Heck: Where the Bad Kids Go by Dale E. Basye

being singled out like this, not because he didn’t know the answers—he almost always did—but because he had to act like he didn’t know the answers in order not to seem like any more of a freak than he already was. But his teachers
knew
that he knew the answers and took great pains to drag them out of him. This made Milton seem like a know-it-all to his classmates, and a head case to his teachers. Either the teachers were completely oblivious to the nuances of Milton’s situation or—on some deep malicious level—cruelly aware.
    â€œUm,” Milton finally managed. “Like lying. Sometimes you lie to save yourself and others. Like when you lied about the whole Watergate thing…you probably thought you were doing the right thing, but each lie and criminal act kept taking you further and further away from what was right, or what you believed was right. Then, before you knew it, it was a big mess and you were impeached.”
    â€œResigned,” Nixon seethed. “Fully pardoned.”
    A blond boy with a head injury slapped his hand on his desk. “That’s it! I thought you looked familiar. You’re that crook from the history books!”
    â€œI was NOT a crook!” Nixon bellowed. He opened his bottom desk drawer and switched off his tape recorder. “The decisions a president must make are very…
complicated.
And every situation, every time and place, has its own unique logic, its own ethical code, that no one outside could possibly understand. It’s just like down here. Each circle of Heck is governed by its own principles, an all-encompassing logic, that hold it together.”
    Milton straightened up from his usual “don’t notice me” slump and shifted to the edge of his seat.
    â€œWithin that logic is its own set of rules, a contract of right and wrong. If something—anything—maintaining that contract is proved unethical, the whole thing crumbles…like an administration built on lies…but that’s all water under the gate, um…
bridge.
”
    Milton scribbled notes on the back of his registration folder as the bell rang.
    Mr. Nixon mumbled as the boys filed out of his class. “No respect for authority,” he said while rubbing his gray, doughy face with his hands.
    Contract…rings…own logic…rules…unethical.
    Milton folded up his paper and stuffed it into his pocket as he fled the class. He hoped his faithful ferret was close to finding a way out of this awful place.

13 · SCENT UP THE RIVER
    THE WORLD WAS a lot different when you were low. It seemed longer, higher, dirtier. Ferrets, it is generally known, have relatively poor eyesight. They do, however, more than make up for this weakness with their keen senses of smell and hearing.
    Unfortunately for Lucky, the halls of Heck were knotted with sharp, distracting smells and strange, echoing noises that didn’t seem to come from any one particular direction. The booming sounds never quite disappeared, either; they layered on top of each other until they formed a deep, unsettling roar.
    One smell in particular sliced through the blend of pungent ammonia and decay: the biting musk of a particular three-headed heckhound.
    Lucky followed the dark, twisting fumes until they became a taste in the back of his mouth. They led him to a towering ebony door carved with nightmarish monsters and, strangely, puppies and unicorns. The door was locked tight, though to a creature such as Lucky it posed no real obstacle. There was a small gap beneath the door, probably no more than an inch and a half high. Lucky possessed the rare ability to make himself almost completely flat. It was quite handy sometimes, like when Milton’s aunt Agnes would visit and wrongly assume she could pet Lucky whenever she liked. It was harder to pet something stiff as an uncooperative board.
    The twitching ferret slipped under the door and snaked across the floor of