Rapacia: The Second Circle of Heck Read Online Free Page A

was for sure: he was irrevocably changed, and nothing would ever be the same again.
    Generica General Hospital resembled a huge concrete Rubik’s cube too boring to solve. A pair of chuckling security guards strode into the hospital through its automatic sliding-door entrance.
    Milton, some twenty feet away, froze in his tracks. He needed to find some way to get inside the hospital, some way to slide past security, like a pig greased in …
    Butter
.
    Something caught Milton’s eye in the visitors parking lot. A large stick of butter with wheels was double-parked beside two Land Ravagers and a Ford Cilantro. Painted on the side of the automotive depiction of fatty, churned cream was the following: GOT A FRIEND WHO’S SICK? GIVE ’EM A STICK! THE SYMPATHY EXPRESS GET BUTTER MOBILE .
    The driver was chatting with a bored teenage girl working a coffee cart outside the hospital.
    Opportunity is where you find it
, thought Milton as he crept behind the Butter Mobile,
sometimes even in a big stick of butter
.
    He stealthily opened the side door, and there, on the seat, was just what he’d suspected: a fiberglass butter costume with a matching cream-yellow leotard.
    Milton peered nervously over the stubby hood of the vehicle. There was no way he’d be able to make it across the parking lot dressed as a stick of butter without the driver noticing.
    He looked down the driveway leading to the hospital’s back entrance. At the end of the slope was an empty delivery area. Milton snatched the costume and a sympathy balloon, sucked in a deep breath, and wrapped his sweaty palm around the vehicle’s parking brake.
    Maybe I’m not such a goody-goody after all
, Miltonreflected, releasing the brake and backing away from the Sympathy Express vehicle as it crept backward down the incline.
    He stole toward a patch of nearby hydrangea bushes for cover. The Butter Mobile slowly gained momentum as it rolled down to the delivery entrance.
    “My Butter Mobile!” the driver yelped. He dropped his coffee and ran down the parking lot.
    Just then, a bread delivery truck entered the rear parking lot.
    “Look out!” the Sympathy Express driver shrieked as his wobbling vehicle slammed into the approaching Your Daily Bread van.
    The fiberglass butter pierced the van’s side with a horrid, grating squeal. The driver leapt out of the van just as it burst into flames.
    “Are you okay?” gasped the Sympathy Express driver as he grabbed the frazzled bread driver by the shoulders and pulled him away from the wreckage.
    “I … I think so …,” the man huffed. “Do you think my van will be okay?”
    Flames licked the side of the van. Painted depictions of freshly baked loaves bubbled and dripped down the vehicle’s side in molten clumps.
    “I think it’s toast,” the Sympathy Express driver sympathized.
    The great cube of charred, fiberglass butter melted, ultimately collapsing upon itself.
    “Is that real?” the Your Daily Bread driver asked, wiping oily soot away from his eyes.
    “The butter?” the Sympathy Express driver replied. “No … it’s fiberglass.”
    “Wow. I can’t
believe
that’s not butter,” the man replied in awe.
    Meanwhile, Milton climbed into the costume, which was several pats too large for him. Taking advantage of the diversion, he trotted into the hospital. He pulled up the saggy yellow fabric bunching down around his knees and approached the reception desk.
    “H-hello,” Milton managed from inside the costume.
    The middle-aged nurse smirked. “You’re not the usual guy. What are you, some kind of butter substitute?”
    “Um … y-yes,” Milton stammered. “He … he’s having a vehicle malfunction. I’m kind of his apprentice.”
    “Oh,” she replied absentmindedly while systematically checking off a stack of forms on her desk. “That’s cute … and a little sad.”
    “I’m here to see Damian Ruffino.”
    “Hmm,” the nurse murmured while scanning a stack of admissions records. “He’s