Copyright © 1996 by The Kilimanjaro Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
SYNOPSIS OF WHAT
HAS GONE BEFORE
Plucked, trembling, from a truly messy and financially unstable life as a dissipated rum-runner, Floyd Aaron Horstmann found himself recast as paladin-savant-philosopher-breadwinner-warrior in the service of Dorgla, Emir of Joungfrou. Pledged, now, to combat a Scourge of the Seven Planets too complicated and vanvogtian to explain this late in the goddam serial, FAH (as he had come to be called by the faerie-folk who used him as a front to buy liquor and cigarettes for them from the subspace equivalent of a 7-Eleven out near the Galactic Horizon just off the freeway in sector nine) has materialized in Dorgla's court, gone through a lot of repetitious explanation, and has been sent out to slay The Tainted One, equipped only with the usual Ring of Silence and the Whip With A Million Eyes (X-rated). Horstmann, aka FAH, has entered the first of the Seven Valleys of Pain -- the dreaded Gulf of Weariness -- and after escaping the travail of the black viscosity now finds himself in the moments before Rogoth, The Tainted One, she of the bad
breath and really cranky PMS manifestations (actually, Dorgla's mother, but we needn't worry about that part again until Chapter 15 or so), is about to reveal herself for the first time.
Now go on to the thrilling...
CHAPTER 10
" CYBERFORNICATA OF THE ZOMBIE UPHOLSTERER"
FAH unshipped the Whip With A Million Eyes (X-rated) and stood twitching expectantly in the ichor-dripping vastness of the subterranean cavern. He could hear the thrashmashing sound of what he knew to be The Tainted One, schlurmping out of the darkness toward the scent of his dainty flesh.
Yet as effulgent light shimmered and then burst from the cavern's countless corridors, Horstmann realized he had not yet, nosir, not by a long shot, uh-uh, no way, not even possibly reached his goal. It would have been too easy. It would have meant, at best, a novelette instead of a full-length novel that could be sold to a decent book club.
This was but the first of the Seven Valleys of Pain, and she who was known as The Tainted One, she who had screwed over Dorgla, she who hadn't returned calls and then put one of those crappy answerphones on the line so you can never reach anydamnone, when you know those momsers aren't really in conference or in a big-time editorial meeting, they're just too goddam
lazy to take their calls, and use Answerphone Hell to get out of the chance random time when they'll actually pick up their own receiver and accidentally have to indulge in human congress with one of the people they've been ducking and avoiding having to give a rational response to,
she of the limitless evil, She Who Must Be Festooned, she wasn't going to make it easy for even a champion like FAH to find her, and actually have to have human congress by answering one of the many phone calls made to her seeking a decision, any decision, but not this chickenshit inability to take a stand, give an answer. No, indeed not, The Tainted One was not this easily dogged to her lair.
This was but the first of her minions. And out of the corridor of darkness came the servant of Rogoth, The Tainted One! And yet again... ! (Maybe just for emphasis, !)
The vile, putrescent servant known as Klamath, High Regelux of Xxor!!
* * *
Klamath, High Regelux of Xxor, spewed her vasten at FAH in the unspoken name of Rogoth the Untimely.
"Whoreson," she smiled, "in the unspoken name of Rogoth the Untimely... your moment of painful endodonture has arrived! Prepare to whimper piteously for my pleasure before the last moment of excruciating extinction!"
"But nay," he snarled, barking a chittering challenge, "I challenge your bosomness to the Rigor of the Clenched Bowels! It is my right as one of the high-born!"
"But you're not high-born," she velmed reasonably. "You're a dissipated rum-runner, whonged out of the timestream from a Saigon coke-parlor...."
"I was only delivering sandwiches to the clientele. Moveable Feat, Inc. Just because I was visiting in a drug den, doesn't make me a dope fiend, y'know!"
(Illo: Ken Fletcher: Klamath vs. FAH)
"Either way, slime-pustule," she quelmed insinuatingly, "you ain't high-born, so you can just give it a forget on this challenge business!"
But FAH had turned on the Ring of Silence, and all her unpleasantries went unheard. The Ring didn't have much more useful value, but as far as blocking out hurtful remarks, it was an okay implement.
Driven half-mad by FAH's equanimity, as well as his naked fecundity, Klamath charged him with her stichomythia bristling, a deadly hygrometer in one of her hundred talons, a logorrhea at the ready, merely waiting for FAH to drop his anomie for but a moment.
As she reveled across the slime-drenched floor of the gigantic cavern, FAH drew back the Whip of a Million Eyes and made to crack it in her evanescent denouement. But suddenly, there above them, swooping down with screams of feral hunger, came the dreaded Pterodacs, denizens of this underworld of despair. FAH was between two deaths!!!
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
DON'T MISS THE BREATHTAKING 11TH PART
OF THIS BREATHTAKING ONGOING SERIAL OF
BREATHTAKING TERRIFICNESS! YOU'D BE A JERK
TO MISS IT, TRUST US ON THIS.
BE HERE IN THE
YEAR OF OUR CLARKE
2001
FOR PART ELEVEN OF
! ! ! NISSASSA! ! !
(titled)
SLAVE-GROUPIES ON THE WAY TO SMOLDERING HELL
or,
"Sure, they close down the Main Street Electrical"
Parade, but hell could freeze over before they
"shut the mouth of that wretched It's a Small World"
Data entry by Judy Bemis
Hard copy provided by Geri Sullivan
Data entry by Judy Bemis
Updated September 29, 2015. If you have a comment about these web pages please send a note to the Fanac Webmaster. Thank you.