It was like it had been waiting for her all along to drop her guard so it could attack her unsuspecting brain.

The image of Lightning's foot-long bloated cock that had appeared to her in the dream burst into her head.

She could hear the blare of the sound of an army of trumpets that accompanied the picture every time it succeeded in making its way to the surface of consciousness.

Her body tingled in fear. Her strength sapped out of her like a tree that was cut in half from the relentless goring of the lumberjack's saw.

Her bones felt like they were made of rubber. She felt guilt at being so fucked up she couldn't tell her dreams from reality.

With her knees tucked under her chin and her hands cupping her sobbing face, Melanie Barker cried like a saint who was suffering for an unnamed sin. Melanie was dying. And what hurt worst of all was that she did not know what was killing her.

CHAPTER THREE

Mullady Mistler stood atop the mountain peak that framed the valley below and adjusted the knobs of his binoculars.

The brow of his beady eyes furrowed into the rims of the eyeglasses as he peered down below into the sun-drenched canyon.

He had the voluptuous Melanie in view and licked his dry, chapped lips as he drunk in her stately frame.

He had watched her and Lightning prance around the floor of the valley and then she removed her clothes and made his head spin.

She reminded him of her mother in every way. The same beauty each of them possessed and the same vice as well.

Mullady Mistler recalled that thawing spring day when his mistress approached him and revealed to him her startling secret.

"Mullady, there's something I want you to do. And I need you to promise me you will never tell a living soul about it."