Volcano Threatens Scurveyshire! (‘Oy, Rodney’)

Does your group have more cavities than theirs? Is it a breath mint or a candy mint? How do you get rid of waxy build-up on your kitchen floor?

The Queen of Suspense wants to know.

“As serious as these problem are,” she confides in the reader, introducing Chapter DXLIX of her epic romance, Oy, Rodney, “they do have one thing in common. They are about to become irrelevant!”

(Well, gosh, I could’ve told you that and I’m only the editor. Nobody listens to me.)

She taps Johnno the Merry Minstrel to deliver the news to Scurveyshire. Johnno is the only one who can make it rhyme. Sort of.

“We have a volcano about to erupt,/ and stifle the honest, wipe out the corrupt/, and pump out lots of lava to bury the shire:/ it’s news of the worst kind, for the whole quacking shire!” Eat your heart out, Wordsworth.

Mt. Scurveyshire has never erupted before. It’s never even been a proper mountain. If you’re looking for something like this, forget it.

The American adventurer who thinks he’s Sargon of Akkad, Willis Twombley, solemnly shakes his head and thoughtfully fires a few shots into the air. “Old Hammurabi,” he soliloquizes, “always said those volcanoes in New Guinea were the worst–you never know where they’ll turn up next.”

Still reeling from his duel with Ginsu knives, against himself (it was a draw), Lord Jeremy Coldsore stares piercingly at Twombley. “Don’t New Guinea volcanoes just stay in New Guinea?” he inquires.

“That’s where you’re wrong, old hoss!” Twombley ululates.

Here the Queen of Suspense shuts down the chapter. To create more suspense. I ought to publish her phone number.