Escape Mechanism
clarity, and she found herself reliving it. It was there, all of it. The home life, protecting and yet restraining. Her dissatisfaction. The secret determination. The running away in the dead of night. It was all there, just as Dr. Gower had said.

"But it's a dream," she murmured, "just a dream."

Yet it seemed a reality. She could feel the cool night press upon her as she made her way slowly through the strange-familiar darkness and descended into the depths of the canyon. The feeling of having been here before was with her, and it brought terror with it. She walked on, looking to either side, listening fearfully. And then she stopped, her blood becoming ice.

There was a man before her. She could see only his eyes, but they were cruel eyes, savage and lustful.

Knowledge came then, bursting over her in a raging tide. She screamed and ran, her footsteps echoing frantically as she hurried through the darkness, looking for an opening for a protecting light. But no opening appeared, no light came. She ran until she was exhausted, and then she sank to the ground panting trying to still her spasms of breath. There was a small sound, as of the scraping of a shoe and she looked into the eyes again.

She screamed again and again and again not knowing where screams ended and echoes began. She put her hands over her ears and screamed into the darkness. She could feel hands reaching out for her and she shrank away from them.

Her mind was a playground for terror. She had to escape. She had to.

(But sometimes the only escape is in the mind!)

The hands reached out. She was suddenly falling, down, down, down. Calmness came, and a grateful thought appeared: she had escaped. Nothing else mattered; only that....

She stopped falling. The mist grew thick, thicker; it became dense; it became liquid. She could not feel the beating of her heart, but her mind was calm and it looked about with a detachment that was intellectual.

She was floating again, floating silently through a world of murky fluid. The liquid was pressing with a force so gentle it almost did not exist. It enveloped her like a protecting shield.

She drifted. There seemed to be no direction but outward. Her thoughts went out and they returned with impressions. This was her world and she 
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