by a stout chain. The dark-haired girl whined and scooted to the back of the cage. The motion caused the cage to spin slightly, and the twisting chain links made a grinding sound.
Ms. Wickman stopped a few feet from the cage. She threw her head back and laughed with sudden, shocking heartiness. Just as abruptly, the laughter died. She stepped closer and pressed her face between two cage bars.
“Hello, dear.” Her voice was a breathy whisper, barely audible. “How are you settling into your new home, hmm?”
The girl said nothing.
Ms. Wickman turned the cage. The chain links groaned and the girl attempted to scoot away again, but Ms. Wickman caught one of her slender arms just above the charred stump of her left wrist. A loud moan emerged from the cage. Ms. Wickman gave the girl a savage yank and she crashed against the cage bars. The girl’s other stump flailed uselessly. Her hands were both gone, of course, removed to make the rendering of dark magics next to impossible.
Ms. Wickman pulled the girl closer and said, “I’d tell you struggling is useless, which is true enough, but I do so enjoy reveling in your terror, Giselle.”
The girl abruptly stopped struggling.
She sagged against the cage bars and shuddered as the room grew colder.
CHAPTER FIVE
Something shifted in the darkness. Dream was dimly aware of a subtle rolling motion. The sensation reminded her of early morning fishing trips with her father when she was a little girl, the way those slowly rippling lake waves would make the boat gently sway in the murky green water. The memory was fleeting, the vivid colors bleaching from the vision before it blew apart like a puff of fog. There was a pang of loss, but then that too was gone, lost in the shifting black tides of unconsciousness.
Dream felt it again, the slow, almost imperceptible roll of her body, only this time the sensation was clearer, more of the real world than the comfortably numb land of sleep. She wasn’t awake yet, but some part of her knew consciousness was approaching and wasn’t happy about it. This dark place was better than what awaited her on the other side of the wall of sleep.
Then she became aware of another sensation, even sweeter, a hand moving slowly over her naked body. Her breath quickened and she moved closer to consciousness. The hand slid up her inner thigh, moved very lightly over her tingling pussy, then roamed over her flat stomach and up between her breasts. When the hand cupped a breast, Dream moaned and arched her back, offering a swollen nipple to her still invisible lover.
She was almost awake now. Her eyes fluttered once before closing again, allowing her a glimpse of a formless shadow. Her lover’s mouth closed over the proffered nipple, making her moan again as the person’s tongue swirled around the stiffened flesh. It felt good. So good. An animalistic grunt came from the region of her breasts as the mouth shifted to her other breast and showed it the same hungry, aching attention.
Dream was awake now, but she kept her eyes closed, reveling in the delicious sensations rippling through her body. The mattress below her rolled again. A waterbed, she finally realized. Which meant she was likely in some cheap hotel. Which further meant the person suckling at her breasts was some sleazy guy she’d picked up somewhere. Not that his identity mattered. In the end he’d be just another faceless mark, the latest in a succession of men she wouldn’t have to care about the next day.
Dream decided to keep her eyes closed while the mytery man did these delightful things to her body. She was enjoying too much the notion that he could be anyone. He could even be…
The image that came to her then arrived with such sudden and shocking vividness that it made her gasp. A part of her mind rebelled.
So instead of pushing the vision away, she allowed it to further crystallize in her mind. She imagined the Master on top of her, his naked body gleaming in the flickering candlelight the way it had the one night she’d spent with him. The sex she’d shared with him that evening had been astonishing, better by far than anything she’d experienced before or since. Her body twisted on the bed, delighting at the feel of his rough, masculine hands kneading her soft, yielding flesh. The fingers teasing her sex abruptly pushed inside her, curled and flexed, triggering a first jolt of orgasm and eliciting a shuddering cry of ecstacy. She lifted her ass off the bed and thrust her pelvis at the still-flexing fingers.
She ached to be penetrated by something else and said so. “Take me…” A gasp. Another flex inside her. “Do it. Please…”
Then the mouth came away from her breast and a voice said, “Afraid I can’t do that, baby.”
Dream’s eyes flew open and she gaped at the sight of Alicia Jackson’s smiling face. “I don’t have the necessary equipment, so sorry.” Alicia’s tongue darted out and flicked at Dream’s still engorged nipple. “But this I can do all night long if y ou like…”
Dream’s face twisted in disgust as a maggot tumbled out of Alicia’s mouth onto her breast. “Get away from me!” Her body jerked away from Alicia’s touch, sinking deeper into the yielding mattress. The tiny maggot clung to her skin and Dream instinctively tried to brush it away, but her arms wouldn’t move. They were stretched at sharp angles behind her. She glanced back and saw that she was tied to the bed. She jerked her hands against the restraints, but the lengths of new-looking rope abraded her flesh and refused to yield.
Fully awake now, she began to take in more details of her surroundings. She saw a ceiling fan above her. Tufts of dust along the edges of the unmoving blades. A bookcase filled with haphazardly stacked old paperbacks. An old television with a rabbit ears antenna atop an old dresser. Piles of dirty laundry on the floor. Chintzy cheap curtains drawn across the room’s two windows. A creased and much-folded poster of Robert Smith on the closed bedroom door. And a faint piss smell she associated with cats. Then she felt the sticky wetness beneath her and realized she’d pissed the bed while she was unconscious.
“Where am I?”
Alicia’s hand slipped out of Dream’s vagina. The dead woman smiled and licked moisture off her bloated fingers. “Mmm… you’re not in Kansas anymore, baby.”
Dream’s mouth curled in disgust. “You’re not Alicia.”
The dead woman rolled her milky eyes. “How tiresome. We’ve been over this. I-”
“I know you’re real,” Dream cut her off. There was fire in her voice now. “But you’re not my dead friend. She’d never do anything so vile to me.”
“You didn’t think it was so vile a minute ago.”
Dream’s face reddened. “A minute ago I thought you were-” She faltered, her mouth hanging open a moment before she lamely finished, “-someone else.”
“Oh, I know what you thought, baby.” The dead woman shifted position on the bed, stretching a leg across Dream’s midsection. Then she sat up, straddling her. She was still wearing the slinky little black dress; it rode up high on her thighs now, exposing mottled flesh that had once been smooth and toned. “You figured I was some dude you picked up at a bar, but what you were really thinking about was-”
“Shut up!” Dream vainly tugged at her bindings again. “And get off me, you fucking disgusting…thing.”
“I will not.” She cupped Dream’s breasts in her swollen hands and tweaked the nipples with her thumbs. Her nails were abnormally long and yellowed; seeing them graze her flesh made Dream’s stomach twist. “You’re in no position to demand anything. And let me be clear about this one more time. I am Alicia Katherine Jackson. And though you didn’t mean to, you brought me back, restored me to this undead state of existence. And let me tell you, I’m not feeling all that charitable toward my old best gal pal these days. It’s not a lot of fun being a half-decayed walking corpse.”
Dream still couldn’t accept it. Buying into what the grotesque apparition was trying to sell her would mean she was some kind of monster. “No. You’re not her. You’re lying. You’re some thing masquerading as her to cause me misery.”
“Nonsense. You think I’m some random ghoul playing head games with you? What kind of sense does that make? No, I’m what I say I am and you’re just going to have to deal with that.” Alicia picked at a weeping razor wound with a yellowed nail. “These hurt, by the way. Thanks so much for making me corporeal, Dream. Thanks for making me feel things. Everything hurts, Dream. Everything feels like it wants to come apart, but the magic you filled me up with won’t let that happen. So, from the bottom of my dead-but-beating heart, thank you so very fucking much. Cunt.”
Dream’s vision blurred. She sniffled and b linked back the tears. “I’m sorry.” Her voice was small, soft, the sound of a beaten, broken thing. “I never meant to hur t you.”
Alicia’s smile faded. “I wonder how many times you’ve said that in your life. You know, I never thought I’d say it, but I’m beginning to think Chad-boy was right about you all those years ago. You love drama. You wallow in self-pity. And at the end of the day, all you’ve ever really done is hurt people.”
“Stop it.” Dream’s eyes misted over again. “Please…”
There was a sudden sound of voices from the other side of the closed door. Alicia sighed and climbed off the bed, moving to a spot near the bookcase. “The fuckers who nabbed you earlier are back. Guess I’ll just sit back and watch the show. Hopefully they’ll at least leave me some sloppy seconds.”
The door flew open and several young people swarmed into the room. Dream counted seven altogether, including the girl she’d assaulted in the bathroom of the Villager Pub. There were two other girls and four boys. They all appeared to be in their late teens or early twenties. One boy was carrying a huge Igloo cooler. He flipped the top open and pulled out a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon. A few of the others grabbed beers, too. A girl wearing a black gypsy dress had hair bleached a platinum shade of blonde with inch-long black roots. Black fishnets with several rips exposing pale flesh encased her slender legs. She fired up a clove cigarette and sat down on the edge of the bed.
“Hello, sleeping beauty.”
Dream didn’t say anything. Though the girl was smiling, the expression didn’t reach her eyes, which were hard and flat. A barely contained rage pulsed just beneath that smiling surface. Dream’s eyes again filled with tears. She would probably die in this room. And despite the hell her life had become, she didn’t want that to happen.
The girl blew rancid clove smoke in Dream’s face. “I hear you beat up my sister tonight.” She indicated the girl Dream remembered from the Villager Pub with a nod. “She says you beat the living shit out of her for no good reason at all. Now, you’re not getting out of here no matter what. I guess you know that, so you might as
