He nods weakly, then collapses into a deck-mounted ‘nourishment’ chair. ‘Computer, 20 cc’s supplement 4-F.’ Placing the feeding tube into his mouth, he closes his eyes, sucking the clear liquid through the two-foot-long pressurized straw.

‘Another nightmare?’

‘It was a vision. A final warning from my father.’

She kneels in front of him. ‘Tell me.’

He shakes his head.

‘Jacob … please—’

The white-haired twin looks up at his mother through gallows’ eyes. ‘I was deep inside the nexus, enshrouded in heavy white fog. My physical body seemed to have left me, there was only my mind’s eye. Two violet specks appeared … two eyes, glowing at me from within the thick haze. It was Lilith. She whispered into my mind, “Jacob, we’ve been waiting.” And then I saw her.

‘She was so intoxicating, Mother, like exquisite poison. “Come to me, Jacob,” she said. My mind screamed no, but then I felt her touch, and it was beyond any ecstasy I’ve ever known. I could feel her warm breath in my ear. My nerve impulses tingled as she caressed the pleasure centers of my mind, and her nectar spread over me like a soothing balm.

‘I could have stayed there forever. I could have let her drain me, dying a happy man. But then these blue specks appeared—a pair of Hunahpu eyes observing me from beyond the fog.

‘It was my father. “You have allowed the serpent into your garden,” he said, “and once more you’ve been deceived.” Then the fog lifted, and I saw the Abomination for what she really was.

‘She was part-human, part-demonic creature. Her skin had bleached ghostly white, her long hair was black and knotty. The corneas of her eyes were violet-red, her pupils like a viper. But it was her mouth that made my soul retch—a vertical slit, like a fleshy trap—like a vagina, Mother, only it was filled with hundreds of these sickening stubbly black teeth.

‘Blood was smeared across the monster’s unholy slit … my blood! She stood before me, an obscenity of humanity. Her hideous lips spread apart, inhaling my consciousness inside her orifice, and I knew I was in Hell.

‘And though I had no body, I could still feel her heat melting the flesh from my bones, and though I had no nose, I could still smell the putrid scent of demon’s vomit, and though I had no mouth, my tortured mind screamed over and over as the Abomination entwined her naked limbs deeper around my mind, and ground her rancid groin into my being.’

‘My God …’