Life Blood---XXIV---Page No 80

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?