Sadia: The Eighth Circle of Heck

By Dale E. Basye

After Marlo loses the War of the Words against her brother, she is whisked away to the deepest bowels of the underworld. Guilt-ridden, Milton agrees to work for Principal Bubb in hopes that he can locate his sister and somehow free her. But his nefarious mission—to “character assassinate” the reigning vice principal of Sadia: Where the Really Mean Kids Go—runs afoul when he learns the true identity of this mysterious individual. Meanwhile, Marlo wakes up to teenage paradise: a veritable You-Topia where everything seems to revolve around her. Marlo soon dis- covers, however, that she is being built up only to be torn down in the cruelest way possible by the Mother Superiority—ruler of the Shunnery—and her cold-shouldering, shade-casting denizens.

There’s also a mutiny brewing in Heaven while the underworld is turned into a tourist destination for the living. Can Milton follow through with his mission: navigating a nest of history’s cruelest tyrants in the process? Can Marlo hold on to her identity amidst a nuclear self-esteem assault? Will they discover the secret history of Sadia before it is used as a weapon against none other than the Big Guy Upstairs?

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Oct 31, 2017
• ISBN: 9781543914740

Book preview

zookeepers

ELEVEN-YEAR-OLD Milton Fauster had been many things in both his short life and premature death: honor roll student, state science competition champion, unofficial receiver of the Most Wedgies in One School Day Award (the award itself being, unfortunately, yet another wedgie), and the only child to escape from Limbo: the waiting (and waiting…) room of Heck, where the bad kids go when they cease to be, give up the ghost, or, in a word, die. Now Milton could add assassin to his long list of diverse honorifics. Well, character assassin, that is…

Milton wiped away the salty drips trickling down his cheeks. He wasn’t crying…his tear ducts had been drained empty a long time ago. It was sweat, the constant clinging perspiration that had streamed out of his preteen pores ever since he boarded the SS Magma Opus as it chugged slowly down the Phlegethon River: a seething, sweltering lava-way as difficult to navigate as it was to pronounce.

Suddenly, the solid-stone tugboat hit an exploding bubble of molten lava, sending Milton flying across the deck. He fell and landed on a stool. Unfortunately, it was the fresh stool of a demon deckhand.

That’s what I get for hanging out on the poop deck, Milton muttered as he tried to clean the pants of his black tailored HADES (Honorary Aide and Defect Enforcement Sect) suit with a rag. He sighed as the filthy rag, unsurprisingly, only made him filthier.

Milton stared out across the bubbling surge of red-yellow lava, a melted sun coursing past in swirling eddies. The old boiler powering the tug sputtered and spat like a mean, sickly cat about to lose its ninth life. Beyond the river— through the blur of searing heat—Milton could see some kind of jumbo-sized jungle. Giant clusters of barbed bamboo erupted from the ground. The oversized plants shuddered as concealed beasts charged past, causing the leaves to rustle together like sharpening knives, shooting out sparks.

A few yards away from Milton, toward the stern of the small craft, two deckhands—Dech and Hans—went about their morning chores. Dech was a demon with a spiky black sea urchin for a head, whose body was covered in gray-pink coral: perfect for polishing the lava-resistant deck of volcanic rock. Hans was a giant scabby starfish with a mouth full of teeth at the center of its belly. Milton couldn’t tell if the creature had eyes, but—with its roving hands—it seemed to have no problem swabbing the tug.

Dech rubbed its coarse back against the gunwale, its black eyes peering out from its glistening face spikes, settling on Milton.

Good morning, Meeester Fauster, the creature said in a salty hiss. Deed you sleeeeep well?

Milton took off his new designer glasses and rubbed his red-rimmed eyes.

Sleep has sort of given up on me, Milton said, stifling a yawn. I haven’t slept for days.

Maybe yooooou should try sleeeeping at night, then, Dech replied.

That’s not really what I—

I always wake up nice and oily, Hans interjected, his voice a shallow gargle, like an elf singing from the bottom of a kiddie pool.

Don’t you mean early? Milton asked.

No, my cot’s beneath the old boiler, the starfish demon replied. But when I do sleep, I sleep like a baby…you know, with a diaper.

By the way, Dech interjected, much to Milton’s relief. Captain Conchswain, he wanted your eeeeeeaaar theeees morning.

Milton self-consciously rubbed his ear.

No, he doesn’t actually want your ear, Hans snorted as he wielded five mops, whipping the deck into a froth.

Though the captain cut himself shaving this morning, so you might want to be careful. Got himself into a bit of a frenzy with that. He just wants to see you, that’s all. About your mission…

Milton nodded and crept slowly along the rim of the main deck. He accidentally trod upon a large pile of dung. He moved to kick it overboard before Hans called out behind him.

No…not that one! the creature yelled from its diaphragm. That’s the captain’s log!

Milton walked away, shaking despite the intense heat. All of the fear that he had been stuffing inside for the last few eventful weeks came popping out, suddenly, like a jack-in-the-box. He was strangely nervous about meeting the captain, though Milton’s passage here aboard the SS Magma Opus was legitimate. Milton—having not only won the War of the Words but a battle of wits with Heck’s Principal Bubb during a showdown at the Tower of Babble—was now an official employee of Heck, serving as the principal’s Err-ant Boy after graduating from Heck’s HADES program. He had, in essence, traded Paradise to save his sister, Marlo, from H-E-double-hockey-sticks: her ghastly fate as the loser of Vice Principal Lewis Carroll’s War of the Words, the diabolical debate that the addled author had devised to mask his attempt to overthrow all of Creation. Meeting Captain Conchswain, though, meant that Milton’s most-likely miserable and most-definitely dangerous mission would truly begin.

The tug hit an exploding bubble of lava, sending Milton crashing into the handrail. The perpetual lurch of the ship, the sleeplessness, the adrenaline of constant worry, and the horrible bilgewater blend coffee had Milton heaving over the side.

Breakfast overboard! Hans gurgled, before whistling with laughter.

Milton stared down into the molten foam.

I’ve got to pull myself together, he thought, wiping his mouth with his sleeve. I’m working for my enemy, for Principal Bubb, in exchange for Marlo’s safety. If I do this job, the principal says she’ll tell me where Marlo is. And if I know where Marlo is, that’s one step closer to rescuing her…

Drawing in a deep, sweltering breath, Milton gazed out at the jungle. He could hear a whistling noise coming from the wilderness beyond, like a lightsaber on overload.

I need to focus. Bubb wants me to remove the new Vice Principal of Sadia—the circle of Heck for really mean kids— through character assassination. Damaged reputation can literally undo the undead. She mentioned that Sadia had gone dark, whatever that means. Everything seems pretty dark down here in the underworld…

He inched closer to the tugboat’s bridge amidst the nauseating swell of the Phlegethon River.

The vice principal must be pretty awful anyway, to be overseeing Sadia. I’d probably be doing all those nasty kids a favor. He’s probably some famous tyrant, which is why Principal Bubb doesn’t want me to know who he is until I’m almost there. She probably thinks I’d be scared…

Milton scaled the ladder leading to the bridge.

And she’d be right. But I’m doing this all for Marlo. All I have to do now is meet this Captain Mako Shark Arms Conchswain guy about my mission.

Milton snorted as he approached the top of the ladder.

What a crazy name. He must have sharks tattooed on his biceps or something. The captain’s probably not all that bad. All of these pirate-types have frightening names so that their enemies are, even before they meet them, utterly—

He crawled up onto the bridge and stood, paralyzed, at the sight of the captain.

—terrified.

The captain turned slowly, a glowing cigar in his teeth, never relaxing his grip on the savaged steering wheel. Milton realized instantly that the demonic creature’s nickname was not some salty sobriquet but instead a practical, clear-eyed description leaving no room for subtlety or misinter-pretation. He, literally, had a pair of sharks for arms.

The small, writhing Great Whites bit into the wheel fiercely with their rows of large, triangular teeth. They each had some kind of breathing apparatus stuffed into their gills with tubes snaking out to small tanks strapped to their backs, or the captain’s forearm, depending. The sharks themselves ended just below the captain’s underarms. The rest of him appeared human—granted, a human that had accrued some significant mileage. He was a burly, six-foot-tall Japanese man with a scar slashed across his upper cheek and lower brow that—perhaps out of pity or dumb luck— spared his dark, heavy-lidded eye. The man glared at Milton from beneath the brim of his cap.

Welcome to tha bridge, Milton Fauster, the captain said from around his smoldering cigar. Ma name eez Mako ‘Shark Arms’ Conchswain.

Milton nodded, fighting the urge to extend his hand in greeting.

I…yes, I assumed as much, Milton managed, trying desperately to smooth the quaver from his voice.

The captain smiled.

Da’ya have a license to sell bait? he said, glancing down at Milton’s pants.

What? Milton replied before zipping his unzipped fly.

Oh…um…right.

The captain’s shark-arms thrashed with barely contained fury. Milton, unsurprisingly, could not take his eyes off of them.

Ya wanta know about ma arms, the captain said, his steely gaze trained directly ahead at the undulating blanket of lava.

Um, well…they’re something you don’t see every day…

Captain Conchswain smirked.

Eef you’ve seen the sorts of things I’ve seen every day, then you wouldn’t be saying that… he replied in his gruff, smoky rumble of a voice.

Well that sort of goes without—

Wuzza fisherman, up on Surface, the captain interrupted. Every morning, just before dawn, I’d head out inta the Sea of Japan in my trawler, the Seas the Day. One marnin’ my net went kureiji…and in it were two sharks…thrashin’ about. I couldn’t believe me luck…

The captain shook his head with a blend of sadness and time-tamped rage.

Only more like a curse. So I drag botha them on deck, and when they stop the fighting, they stare up at me with those puddle-a-ink eyes and start tearing intah me. Well, I no like that, so— just before all life drained outta me and ontah the deck—I take the two Great Whites with me, here, to shi…to the death-place. Next thing I know, I’m like this. So I just threw up my hands…

In hopelessness?

No, because the sharks ate them…

The tugboat trembled as its boiler gasped from below. The captain scowled.

Dern boiler, he grumbled as his arms gnashed at the splintering steering wheel. Older than time itself. Make me so mad. Sharks take it out on the wheel…

Milton noticed a wad of toilet paper stuck fast to the man’s chiseled jaw.

You cut yourself shaving, Milton said. How do you even do that?

The captain snorted, expelling a cloud of cigar smoke that wafted to the ceiling of the stone-hewn bridge.

"Let us just say that sometimes a close shave can be too close…and, when sharks are involved, a little blood can make for a big problem…"

Milton noticed a large, manila envelope at the man’s feet. The envelope had Milton’s name on it, written in Principal Bubb’s unmistakable scrawl. Captain Mako Shark Arms Conchswain noted Milton’s attention with an appraising flick of his eye.

For you, he said, his voice as dark and silky as squid ink. For your mission.

The man kicked the envelope over to Milton.

Finally, I can learn who my target is, Milton thought as he snatched the envelope and held it out above the sweltering lava flow, steaming it open. He emptied out a thick folder.

Man, whoever this is, he must be pretty bad to have all this stacked against him, Milton thought as he opened the folder. Probably an infamous murderer or crazed dictator…some irredeemable villain who deserves to never, ever again see the light of—

Milton stared at the cruelly familiar picture of a cruelly familiar boy.

Damian?! Milton gasped as he swayed in the sulfurous heat, losing consciousness.

MAKO SHARK ARMS Conchswain was leaning over Milton as he came to.

Need a hand, boy? the captain asked, offering a snapping set of jaws. Milton grabbed his glasses from the stone deck and hurried to his feet.

I’m good, he replied.

The captain shrugged his muscled shoulders, his hands biting viciously into the steering wheel.

Ya sure?

Milton noticed pages from Damian’s file splayed out on the ground. He scooped them up into his arms.

I just need to get my lava legs, that’s all, Milton replied.

He climbed back down to the reeking poop deck and sat in an unsullied corner.

Little did Milton know when he accepted the mission (not that he really had much say in the matter), that Sadia’s vice principal—the very person he was charged with character assassinating—was none other than the boy who sent him to Heck in the first place: Damian Ruffino.

Milton opened the folder and reviewed the dossier paper-clipped inside.

Confidential!

File Copy

Department of Unendurable Redundancy, Bureaucracy, and Redundancy

Purgatory While U Wait, Underworld

Name: Damian Orville Underwood Ruffino…

Milton smirked as the boiler sputtered angrily below deck as if in the throes of steam-pressured seizure.

Orville Underwood? No wonder he’s a bully, Milton thought. He returned to Damian’s dossier.

Aliases: Sluggo, Brutus Maximus, The Ouchmeister

Status: Unknown

Place of Death: Generica, Kansas, United States

Height: 5’ 10" Weight: 190 lbs. Build: Husky

Current Occupation: Vice Principal of Sadia

Scars & Marks: Multiple scars on knuckles from over-use. Only distinguishing marks are the many black marks against him.

Hair Color: Mud Brown

Eye Color: Train-Tunnel Black

Complexion: Overcast with a Chance of Pain

Remarks: Damian Ruffino was a brutal, cold-blooded career bully: a lifetime lasher-outer who was only happy when everyone around him was thoroughly miserable. Mr. Ruffino officially gained his homicidal ruffian status after dispatching two children during a deadly act of civil disobedience at Grizzly Mall: The Mall of Generica, an act that was his ultimate undoing. Once in Heck, Mr. Ruffino continued his reign of thuggery unabated, before his short-lived resurrection upon the Surface as the leader of a misguided death cult (as if there were any other kind). The circumstances regarding his second death and subsequent promotion are, as of this writing, unclear, as information is either unavailable or conflicting…

Milton rubbed his weary eyes. He still couldn’t believe it: his nemesis—in both this world and the last—ruling over the meanest (and deadest) bullies in the underworld. The SS Magma Opus swayed nauseatingly back and forth like a dyspeptic rocking horse.

The principal must have given Damian the position as a sort of experiment, Milton muttered. To see just how bad a realm could be when the worst of the worst is in charge…

Milton sighed.

Can I really do this? Character assassinate Damian? Can I get enough dirt on him to destroy his reputation and save Marlo? And what does that even mean down here? Smearing someone in the underworld is like handing out demerits in detention. But I have to do what I said I’d do, even if there’s no way I can do it…and if I don’t do what I can’t do….

Milton massaged his throbbing temples.

I’m going in circles…

He wrinkled his brow and rose unsteadily to his feet.

…we’re going in circles…

Milton looked out over the bow. The snarled jungle shores spun past the ship. Milton fought a wave of vertigo as a gust of hot, bad-breath wind wafted over him. The ship was caught in some kind of swirling eddy. Milton and the deckhands climbed up to the bridge.

Mako Shark Arms Conchswain wrestled with the helm, his hulking, predatory arms thrashing at his sides.

What’s going on? Milton asked.

A whirlpool…a raging argument of lava, the captain replied grimly. Not surprising near a place as furious as Sadia…

Captain Conchswain sighed—biting down on his cigar with resolve—then leaned hard against the steering wheel, sending the ship into the eddy.

What are you doing?! Milton yelped. You’re headed straight for it!

The captain shrugged his massive shoulders.

Steam boiler has self-steam issues, he grunted. Probably because I always yell at it. Now I’m gonna enter the whirlpool to get out of the whirlpool…hold on!

Milton hid away in the corner, preparing for the worst.

Using your opponent’s energy to your advantage, the captain murmured, the gills on his slick gray arms flaring angrily. This is the core of aikido—Japanese form of self-defense. If I can get us to the right spot, the flow of the whirlpool should fling us free.

"Should fling us free?" Milton said as a blistering spray of lava spattered the deck.

Don’t worry…rirakkusu, Captain Conchswain grunted. The worst that could happen is that we roll…

Roll!? We’d be boiled away to nothing!

Yes…that’s why I say worst thing…

The SS Magma Opus listed alarmingly to the star-board side, like a great stone sow suckling a litter of invisible piglets. The tug was caught in the arm of a fierce current of molten, red-yellow lava. Hairline fissures formed along the walls of the helm. The ship was leaning so dramatically it could practically win an Oscar; the bubbling magma gurgled overhead like a searing-hot sky.

Dech feathered back the glistening black spines from its face. Just beyond the ship’s snub-nosed prow was a dark, churning eye.

A beeeeeeg black tunnel! Dech exclaimed.

The SS Magma Opus sputtered with a sudden burst of speed from its faltering boiler. The captain spun the steering wheel like a roulette wheel, gambling with everyone’s future.

The whirlpool of lava flung the ship with furious momentum. Milton’s stomach felt like it had been flushed down a public toilet. The stone-tug skimmed across the roiling Phlegethon River until—with a blunt, wet thud—it stopped, sending Milton sprawling on the deck. Captain Conchswain clutched the wheel with his toothy shark-grip.

See? he said, his cigar flaring with a blast of fishy breath. Whenever I gamble, I win…

Dech helped Milton up off the floor of the bridge.

Heeeeeee’s something of a card shark, the demon explained with a salty hiss. His cards are always marked…weeeth teeeeeeeeeeth marks, usually.

Milton stared out at the dark-green jungle beyond the ship. Everything seemed oversized: from the scorched trees and their sharp bladelike leaves, to the feeling of impending danger that wormed its way through Milton’s gut.

What is this place? Milton muttered, almost afraid to ask.

The captain wiped the sweat from his face with his right fin.

Eet is Indig Nation…beyond the surly shores of mighty, uptighty Phlegethon, he replied. The jungle was once populated by an ancient race of giants called Nephilim. These angry, resentful giants—the supposed offspring of gods and humans—were jealous of Heaven, so they built a tremeeeeendous mechanical angel called Metatron. They sent it upstairs as a gift in the year 1,000 AD.

A gift? Milton said. I thought they hated Heaven.

A gift with a surprise….a terrible surprise. Like a Crackerjack Box with a spring-loaded trap inside.

Like a Trojan horse, Milton interjected.

No, he said a big metal angel… Hans replied, coiling his starfish arm around the guardrail.

What I mean is, in the Trojan War, Greek warriors hid inside a big hollow wooden horse and left it outside of the city of Troy, Milton clarified. The Trojans brought it in, thinking it some kind of peace offering, then—in the dead of night—the Greeks soldiers crept out, opened the gates for the rest of their army, and the war was over.

Milton watched a long black snake travel up the blackened trunk of a nearby tree. A birds’ nest perched toward the top burst into an explosion of feathers and wings. As the vulture-like birds flew out toward the river, the serpent opened its jaws and—lashing out its tongue like a lasso—snatched two of the birds from the air.

Milton turned away as the snake gulped down the screeching birds.

Hai, yes, like your Trojan Horse, the captain replied. Hidden inside Metatron were the last known Nephilim warriors, determined to storm Heaven and take it for their own. Only, being giants blinded by rage, they hadn’t really thought things through. One, they couldn’t open the Pearly Gates and let the rest of their army inside as there was no rest of their army. But most important, the Nephilim couldn’t get out of Metatron. They had built a giant angel around them, and didn’t make a door big enough. So the plan was thwarted, and gargantuan golem was cast away, never to be seen again…

Something skittered in the jungle, a dozen yards beyond the ship. The unseen creature brushed against a reddish-brown patch of a sparking nettle, shooting a dozen smoldering flickers into the air and kindling the peeling bark of a nearby tree.

So what was the point of it then? Milton asked.

The point is— the captain began.

Suddenly, a spear whistled through the air in a deadly arc toward the ship. It pierced one of Hans’s rough mottled arms.

—that fate is cruel and unfair.

The starfish demon collapsed to the floor.

Point taken, Hans wheezed as his appendage grew an unhealthy purple-black.

Dech kneeled alongside Hans. Inky black tears leaked from his face. The sea urchin demon cradled what may or may not have been Hans’s head in his arms.

The demon starfish muttered.

Heeeee’s trying to saaaaaaay sometheeeeeeng, Dech replied, leaning close to the creature’s belly. What eeeeeez eeeeet, my friend?

You’re…, Hans gasped, …on my leg.

Oh…sooooorrryy, Dech apologized as he moved his spiny knee.

The captain pulled out a machete from a leather sheath hanging below the helm.

Captain, wait! Hans sputtered. Don’t do it…I’m totally—

The captain swiftly hacked off the starfish demon’s blackening limb and wiped the machete off on his rough, burlap pants.

—armless! Hans cried.

Out of the wound below the starfish demon’s upper-most appendage sprouted a tiny pink tendril, growing and swelling with every beat of the creature’s heart.

Hardly, Captain Conchswain muttered. You got too many arms as is. Besides—

A salvo of spears whizzed through the air. The jungle sparked like an army of angry fireflies.

We’ve got bigger problems now… the captain barked as he punched the throttle and twisted the steering wheel.

The SS Magma Opus wheezed and rattled. It pulled away from the shore slowly and laboriously, like an old woman in a secondhand wheelchair. Long spears with jagged blades of stone rained down upon the ship.

I thought you said the Nephilim were extinct?! Milton yelled against the death-roar of the ship’s malfunctioning boiler.

The captain’s hands bit hard into the wheel.

If they weren’t extinct, we wouldn’t be having this conversation, he growled. The Indig Nation is lousy with brutal beasties and savage nasties…brimming with blind rage as far as you can see…

Milton hunkered down as spears clattered onto the deck. He peered through the guardrail at the jungle. He could see dark eyes flashing from the brush, shooting daggers at the ship as well as spears.

With a sudden explosion of steam, the SS Magma Opus heaved out to the center of the river and joined a furious current of lava—the river’s fast lane—and sped away.

Milton breathed a sigh of relief.

We’re safe, he muttered.

The captain turned. His eyes were dull black yet oddly comforting, like buttons sewn onto a homemade doll.

You are going to the worst place in the underworld and don’t even know it, he replied. A place where violence is golden…

Milton swallowed as he shuddered inside. The Phlegethon River snaked through the worst part of Heck like a circuit cable, plugged straight into Sadia: the circle of Heck where the real punishment happens. Straight to Damian Ruffino, the person who hated Milton more than anyone…

A glimmer of an idea fluttered desperately in Milton’s brain, like a fly trapped in a windowsill.

"What would it take for you to not take me to Sadia? Milton murmured, leaning in as close as he dared to the captain. For me to charter the SS Magma Opus and find my sister then take us somewhere on the outskirts of the afterlife…"

Mako Shark Arms Conchswain rolled his cigar on his tongue in contemplation. After a moment’s thought, he gulped down his cigar, making his hands cough through their rows of jagged, triangle-teeth.

Zannen desu ga, but no can do. Too much trouble…

The ship’s boiler trembled violently below deck.

Eef you could replace this kuso lava-steam boiler, I’d consider it, though. But I can’t turn this tug around now.

Why not?

"Because we’re already there…or here, actually."

In the hazy distance was Sadia. It was an imposing, hundred-foot-tall mountain of volcanic rock