The Double Flusher - by Clark Asshton Smith
Dec 16, 2016 17:35:28 GMT -5
Post by ChrisLAdams on Dec 16, 2016 17:35:28 GMT -5
The Double Flusher
by
Clark Asshton Smith
My name is Phartupon, to those who know me in Poseidonis; yet even I, the last and most gaseous pupil of the wise Avyctes, know not the name of that which I am fated to become ere tomorrow. So it is with quivering hand that I write of the last days of the greatest shizzard the world has ever known. Therefore, I scribe this hastily with a strained brown ink upon a role of ivory tissue and will wrap it around a cylinder and pass it into the sea. And haply, mariners of Ung and Shteor in their triremes may find the cylinder, and learning the truth, will avoid the sewage haunted shores of the cursed house of Avyctes.
Well it had been for Avyctes and I had he contented himself with the knowledge of Pu Thulan, Atlantis and Stule. But Avyctes thirsted for deeper and more arcane knowledge. The storm must have been savage indeed that cast the paper bag of the Serpent People from the depths of the sea upon our fabled step. The noxious fumes of millennia must have dwelt in that somber sack, so that with the coming of dawn, it took little of the weak and watery rays of gray sunlight to cause the bag to burst into flames, the smoke of which alerted Avyctes that something foul was afoot. Bursting through the hand carved door of polished turdonite, Avyctes spotted the flaming brown bag of the Serpent People on the front stoop, and responded immediately as any shizzard of the 9th order would - he stomped out the flaming bag!
That very eve we gathered our potions and simples and the mummy Oigos and betook ourselves to the Chamber of Evocation. We flushed our respective commodes and then opened a window facing the sea and another window facing landward because of the high aroma of our erudite odors, and also in case what we summoned required more than one window to escape. Not to mention only having one window open would have caused the aromatic visitor to waft more toward one conjurer than the other and Avyctes was quite astute about summonings and such. Oh and the singed brown bag....
With the mummy Oigos crying out in horror, Avyctes asking the marble women along the wall to pull his finger and I, your narrator, gagging on the wretched stench Avyctes had summoned, our incantation rolled sonorously through the halls of the house of Avyctes. No corner was safe from the vapors of our herculean efforts. Suddenly Avyctes fell into a torpor and the evocation was over, with only the aromatic afterglow of the serpent sack filling the room. If we had summoned anything it was not obvious to us at that time.
The months and years crept by, and still Avyctes was no closer to solving the riddle of the flaming sack of the serpent men. Eventually it appeared that Avyctes had totally forgotten about the bag, the stench and the marble women. However, I began to notice a smallish brown shadow that dogged Avyctes. I feared to speak of it and when Avyctes asked me to pull his finger - I dared not! Finally he took notice of the oddity himself and began to study it, but none of his powers were able to cause the brown shadow to remove itself from following him; I could always smell my master coming down the hall before I heard him.
Like a flowing taint of liquid corruption, the brown shadow followed his own; and the space between the two was no wider than that of the thickness of a shizzard's pen.
And now upon the face of Avyctes grew the wrinkles of strain such as only the constipation of a shizzard of Avyctes' level might muster. For he knew, even as I, that this fume was beyond all laws, and foreboding naught but disaster and vile stench. And he cried out to me in a shaken voice, and said:
"I have no knowledge of this vapor nor how pungent it will be when it merges with my shadow. Go forth, therefor, and leave, for I would not that any man witness an odor fouler than that which I can conjure after a night of cabbage and beans, and I fear that that case may soon be. Also, it is well to depart while there is time, lest you too should become the quarry of the brown shadow and be compelled to share its menace."
And seeing the face of Avyctes contorted into horrors unknown, as of one caught in a miasma of gargantuan proportions, such as swamp gas combined with the swollen intestine of a dead and bloated ox could never produce, I fled. And over the sound of my running feet I heard the screams - and the flushes. Two of them - and knew that Avyctes was no more. But I soon discovered that the very spaces around the domicile of Avyctes had been changed, swayed as to a vapor in the distance. And each time I fled I found myself running anew down one of the many and noxious halls of the House of Avyctes.
Now I fear that I, too, shall know those strains that contorted the face of Acytes, and caused the howling of the mummy Oigos, and the button noses of the marble women of the Evocation chamber to curl in disdain. For the air about me curdles, the gibbous moon appears as a moldy cheese to my sight. And the air seems thick, and the sea is quieted and the spaces seem out of proportion to reality. And I have noticed now that the brown shadow dogs my own shadow, drawing ever closer.
So, knowing my time to be brief, I have sealed myself in a lofty chamber above the sea and have written these things. And I have taken that cursed flaming paper bag of the long forgotten serpent people, and amidst their sibilant hissings, flung it from me from a high window into the depths of the sea where hopefully its foul shape and aroma may never curse man again.
I see the brown shadow, and it is straightened momently - and the distance is no greater than that of a shizzard's pen.
by
Clark Asshton Smith
My name is Phartupon, to those who know me in Poseidonis; yet even I, the last and most gaseous pupil of the wise Avyctes, know not the name of that which I am fated to become ere tomorrow. So it is with quivering hand that I write of the last days of the greatest shizzard the world has ever known. Therefore, I scribe this hastily with a strained brown ink upon a role of ivory tissue and will wrap it around a cylinder and pass it into the sea. And haply, mariners of Ung and Shteor in their triremes may find the cylinder, and learning the truth, will avoid the sewage haunted shores of the cursed house of Avyctes.
Well it had been for Avyctes and I had he contented himself with the knowledge of Pu Thulan, Atlantis and Stule. But Avyctes thirsted for deeper and more arcane knowledge. The storm must have been savage indeed that cast the paper bag of the Serpent People from the depths of the sea upon our fabled step. The noxious fumes of millennia must have dwelt in that somber sack, so that with the coming of dawn, it took little of the weak and watery rays of gray sunlight to cause the bag to burst into flames, the smoke of which alerted Avyctes that something foul was afoot. Bursting through the hand carved door of polished turdonite, Avyctes spotted the flaming brown bag of the Serpent People on the front stoop, and responded immediately as any shizzard of the 9th order would - he stomped out the flaming bag!
That very eve we gathered our potions and simples and the mummy Oigos and betook ourselves to the Chamber of Evocation. We flushed our respective commodes and then opened a window facing the sea and another window facing landward because of the high aroma of our erudite odors, and also in case what we summoned required more than one window to escape. Not to mention only having one window open would have caused the aromatic visitor to waft more toward one conjurer than the other and Avyctes was quite astute about summonings and such. Oh and the singed brown bag....
With the mummy Oigos crying out in horror, Avyctes asking the marble women along the wall to pull his finger and I, your narrator, gagging on the wretched stench Avyctes had summoned, our incantation rolled sonorously through the halls of the house of Avyctes. No corner was safe from the vapors of our herculean efforts. Suddenly Avyctes fell into a torpor and the evocation was over, with only the aromatic afterglow of the serpent sack filling the room. If we had summoned anything it was not obvious to us at that time.
The months and years crept by, and still Avyctes was no closer to solving the riddle of the flaming sack of the serpent men. Eventually it appeared that Avyctes had totally forgotten about the bag, the stench and the marble women. However, I began to notice a smallish brown shadow that dogged Avyctes. I feared to speak of it and when Avyctes asked me to pull his finger - I dared not! Finally he took notice of the oddity himself and began to study it, but none of his powers were able to cause the brown shadow to remove itself from following him; I could always smell my master coming down the hall before I heard him.
Like a flowing taint of liquid corruption, the brown shadow followed his own; and the space between the two was no wider than that of the thickness of a shizzard's pen.
And now upon the face of Avyctes grew the wrinkles of strain such as only the constipation of a shizzard of Avyctes' level might muster. For he knew, even as I, that this fume was beyond all laws, and foreboding naught but disaster and vile stench. And he cried out to me in a shaken voice, and said:
"I have no knowledge of this vapor nor how pungent it will be when it merges with my shadow. Go forth, therefor, and leave, for I would not that any man witness an odor fouler than that which I can conjure after a night of cabbage and beans, and I fear that that case may soon be. Also, it is well to depart while there is time, lest you too should become the quarry of the brown shadow and be compelled to share its menace."
And seeing the face of Avyctes contorted into horrors unknown, as of one caught in a miasma of gargantuan proportions, such as swamp gas combined with the swollen intestine of a dead and bloated ox could never produce, I fled. And over the sound of my running feet I heard the screams - and the flushes. Two of them - and knew that Avyctes was no more. But I soon discovered that the very spaces around the domicile of Avyctes had been changed, swayed as to a vapor in the distance. And each time I fled I found myself running anew down one of the many and noxious halls of the House of Avyctes.
Now I fear that I, too, shall know those strains that contorted the face of Acytes, and caused the howling of the mummy Oigos, and the button noses of the marble women of the Evocation chamber to curl in disdain. For the air about me curdles, the gibbous moon appears as a moldy cheese to my sight. And the air seems thick, and the sea is quieted and the spaces seem out of proportion to reality. And I have noticed now that the brown shadow dogs my own shadow, drawing ever closer.
So, knowing my time to be brief, I have sealed myself in a lofty chamber above the sea and have written these things. And I have taken that cursed flaming paper bag of the long forgotten serpent people, and amidst their sibilant hissings, flung it from me from a high window into the depths of the sea where hopefully its foul shape and aroma may never curse man again.
I see the brown shadow, and it is straightened momently - and the distance is no greater than that of a shizzard's pen.
