Fibble: The Fourth Circle of Heck (28 page)

Marlo rolled her eyes.

“That’s what they
want
you to think,” she said as she
examined the grass around her. “It’s like security cameras in department stores. Most of the time they aren’t even hooked up. They just want you to
think
that they are. So we just need the edits to look as close as—”

Marlo found a long crow feather rolling in the breeze.

“—possible.”

She snatched it up, then found a sharp rock wedged in the reddish dirt.

“Put your thinking cap on, bro,” Marlo said with a smirk, “ ’Cuz we’re going to rewrite some
serious
wrongs.”

Marlo dug the jagged stone into her palm. Milton winced with sympathetic pain, perhaps because the palm that was now currently gushing blood was
his
. She took the crow’s feather with her other hand, dipped the tip in blood, and laid the first script across her lap.

“Okay,” she said matter-of-factly, as if she wrote with her own blood every day, “let’s hurry before I pass out.
Allah in the Family
 …”

She scanned the last few pages.

“Hmm … the father is trying to get his family out of the house before his judgmental Uncle Mahdi comes at the appointed hour because he’s afraid they’ll embarrass him—especially his modern daughter—and spoil his chances of inheriting the family estate in the country. But the father
doesn’t
and they all get in a big fight and, while all the relatives are screaming at each other, the
whole house is accidentally torched by a prayer candle and … ugh. Depressing!”

“Wait, I know,” Milton interjected. “How about the daughter brings home a Christian boy, and at first the father is really mad, but then they all get to talking and realize they have a lot more in common than they thought? Then Uncle Mahdi drops by and is furious but no one cares. The father doesn’t inherit the country estate, but the family is cool with that because they’re so happy in their old home.”

Marlo scribbled over the last pages with the quill.

“Corny, but satisfying,” she said as she dashed out Milton’s edits. Marlo threw the script off to the side and picked up the next.

“Queen of the Shebrews,”
she mumbled as she tapped the tip of the quill on her tongue. “Hmm … New Jersey superheroine Bat Mitzvah freaks out when a band of thieves called The New Order move into Newark and cut off the power for a week until their demands are met: that Bat Mitzvah has her credit cards taken away and is driven out of town forever.…”

Marlo stared off across a rolling hill, where a pack of dogs with toys strapped to their sides were chasing squirrels up a tree.

“First,
no
girl should have her credit cards taken away,” Marlo said while dipping her quill in fresh blood. “That’s just cruel.”

Milton paced in front of the tree.

“I know,”
he said, holding his finger up in the air. “Bat Mitzvah joins forces with her archenemy, the Jersey Jokester, united now that they both face a greater threat. Then they’ll take back Newark, and the Jersey Jokester will reveal that she’s Bat Mitzvah’s long-lost sister, Kabbalah, who fell off a horse during an equestrian event at boarding school and lost her memory. Then they hug and go shopping.”

“Brilliant!” Marlo replied as she scribbled away, getting paler with every sentence. She picked up another script.

“What’s Mayan Is Yours,”
she said, a little dizzy. “An ancient Mayan family living in Central America freak out because the calendar on their refrigerator runs out of months … that’s dumb.”

Marlo made a few quick edits to the script.

“There, they find a big box full of cool
new
calendars and the whole town celebrates by inventing astronomy. Okay, next …”

She picks up another script.

“
Peek-a-Buddha …
Buddha and his parents, Sidd and Hartha, are on a road trip to visit this cool amusement park near Vanna—must be some city—but the Wheels of Life on their Karmann Ghia blow out.”

“Simple!” Milton exclaimed, padding across the grass in his stockinged feet. “They find four spare Wheels of Life in the trunk, go to the amusement park, but it turns out to be overly materialistic so they drive around and
around, aimless and happy, taking in the beautiful countryside!”

Marlo’s eyes fluttered, a loopy grin smeared across her face.

“Boom!” she laughed as she made her brother’s edits and grabbed another script.

“Marlo?” Milton asked as she squeezed more blood from her hand.

“What, me … I mean, bro?” she replied, her face deadly pale.

“I think maybe you should stop,” he said, kneeling down beside her with concern.

“But there are a few more—”

“I think maybe the well has run dry, plasmaticly speaking.”

Marlo nodded groggily.

“Maybe you’re right,” she said before swiftly jabbing the point of her quill in her brother’s thigh.

“Oww!!”
he squealed, clutching his leg. “Why did you—?”

Marlo worked the feather into Milton’s wound a bit before removing it and opening the last few scripts.

“Just needed to draw some more inspiration. C’mon, let’s finish these, Bleedy McInkwell … we’re on a drop-deadline.”

* * *

The Fausters, pale and drained, hobbled together back into the fortress courtyard as the Scarecrows beat back the toxic wind.

Saint Francis stood beside the portal leading back to the Really Big Farm. The gentle friar gaped at the gruesome wake of Pandora’s Cat Box, smeared across the Furafter.

“It’s like something out of Revelation,” he said in a near whisper.

Milton cocked one of his sister’s not-plucked-for-a-month-or-so eyebrows.

The Man Who Soldeth the World … he had “Revelation 12:7” written on a doily
, Milton thought. “Excuse me, sir, but what’s Revelation?” he asked.

Saint Francis pulled his brown hood over his sharp, angular head and eyed the horizon with quiet apprehension.

“The last book of the New Testament. The last breath of humanity as flesh and blood
humans
. The divine undoing of creation.”

“Cheery,”
Marlo said, still a bit loopy from blood loss. “All the cool stuff I miss by sleeping in on Sundays.”

“What does the ‘12:7’ mean?” Milton pressed.

“Chapter 12, verse 7,” Saint Francis clarified.
“And there was war in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back.”

Milton shuddered. Had he and Marlo stumbled into
the middle of some kind of “heavenly” war—either real or staged—with mankind as the likely casualty? He didn’t have time to grapple with the enormity of it. The only thing Milton
did
have now was a plan … and that would have to do.

“Well … thanks,” Milton said abruptly as he dashed over to Noah, who stood before the Scarecrows like a synchronized-flapping coach.

“I, h-hello, Mr. Noah,” Milton stammered as Marlo staggered to his side. “Um, thanks for saving us all from the flood.…”

Marlo snickered.

“Thanks for saving us all from the flood,”
she whispered back at Milton, twisting his words into a taunt.

Milton punched his sister in the arm.

“You’ll be sorry,” she grumbled as she rubbed her shoulder. “You bruise easy.”

“I’m Milton Fauster, a friend of Annubis. And it’s really important that I get this stack of scripts back to Hellywood, Infernia, to a Mr. Orson Welles. The fate of the Surface may hang in the balance.”

“Milton?” Noah answered, his confusion somehow squeezing another wrinkle in the incredibly wrinkled man’s face. “That’s a boy’s name. At least it was … well, back in Bible times.…”

“It’s a long story,” Milton replied as he self-consciously picked at the holes in his tights. “Could one of your crows deliver these now?”

Noah scanned the sky. Swirls of thick, soupy gas uncoiled from the smoldering Kennels, reaching out as if to strangle any sign of good.

“Well—believe it or not—it looks like the worst of the storm has passed … and if
anyone
should be able to gauge the relative threat of a meteorological event, it’s me,” he replied before giving a quick nod. “Okay.”

“Awesome!” Milton replied as he quickly wrote a note, pricking his throbbing thigh one last time with the crow’s quill.

Milton secured the note to the stack of scripts with a rubber band, dropped the pile in his canvas tote, and handed it to Noah.

“Thank you!” Milton said with a wave as he turned to Marlo.

“Wait, you forgot one,” Marlo said, pointing to the script tucked beneath Milton’s arm. He gave Marlo a conspiratorial grin.

“
This
one we’re going to do ourselves,” he replied mysteriously.

Milton gazed at the destruction outside in the Furafter. Black rain poured down in dire, dismal sheets. Bitter wind howled and screamed. It looked like the end of the world, which—to Milton—was
perfect
.

THE SKY CRACKLED
and seethed, like a roaring fire fed with kerosene. Greasy, black-brown globs of fiery yuck hailed down, hitting the ground with corrosive splats that set the newspaper floor aflame. Milton panned across the Furafter with the video camera before rushing back into the Really Big Farm to get a close-up of his star.