Darconville's Cat (98 page)

  The expression, as he amassed them, sat loosely on
his thoughts.

  Then he spoke.

  XCIII

  “Why Don’t You-?”

  I’ll teach you differences.

        —WILLIAM
SHAKESPEARE,

              
King
Lear

  “STAB HER with a bung-starter! Mail her a poison
suit! Employ the scaphism! Hurl her down the Gemonian steps with
tincans tied to her ears! Whittle her nose into a dowel! Exenterate
her with an oilcloth-cutter’s knife! Glume back her scalp and paint
the skull with a crimson A! Incrassate her into jellies!
Conglutinate her buttocks with hot solder! Bake her a pie made from
castor beans, pokeweed, tomato plant foliage, black locust bark,
rhubarb leaves, and wisteria pods! Ablende her eyeballs!

  “Burn
radix pedis diaboli
in her bedroom!
Force her to have buccal coition with a yak! Deliver her over for
lewd sport to hordes of ferocious Khonghouses! Snop her, snackle
her, smore her in picrotoxin! Tie her down on a nest of dermestid
beetles! Pickle her in natron! Replace her nose with a headlight
and drive her into a plate-glass window painted the color of money!
Inject her with fox mange, nasal gleet, poultry mites! Lock her
away forever into the charnel-vault of Montf aucon! Fouch off her
buttocks!

  “Place Q-wedges in her eyes! Cauterize her cervix
with strychnia! Nail her name down with Punic wax and pour acid on
it! Sew her up inside a hippo! Bore a hole in her throat and draw
down the tongue, for comic effect, to pull it through her neck! Cut
the fingers off her first-born and fashion them into a necklace for
a cross-eyed pigmy! Grill her on
cashielawis
! Thropple her
with your wet hands! Notch her nostrils! Drip plutonium into her
open eyes! Roll her tongue up like a bruggioli and transfix it with
a mail-opener! Feed her out of a lead footpan into which several
Hassidic Jews have just vomited! Plug up her Bowlahoola!

  “Beat her senseless with her boiled shoes!
Scrobiculate her with a pair of tailor’s shears! Hang a wreath of
fruitbats around her neck! Put a rocket up her anus and light the
touch-paper! Vaginoexcavate her with a hot coal spoon! Put a stone
fish into her bathing cap! Bas-ton her with heated gisarmes! Lib
off her ears! Shove tacks into her fold of Houston! Upend her into
a moldy fust! Crimp her epidermis into artistic sunbursts and
slivers with an Eskimo ulu! Sulp her! Feague her! Gaum her!
Hamesuck her! Waterzoutch her!

  “Strangle her with a numbat’s tongue! Coat her with
hot creosote, hollow her out, and use her in your garden as a
drainbarrel! Beat her into a j-particle! Hang her in a bottle like
a cat! Shoot Dutch bric-a-brac off her head with a shotgun! Tack a
pocket to her libbard skin! Make stone jewelry out of her distals,
terminals, unguals! Give her a felon-wort sandwich! Behead her with
a rusty coffee-can lid! Pitch sorb-apple hoops into her face!

  “Yerk her on the lip with a gorilla’s
scrotum-stones! Smother her in her own midden! Force her at
knife-point to shinny naked up a locust tree! Contrive to make her
feel torment without the luxury of sorrow! Spackle up her mouth!
Lay pipes in her you’ll scald! Clap her into a pair of hames and
take her for a run on a string! Hogcomb her back! Fit a whipworm
into her ear! Slingshot a brookstone into her forehead! Stick her
toes into Bullivant’s Stopper and twist! Roll her in
smilax
rotundifolia
! Dunch her in the belly! Duntle her in the teeth!
Dub her in the face!

  “Raft off her head! Throw her to a Zanzibar tiger!
Hire her out to a sideshow where she’ll be backscuttled by a Bulgar
in a conical hat! Venenate her vegetation! Coat her with meat sauce
and release fifty starved Molossian hunting dogs! Send her around
Cape Horn in an ill-caulked fat! Reverse her fingers! Thrast her
temples with a filter-wrench! Slither a taipan through her bath
tap! Hautpin her through the ears!

  “Vivisepult her! Snawle her! Titscrew her! Sheer off
her right mammary prominence and throw it to a Maltese spaniel!
Snip her weasand! Jackflip her into Appleby’s self-knotting binder!
Bang her hard on the occiput with a copper stewpan! Saw off the top
of her skull and use it as a whistle-tankard from which to drink
juleps! Boil her buttocks! Crucify her on the front of a barndoor
while wearing a duncecap listing her crimes! Blowtorch her hair off
and scald her like a sow!

  “Melt her down into a kitty-litter tray! Fustigate
her with an eel-ferret! String a zither with her vastus lateralis
tendons and play ‘A Nautical Man Came By’! Tear out her umbles,
reins, and kidneys and replace them with her lying tapes! Give her
an overdose of chloral and force her to do unnatural acrobatics!
Chop her into messes with an ax-wedge! Fill her calyx with duocide
chucks! Place cannonballs on each of her feet and hang her by the
tongue from the clock of the Soestdijk Palace! Graft her thumb onto
her chin!

  “Rip out her temperomandibular joints! Sever her
stapes! Brank off her wrists with hoof-nippers! Mammock her into
bacon! Bite her on the neck and give her the gleep! Inject her with
the Black Formosa Corruption! Grant her the xi pains of hell! Foin
off her thumbtips! Suggilate her with night-visits from goblins,
bugbears, and tenebrions! Garrote her with corned beef string!
Celebrate a mass inhumation with her and her two friends! Duckpop
her by grabbing her asshole and snapping her inside out!

  “Pack furballs of her own hair into her by suction!
Miniaturize her! Decapitate her during the recitative of
Fidelia
! Hand her a bouquet of amanita mushrooms, Persian
kerza flowers, Jerusalem cherry plant, pyrethrum daisies, Javanese
upas leaves, and tell her to breathe deeply! Snip off her eyelids!
Inject potassium under her armpit! Gore her in the temple with a
suction trocar! Force her to grab an active propeller! Order her to
memorize Zumpft’s
Latin Grammar
while bonking her on the
head with a hammer! Dye her black! Devil her into a pâté! Dash her
against a wall of dolerite!

  “Bimster off her flesh! Tap croquet balls down her
throat one by one! Feed her the gets of cupped and goitrous
Jewgirls! Sit her in a footstool made of Perunite B and throw a lit
match at her navel! Suspend her naked from a dree-draw! Fashion a
parrot cage out of her sternal ribs! Slip a gluey penny into her
glottis! Lower her into filthy sewage! Electroplate her and hang
her as a bauble in a burlesque house in Clinch Valley, Va.! Slit
her snout! Wish her a case of sheeprot! Fit a barlow knife into her
nasopharynx! Crunt her on the skull with a cudgel!

  “Sling a schist into her belly! Pewke into her
pockets! Thrack her with anvils up to Pantops Mt.! Insert the
nozzle of a bellows into her touchhole and pump hard! Pour all over
her skin a devouring escharotic! Bombard her with calcium atoms!
Turn her upsidedown and let bongo apes depucelate her bum! Split
her head with a pike at the lambdoid suture and use them for woks!
Upholster your house with her verminous dermis! Whack off her lower
lip with an imperfect blade! Attach drawstrings to her and
hanfangle her from the vanes of a windmill by ‘The Hottentot
Apron’! Fetch the rymme out of her throat!

  “Adnexopex her! Burke her! Crooch her in the face!
Put her to the hot-water ordeal! Roomal her with her lover’s
dogstones and rope-theats! Hide a spincop in her knitting ball!
Drape a mulebell on each of her ears and parade her duck-squatting
through the village of s’Her-togenbosch! Whip her about like a
bumming-top! Assoil her with rude fists of offal! Thrammle her to a
leaking nuclear-reactor! Splashfeed her with phenyl cyanide!

  “Glaive off her ears! Hurl Montenegrin shepherds’
curses at her through a megaphone! Spray hive-bomb down her throat!
Clap her into a casket with a vicious ounce! Mule-pulley off her
back from her front! Drop live geckos into her hair! Sproat her
through the tongue and lower her into a sharkpool. Cruddle her
fibula bones into matchwood!
La plongez dans lessive faicte
d’estrons et de pissat de juifvre
! Vault her down the street
with a wagstaff inside her! Behead her with a dull thixle!

  “Brangle her by the ears! Swage her legs to a
perpetual 180°! Afflict her with the scabadoo, dry serpigos, roup,
gaffkyremia, and white diarrhea! Put casting-counters in her
eyeholes! Haust her with higry-pigry! Clap a fistful of Yucatan
habanera chilies into her mouth and hold tight! Depeditate her and
force her on a stump pilgrimage to the Mount of Deceit! Cut her to
the rames! Bace her to death with rubber drubbers! Caboche off her
head and use it for a glowball!

  “Impissocrapigate all over her! Crosshatch her face
with a pie-crimper! Make her bite down hard on a chunk of Hawaiian
coral! Massage her with a currycomb, abrading the flesh, then rub
her with alcohol, ignite it, resume combing, rub again, and
relight! Stuff her lover’s severed cullions into her podex! Jangle
puppets who look like her real father outside her night-window! Set
vicious ichneumons loose at her heels! Sit her in a bed of flaming
hot gleeds!

  “Comminute her into snuff! Keel-haul her backwards
through a pond of aqua toffana! Dress her up like Satan and walk
her into the Valley of Mina to be pelted by outraged Muslims! Carve
a perpetual pumpkin-like smile into her face! Put a fire-alarm
inside her and excite it with a jab every five minutes! Skin her
alive and roll her in salt! Catch her a whisterpoop on the face
with a birchrod! Chain her in gimmaces from a balloon and pot-shoot
her with glass bits! Shove her into a jam-pan! Make her swim into a
cave of beach voles! Batter her with a wanion! Thrash her with a
hame strap!

  “Acupunctuate her! Swindge her! Thunderstone her!
Feed her a full bag of creep ration! Deartuate her with a pair of
calipers! Dose her simultaneously with huge amounts of Sinequan and
Mebroin, Pertofrane and Panwarfin, Mellaril and Esidrix! Infibulate
her with a curved seton needle! Pack her bathtub-deep in dough and
harden her into a human Beef Wellington! Tug a sailneedle through
her nose-points! Anchor her down by her byssal hairs and roger her
arseways!

  “Feed her poison garbongs! Cryogenize her into a
glacial dirt-band! Flame up a hornbeam into her eye! Cripple her
and give her a 16th-century larder pan to slide herself about like
a
cul-de-jatte
! Pinch the back of her neck white with a
tension forceps! Fuse her legs together into a tail! Lock her into
the Bull of Phalaris! Gamahuch her with the tip of a pompier
ladder! Take out her twenty-eight miles of intestines and with them
hang her parents from the storefront in Fawx’s Mt.!

  “Funnel lobster dung into her eyes! Ganch her with
razor-sharp hooks through the clavicles and attach it to a
dirigible! Wither her like Jeroboam’s hand! Exoculate her with a
spoon and feed the balls of her eyes to your pet mandrill! Crush
the tips of her toes in a
grésillon
! Send shrews skittling
up her anus! Stick her head between her thighs —the seat of
dishonor—and jab her to death with a firefork! Beat her to death
with an elderstick that was cut the minute the sun entered Mars!
Roll her about in yucca leaves! Send her wedding veil to an insane
asylum in the Tidewater to be used as a volleyball net! Set gongs
to work under her bed and when she jumps cut off her ankles!
Gar-rote her with her heartstrings! Pour six quarts of ipecac down
her gullet—and gag her!

  “Probang her with liquor of ammonia! Blind her with
hot pins and place a fat padlock through her eyes! Void on her! Tie
her onto the Lowell House bells and gong them! Hang, draw, and
quarter her with the tied sheets of her marriage bed! Swing up a
hidden steel chungool and swipe off her labiae! Pincer her occicles
with pliers! Hamble her in the feet and force her to walk on stilts
made out of her lover’s bones! Frottage her head with a
drill-sander!

  “Tamp percussion caps into her ears and explode
them! Sponge her in the midriff with sulfuric acid! Turn the
killing gaze of a Catablepas on her! March her on the run,
backwards, into a forest barbed with sharpened punji sticks!
Inflate her with hydrogen gas through a clyster pipe! Squirt
burgundy pitch into her ears! Cement her alive into the dungeons of
Kasr el-Nihaye! Shake a can of wireworms into her face! Cover her
with thistle-seed and unleash seventy-five bags of diseased
crows!

  “Give her a bath in hot naval jelly! Expose her
strapped down on an iron grating in the Dokhma! Puncture her heart
with an etching-point needle! Flatten her feet into trays with a
spalling hammer! Shoot her with a phosphorus gun and leave a huge
circle-burn for a halo on her heart! Take watermelon-sized bites
out of her oxter! Tie her with clew lines, furl her, and bash her
unconscious into the deadlight of a ship! Fuse her with sulphur
into a human candle! Screw an ear-trumpet into her mouth and pour
in chloride of zinc!

  “Truss her haunches! Switch out her brains! Flog her
with a cabman’s whip! Nail her face up under a thick woolen drugget
riddled with bedbugs! Extract all her teeth and replace each one
with a red-hot nail! Allow a candle to burn down in her sphincter!
Flay her with a rhino whip tipped with bent pins, knotted cords,
switches of heather, and a bull’s pizzle! Screw a spout into her
mouth and porcelainize her for a men’s room in Kabool!

  “Request her to play ‘
Aschosos paizeis
!
Snatch out her eyes, harden and varnish them, and use them for
hacking chestnuts! Ream off one of her buttocks and make her wear
it as a fur tippet! Split her lip like a bunny with one snip and
make her hop after carrots! Funnel pounds of nephrocatarticon into
her and scorch her kidneys! Beat her knuckles with a hickory
ferrule! Throw a rabid kinkajoo into her bathwater! Quadrifurcate
her and set the meat on four staves in the Rub’al Khali!