"Two people," Caine repeated, lifting his own glass. The Scotch burned down his throat.

She kneeled again and smiled at him. Caine noticed then that the music was still beating into the night air, and that the black gown was still very thin. He turned his glass up again, to hurry through the drink. Even in her simplicity and tears he didn't trust himself.

The Scotch seemed to take hold of his blood and he could feel it racing in his veins.

He lifted the glass a third time, and the hand that held it seemed suddenly detached from his own movement. A singing began in his head and then disappeared, and when he looked at her, the smiling lips were redder and the shining teeth were whiter. The music pulsated in his head, seeming to beat against his brain.

"What...?" he began, and his voice was thick. He shook his head and looked at his glass. It fell out of his hand.

"A little witch's potion," she said, rising. "Something from the Martian cauldron. Quick and oh, so effective."

He fought the feeling that caught hold of him. His brain seemed to deaden until there was only the drums inside his head, and his senses became alive and burning. He could see her before him, and she began to sway back and forth, her hands moving in front of her face. He caught hold of the chair arms to keep his own hands from reaching out.

He tried to cling to reason, but his hands wanted to escape. The flames of the fire flickered somewhere in the distance, and in front of him the black-covered body began to move in rippling shivers. The moving pink hands rose in the air, and there was a shimmer of concealed muscles, dancing, dancing.

He clung to the chair, gritting his teeth, but the drums pounded at his senses, over and over, and the lips smiled and the white teeth shone and the pink body moved in time with the drums.

"Not yet?" he heard her say, somewhere far away.

And the body turned slowly, convoluting in a shimmering dance of thin blackness.

Caine lost his grip on the chair, and he was moving his hands. He heard the laughter, high in the air, stinging his ears and he couldn't stop himself. He was listening to the laughter when his fingers touched skin, and there was only blackness after that.

Minds examine. 

 Prev. P 14/26 next