Demosthenes cracked his knuckles and reached for me.

They wanted me alive for some reason, so I felt I could risk my next move. Sitting down on the bed, I braced against the wall and kicked both feet into O'Rourke's crotch.

He huffed like a bull and backed off to raise his fists.

"Easy, Frank!" Beathan reached out to calm the big man.

The fists unclenched. "I forgive you," the rumbling voice said, "as even Jesus forgives you." He moved in again.

I kicked him harder.

In an effort to gain my attention, Beathan tapped me on the side of the head with a double fist. This time I saw stars.

Through a minor galaxy of multicolored lights and throbbing noise, I saw Demosthenes rolling on the floor clutching his groin. A needle approached my neck. Voices faded in and out and buzzed a million miles away.

"JesusJesusJesus damn him to hell…"

"Shut up and get him to Dissection."

"Make `im burn Godalmighty it hurts!"

"Get up!"

Something eventually reached through the fluffy cloud of fuzzed sensation that enveloped me. I was dragged from the bed. Something stung in my neck again, and the constellations collapsed into black holes.

The universe vanished like God waking up.

God started dreaming again, and I awoke in a dark place. I wasn't sure I was completely awake, though. Something felt very wrong.

For starters, the floor rumpled and wiggled beneath me. The single light bulb hanging over me grew and shrank, pulsating opalescent colors. The ceiling squirmed like boiling pudding in slow motion. I tried to stand.

And watched my feet melt into the floor.

At first, I thought I'd slipped and fallen. When I grabbed for a nearby table and watched it twist away from me, I knew something wasn't straight, and it was I.

Blotchy hands, horribly withered, hung from my wrists. Beneath the hospital robe my body swelled and contracted. So did everything else. The whole room behaved as if it were hideously alive.

What Beathan had said about set, setting, and dosage suddenly came back to me in a thousand tiny voices. Something black and red flickered the word stoned. I knew it then and there. And the most frightening realization was that there was nothing I could do about it. I had to ride it wherever it would take me.

Somewhere deep back in what was left of my mind, I guessed that they'd drugged me to imprint something on my consciousness. Psychedelics-such as the one currently making me see the skeleton under my skin-have the effect of opening the mind to suggestion. The thought slithered through my mind and vanished the instant I laid my hand on the table. And put my fingers into someone's liver.

The cold, hard liver nestled in the middle of a corpse. Its skin had been folded away in sheets of yellow-grey to reveal its cold, hard organs.

The trouble was, the body squirmed around on the table, looking at me with frosted eyes. A tongueless mouth lectured me from beneath gauze wrapping.

"It is logically impossible to find God," the corpse said. Its liver turned into a bloated, bloody worm that ate into its lungs. "The object of the search is the searcher forever beyond your grasp. He is that and that is you."

"Shut up," I said, flowers parachuting out of my mouth. My skeleton turned into Malto Meal, and I slid once more to the soft marble.

All the other tables crowded in on me. I was surrounded by death and the smell of science. The tables shrieked back in a blaze of scintillating yellow. My tongue burned just watching the smells.

I stood again to walk like a fly across an inverted floor. My feet puddled and dropped bits of electric-blue shadow behind them.

I could see in both directions at once. All around me lay the gutted remains of medical cadavers. They'd all endured a good deal of use over the years.

That didn't bother me. My concern was that some of them writhed. Some groaned and gurgled. One was tap dancing.

An idea dripped acid green. They're trying to scare the shit out of me. That's the reason for the cadavers.

"Profound conclusion," said a face that pushed itself up from my wrist. "But why?"

"God is why!" mimicked a truncated torso, giving off an angry taste of violet.

"God is wry!" blinked a skinless hand.

"God is rye rot, right?"

This was getting unruly. The deceptive part of it was that my mind seemed to be alert. It wasn't like being drunk. Yet I saw these things.

A door pulsated like a heart at the end of a row of carts. Rubbery feet carried me through a sluggish stream of pink noise. Gnarled hands pushed the tables aside. I approached a massive blockade.

The door had a thousand locks on it, all covered with spikes. They smelled black all over. I stared for hours at them in an instant. Not knowing what else to do, I heaved my body against the barricade.

My skin broke open and splattered against the door. Locks and spikes dissolved into pools of noisy, noisome vomit. The stinking, vibrating mass flowed up the walls and away to reveal an open door and blinding bright hallway.

The hallway became a hole stretching down into white oblivion. I gripped fervently at the doorjamb. My fingers crumbled and split. Crickets and silverfish crawled out of the joints to jump and crawl over my arms.

I wasn't making much progress.

I let go and slid down the hole in a scream of lilac and ammonia. I shrieked all the way until I hit bottom. Panic bars reached out to pound me in the gut. A clear, white light surrounded me. It burnt my flesh, dazzled my eyes. Flakes of skin sloughed off like snow. Everything roared.

"Too loud!" I screamed. "Too loud!"

A hundred black and scarlet hands gesticulated in the sunlight, casting their own twisted shadows. Snake-tongued fingers pointed the way.

I looked in their direction. A lion crouched there, lurking in the distance. With a shattering growl it pounced and ran toward me. My feet sank into yielding pavement, holding me fast.

Soft brown paws burrowed up from the ground. They grasped my ankles. The lion raced nearer. As it did, its paws metamorphosed into hooves, its mane transformed into antlers.

A stag rushed at me, blood streaming silver and smoky in its path. In its eyes glowed fury and pain.

I stood my ground bravely-the paws and pavement that gripped my feet defied escape. Dust howled about me. The stag swerved at the last instant, pelting my body with gravel. Each rock cried out with indignity as it hit home.

"Get in!" The voice was an astonished, blurring rainbow. A white hand beckoned out to me.

I crawled my focus along the arm until I reached a face. Ann Perrine gazed at me, as clear as unaltered reality.

My hands groped for the smooth metal siding of the car that filled my vision. Suddenly I hung from it, dangling over an infinite, empty space. I screamed.

"Quiet!" a voice hissed. "They'll hear you!"

Time flowed below me like a sewer. I tried to convince my rational, panicky mind that none of this was happening. It didn't do much good. I pulled myself up to her, never letting my million eyes lose sight of her. I clung. I inched.

I was inside.

"You're safe."

I tasted her words-they felt good.

"It's me," she said. "Ann. What've they done to you?"

My voice rebounded with irritating volume. "I've got more dope in my veins than half of Woodstock Nation." That was all I could get past the clog of mealworms in my mouth. I stared down at my hands. The skin was blotched red and blue. The muscles palpitated erratically.

"You're safe," she repeated. Her arms reached out to hold me.

All I saw were scorpion claws, sickles, razor-edged boomerangs. I pushed her away.

"No," my voice fuzzed from somewhere. "Fear imprint." My mumbling sounded like waves of mush.