Columns in the historical city of Palmyra
THE FIFTH COLUMN
“Damn him to the hottest fires of hell!” cries high priest Myxomatosis ecstatically, before crashing drunkenly off the platform provided.
“Damn him!” cry the celebrants, waving their jewellery and the keys to their expensive cars.
The venue is an expansion of the Saxonwold Shebeen, now so big there are rumours it will be renamed the Sahara Dome.
It’s packed. The place is a riot, as they say. It’s a cross between an orgy and an exorcism. A heaving mass of greedy quivering flesh awaits the climax of this apocalyptic narrative, when worshippers will be fed the blood of the Great Ogre Pravin.
For it is told in the Gospel of Gobble that the evil monster, the very Smaug of the land, who sits selfishly guarding a great treasure, will one day be defeated by the forces of light — or, at least, the forces of lightning-fast transoceanic bank transfers.
That day is here: the moment all true believers, with their VBS credit cards in their pockets, have been waiting for. It is the Rapture for Gobblists, for all followers of the new religion founded by the Gobbles, a family of travelling evangelists from Uttar Pradesh in Mysterious India.
Excitement is running high. It’s a kind of Armageddon party, a mass for the last great battle.
“The end is nigh for Pravin, that bank-besotted botherer!” chants another high priest, Bell Pottygerms. “Pestilences upon him and all his works!”
“Amen!” cry the celebrants, raising their glasses in one hand while tweeting quickly with the other (#pravinthegreatsatan). They were trained by North Korean agents to compose tweets with only one hand.
“Soon, my children, sooooooon,” comes a sibiliant voice at a low frequency that can only be heard by Gobble devotees (once they have been initiated by receiving a tog bag of secret goodies).
The glamorous nightclub entertainer, Mimi Jumbles, cuts a swath through the sweat-drenched crowd, pressing the flesh here, having the flesh pressed there.
Actually, she’s begging for her flesh to be pressed. “Feel this,” she squeals, extruding her impressive embonpoint. “I just had it done last week! The silicone has settled in nicely.”
“Wow,” say Brian and Mosebenzi simultaneously, each palpating one of Mimi’s breasts.
“Woof,” says Des, who’s on his hands and knees on the floor, sniffing around the back of Mimi’s knees.
“And it’s got a built-in transmitter!” says Mimi of the left bulge, directing Brian’s nose towards the nipple, which is gently shining through her diaphanous upper garment.
Brian glugs what’s left of his Belvedere and gazes admiringly upon Mimi. It’s particularly wonderful because, being in the know, he knows that until just recently Mimi was in fact Jimmy Mumbles, the globe-trotting superspy deployed to —
Ah, but we can say no more. We must turn our eyes away. It’s all top, top secret.
But you’ll know, when you see Saxonwold and environs ablaze with fireworks, that the Gobble Rapture has arrived.