At this time, further matters were disseminated concerning Emanuel Künt the Haruspex of Quads & Pex down like fuckin’ Easton. In particular, Rumour painted full of tongues averred that this pampered popinjay, complaining bitterly that he was afflicted yet with the Boner’s Palsy got from touching the White Willy, and furthermore that his suit against Herod for compo in respect of this pox did not speedily progress, had concocted a plot against that eunuch in concert with some of the surviving Spartacists; these latter being loth to suffer the torments undergone by their predecessors in the mezzanine/penthouse prize assizes, and also vexed at their having been sent to Coventry by the management of Pex ‘n’ Quads. The samizdat media, those fell bruiters of idle innuendo, noised abroad that Emanuel Künt had constructed a wax effigy of the White Willy, and that this sorcerer had seduced certain of the Spartacists away from the path of righteousness to a stony place or Gethsemane inhabited only by harlots and fugitives and snakes and lizards and locusts and other xrafstars. There, the Haruspex and his minions had conjured the vilest necromancies upon that meta-counterfeit, pricking it full of pins, seeking in this manner to do a mischief unto Herod, either in his aspirations or in his privy parts, such as remained to that wretch. —
Emanuel Künt, White Willy, Herod, Pex ‘n’ Quads, Mezzanine/Penthouse Prize, Haruspex
Herod upon receiving these intelligences was much dismayed, and greatly aggrieved at the insult that was being done unto his dignity. To this end, he did summon his scribes, instructing them to prepare and issue counter-suit under either S4 or S5 of the Public Order Act against Rype-Cheyse & Smegma (Claims Management) Ltd, the scribes of Emanuel Künt, for that Haruspex’s behaviour being likely to cause him alarm, annoyance or distress. John Virgil Haruspex and also Billy, being the more sober of countenance and serious of the Cerberidae, strove to dissuade him from this course, fearing that it would inflame Emanuel Künt and provoke him unto yet more dangerous plots against the safety and sanity of Herod, or otherwise disturb the smooth management of the Pex ‘n’ Quads operation. These suasions being unavailing, they sent then secret embassies unto Gilles de Pantalon-Rouge, hoping that the wise counsels of that sanguine gentleman might yet prevail against the rashness and folly of his Haruspex. Withal, Monsieur de Pantalon-Rouge yet resented the cruelty visited upon his only begotten son, the callow St Just, and was deaf to all the entreaties of our ambassadors, and indeed sent them from his gate with the vilest imprecations ringing in their ears. —
John Virgil
Wiser counsel might have prevailed yet, were it not for the inexorable Moirai. For a strong voice for moderation was that of the bandy-legged little jockey Rodolfo Mather-Steiner. This old loon, who had imbibed the principles of pacifism from his Quaker hinterland and persisted in seeing the good in everyone, added his piping treble to the plangent clamour for restraint. And we may speculate as to the likelihood of Herod staying his hand, if only to get some peace from that incessant whining which was Rodolfo’s stock-in-trade. Withal, the Fates need must measure and snip the thread. 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. —
Charybdis (Pex ‘n’ Quads), Rodolfo Mather-Steiner
The little man went to meet his doom, it must be said, with a good grace, and a nobility which put to shame many of his more bombastic predecessors. The same, alas, could not be said of his companion on this sad occasion. For be it recalled that the Fates picked out every third surviving Spartacist, Rodolfo as number 7 being in this manner the third after numbers 2 and 4, respectively in their everyday lives Marshall Petoman the flatulist and Agape Wydon, the latter of whom we know to have functioned in some wise as an associate of Colloid. Continuing in this manner, after Rodolfo, the Angel of Death passed over Face the kidult and the poshtitute Widow Snatch, alighting upon St Just’s erstwhile companion Boyd. —
Rodolfo Mather-Steiner, Boyd
An unedifying fellow, this Boyd, much as had been his fellow leftist firebrand St Just before that creature was taken from us. In describing him as a leftist, I must perforce speak guardedly, inasmuch as he would perhaps be more appropriately described as adhering to the Idiot-Left. For he was much in the habit, as indeed had been St Just, of describing himself very airily as an anarchist, except during those relatively brief interludes when, after somebody or other judiciously thought to point out to him the trouble which would ensue, were anarchy to prevail, for anything systemic which he held dear, such as the administration and payment of social benefits, he would revert for a time to a hardline socialism, just as idiotic as anarchism in its own purblind abdication from reality, withal it was authoritarian and therefore a prophylactic against any politick held to be deleterious to the welfare conception; although presently the glib rhetoric of Proudhon and Kropotkin would ever seduce him once more back into that somnambulistical dreamslough in which he customarily wallowed. —
Boyd
This dismissal of the Tartaress’s fears struck me as hasty, and raised questions for me, regarding the praeter-metonymic or praeter-synechdochic transference of magical effect from wax meta-simulacrum to plastic simulacrum to mutilated whole. I turned this matter over and over in my mind, considering it first from this perspective and then from that. I was much troubled by these questions, concluding but tentatively that that other Haruspex Emanuel Künt had cast his baleful spell, neither upon the White Willy nor upon Herod himself, but rather upon Herod’s quest to venge himself upon the Aeromonads lurking in the pool. Withal, I kept this prognosis to myself, fearing as ever that if I drew attention to myself, then the ancient caste hatred of my Cerebellum Towers status, seemingly latent in almost every bosom, might yet vent in the form of false witness insinuating my guilt in the case of the Phantom Crapper. Marry, from this moment on I regarded Herod’s purpose as a doomed barque, by virtue of the power of the juju of the Haruspex of Quads & Pex down like fuckin’ Easton. —
Aeromonads
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