Trolley No. 1852

Was this to be believed? I sensed yes, in spite of the desolate consequences in store for myself.

I turned to my sister. “You must leave now, Selina, and forget me.”

She stood frantic. “But I can’t, Morgan! I can’t allow you to trade your freedom for mine!”

“You can and will. I’ve lived my life; now go live yours.” I handed her my billfold and keys. “Here is the address for my room and the keys to the door. The rent is paid for several months, and you’ll find a small sum of money hidden behind my bookshelf. It should be enough to get you on your feet.”

“I can’t!” she sobbed.

“Go!” I yelled back.

A macabre fugue-state seemed to overwhelm the chamber, but I knew it could only genuinely be amid my mind. In what appeared to be retarded motion, Miss Aheb came down off her chair, whereupon she took Selina by the shoulders and kissed her once. Then—

She removed my sister’s pendant.

With instantaneousness, the revolting, pond-scum skin that so molested Selina’s physical beauty… reversed! In only seconds her face beamed in a creamy and quite normal hue.

Miss Aheb turned Selina about and gently nudged her toward the door.

“Goodbye, my beloved sister,” I bid, and suddenly what occurred to me was something more than simple relief but the resplendent positivity that so enraptured my friend Mr. Erwin. “Every day is a celebration. Never forget that. Revel in that celebration, Selina, while I, here in my own way, shall share in your joy…”

She walked shakily to the ornate door, opened it, but halted, to turn her tear-streaked face to me a final time.

I smiled as I hadn’t in decades. “Go.”

And she was gone.

Miss Aheb traipsed slowly about the grand chamber, as if mulling penetrative thoughts. “You seem a sincere man, Mr. Phillips, in a world where men are anything but. Your thoughts remain surprisingly clear, and I’m impressed by that. But should you ever harbour hope of escape, don’t bother. Perhaps you’ll one day entertain the notion that your sister will report the existence of the 1852 Club to the authorities, and they’ll storm through the door and wrest back your freedom. But what you must know is that no one ever finds the club save for those I allow to find it.”

“I’m not surprised by the intricacies of your powers, madam; rest assured, I shall never challenge them. After all… A deal’s a deal.”

She turned, then, to slowly approach me.

She snapped her fingers, and in moments, I stood in the midst of the brothel’s ladies of pleasure, all of whom remained naked and raving in their slatternly appeal. One by one they undressed me of all my garb, then commenced to re-dress me…

… in the trousers, tunic, boots, and regulation cap of a trolley-car conductor.

That bizarre fugue, impossible as it was, rose to a steady, lamenting dirge in my head, and it was then that Miss Aheb placed the pendant about my neck.

“Consider yourself blessed,” her lithe accent hissed. “You are the new conductor for the trolley.”

“So be it,” I croaked.

It was the delightful and very spirited tart named Ammi who, with a lascivious grin, held the mirror before my face.

The silver veins shined back…

Into the features of my nondescript visage the brand of the Pyramidiles had now been imbued: that nauseating swirl of swamp-foam green with corpse-white.

“From here on, you exist to serve the Pyramidiles,” Miss Aheb’s hellish voice echoed so very softly, and then over my face she placed the parchment mask…

“Go now, Conductor Phillips. The trolley is ready to depart.”

3.

Hence, the sum of all my destiny’s parts. I conduct the trolley now, in my ghastly mask of death, during the blackest and most silent hours of eventime. A new motorman was easily procured, identical in function—and in atrociousness—to the first. When not transporting appropriately virile guests to and from the club, or making the periodic “ingressions” to that howling terrorscape upon which the execrable Pyramidiles live to suck up like wine the horrors of countless worlds, I serve these abyssal mountains of flesh and their blasphemous, aeons-old acolyte, Isimah el-Aheb. I serve the latter quite carnally and in ways too lewd to iterate; and I serve the former quite traitorously via the inter-worldly deliveries of sperm so abundantly pilfered from the club’s unsuspecting suitors. Much of that consignment, to my eternal shame, is my own, and when on one bleak day in the future two billion thoggs are unleashed upon my planet, I shudder to think how many of them will have been sired by me…

And as for the question of how long the earth shall last, I cannot estimate. Another day, perhaps, or another thousand years. Whichever the case may be, my new grotesque immortality will ensure that I am here to witness it all. As for my beloved sister, I never saw her again, and I can only, however thinly, pray to Erwin’s God that she is safe, unexploited, and, above all, alive.

And in times when I am in farthest proximity from my wretched mastress (and hence farthest from her prying grey matter) I dare to entertain the hope that I may eventually condition my mind to veil its thoughts soundly enough from her psychically-clutching powers and then devise some manner by which I may destroy her and close forever this horrid ingressional rive. But until that day may dawn…

My name is Morgan Phillips, and I am the conductor of Trolley No. 1852.

THE END

— | — | —

When the sudden and rather annoying series of raps sounded from the downstairs foyer, Howard frowned up from his current work-in-progress which, upon conclusion, he believed he would entitle “The Shadow Out of Time.” But, oh, how he deplored interruptions! What’s more, he hoped the intrusion didn’t disturb his aunt who was still feebly recuperating from a broken hip.

“Howard!” came her shrill voice. “There’s someone at the—”

In the name of He Who Is Not To Be Named! “My perfectly serviceable auditory functions have left me so apprised, Auntie,” he raised his voice in response. “We can at least rest assured that it’s not the landlord, since I’ve paid the next six months’ rent.”

“What a fine, gifted boy you are, Howard…”

I’m forty-four and she still calls me a boy… He shot down the stairs, hoping to circumvent more rapping, but upon opening the door, he was taken startlingly aback by the physical presence of the visitor. Poised opposite within the doorway was a significantly handsome woman with shining, shoulder-length tresses of hair the colour of sunlight, and penetrating noon-blue eyes. Even in the long, autumn-leaf overcoat, her sonsy bosom and copious curvations were so evident, the writer’s power of speech stalled outright.

“Do I have the pleasure of standing before the renowned H.P. Lovecraft?” she asked in a silken wisp of a voice.

“I… er, uh…” Not one to ordinarily be struck dumb by the vision of a notably attractive woman, the writer could only gulp ludicrously in repeated attempts to make an affirmative response. The woman’s cleavage blared at him from the V beneath her smart collar.

“Oh, I’m so sorry, sir. Perhaps I have the wrong address…”

“I’m Howard Lovecraft, yes,” he finally erupted, “but-but-but, I’d hardly refer to myself as renowned.”

“You’re too humble, sir!” she exclaimed, and then a smile that could’ve been painted by Rubens illuminated her flawlessly angled face. “Do pardon the interruption, Mr. Lovecraft. I’m Francine Wilcox, the publisher of