By the beginning of the following week, the rains had altogether ceased and the flood waters had receded, so that all that was left in the basement weights room was a plimsoll mark, and a dozen or so randomly scattered piles of morphless sludge, from which emanated very predictably the vilest sewage stink. The australopithecines and silverbacks, whose habitat this place had been before the great flood, returned willingly enough to their erstwhile habitat, taking very little account of the unsanitary conditions prevailing there, being as the plum-duff ponces and effeminate mincers who inhabited the Spa Elysium where they had taken refuge had enervated them beyond all measure, and anyway they liked to have somewhere in which they could spit and swear and spray their spoor without any cunt like fuckin’ like lookin’ at them. Soon that salon, withal it was a filthy disease-ridden swamp of a place, resounded once more to the testosterone grunts and inchoate roars and diphthong-laden epithets typical of its simian and/or saurian denizens. John Virgil Haruspex also returned to his windowless office down in that circle of Hell, and resumed his former ways of Marketing, Placemaking, Byzantine Intriguing ‘n’ Torture and, when directed to do so, showing unto such miscreants as were brought into his presence the contents of his bucket. —
John Virgil, Spa Elysium
All of this meant that that decidedly more ethereal place the Spa Elysium became correspondingly much less crowded, even during the penthouse/mezzanine witch-duckings, which had already greatly thinned the ranks of the poor souls driven to attend there, and which still went on very much as before. I noticed that Farokh the Engineer became decidedly more cheerful and applied himself to his work with renewed vigour, now that he was no longer encumbered by the sheer press of people. And I began to entertain some hope that he really was as close to finding the lair of the worm, as erstwhile he had so often pretended. —
Farokh
Withal my encounter with Kylie the Southmead Jezebel had much discombobulated me, yet did this incident seem to precipitate nothing more serious than yet another period of absence on her part, this being window-dressed by the standard sick note. I made discreet enquiries among certain of the Kurts and Troys, and of the immigrant cleaners sub-contracted by House of Rurik Solutions SARL, who to a man and woman assured me that that harlot’s Pex ‘n’ Quads career was to be characterised by precisely this cycle of brief presence, outburst of inarticulate and incomprehensible strife, prolonged absence, sheepish return, and then resumption of the cycle, and that my encounter with her had been entirely of a piece with all that had gone on before. Such prognoses greatly reassured me, and in time the spectre of Kylie the Southmead Jezebel vanished from my imaginarium. Furthermore, each time the Angel of Death passed me over, it began to seem more and more likely that I would escape in the final reckoning of the mezzanine/penthouse prize process. For these reasons, the black cloud which had been hovering over me gradually yielded to a guarded optimism. —
Kylie the Southmead Jezebel, Mezzanine/Penthouse Prize
I could not help noticing that something similar might be said of Ageing Hippus the yoga god. Indeed, it will be recalled that he had himself already intimated something to this effect. Whatever the case, at the next mezzanine/penthouse Salem, we two seemed to be the only participants who felt this cheer. A much diminished and very sorry little gathering it was, now that twenty-five out of the projected thirty-nine allocations had been made, with the ranks thinned accordingly, and only sparsely compensated for by the presence of a few of the weaker-willed Kurts and Troys and House of Rurik operatives, these having been cajoled into a grudging and reluctant attendance in order to lend that pathetic proceeding a semblance of the dignity which it increasingly eschewed. —
Ageing Hippus
This trio was bound, I believe, by certain partly asymmetric relations. I had on several occasions, most commonly in the Ghastly Hipster opposite Turbo Island, but also in other places such as the Fruit & Nut Flake and the Easton Buttplough, observed Book, in company with the late lamented Evelyn Wagge and his fellow kidults Face and Dee Fwend, disporting with Adrian and also with the latter’s fellow twink Timothy. Moreover, of course, a relation not so much social as sociopathic obtained between Adrian and Wookey who, in common with the remaining Somerset dipsomaniacs Wurzel and Chard, had for several weeks, following the demise of Adrian’s bear Rogers Boyes, been mercilessly buggering that misbegotten wretch. —
Ghastly Hipster opposite Turbo Island
The evaporation of the drench, Persephone’s reappearance, Helios’s mounting of his chariot, the thinning of the crowds attending the executions in the Spa Elysium: a time of quickening, and also of history careening towards its conclusion. Soon the thirty-nine allocations would be complete, the process at an end, leaving just two survivors out of the original band or Bund of the Spartacists. The change in the weather, and the concomitant thinning in the crowd who danced attendance on the mezzanine/penthouse prize process, appeared to have wrought a peculiar change in the mood of our ringmaster Herod, who seemed to become more impatient. Comme une enceinte s’approchant à l’heure de son accouchement – que d’une ironie. Sooth, he might almost have heeded the Parthian auguries flung by that lurking Cassandra Aeromonas Annie, for his conduct at this time betrayed a certain accord with her doom-sayings. At any rate, he seemed to the neutral observer nervous and impatient, such a state of mind being betrayed by his endless fidgeting, when his fingers absent-mindedly caressed and rubbed the awful gleaming surface of the White Willy; for so many hours at a time that I bethought myself that a groove must inevitably be ploughed in that ghostly and ghastly dildo; withal this never happened, and that horrible thing remained pristine until the very end. —
White Willy, Herod, Mezzanine/Penthouse Prize
The congenital bondsman Wookey, who understood as well as anyone the peremptory exercise of authority, complied readily enough with Herod’s directive; likewise Adrian, being well-acquainted with Freikörperkultur, required no assistance in the attainment of the natural state; and in the twinkling of an eye they stood there nude before the throng, the one hairy as an Esau, the other smooth as an Jacob, neither unduly abashed, which all there present considered as manifesting a dignity in extremis quite lacking in the third member of that triumvirate, whose milquetoastage was disturbingly reminiscent of the vapid cowardice manifested some weeks before by Wanksy on the occasion of his apotheosis, and who continued to cleave to the status resartus which he had been bid to relinquish. —
Wookey, Adrian, Freikörperkultur
Wookey and his bottom Adrian went complaisantly enough into that pool, the one thinking perhaps to indulge further frolics little considering the terrible fate which awaited him in there, the other with an air of weary resignation, the implicit courage and nobility of this attitude arousing in the onlookers no little admiration. When after some further minutes Book had been driven by the staves of the Kurts and the cudgels of the Troys into Charybdis, it touched the hearts of all to see how Adrian the chum of his extended adolescence did comfort him, caressing him and gently wanking his winky under the waves of that jacuzzi, for all that the latter appendage did slumber, not being minded to awaken in view of the extremis attended by the person to whom it was attached. —
Book
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