On a grassless salt-plain stood an old, dead oak. Vines of cold black iron strangled the life out of the once proud and virile tree. Where once verdant leaves danced joyfully amongst its boughs, salt encrusted nails attempted to stab at the blanket of fading stars. Below them, chained to the trunk of the iron oak with the same vines that had squeezed the life from the tree was Mike. Before him stood two gaunt figures clothed in the writhing liquid concepts of “spite” and “contempt.”

The figure furthest from Mike grinned and responded with a volley of percussive laugh-coughs. Its hair was flat and shaggy. The arch of its large, aggressive smile mimicked the curve in its back that forced the figure into a half-hunched posture. Its hands were square and knotted, and in one of them, it dragged and squeezed a solid copper-colored club. Overall, Mike thought this one looked like a pale ape-man, a thought which triggered the fluid concept cloth that surrounded the creature to solidify into the antithesis of what Mike thought a pale ape-man would wear: a three-piece suit with patent leather loafers. Despite the professional appearance of its now solidified wardrobe, the pale-ape still walked with a hunch and drug the copper-colored club through the salt-bleached dirt.

The second figure was decidedly more feminine than the pale-ape. Its facial features were sharp and angular. Its eyes resided in deep pits, and its lips were dark and full like two engorged nightcrawlers. The words “femme fatale” filled his conception of it, and the fluid spite covering its ghoulish body solidified into a form-fitting black gown.

The iron vines tightened around Mike’s arms and legs as the femme fatale brushed the back of its hand across Mike’s left cheek. Mike tried to shout, but the vines wrapped around his chest prevented anything more than a raspy wheeze.

“Who are you?”

“Do not struggle,” said the femme fatale, “we are here to bring you into something greater than yourself.”

The femme fatale’s gown billows into a cloud of dark black smoke. As it wafts over Mike, his body is filled with a wave of tingling cold calm. For the first time in over a thousand hours, Mike felt a euphoric, restful feeling, despite the natural inclination to wrest himself free from capture.