Read Online Blimpo: The Third Circle of Heck by Dale E. Basye - Free Book Online Page B

that … stuck-up witch … doesn’t need to know.”
    Farzana’s quivering eyes nearly popped out of her skull. Her pupils gestured to something over Marlo’s shoulder.
    “She’s probably too busy eating live puppies for lunch—”
    “Puppies, while delicious, are far too hard to come by down here,” Madame Pompadour said from behind Marlo. Marlo jumped. She turned slowly, her head as thick and fuzzy as the lint trap on a Laundromat dryer.
    “I—I—I,” Marlo stammered.
    “Aye-yi-yi?” Madame Pompadour jeered. “What are you, some kind of
bandito?
Is Cinco de Mayo early this year?”
    Farzana laughed nervously.
    “H-h-ha h-h-ha.”
    Wow
, Marlo thought,
she even
laughs
with a stutter
.
    “Miss Daffney,” Madame Pompadour hissed, “please refrain from talking until you’ve had your Beauty Cream!”
    “Yes, m-madame,” Farzana replied. “It’s just that the c-cart hasn’t g-gotten here y-yet.”
    Madame Pompadour grabbed the dinner jacket from Marlo. She ripped off the plastic, wadded it up in her pawlike hand, and tossed it onto Farzana’s desk.
    “Recycle this. Send it to one of Heck’s preschools for a toy.”
    Farzana nodded. “Yes, m-m-m—”
    Madame Pompadour sniffed at the garment with her tiny pink nose. She arched her eyebrows, or would have if she had any, and glared at Marlo with glowing green cobra-cat eyes.
    “What is this, Miss Fauster?”
    It’s a flippin’ fudge-covered Christmas tree
, Marlo thought to herself.
What does she
think
it is?
    “Um, I’m going to go for
dinner jacket
, madame—”
    “Is this some kind of joke?”
    “Believe me, I know funnier jokes than this,” Marlo answered, trying desperately to keep from trembling. “Like the one played on
you
, having to spend eternity with girls like
me.”
    “This is the wrong jacket,” Madame Pompadour replied.
    Of course it is
, Marlo moaned to herself before replying with exasperation, “But the ticket was torn!”
    The edges of Madame Pompadour’s lips curled with a sly, nearly imperceptible smile. The imposing, impossibly skinny woman with her perfect skin stretched across her perfect cheekbones gave the jacket another dainty sniff.
    “Even if it
was
the right jacket,” she continued, “it hasn’t had
nearly
enough pungent sulfurous smoke infused into the fabric.”
    “Infused?” Marlo asked, confused. “Don’t you mean
removed?”
    “No.
Infused,”
Madame Pompadour clarified. “And where are the pants?”
    Marlo’s dead heart stopped.
    “P-pants?”
    Madame Pompadour tapped her baby-alligator-skin shoes in time with her own impatience.
    “I had no idea that stuttering was a contagious condition!” she hissed. “The matching pants. Where are they?!”
    Marlo had, unbeknownst to her, backed into Farzana’s desk.
    “Do
not
tell me that you lost Satan’s pants!”
    Farzana surreptitiously dialed a number on her compact. The phone on her desk rang.
    “H-hello, M-madame Pompadour’s office,” she answered. Farzana’s large, quivering eyes rolled from Marlo to the madame. “Oh … yes … I’ll tell her.”
    She hung up.
    “That was the d-d-dry cleaner,” Farzana said. “He said that there was a mix-up and that he was very s-sorry.”
    Madame Pompadour couldn’t decide which of her Inferns to fix her glare fully upon. She sighed, ferociously, so that you could practically smell the potato chips she had licked for dinner the night before. Dragging the coat behind her, she strutted across the room and pulled open a huge closet: bigger than a walk-in, it was more like a
run-in
closet. Inside were dozens of the
exact
same dinner jacket. Madame Pompadour threw the latest one onto the floor.
    “Just be sure you don’t make another mistake, Miss Fauster,” she scolded as she swept past Marlo on the way to her office. “Even if it isn’t yours.”
    Madame Pompadour slammed the leather door behind her—as much as one can slam a plushly upholstered door—leaving, in her wake, a frozen