Suddenly the sun was blotted out, and the great horned head, its one eye shining in the fog like a polished spatula before it scoops up any pancakes, slowly rises over the humped back of Pnath Hill… It is the Cyclops.
That quote comes straight out of Chapter 531 (or whatever) of Violet Crepuscular’s immoral classic, Oy, Rodney. If you’re looking for interminable romance with bells attached, pilgrim, you’ve found it!
But back to the Cyclops!
From his perch on the root of Coldsore Hall, the American adventurer Willis Twombley, who thinks he’s Sargon of Akkad, ostentatiously takes aim at the cyclops’ single eye.
“If there’s anything I hate,” he cackles, “it’s a fake cyclops. Those dang-nab Elamites were always trying to run that scam. Well, here comes payback!”
Lord Jeremy Coldsore interrupts, with an unbecoming belch. “I say! Won’t that gentleman get rather fierce, if you take pot shots at him?”
“You just leave the cyclops to me, Germy!”
He takes careful aim, checks which way the wind is blowing… and shoots.
The bullet pings off the cyclops’ horn and wounds a woolly mammoth who has already been winged once and isn’t happy about it.
With an ear-piercing trumpet, the mammoth bears down on Lord Jeremy’s front door.
“And that’s all you get for now!!” adds Ms. Crepuscular. “There is a point where shilly-shallying must give way to pure suspense, or the reverse will happen and then you have a stupid book.”
(An Elamite hoax?)
