Rapacia: The Second Circle of Heck Read online

  “How good of you to fathom

  my happy little tale.

  Bubb, she said that you were dumb,

  assuring me you’d fail.”

  The girls eyed Marlo with amusement.

  “Ooh … snap!” Lyon snickered to Bordeaux.

  Even more than she disliked being reprimanded in rhyme by a large, freaky metal rabbit thing, Marlo loathed Lyon Sheraton.

  Coveting, wanting, grabbing things she didn’t pay for—this was Marlo’s domain. But Lyon practically ate greed for breakfast—after her chef had prepared it, of course. With the Sheraton billions to fund her every whim, Lyon had barely had a chance to feel a desire before it was met. Marlo, on the other hand, had been forced to work hard to take what didn’t belong to her. It wasn’t fair.

  Now the Grabbit, having concluded its sick story, resumed its previous state of eerie inactivity, rumbling in subsonic ripples that made Marlo’s flesh crawl. Perhaps it was in “sleep” mode, or whatever, Marlo thought as she slowly rose and feigned a stretch while the other girls—after sharing an uncomfortable silence—chatted among themselves.

  A beckoning, shimmering gleam had snagged Marlo’s eye like a fishhook. The lurid glow trickled into the warren from the gilt ceiling grate above and beyond the Grabbit.

  Marlo grazed the wallpaper with the tip of her finger as she made her way nonchalantly around the Grabbit. Upon closer inspection, she realized that the intricate wallpaper was a collage of international currencies lacquered against the warren’s walls. After a futile attempt to peel off a cool-looking French franc, Marlo sidled along the chamber’s edge until she was just beneath the grate.

  Marlo climbed up on a lushly upholstered antique love seat. She stretched up onto her tiptoes, scrunched one eye closed, and squinted through one of the grate’s ornate wrought-iron loops as if it were a telescope. Marlo couldn’t believe her eye.

  Above her was a gargantuan, spiraling structure that blinked, buzzed, and hummed with frantic activity. Marlo gasped and gave her eye a quick rub with her fist. It was a mall—a grand, majestic, and stupefyingly wondrous shopping complex that made the Mall of Generica back home in Kansas seem like an Amish garage sale.

  Marlo’s mind could barely process the assault of information pounding into her eye. The mall was like the inside of a massive electric wedding cake—indulgently filled with hundreds, maybe thousands, of stores—and iced with a glittering, stained-crystal ceiling. Marlo counted ten, eleven … thirteen tiers, until her own tears blurred the sight into a kaleidoscopic smear.

  Her ring finger stung as if she had plunged it into a beehive. She held it up to her face, expecting it to be pricked and swollen. It was fine. That tingle, she thought as she scrutinized her undamaged hand, it’s like when I see a primo shoplifting opportunity … only this time the feeling is off the charts.

  The sensation branched out through her body like slow, creeping lightning.

  Right above her was … everything It was heartbreakingly beautiful. It was mind-bogglingly exciting. It was sticky-finger-lickingly good.

  It also seemed tormentingly out of reach. If only she could think of some way to get up there, some artful ruse, even a somewhat convincing excuse …

  “Excuse us, our Miss Fauster,

  we’d welcome your attention.

  I think, girls, that we lost her.

  She must want some detention.”

  Marlo stumbled off the love seat with shock.

  Lyon snickered into Bordeaux’s ear. “Ooh … two snaps!”

  The African-English girl scowled at Lyon and Bordeaux. “If you two skinny gorms say ‘snap’ one more time,” she said, “I’ll snap you like a crisp.”

  Lyon glared at the dark fuzz nesting atop the girl’s lip. “And who are you, Miss Mustache?”

  “The name’s Jordie,” the girl replied, squaring her jaw like a sawed-off shotgun. “And you don’t want to brass me off.”

  Marlo rushed over to the Grabbit. “What is that wonderful place … up above?” she asked, staring up at its unreadably jolly facade. The half rabbit, half robot—rabbot—quivered back to pseudo-life.

  “You feed on my patience,

  just like a piranha.

  In trade for your silence,

  that place? It’s Mallvana.”

  “Mallvana?” Lyon spat, the corner of her lip tugged up to her nose as if by an invisible pulley. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  “See for yourself,” Marlo said, pointing back to the warm golden sheen of the ceiling grate.

  Lyon popped her pink bubble gum with explosive disdain. “It’s probably some dumb trick,” she sneered, “like the one fate played on your face.”

  Bordeaux giggled like an asthmatic shih tzu. “Three snaps, you’re out!”

  Jordie stood up, nostrils flared. “I warned you, ya saft bint!”

  Lyon rose to her feet, still exuding haughty runway perfection despite her GRANDMA’S MY NAME AND SPOILING’S MY GAME sweatshirt. She trained her cornflower-blue eyes on Jordie. “Zip it, hair lip,” she hissed between wet chomps of gum. “No one here speaks fish and chips, anyway.”

  Jordie glared at Lyon with dark, simmering, seen-it-all-before-and-didn’t-like-it-the-first-time eyes. Her jaw shifted from side to side, as if she were carefully considering which part of Lyon to hurt first.

  The imposing girl tightened her red silk head scarf, preparing for battle. Marlo could see an ugly scar peeking out from beneath her headdress. She had a feeling that, however Jordie got down here to Heck, it wasn’t peacefully in her sleep.

  But just as things were about to get hair-pullingly face-scratchingly fun, the Grabbit nipped the fight-to-be in the bud.

  “Now, now, mesdemoiselles,

  let’s not be so crass.

  Let’s trade our farewells,

  then shuffle off to class.”

  With a slicing sound, like two keen knives sharpening one another, a golden gate opened into a grand hallway. Unlike the dark, unsettling tunnels through which Marlo and the other girls had traveled, this passage was as gaudy and extravagant as the Grabbit’s warren. Two demons wearing green vests, brass spats, and—unfortunately—nothing else, stood in the doorway, beckoning the girls with impatient waves of their pitchsporks.

  Bordeaux, the Japanese girl, and the drab stubby girl with the unfortunate haircut, rose to their feet, joining Marlo, Lyon, and Jordie. The girls—each swaddled in sweatshirts adorned with hideous appliqués—hesitated. Marlo felt as if there was some invisible force field surrounding the Grabbit, some magical glue that made it hard to leave. She looked at the other girls, and they, too, seemed like struggling, freaked-out flies stuck fast to supernatural flypaper.

  Marlo took a labored step toward the demons. She felt twitchy and uncomfortable, like she had fire ants in her pants. She strained to break free of the Grabbit’s magnetic grip, though each hard-earned stride made the feeling grow worse. The ants started to bite, the pants were now made of burlap, and her heart became so hungry it hurt.

  Prodded painfully by the demons, the girls around her reluctantly shuffled away, each fighting the Grabbit’s eerie pull.

  Marlo made it to the hallway, where the feeling of anxiety dulled into a gnawing sense of longing. She looked back at the Grabbit’s sneering puzzle of a face. She hated it. She loved it. She hated loving it and loved hating it.

  The golden gate shut, and in that instant, Marlo felt like a newborn baby whose umbilical cord had been abruptly snipped. That confusing swirl of electricity was replaced by an excruciating emptiness.

  “No!” she shouted as she ran for the door. She pounded it with her fists until a demon grabbed her by the shoulders and heaved her down the hall.

  The elegant hallway featured two fading paintings: Van Gogh’s Starry Night and Picasso’s Boy with Lobster (the only way Marlo knew the names was because of the huge brass plates underneath). The paintings weren’t fading in the traditional “timeworn, sun-damaged” sense but were actually disappear
ing before her very eyes. She inched close to the Van Gogh and pressed her finger through the blobby golden moon until her chewed nail touched the wall. The entire place was in a constant state of ghostly redecoration.

  “So sad,” the Japanese girl said.

  Marlo jumped. The girl’s sudden presence startled her but distracted her from the emptiness she felt inside.

  “Pretty painting is going away” the girl continued with a comic look of confusion. The mousy girl with the rat’s-nest hairdon’t was at her side.

  Marlo turned and attempted a smile. “Jujitsu,” she said.

  The girl covered her mouth and giggled. “That’s kajitsu,” she replied. “Good day to you, too. My name is Takara.”

  Takara was cool, Marlo thought. She was one of those Harajuku girls in Japan (or used to be, anyway)—the ones who dressed up in all the crazy costumes like living, breathing pieces of art. Of course, now she was wearing a bulky beige sweatshirt with QUEEN OF THE QUILTING BEE written on it in sequins, but she still had her cotton-candy hair and matching lipstick. You can take the girl out of her style, Marlo thought with a smirk, but you can’t take the style out of the girl.

  “Marlo,” the elder Fauster sibling replied with a lopsided grin.

  “I’m Norm,” the other girl mumbled.

  “Norm?” Marlo replied. “As in Norma?”

  “Actually it’s short for Normal,” the girl replied. “My mom was so happy that I was born normal, unlike my brothers and sisters—extra toes, fingers, even nipples—that she named me ‘Normal,’ which pretty much condemned me to a less-than-normal life.”

  Marlo laughed. Nothing like a fellow misfit to make you feel like you fit in.

  Takara squinted at the Picasso. “Why does the boy with the lobster sit on the table without pants?”

  Marlo sidled up beside Takara to scrutinize the strange, disappearing painting.

  “One of life’s great mysteries,” Marlo mused.

  The “boy” or whatever, had a face like a Mr. Mashed Potato Head. Maybe everyone back in Picasso’s time just felt sorry for him and acted like his paintings were really good so he wouldn’t cut off his ear like Van Gogh.

  “Hurry!” one of the demons shouted back at them, herding the rest of the group ahead.

  “Yeah, yeah, keep your spats on,” Marlo grumbled, rubbing her sore pitchsporked bottom.

  “Me too,” Norm said, noticing Marlo’s pain in the butt. “Those stagecoach drivers are a bunch of prod-happy poets, apparently.”

  “Mine was a pretty bird,” Takara chirped. “Said his name was Keats. I thought he meant parakeet, and he got really mad.”

  “I got tenderized by Lord Byron,” Marlo added.

  “Keats hates Byron!” Takara said with wide eyes. “He squawked about how he was a meatheaded melancholic!”

  Marlo shuddered. “He’s more than just meatheaded now,” she said.

  “Mine was a homely lady named George,” Norm offered.

  Marlo shook her head as she turned to walk away. “A regular dead poets society,” she said before taking one last look at the painting.

  There was something about the boy’s overly trusting eyes. And the dorky hair, like his mother had spit on a comb and scraped it straight for a family portrait. The boy reminded her of Milton—her brother, whom she had tricked into shoplifting, sending him straight to Heck after the marshmallow bear blew up. He had managed to escape, but to who knows where? All she knew for certain was that she missed him, dorky hair and all.

  Takara stared at the painting as it finally vanished into thin air.

  “Lobster boy is gone,” she said in her sweet, doll-like voice. “Like he was never here in the first place.”

  Marlo sniffed back a tear as her eyes bored through the green wall to a place lifetimes away.

  “Yeah,” she said weakly. “Like he was never here at all.”

  3 · BUTTER OFF DEAD

  “DAMIAN’S ALIVE?!” cried Milton Fauster, a haunted, bedraggled boy who had seen more than his eleven years could comfortably contain. Milton stood by the flagpole of Generica Middle School as Hans Jovonovic fidgeted, staring down at his way-too-white Keds.

  “Well, in a coma, anyway,” Milton’s once-close friend replied in the same distant, nervous manner that everyone had adopted since Milton’s return from the dead. “Maybe he’ll come back to life like … like you did.”

  “Hopefully not, though,” interjected Humberto Stiles, a tall, pimply beanpole in a NEXT STOP: M.I.T. sweatshirt. “Considering what a colossal, menacing jerk he was … is … whatever.”

  “We’re glad you came back, though,” Hans added with haste. “Of course.”

  Hans shot Humberto a furtive glance before staring glumly at the flagpole, now at half-mast to commemorate the death of Milton’s sister, Marlo.

  Hans, Milton, and Humberto were the founders of the Generica Middle School Model Chessetry Club, a club that had held woefully underattended matches using model rockets shaped like chess pieces. Before that, they had been the Middle Earthlings, Warp Factor Three, and even Monty Cylon’s Flying Circuits (which had won Modern Outcast magazine’s Geekiest School Club Name of the Year award). But despite all they had been through together, it was obvious that Milton was now a third wheel, and they were all far too old for tricycles.

  Strangely, though, Milton didn’t feel all that bad about how awkward things had gotten between him and his friends. Since his “death,” what had once seemed so interesting to him now joined the ranks of Hot Wheels and Lincoln Logs in the landfill of his heart.

  Even Milton wasn’t completely sure if what had happened had really happened. Had he actually died and gone down to Heck—where the souls of the darned toil for all eternity or until they turn eighteen, whichever comes first—or had it all been nothing but a near-death delusion?

  His faithful ferret, Lucky, had thrown up bits of what Milton believed to be the contract for his everlasting soul. But considering the things that his voracious pet ate on a daily basis, he couldn’t be 100 percent sure. For all Milton knew, his “contract” could have merely been the result of a day’s newspaper nibbling.

  So that left Damian: Milton’s brutish earthly nemesis turned slick, savvy and exponentially more dangerous after having descended to the Netherworld. Although in a coma, he was still—at least legally—alive! Damian was Milton’s only connection between this world and the next. And maybe, if Heck was real, there was some way Milton could use Damian to make contact with Marlo.

  “Where is he?” Milton asked. Hans and Humberto stared mutely at Milton, as they had been doing for the past minute while Milton had been engaged in a private wrestling match with his own thoughts.

  “Who?” Humberto asked with fearful caution, as if talking to an armed gunman or a cheerleader.

  “Damian!” Milton shot back.

  “Why is it so important for you to see him?” Hans asked.

  Returning to the land of the living moments after his own death, Milton had somehow arrived before Damian’s departure. It was as if he had stepped off a metaphysical merry-go-round at the very point he had boarded. The only explanation that made any sense to Milton was that—having been sentenced to Limbo where time didn’t pass—he had escaped back to the Stage, or Earth, whatever, as if nothing had ever happened.

  “I just need some … closure,” Milton lied. “Because”—he stared up at the blue Kansas state flag fluttering halfway up the pole—“because of Marlo.”

  Hans sighed. He had harbored a secret crush on Marlo since fourth grade. Marlo, like most every girl in his life, had made fun of Hans because of his woolly orange hair. But Marlo had always taken the time to come up with unique ways of insulting him, like when she pretended she could talk to God through his flaming bush of red curls. It was those thoughtful little touches that he had found so endearing.

  “He’s at Generica General,” Hans replied sadly.

  Milton turned to leave.

  “But they won’t let you in,”
Hans continued. “Not unless you’re part of his awful, messed-up family, that is.”

  Milton froze. Although he had spent much of his life ducking down hallways and hiding behind drinking fountains to avoid the sadistic scrutiny of Damian, Milton had to see him now more than anything.

  “Do you guys want to come and help me?” Milton asked, turning back toward his once-friends. “You know … to pay your lack of respects?” Even though Milton felt he was on a solitary mission, he could use some company.

  Hans and Humberto glanced at each other uneasily for guidance.

  “Um, we’ve got a … social obligation,” Hans said with a stunning lack of conviction.

  Milton glared at the less-than-dynamic duo.

  “Fine,” he sighed bitterly. “Then consider this my official resignation from the Model Chessetry Club.”

  He walked away.

  “Social obligation my once-dead butt,” Milton, the outcast of the outcasts, grumbled with disgust as he crossed Rubicon Street toward the hospital, on a mission he didn’t fully understand. Whether Milton had truly been reborn or had simply lost his marbles while hovering at death’s door, one thing was for sure: he was irrevocably changed, and nothing would ever be the same again.

  Generica General Hospital resembled a huge concrete Rubik’s cube too boring to solve. A pair of chuckling security guards strode into the hospital through its automatic sliding-door entrance.

  Milton, some twenty feet away, froze in his tracks. He needed to find some way to get inside the hospital, some way to slide past security, like a pig greased in …

  Butter.

  Something caught Milton’s eye in the visitors parking lot. A large stick of butter with wheels was double-parked beside two Land Ravagers and a Ford Cilantro. Painted on the side of the automotive depiction of fatty, churned cream was the following: GOT A FRIEND WHO’S SICK? GIVE ’EM A STICK! THE SYMPATHY EXPRESS GET BUTTER MOBILE.

  The driver was chatting with a bored teenage girl working a coffee cart outside the hospital.