“You’re awake, splendid!”
That I was unable to move was not nearly as disturbing as the realization that I returned to consciousness deprived of three of my five senses; I could see the ceiling and I could hear a voice.
“You and I have much to talk about,” his words were clipped, ever so slightly, with a humor common to boys sharing their clandestine enjoyment of risqué playing cards, guilty fear mixed with carnal aggression, a combination impossible to harmonize, “and we don’t have much time.”
The man who signed the hotel register as Mr. Egmont leaned over the bed that supported my inert body, holding the shiny square that had tempted me to remain longer in his room than wise; it was of some material like silver or pewter but lighter; “Where I come from, we call this a computer, but that is not important at this moment,” moving out of my single, vertical field of view, a wool-and-mustachioed sun ranging the sky like an undisciplined prophet in Joshua 10:12, the variations in his voice telling of a man unable or unwilling to remain still, “What does matter is, why are you following me?”
The jagged edge to his voice smoothed, as if he remembered that I was a mere drawing of a man on a hotel bed and continued, his voice that of an orator resigned to a rapidly approaching conclusion.
“Well, lucky for you that you’re not a booze-marinated streetwalker, otherwise I’d use you to prime our killer’s hunger; you, my young friend, need to provide me with information about who you represent and, if useful to me, you just might wake up tomorrow.
The Order of Lilith 