Free Trolley No. 1852 by Edward Lee Page B

seat-back, I
stared in utter befuddlement…
    More stone blocks filled
the archway, rendering passage impossible! What on earth? I thought. Yet the
negating blocks were not of normal stone, as were those of the arch
and the courtyard’s walls…
    They were of the same cryptic material that
comprised the stalactitical crystals of Miss Aheb’s chandelier, and
her and Selina’s pendants!
    The trolley jerked; metal abraded as the
vehicle’s wheels squealed over the ancient rails, and it was
then…
    Impossible!
    Trolley No. 1852 rumbled
forward toward the solid wall within the arch and—
    Ineptly, I covered my head with my arms,
awaiting what… I could never estimate.
    The trolley, without so
much as a hitch, passed through the wall of outerworldly blocks.
    There came a
noisome sucking sound, then one of soft grinding; I myself felt as though I
were being pulled through a range of sand, yet no physical
substance was observed; barely visible mist, however, was observed, akin to
the seeming mist I’d thought I noticed in the madam’s chamber. I
received the notion that the mist (warm and somehow oily) existed
in some direct or indirect relativity to that inexplicable
counter-luminescence, for that same trait now—that light which
was not light—held dominion over the queer space in which the trolley
now ranged.
    And a queer space it was, indeed.
    I sensed barrenness even before I
opened my eyes, and felt inordinate pressure as well as a peculiar
absence of air temperature; it was neither hot nor cold, just
simply nothing. I
thought of vacuities and voids, of inhuman realms and lost worlds.
It was then that I actually looked out of the trolley-car’s
vestibule…
    Should this manuscript ever be found, I
suspect that by this point, the reader will have no choice but to
dismiss me as one fit for some refuge for the deranged. Translating
what I then witnessed into communicable lexicon would overbound the
skill of even the most preeminent writer. Sufficient words, you
see, simply do not exist. I will endeavor, though, toward a feeble
attempt…
    I saw a sky hazy with the
anti-light, whose source could not be perceived as there was no
object of provenance, such as a sun or a moon. Yet beyond the
spectral shimmer, the nature of this phenomenon I can only think of
as a sky existed in layers, or stratum, the darkest being the most
elevated, the lightest being in the closest proximal relation to
the land, if indeed it could be called as such. Yet each strata
bore colours defying category; instead, they seemed gradient shades
of tone, bereft of what we’re taught to be primary and/or secondary
colouring which, when amalgamated, result in the visual character
of what our eyes perceive. Forgive my convolutedness, and I
apologize for any ensuant frustration. Alas, this is the only
description my anaemic grey-matter can generate.
    Even more spectral,
though, than this “sky” was the terrain itself over which the
clattering trolley now traversed. The physical realm I now beheld
(what I mean is the solid ground) existed not as earth nor desert,
not as hillock nor woodland. It was merely flat, barren space, flat to
exactitude and extending as far as the eye could register retinal
images. I knew then that I must be on another planet, or (recalling
the forbidden mythologies of the ancient Ahebites) within some
other dimensional plane that existed in contestation with the three
aspects of dimensionality we are comfortable with; for the
Ahebites, led by the dread witch-priestess Isimah el-Aheb, were
worshipers and human physical agents for the drab, featureless
beings known as the Pyramidiles who did indeed inhabit a realm that
was not planetary and thereby could only be
para-dimensional.
    This, I knew, was but grim
fable; or at least I’d always thought it to be…
    How, though, could I deny
it now?
    More surveillance was
necessary for me to make a proper assessment of this phantasmata I was now
sitting in the middle of. I required a