I'm on a bed, in a dreamscape room enveloped in pastel fog, watching a
Melania butterfly the size of a man pump his massive orange and black
wings above me. His voice is mellifluous, hypnotic, and I feel the soft
wind of his wings against my face, cooling, scented, enveloping. It is
the softness of eternal peace.
"Your body is a realm of fertility," he is saying, his tones echoing in
the shadowy haze around me, sonorous and caring. "You are special."
Then, iridescent blues and purples shimmering off his wings, his face
evolves into the orange and black mask of a jaguar. "You are one of the
special ones. Together we will create life."
Did he say "special"? Marcelina said I was . . . like Sarah . . .
Now his eyes are boring in and I'm thinking of the Chinese . . . Am I
human, dreaming I'm a butterfly, or am I a butterfly dreaming I'm human?
As he moves over me, the rest of his butterfly form disappears and he's
become a lithe jaguar whose lips are touching mine. The sheet over me
melts into my skin as the soft spotted fur of his underbelly presses
onto me. And his face has turned even more feline and sensuous, with
dark eyes that look directly through me. I can feel his whiskers
against me as he sniffs down my body, then explores my groin with his
probing tongue.
Before I realize what's happening, his thighs press against mine and he
knowingly insinuates himself into me. It all happens so naturally and
effortlessly I scarcely . . . I see only an intense twitch of his
animal ears, erect and directed toward me, as he enfolds me completely,
his hot male breath urgent. As he grinds his thighs against mine, he
emits growls, low in his throat, then nips lightly and lovingly at my
cheek, his pale fangs benign and delicious.
I cling to him, bathed in sweat, falling into him, wanting him, but now
. . .
He's changing. . . . My God. No! He's . . .
His face is becoming a jade mask with eyes that burn a fiery red, a
spirit of evil. He's plunging something deep into me, metal, cold and
cutting. Far inside, reaching, while my mind fights through the waves
of pain that course down my lower body. I struggle back, but my arms
just pass through empty air. Stop. The eyes, the hard metal . . . Time
turns fluid, minutes are hours, lost, and I don't know . . .
Finally---it could be years later--he growls one last time and the room
begins fading to darkness. Then a blessed numbness washes over me. He's
gone. . . .
And I dream I am dead.
Sometime, probably hours later, I sensed my consciousness gradually
returning. Around me the room was still dark and, remembering the
"dream," I came fully awake with a start, my heart pounding. What had .
. . it done to me? I was shivering, with a piercing, pointed ache in my
groin. I needed air.
I rose up unsteadily and reached out, and realized I was in a hospital
bed with metal bars along one side.
What! How did I come to be in this? Then I began remembering. I was at
_Baalum_, in Alex Goddard's Ninos del Mundo clinic. And I'd been trying
to get Sarah and take her home.
Instead, I'd passed out and then . . . an attack, some unspeakably evil
. . .
Get out of here. Now.
I settled my feet onto the floor with a surge of determination, and
that was when I sensed I was in a different place from where I'd . . .
Where--!
I gazed around in the dark, then reached out and felt something on a
table beside the bed. It was a clay bowl full of wax. What . . . a
candle. And next to it I touched a plain book of matches. My hand was
trembling from the pain in my groin, but I managed to light the candle,
a flickering glow.
My wristwatch was lying nearby on the table. Someone must have taken it
off and placed it there. I picked it up and held it by the candle, and
for a moment I was confused by the seconds ticking off. Then I realized
the time was . . . How could that be! It read 4:57 A.M. Had I been out
for hours?
I gasped, then raised the candle and gazed around. The walls were brown
stone--or maybe they just looked like stone. Yes, now I recognized it.
I was in the fiberglass-walled operating room I'd seen on Alex
Goddard's closed-circuit monitor.
What was I doing in here?
My arm brushed against the table and I felt an odd sensation. Glancing
down, I realized there was a Band-Aid on the inside of my left wrist.
What was that about? Earlier he'd taken blood from my right arm, but
then he'd just swabbed it, so why this bandage? And what in hell was I
doing in an operating room? I hadn't agreed to any procedures. Did he
come back for a second--?
Or . . . that was what he'd done. He'd injected me with an IV drug. The
bizarre vision I'd had was his cover for some perverse invasion of my
body. My God, I'd been unconscious since yesterday afternoon. During
all that time, what could he have done to me?
I was fist-clenching furious. Looking around the "operating room," I
wanted to rip the place apart.
When I tried to stand, I realized my groin was tender and sore as hell,
all across my panty-line, only somewhere deep, deep inside, in my
reproductive . . . It was like after he'd given me those shots up at
Quetzal Manor. I checked and saw no red needle-punctures this time, but
the pain was much worse. That sick butterfly-jaguar dream was no dream.
I'd been raped by . . . The bastard.
I pushed aside the pain, edged across to the door, and tested it.
Unlocked. Good. Go find the SOB right now. Tear his head off.