style="font-size:15px;"> “Hold still.”
She froze, facing directly upward, but a spasm of terror surged through her body.
The voice hissed a command again.
“Still, I said.”
She willed her body to be still. Her eyes were open, but the light was painfully bright and hot, and she couldn’t see anything clearly.
The knife went away, and the fingers resumed smearing, this time around her lips. She gritted her teeth, and she could actually hear them grinding together with terrible pressure.
“Almost through,” the voice said.
Despite the heat, Janet was starting to shiver all over from fear.
The fingers began pressing around her eyes now, and she had to shut them again to keep whatever the man was smearing from getting into them.
Then the fingers moved away from her face, and she could open her eyes again. Now she could make out the silhouette of a grotesquely shaped head moving around in the blazing light.
She felt a terrified sob burst out of her throat.
“Let me go,” she said. “Please let me go.”
The man said nothing. She felt him fumbling around her left arm right now, strapping something elastic around her bicep, then tightening it painfully.
Janet’s panic rose, and she tried not to imagine what was about to happen.
“No,” she said. “Don’t.”
She felt a finger probing around the crook of her arm, then the piercing pain of a needle entering an artery.
Janet let out a shriek of horror and despair.
Then, as she felt the needle leave, a strange transformation came over her.
Her scream suddenly turned into …
Laughter!
She was laughing riotously, uncontrollably, filled with a crazed euphoria she’d never experienced before.
She felt positively invincible now, and infinitely strong and powerful.
But when she tried again to free herself from the bonds around her wrists and ankles, they wouldn’t budge.
Her laughter turned into a surge of wild fury.
“Let me go,” she hissed. “Let me go, or I swear to God, I’ll kill you!”
The man let out a whispering chuckle.
Then he tilted the metal shade of the lamp so that its light blazed on his face.
It was the face of a clown, painted white with huge, bizarre eyes and lips drawn with black and red.
Janet’s breath froze in her lungs.
The man smiled, his teeth a dull yellow in contrast to the rest of his brightly colored face.
He said to her …
“They’re going to leave you behind.”
Janet wanted to ask …
Who?
Who are you talking about?
And who are you?
Why are you doing this to me?
But she couldn’t even breathe now.
The knife flashed in front of her face again. Then the man teased its sharp tip lightly across her cheek, down the side of her face, and then across her throat. Just the slightest bit of pressure, and Janet knew that the knife would draw blood.
Her breath started to come again, first in shallow gasps, then in huge gulps of air.
She knew she was starting to hyperventilate, but she couldn’t bring her breathing under control. She could feel her heart pounding inside her chest, could feel and hear its violent pulse between her ears growing faster and louder.
She wondered …
What was in that needle?
Whatever it was, its effects were coming on stronger by the second. She couldn’t escape what was going on in her own body.
As he kept stroking her face with the knife tip, he murmured …
“They’re going to leave you behind.”
She managed to gasp out …
“Who? Who’s going to leave me behind?”
“You know who,” he said.
Janet realized she was losing control of her thoughts. She was flooded with mindless anxiety and panic, mad feelings of persecution and victimhood.
Who does he mean?
Images of friends and family members and coworkers passed through her head.
But their familiar, friendly smiles turned to sneers of contempt and hatred.
Everybody, she thought.
Everybody is doing this to me.
Every person I’ve ever known.
Again, she felt a burst of anger.
I should have known better than to ever trust a single soul.
Worse, she felt as if her skin was literally starting to move.
No, something was crawling all over her skin.
Insects! she thought.
Thousands of them!
She struggled against her restraints.
“Swat them off me!” she begged the man. “Kill them!”
The man chuckled as he kept staring down at her through his grotesque makeup.
He made no offer to help.
He knows something, Janet thought.
He knows something I don’t know.
Then as the crawling continued, it dawned on her …
The insects …
They’re not crawling on my skin.
They’re crawling under it!
Her breathing came harder and faster, and her lungs burned as if she’d been running for a long distance. Her heart pounded even more painfully.
Her head was exploding with a host of violent emotions—fury, fear, disgust, panic, and sheer bafflement.
Had
