Frantic, I tried to remove it. I attempted to beat my hand against it without hitting its tail, but how could I? Panicking, I searched for any hard object. Finally finding a picture frame, I pounded it against the creature, hurting myself more than it.

I heard the purring sound and looked again and saw the gerbil, bloodied by my blows.

What have I done?

I petted the poor creature, warm and fuzzy and harmless. It licked me, rubbed against my hand. I gazed at the women again.

Suddenly a wild rush of pain overwhelmed me, and I looked back on my chest. The scorpion inflicted wound after wound, relentlessly filling me with its poison.

The pain deepened my emptiness, and the emptiness demanded to be filled. I entered beneath an archway, then another and another. I moved from place to place, indulging more and more, satisfied less and less. Still, I came back for more, until I came to one archway, blocked by a silent sentinel.

“Why don’t you stop before it’s too late?”

It was Shad! His face was lined with pain and disgust, his eyes blazing with fury, a passion of its own sort. I detested this man for daring to judge me and trying to deprive me of what I wanted. I pushed him to the floor.

I went in the door, but I didn’t find what I expected. She was there.

“Marci!”

I saw my own wife, but I didn’t know who she was. Not really. I’d never stopped to ask her. I’d used her as one more object, one more possession, one more hunting trophy.

I gazed up at swaying women on a stage. Then a shock wave assailed me, followed by a sick emptiness. I screamed in horror.

“Amy. No, not you!”

My own daughter had joined the women who paraded on stage. In the din no one heard me scream. I gazed into the emptiness of my own daughter’s eyes. I started pushing and shoving. I wanted to kill the men who lusted after her—vile men whose daughters I lusted after.

Something happened in that moment. In seeing my little Amy, I saw Marci and the other women as they really were—frightened daughters and hardened mothers, desperate souls projecting images of delighted sensuality when inside they felt nothing but disdain for the men and themselves. The raging lust in my blood chilled into shame.

Things were not as they appeared.

I sobbed hopelessly. I thought of tracking down Mason to ask him if he wanted to leave this house of horrors with me, but I couldn’t find him.