about a Jewish scholar who, after being bitten by a mad bandicoot on a religious camping retreat, develops treatment-resistant hydrophobia, which prevents him from administering Jewish water rituals such as the tevilah.

Two things perplexed Milton—and, thankfully, distracted him from the creepy tingle of wearing leggings. The first was the strange videocassette he had watched of
The Man Who Soldeth the World
. Who or
what
had sent it? How much of it—if any—was real? What did it mean? Milton wasn’t sure, but it cost nothing to produce, and he had a lot of slots to fill.

The second thing that perplexed Milton was T.H.E.E.N.D.’s content and scheduling strategy. All of the shows catered to specific religions and faiths, which was fine and surprisingly all-inclusive considering that the head of the network was the devil. But these shows were all set to air
at the same time
in the most coveted
prime-time slot: Sunday at 8 p.m. It didn’t make any sense. Satan had enough decent shows to launch a successful network with a full and diverse lineup. Why would he create a network of networks, pitting his shows against one another and not even allowing people to watch them on DVR? It would create a sort of religious ratings war.…

Hmm …
Milton thought.
Maybe
that’s
what the devil is up to. Creating fundamentalist friction up on the Surface, rubbing different beliefs against each other like a Cub Scout trying to earn his fire badge …

Milton’s nostrils were suddenly filled with a noxious odor, as if someone had wrapped old sneaker tongues in seaweed and set them aflame.

“Hello … Miss … Fauster,” Mr. Welles panted, standing in the doorway of the cramped Boob Tube chomping down on a cigar. “Elevator’s … 
out.
”

Breathing hard in that way that only the morbidly obese do, Mr. Welles looked like a big bomb with a stinky, smoking fuse, his cigar flaring with every wheeze.

“I don’t think the elevator has ever been
in,
” Milton replied.

Mr. Welles wiped his sweaty forehead with a handkerchief.

“Well, this building has more flights than a commuter airline,” he gasped before noticing Milton’s “Yes” and “No” piles.

“You didn’t like
The Rabid Rabbi
?”

Milton shrugged his shoulders.

“I wasn’t mad about it.”

Mr. Welles flipped through the script.

“Perhaps you’re right,” he murmured. “The production values on the temple flood scene alone would have laid waste to our entire budget … it’s odd, Miss Fauster. I heard that you were an impudent young lady, but you actually seem respectful and forthright.”

Uh-oh
, Milton thought.

“Whatever, Mr. Well-fed. I just
looooove
my new job,” Milton replied quickly, feigning his sister’s insincerity.

Mr. Welles leveled his penetrating stare at the
Man Who Soldeth the World
video sticking out of the VCR like a petulant toddler’s tongue.

“Did you have the opportunity of screening that mysterious submission?” he asked, his eyebrow arching like a suspicious scalene triangle.

Milton gulped. He wanted to keep an ace up his sleeve, and
The Man Who Soldeth the World
was the only card he had to keep. Whether it could beat whatever a jack-of-all-trades like Mr. Welles was holding, or even the hand Satan, the King of the Bottomless Pit, had been dealt, he had no clue.

“Miss Fauster?” Mr. Welles coughed. “Are you having an internal conversation? The audience can’t follow along unless there’s a voice-over track.…”

“Oh, right … sorry,” Milton replied. “The tape. Yes,
it was … kind of weird. But I … well … I’ll need to see where it’s going to be sure.”

Mr. Welles nodded.

“Fine. I’ll add it to the roster anyway. It might achieve cult status … especially with viewers who happen to be in cults.”

He picked up the
Teenage Jesus
script and grinned.

“This, however, is pure ratings
gold,
” Mr. Welles said.

Milton caught his reflection,
Marlo’s
reflection, in one of the video monitors, noticing that—once again—he had gotten lipstick on his teeth.

“It’s a great story,” Milton said, brushing his tooth with his index finger. “One of the greatest stories ever told. But that puts a lot of pressure on the lead. He needs to be, like,
Jesus
perfect.”

Mr. Welles tilted back his head and expelled a great cloud of cigar smoke. He looked like a carcinogenic PEZ dispenser.

“And I have found the
perfect
Jesus,” he replied with a smirk.

Mr. Welles scooped up the “Yes” scripts and cinched them under his arm.

“Come with me, Miss Fauster. Son-of-God speed.”

Milton picked up his purse, missing his trusty backpack. He couldn’t fit
nearly
as much stuff in it, and missed the reassuring pressure of it between his shoulder blades. He slipped the videotape inside the bag.

“What about the Boob Tube?” he asked, hesitant to wean himself from his multimedia sanctuary.