LITMIR.BIZ

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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 the man injected thousands, perhaps millions, of insects into her bloodstream?

      How was that even possible?

      In a voice that shook with both anger and self-pity, she asked …

      “Why do you hate me?”

      The man chuckled louder this time.

      He said, “Everybody hates you.”

      Janet was having trouble seeing now. Her vision wasn’t getting blurry. Instead, the scene in front of her seemed to be twitching and bouncing and jumping. She imagined she could hear her eyeballs rattling around in their sockets.

      So when she saw another clown’s face, she thought she was seeing double.

      But she quickly realized …

      This face is different.

      It was painted with the same colors, but with somewhat different shapes.

      It isn’t him.

      Under the paint lay familiar features.

      Then it dawned her …

      Me. That’s me.

      The man was holding a mirror up to her face. The hideously garish face she saw was her own.

      The sight of that twisted, tearful, yet mocking countenance filled her with a loathing she’d never known before.

      He’s right, she thought.

      Everybody hates me.

      And I’m my own worst enemy.

      As if sharing her disgust, the creatures under her skin scurried all about like cockroaches suddenly exposed to sunlight but with nowhere to run and hide.

      The man set the mirror aside and began to stroke her face with the knife point again.

      He said yet again …

      “They’re going to leave you behind.”

      As the knife passed over her throat, it occurred to her …

      If he cuts me the insects can escape.

      Of course the blade would also kill her. But that seemed a small price to pay to be free of the insects and this terror.

      She hissed …

      “Do it. Do it now.”

      Suddenly, the air was filled with ugly and distorted laughter, as if a thousand clowns were noisily gloating in her plight.

      The laughter propelled her heart to pound still harder and faster. Janet knew her heart couldn’t possibly take much more of this.

      And she didn’t want it to.

      She wanted it to stop as soon

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