As far as anyone could tell, Herod received these same intelligences regarding Costa with relative equanimity. The corrugations on his brow had anyway eroded quite markedly since the entrenchment of the mezzanine/penthouse prize selections regime. The thousand yard stare had softened to a benign professorial hyperopia, and the dark beard had grown out and seemed now a little shinier and silkier and not so bristly as before. Withal, the White Willy kept yet the habit of insinuating, nay, of thrusting itself into spaces in which it was not welcome. —
Mezzanine, Mezzanine/Penthouse Prize
The solitude which I found there on that running track and in that miasma was almost never disturbed but by a solitary, an elderly and most solemn marathon runner of indeterminate gender and – such was my fancy – boundless wisdom. Always, this albatross, this evolved Hermaphrodites, this Pheidippides, wore headphones, which seemed to me to insulate their wearer, to place this soul above the petty concerns of the human swarm. I caught a snatch of Nirvana once or twice as the comet-like peregrination brought this entity back within my ambit, as Pheidippides approached and trundled past me and once more receded. Only to return again, endlessly. Shanti, Shanti. And indeed I thought that this phenomenon did betray a serene soul intent on running into oblivion, of releasing itself from the cycle of suffering. —
Pheidippides
One such evening, I shrugged off as best I could the brown study into which these sessions invariably thrust me and, quitting the worn path of ancient Pheidippides, shoved through the double doors into the stairwell. Once again, the Phantom Crapper had been on his rounds. The evidence, coiled and glistening under the striplights in the corner of the landing between the sportshall and the next floor down. Very fresh spoor. No flies yet, and the stink only arising now. —
Phantom Crapper
A few steps further down into the well, darker down there because the striplights had blown fuses. Double doors opened into the wellness suite. Me through these. —
The Wellness Suite
No dead souls tarried at that late hour in this Elysium. Subdued lighting kept at bay but did not chase off the night umbrage. 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 promise of stress-free relaxation, was the default oppressor of the senses in that salon. They said it was an Elysium, but they kept it as a charnel house, a chamber of white noise and water torture, not to say of sexual tension. —
Charybdis (Pex ‘n’ Quads)
As thus I gazed upon Charybdis, the suppurating ulcer of that place, heavy clodhops ascending the stairwell jerked me from this new reverie and, unwilling to be put to the awkwardness of explaining my reasons for lingering there over Charybdis – notwithstanding my innocence in the matter of the Phantom Crapper – I betook myself behind the far lip of the tub and crouched there in the hope of concealing my presence. —
Phantom Crapper
The footsteps climbed past my floor to the next level. There was a pause, and a silence. And then the footsteps returned. The double doors swung open then, disclosing Stig O'Dump. This deviant wrung his hands, and addressed the following words to no one in particular. —
Stig O’Dump
The same rigmarole: footsteps past and upstairs, and stopping, a silence redolent of disgust, and then the return of the footsteps. The doors swung open again, this time revealing Rodolfo Mather-Steiner the sadly bereft consort of the late Eartha, and all who sailed in her. This specimen approached the hot tub with a daintily self-effacing and yet lugubrious tread, and spake in his reedy treble. —
Rodolfo Mather-Steiner
The same cycle of events reimposed itself. Footsteps briefly paused without, then resumed their ascent. A shadow passing across the frosted glass, I noticed this time. A few more steps, pause uncomfortably elongated, return. Then the double doors swinging open, this time to reveal – who else? – Petra Mountjoy. —
Petra Mountjoy
- I am Farokh the Engineer. I find the worm in his lair. —
Farokh
Rodolfo Mather-Steiner now fell to his knees, and spoke in sepulchral tones. —
Rodolfo Mather-Steiner
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