Chapter One Hundred and Thirty-Eight
That evening’s scheduled entertainment was an orgy, held in the ballroom, after the raspberry strudel with cream. It was conducted amidst the smeared entrails, ankle-deep in the blood, of Senhor La Paiva, whose unsurprised eyes peeped at the spontaneous outpouring of undifferentiating lust. Some of our main characters were not participating: Miss Trojczakowski, Mademoiselle Rosella, and Signora Bergamaschi were in their room, hotly debating the validity of needlepoint as a fine art; Mister Stoupes was passed out in a puddle of vomit in his room, a puddle which, dispersed about his head, would have resembled to a conscious and knowledgeable observer the shape of the principal islands constituting the Philippines; Monsieurs Mifkin and Bartoff were telling Sam off for peeing in the room; Sri Gangakanta was weeping in his bath; Herr Voot and Sniggly were cuddling in bed, gigglingly planning their future; Misters Drig and O’Herlihy watched from behind a pillar; the Drig children had free rein of the kitchen, and impounded all they could lay hold of; Frau Hühnerbeinstein knelt on the rug in her room, appealing to an unresponsive God; and Poor Larry slept.
But Curtis/Thaddeus took part, stumbling about, his trousers round his ankles, barking senseless bursts of profanity whilst choking every aperture in sight with his manhood, which had inexplicably ballooned to monstrous and wholly unwieldy dimensions, to the shock of its bearer as much as to his variously appreciative recipients; as did Missus Drig, who gave herself freely to whoever would have her; Aloysius might have exploded with jealousy had he not been preoccupied with sodomising several wives according to the strict sequence of a ticketing system he’d set up for that purpose; Herra Brotherus, boasting a large infected clot of blood where his penis had once proudly hung, skipped about shamelessly begging ladies and gentlemen to injure him through violent sexual humiliation; a hermaphrodite from Siam, after exposing zherself to the applause of all, proceeded to pleasure small groups of participants at a time (an orderly queue having been established, unconsciously, testifying to the innate sense of fair play ensconced within the hearts of all peoples from all parts of the world); Janice, the cleaning lady, fellated the men and fingered the ladies; Mister Johnson urinated on the men and offered his mouth to serve as a receptacle for the ladies to urinate into him; Signor Gridenko stood on a table and ejaculated over a large number of guests whilst roaring “Finch’han dal vino”; Missus Minette used the faces of guests as seats with an asphyxiating, nearly fatal force; Madame Tautphoeus, who would have been voted “Belle of the Bacchanal” had there been such a title, and had there been such a vote, revelled in her disgrace, brandishing her orifices like hideous weapons; and so on.
I have provided the barest outlines of the goings-on owing to my moral responsibilities as narrator—as set out minutely in Statutory Duties of the Author of Parodic Murder Mysteries, 1867, available as a print publication from the British Library (see their website, or walk in and loudly demand answers, for details)—but, Reader, I’m telling you straight: I implore you to curb your obviously salacious appetite for explicit images. If you must, imagine for yourself the deplorable scene which honour, it by this point should go without saying, forbids me to envisage.