74

My karate robe is folded over the back of a chair. I've been taking martial arts lessons.

You go to bed. Although your head is spinning from the evening's events, you quickly drift off.

And then you are in dreams. More specifically, you dream you are standing at a Southern country crossroads, cicadas and frogs croaking at the periphery of your awareness, insects buzzing languidly in the fulgent light of a pregnant moon. The stars are brighter than you've ever seen, radiant jewels studding the surface of an oil-slick sky. Your right hand clutches the handle of a hard black guitar case, and the instrument feels unnaturally heavy in your grip.

Nobody is there with you. And then you blink, and there it is—standing right in front of you is a towering figure, eight feet tall. It is wearing what looks like a red leather suit.

As you look at the figure, it shifts and moves and wriggles, living red snakeskin slithering across its massive frame. Its skin is white, pure white like milk, but there are black veins that branch, combine, and fragment just beneath the epidermis. The figure's head is strangely elongated, and its eyes are deep black flecked with gold.

You know it is here to make you an offer. The Thing in the Snakeskin Suit stretches its hand toward you, and the hand is a twisted, long-fingered claw. It parts its lips and smiles, showing enormous teeth that taper to razor-sharp points. For just a moment, you are reminded of Paulus, the Gestapo agent you saw in Transjordan, and the semicrazed, cruel, hungry glint in his eyes.

And then you are awake, drenched in sweat and breathing hard. Lazy dawn light streams in through your drapes. Another magnificent Louisiana day has dawned.

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