X is for Xylbaaal

Number 24 in The A to Z of the Writer’s Affliction, part of the A to Z blogging challenge.

X, of course, is the difficult one. How many xylophones, I wonder, among the blogs of the A to Z challenge? I could have gone for X-rated, but I’ve already written about sex. Fortunately, our dear friend Arnold Pogostik was on hand to help me out, as much of his epic The Incredibly Cruel Creepy-Crawly That Kidnapped Kate takes place on the planet Xylbaal. When I mentioned the X problem to him, he dashed off a paragraph in no time.

Despite her dark hair, Kate on the whole was xanthochroid, though after a few days tied up in a prison cell on Xylbaaal, she started to develop xanthoma. She had to escape. Luckily she had a xerafin which she gave to her guard in return for a block of wood and a xyster. She pretended to be carving a xoanon, but at night she used the instrument on the window frame to painstakingly slow, but ultimately successful xylotomous effect. 

Just in case some of the subtlety of Arnold’s text escapes you, he also kindly provided a glossary:

Xanthochroid: of, relating to, or designating races having light-coloured hair and a pale complexion.

Xanthoma: the presence in the skin of fatty yellow or brownish plaques or nodules, esp on the eyelids, caused by a disorder of lipid metabolism.

Xyster: a surgical instrument for scraping bone; surgical rasp or file.

Xylotomous: (of certain insects, insect larvae, etc) cutting or boring into wood.

Xerafin: an old Bombay coin equivalent to ³⁄₅ of a rupee.

Xoanon: a primitive image of a god, carved, esp originally, in wood, and supposed to have fallen from heaven.