JOSHUA STOOD AT A DISTANCE, watching me with Victoria. He came closer and motioned me down a high-ceilinged corridor, then toward a tinted-glass doorway where other men were entering. I followed. Heading for the door, I pushed it open and entered the building. Inside, it was hot and sticky.

I thought I heard a tarp flapping but looked up and saw nothing. I felt something fall on my shoulders and back. The foul odor turned my stomach. An army of nipping blackflies buzzed around me. At first I swatted at them, but there were so many I finally gave up. The stench overwhelmed me, and I fell to my knees, nearly vomiting.

Yet no sooner had this happened than suddenly I felt fine, alive, energized, eager to move ahead. The foul odor was gone, and instead I smelled sweet perfume, not pausing to consider the incongruity of it all.

“Mason!” I was surprised to see him, pushing ahead with the other men who’d just entered. He looked away from me, then quickly moved farther inside.

Through arched doorways I could see the women. I breathed deeply the perfumed air. It was glorious. My thoughts were on one thing only. I was hypnotized, like a moth fluttering around a blinding light. My longing increased until I knew I would sell my soul for the promised pleasures. I was awash in a tidal wave of passion.

I’d forgotten about the gerbil until I felt it move on my chest. Suddenly pain shot through my torso, up into my head as if it were a runaway train. I reeled from the blow and tried to shake it off me. The pain was horrid. When I didn’t manage to get the creature off me, I continued my quest despite the pain, obsessed with what I wanted.

I looked around at the other men, all of us indulging, none of us satisfied. Some of the men frantically redirected their longings, men looking upon men or even upon children. In a feeding frenzy we became predators, consumers of others, cannibals, no longer men but obscene appetites.

It became a prison riot, and I was in the thick of it. I was ashamed, but my shame gave me no power to resist. I felt helpless, like a junkie enslaved to his addiction. I saw in the men around me lifeless eyes, shark eyes.

Feeling a stabbing pain, I looked down at the creature on my chest. What looked back at me was not a furry little gerbil, but a stone-eyed scorpion. As I watched it with horror, it lifted its tail and brought it down into my chest, piercing my shirt and flesh and wriggling its tail inside me. Stunned by the agony of the moment, I realized the sound I’d thought was the gerbil’s gentle purr was all along the scorpion’s swinging tail.