short short snap of an experience, last dream before I woke... and it just reamed all the other three that I'd been kinda keeping in the back of my head... sweat on gold skin over bulging muscles bound *TIGHT* with rope, rope and more rope to an oak beam. I was slender, male, dark with a magician's hands... and the gold man in bondage was panting, crying. despair, despair and hatred and fear and RAGE pounding through me. the man screamed and howled gibberish and rage, fighting the bonds, making the oak frame creak and cry, nearly as tortured as he. burning blue eyes under a dirty, stringy mop of golden hair and hatred in those eyes as fierce as a trapped wolf. and then the strong man collapsed in his bonds. "love..." he whispered, "kill me." He gathered his strength and looked up at me, "please." His eyes were his own again... sad, now, hurt... kinda dazed. I was crying, very softly, very silently. I nodded. He sighed, closed his eyes and relaxed in the bonds. I kissed him and he kissed me back, gentle, knowing... and then his whole body jerked and I had just enough time to leap back as he tried to bite my lip off... I sobbed, just once. Then took the strangler's wire I always carried in my belt, wrapped it around his throat, the demon stopped controlling him. He leaned against me, trusting, knowing my hand. I was crying, but couldn't let it be too hard 'cause I'd need my strength to do this right, and after three days of all this, I had to concentrate. He relaxed, knowing it would be easier for me if he did. I wrapped the wire three times around each of my strong, distinctly male but slender hands, making absolutely sure my grip was sure. I set myself. I *PULLED* and I woke up. Background material was that he and I had been lovers, a team in demon hunting and killing, and I was the mage and he the fighter. We'd had a nasty, hard, hurtful fight with each other and broken up. I'd left him with all the magical guards he needed against demons, to keep him safe; and he knew the precautions he had to take to keep them up. I left. I don't know if he just forgot or if he got careless, or if he'd pushed away my protections in response to pushing me away... or what... but he got possessed by a demon that hated us so badly, it would rather die than leave him. It wanted to hurt us, wanted to hurt me as much as possible. It succeeded, at the cost of its own life. Mechanics of the demons was that they were 'caught' also while they were possessing someone. They could only enter once, and if they left, they were permanently banned from the person. They would die if their host died with them. They felt everything STRONGLY when they were in control of their host, but would also feel what happened to their host even when they weren't in control. So we'd spent three days torturing him... ... the really *bad* stuff, pushing all the limits that we'd known he had, trying to pain the demon OUT of him. It didn't work. The demon hung on, through it all, more consumed by revenge than anything else in existence. Either my lover was going to be possessed for his whole life, and, possibly kill me through it; or we could choose to kill him. One more detail was that the demons could escape if they were given a death opening that they could escape through, so swords, daggers and the like were right out. When I woke up... my waking reaction to the end was to put an ambiguous note on it. Maybe we did that to scare the demon out... or maybe it was simply that we took our one path to a choice. I woke up crying, though. Crying those quiet tears. ---- Phyllis