Trolley No. 1852

“Fuck,” the blonde moaned only to sidle over as if narcolyzed. Ammi giggled, wiping her sheened mouth. “Mister,” she said to me, “you just fucked five whores to kingdom come!”

The remark, which I supposed was a compliment, left me inwardly very weary. “Well, Ammi, ladies. That was, uh, quite nice but I think I’ll bid my adieu now and repair to the atrium.” I frowned at the sullied condom on my now-slackening penis. “But I’d best get rid of this thing first…”

I prepared to remove the vulgar sheath, but then Ammi reached forward, strangely as if in alarm. “No, no!” she shrilled. “I’ll take care of that! After all, it’s, uh… it’s my job,” and with that curious comment, she gingerly removed the soiled vulcanized barrier.

Then, even more curiously, she held the thing out, suspended from her fingertips, for all to see, and in an excited squeal, said, “Girls! Look at this!”

The four other docile women looked at the unrolled object in what seemed absolute astonishment.

“Can you believe all that jism?”

Indeed, my expended seed was quite milkily obvious as it depended at the prophylactic’s tip, though I couldn’t imagine what the fuss was about. What else would these silly girls expect? I wondered.

“That’s a lot of nut!”

“Shit. Looks like enough cum for half a dozen guys…”

“Mr. Big Dick is a walking creamery!”

Ammi chuckled her way out of the room, carrying with her the ridiculous sheath of latex. But in all this ballyhoo, and in spite of the undeniable attractiveness of my coarse-mouthed companions, I’d simply had enough. Ah, but I couldn’t leave just yet, could I?

“Ladies, if I may impose upon you a moment?” I requested and showed them the photograph of my only sibling. “This is my sister, Selina Phillips, and I’m most dire to locate her. Might any of you have seen her about anywhere?”

The question set my heart to racing!

The naked and quite exhausted quattro all squinted at the photo, registered blank expressions, then shook their heads no.

Drat! All that tomfoolery for nothing!

I mumbled specious niceties in my departure, and bound for the door…

“‘Bye, Mr. Big Dick!”

“Yeah! ‘Bye!”

“There goes the cream-wagon!”

“Come back again, please!”

I didn’t waste my breath in informing them that such a prospect presented a very low order of probability…

Whew! I thought once back on the stair-hall and finally away from the dizzy cluster of trollops. More trollops (and likely just as dizzy) would have to be sought out and questioned about Selina; for the moment, though, I desperately needed a breather.

Past the stair-hall rail I noticed a spectacular hanging candelabrum; from there, I looked down and saw several male patrons loitering about the banquet table, most seeming to slurp down more of the loathsome oysters. These men had obviously finished their first sexual assignations and were affording themselves a break before pursuing another. There was no sign, however, of my associate Mr. Erwin.

A shrill rabble of feminine bombast resounded at the hall’s end, where I spied Ammi’s bare form proudly displaying the depending condom to another nude sprite—a pointy-breasted brunette. “Holy cow! ” exclaimed the latter one eyeing the semen-filled reservoir. “Look at it all!”

“I know,” gushed Ammi, “can you believe it? And the guy fucked the daylights out of all of us!”

“Holy cow!”

Great Pegana, I thought dismally. Could I help it that my seminal deposits were evidently much more voluminous than the average?

“And you should’ve seen his goddamn prong! Big as a baby’s leg, I swear—he fucked me so hard I’ll be walking like a cowboy for a week!”

I hid behind a somewhat Doric display pedestal, so not to be seen; what I needed less than anything just then was this pointy-breasted one wanting to sample my wares, too.

“I better get this upstairs,” Ammi said, more quietly, of the ludicrous condom. “You already take yours?”

“Yeah, two so far…”

I felt my brow furrow at the arcane discourse. They’re clearly talking about… spent prophylactics. How eccentric…

The elfin pair separated, Ammi moving up the stairs to the fourth story—or I’d be more accurate to say limping.

At that same moment a door farther down clicked open and out stepped another brazenly unattired prostitute—this one with nipples sticking out like persimmons—only to turn down the stairs and proceed behind Ammi. But this woman, too, had a spent prophylactic dangling from her fingers!

And a moment later?

A third woman did the same…

My astonishment was plain. What cryptic onus could POSSIBLY charge these petite strumpets with the task of carrying away used prophylactics UPSTAIRS? Surely, the nearest waste basket would do…

The hall remained clear, but when I emerged from my hiding, my eyes inadvertently fixed on the previously unnoticed object sitting atop the display pedestal: a crude beige cylindrical clay-shape roughly the size of a common pail; when recognition alighted, I muttered beneath my breath a shopworn, “Oh my God!” for I knew all too well what the unlikely object was:

A cuneiform cylinder.

As any archaeologist and, indeed, professor of ancient histories would know, these objects provided humankind with its very first “books,” the most famous example being the Cyrus Cylinder which, in intricate cuneiform, detailed the conquest of Babylon by the Persian warrior Cyrus the Great and verified the prophet Isaiah’s prediction in Old Testament papyri scrolls of the same two centuries previous. This cylinder, however (as, I add, without meaning to brag, that I am well-versed in many variations of cuneiform) did not bear the typical assortments of logograms, pictoglyphs, and polyphonous sequences of wedges and slants that the early writing system is known for. Instead, the clay cylinder before me was covered entirely with the exclusive stylus marks used to denote numbers.

The entire cylinder, I reiterate, had been so inscribed.

Oh, if I only had a month’s time to decipher this cylinder, I lamented.

I let my considerations stew, along with my adjacent perplexity regarding the mysterious redeposition of expended condoms to some paradoxical upward recess of the building. I knew I must not make myself obvious; therefore, I strolled about the stair-hall half-pretending to examine various statues, paintings, and other pedestalled objets-d’art. Periodically, however, I took hasty opportunities to put my ear to each invaluable nine-paneled door I passed…

“Ooo-ooo-ahh-ahh… oh, YES!”

“Churn me like butter, honey!”

“Good, good! That’s a good boy!”

All of the shrill exclamations were in feminine tones and clearly indicative of some manner of fornication.

The hall quieted, then, in seeming increments; alternately, the doors I’d just quitted opened to release, first, a brawny man with a sated smile on his face, and then his corresponding fornicatress.

Each naked woman, as I might’ve suspected by now, dispatched at once from the room to the stairs, and up. And from the fingertips of each suspended a spent prophylactic.

The bizarreness of my observations were by now getting the best of me. Clearly, more rooms existed upstairs on the fourth floor, yet not one prostitute had taken a man thither; which left me to deliberate: The