Rapacia: The Second Circle of Heck by Dale E. Basye Page B

countless moths and mosquitoes. He would need a lot, but Milton thought that by sleeping out in the garage with an electrified meat thermometer in his mouth, he should wake up with at least a little more spring in his step.
    He plugged in the Insecticide 3000, slipped into his sleeping bag, and waited.
    Zzzz
.
    Milton tingled at his first, albeit paltry, pulse of etheric energy. He turned and looked out the half-open garage door. A bright star twinkled low on the horizon. He made a wish.
    Please make everything be okay
.
    Milton’s “star” moved slowly over downtown Generica as it made its descent into Buffalo Bill International Airport. Milton sighed and closed his eyes.
    Zzzz
.
    As he drifted off to sleep, Milton imagined his soul as a translucent, rainbow-speckled glob (which was easy for him to picture, having actually
seen
his soul) piloting a craft, his body—a plane of existence flying through the night sky—flapping its arms as his soul gently nudged it into playful barrel rolls.
    Outside, Lucky had been tracking a leathery flapping noise that made him twitch with frustration. Every so often, he could hear a high-pitched whine bouncing off a tree branch or garden shed, which only drove him crazier. He looked up, and there, streaking across the full moon, swooping jaggedly behind a living cloud, he saw it—a weird, shiny black bird-rat thing.
    With his head held high in the air, Lucky followed the creature as it chased a swarm of bugs toward his very home. Such luck!
    He had no time to lose. The flapping creature was herding the buzzing cloud to that strange humming lantern his master had hung above the garage. Lucky galloped toward the garage at full speed, then—with all of his keen senses tingling—leapt into the air to seize the odd leather bird just as it flapped into the lantern.
    Zzzzz … zzzzz … zzzzzz … zzzzz … ziot … BAP … BAP … kapow … z-zwap … swizz-a-swizz-a-ZAP … zokazlott … sizza … ZORP!!!

15 · HOPELESSLY DEVOTED
    BEA “ELSA” BUBB did
not
like people going through her things. She arranged her office as a reflection of herself—inscrutable, challenging, and possessing a beauty of form so perfect as to be nearly imperceptible to the untrained eye.
    And here she was, forced to stand idly by while Lilith Couture—
ugh, the name itself made one’s tongue contort grotesquely
, Principal Bubb fumed—riffled through her files.
    A music-video program played on the plasma screen behind them.
    “Welcome to
Total Request Dead!
I’m your host, Carson Nightly with the latest video from Yojuanna B. Covetta, ‘I’m L8 ’n’ Gr8, Gonna Make U Saliv8.’”
    “Ugh,” Lilith said as she punched the mute button of the remote.
    As Yojuanna danced on the crest of a shimmering tidal wave, Lilith resumed fingering her way through a stack of bulging folders.
    “The only words I can think of to describe this travesty of a filing system aren’t suitable for a children’s facility.”
    “You don’t know what it takes to run an institution such as Heck,” Bea “Elsa” Bubb said haughtily.
    “And neither do you,” Lilith replied with a voice like a snooty sorority girl with a head cold. “This isn’t just about your sloppy management skills, Ms. Blob.”
    “Principal
Blobb … er …
Bubb,”
corrected Bea “Elsa” Bubb.
    “Do you follow the Netherworld Soul Exchange?” Lilith inquired. “It’s an organization that issues, trades, and redeems souls, with each transaction—”
    “Yes, of course I am familiar with it,” Principal Bubb replied defensively. “I’ve only got my retirement tied up in the thing. Did you notice that I happen to have a stock ticker on the wall?”
    Lilith looked over at the pulsing stream of letters and numbers on the wall and smiled weakly to herself. “Well, then,” she said, “you may want to rethink your retirement plan. There’s been considerable volatility recently. And the embarrassment of you allowing a little boy to escape