Charybdis (Pex ‘n’ Quads)

…They dragged him, snarling a series of unimaginative but plosive epithets, into the foyer of Pex ‘n’ Quads, and up the stairs into the wellness spa, where the Cerberidae rather kittenishly assuming handmaidenly roles relieved him of his shellsuit.

…In the corner, but somehow dominating everything, Charybdis … er … squatted and silently brooded, all porcelain tiles and chrome and sexcrime and Herod’s Plaint. I could not accustom myself to the silence which now reigned there, but was struck at that instant by the aperçu or revelation, what a blessed relief it was not to be subjected to the deafening roar of Charybdis which, far from delivering on the…

…late morning, where this perversion of a centaur was supposed to be present: in the spa Elysian, by Charybdis, ready for the next assault against that colony of A.hydrophila, where it brooded and bred in the fastness of the pipes which were the entrails of that infernal contraption. The assembled throng held there with them a pinioned captive, who struggled and groaned and chafed against his bondage, as was mete…

…was to be observed, clutching various rubber and steel and glass apparatuses, and plunging beneath the waves of Charybdis; and rooting around, evidently, among Charybdis’s pipes where, as he continued to assert, he did find the lair of the worm. We announced the scandal to the ears of Herod. But those ears did not burn with shame. Instead, that saucy idolatrous knave only laughed in our faces, and bid us…

The bubbling of the waters in Charybdis died down at that moment, and there was silence. A general petrification then, the only movement the lolling of the head of the hipster Evelyn Wagge upon the shoulder of her paladin Ianeass the Gimp. Several Spartacists reformed the Chorus, and they set up a jabber, and said then

…dictum, Colloid not unreasonably inferred that Farokh the Engineer had quite literally found worms infesting the bowels of Charybdis, concluding by plausible heuristic that here ultimately was to be found the explanation for the misfortune which had befallen Herod given, as Mulholland & Yong-Hee remark in relation to the Brisbane case, that

…of destiny found us all in the Spa Elysium, grouped as usual in a ragtag semi-circle round burping Charybdis. Mr Jupiter had been arrayed in a sort of winding sheet or toga, and was garlanded with laurels about his brow. To stray into his proximity was reluctantly to know that he had been anointed with the yobspray Jason, much in the manner of John Virgil Haruspex and his quondam colleague…

At length, the thin matron and the fat matron being entreated gently to step into Charybdis, this they did. And a great woe was upon us, and the dirge of the Chorus was louder than usual and eke more drear, for we knew not what would become of us, once Petra Mountjoy had administered the coup de grace. We in respectful and fearful silence witnessed the dolours of Lady Dragon…

…Not to put too fine a point on things, it was now Rodolfo’s turn to climb into Charybdis, and thereby suffer the Bristol Inquisition.