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Leadem, Christopher

"The Mantooth"


'What on earth made you ask that?'
'Oh, nothing really. Just curious.' She wished he would stop
looking at her that way.
'Yes I have. Once, with Kalus. We..... It was peyote.'
'How much did you do?'
'Two buttons each. One right away..... Why are you laughing?'
'Two peyote buttons, and you think you've seen it all. Ha! That
wouldn't be enough to open your pretty little eyelids.' She
wondered why she suddenly felt restless and irritable.
'What makes you think it's only how much, and not how pure? Or
maybe we just didn't need to have our whole consciousness blown away
to get something meaningful from it.' She felt angry, defiant, and
horribly uncomfortable. 'I could do LSD if I wanted to.'
'Could you now? We're going to find out.' She felt the touch
of an icy hand inside her.
'What do you mean?'
'The wine is laced with it.'
And the current closed over her head.

*

Kalus sat in the fore of the leering monolith, which lay just inside the
rim of the oblong vale. The dwarfish Obelisk, like a pointed tombstone,
lay swart and square in its center. Kalus remembered the first time he
had come here, driven on by Sylviana's almost distracted haste to
find others of her kind. AND TO ESCAPE, he thought bitterly, HER
DEPENDENCE ON ME.


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