As the private ambulance bore away Dives the billionaire, I turned my attention to Ianeass the Gimp. That embodiment of sarcasm had evidently reconsidered his decision to spurn the invitation to replenish the ranks of the old men eternally washing their nethers, for he now approached the grimy drawbridge separating Pex ‘n’ Quads from reality. Probably needed the money. Our eyes met then, and he stopped in front of me and said —
Pex ‘n’ Quads, Ianeass the Gimp
Notwithstanding, my business lay elsewhere. More particularly, I felt obliged, not morally but by the normative constraints of etiquette and beastly primal fear, to attend the latest dunking in Charybdis of her latest tribute. This being the nymph Evelyn Wagge. I had heard it bruited on the part of Rumour painted full of tongues that this personage was in some wise the offspring of Pheidippides, who as ever ran and ran and ran round and round and round the mezzanine a floor and a half above our heads. Withal, Pheidippides persisted in his or her saurian impassivity on this as on all other matters, and I paid no heed to idle tittle tattle, sharing in the common presentiments holding that Pheidippides was a mule and that mules beget not, a fortiori beget not further mules. —
Pheidippides
For all those insinuations above mentioned concerning her, as it might be, origin from a dry font, Evelyn Wagge enjoyed something of the reputation of a Bright Young Person. More particularly, she eked out a sort of living as one of the irritating baristas in the Ghastly Hipster opposite Turbo Island, where her job involved maintaining an inanely cheerful display of repartee and in-jokes with the other irritating baristas, and keeping the punters waiting while she chatted with her equally annoyingly wacky hipster chums who did not work there; this meagre income being supplemented by part-time life-modelling for a succession of middle-aged gentleman with largely bald heads but also nasty greasy pony-tails, all of whom I either understood or assumed to be intimate with or at least on a nodding acquaintance with Ageing Hippus the yoga god. —
Evelyn Wagge, Ghastly Hipster opposite Turbo Island
Some further moments of rage et désespoir elapsed, during which I stood rooted to the spot in quandary and faecal slough, feeling my gorge rise and yet not willing to smear by tread the Phantom Crapper’s waste product over the rest of the stairwell, out of fear of the retribution of John Virgil Haruspex. Eventually, a sort of grim determination arose in me, and I bent or knelt, and with fastidious fingers set about untying the knots or bonds binding me to my Nikes and to the filth now clinging to their undersides. As I grimaced and gagged and retched, a hubbub arose from below, and Ianeass the Gimp, no longer nude, emerged at the head of a procession or crowd of gym staff and members, who ascending the stairs approached that benighted salon purposing as was customary during those times to bear witness to the apotheosis of the hipster Evelyn Wragge. I now discovered Ianeass the Gimp to be an aficionado of schadenfreude. For upon observing my difficulties he laughed out loud, the Mancunian wormwood and gall apparently quite banished, and nudged his closest companions. These happened to be an ill-assorted trio consisting of Petra Mountjoy, her restive subordinate Colloid, and Onanisticles the scagsmith and quondam factotum to Ianeass the Gimp, whom the latter had evidently, notwithstanding his initial disappointment, dredged up from his cockwashing duties in the bowels of Pex ‘n’ Quads. These four performed an elaborate sort of counterpoint with one another, Ianeass laughing and pointing and egging on his companions to share in his savage humour, Onanisticles the scagsmith struggling to do so out of some misplaced sense of duty, the relict of his years of subordination in Ianeass the Gimp’s former Old Disgrace kraal, Colloid staring impassively through his smudged glasses, and Petra Mountjoy shrewishly scowling. This latter finally spoke. —
Petra Mountjoy, Onanisticles the scagsmith
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 —
Charybdis (Pex ‘n’ Quads)
When the charade was over, and as the charred corpse of the hipstress Evelyn Wagge was levered gingerly from the briny by rubber-gloved John Virgil Haruspex, Herod who was still there was heard to say —
Herod
This site would like to use cookies to count visits and measure advertising. Nothing is set unless you accept.
