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        I woke up in her arms. Who she was, where she had come from or even how I'd come to be with her was all a mystery. She was young and lovely with hair like red wine that flowed down past her shoulders. Her eyes were large and blue and reflected perfectly whatever she looked at. Her breasts were firm and full, snowy white as her skin and wrapped in linens of purple and green silk. Her lips were thick and red, begging in a way to be kissed. The dulled gold light that filled the room cast an aura like a halo around her.
        She was lifting my head a bit in her lap and stroking my cheeks and forehead with her small, soft hand. I tried to sit up on my own strength but felt a pain ripple through the majority of my body. She pushed me sweetly back down into her lap and looked lovingly at me as you might expect a mother with her child.
        "Ah, you're awake," she whispered in a voice more innocent and sweet than any other I had ever heard. "I was worried you might never wake up. Don't move too much just yet, the elixir hasn't had time to heal you entirely." She continued to stroke my face as I looked on.
        "Where am I?" I managed to croak out of my hoarse throat.
        She smiled wide, showing rows of perfect white teeth. "My you're adventurous. You barely made it here and yet you try to walk and talk so soon. You are safe in the home of our king."
        I looked around the room as far as my eyes and body would allow. The room was large and round where I lay, with tapestries of that same green and purple hanging down over the walls. Mirrors of gold were positioned near windows to reflect the sunlight into prisms that dangled from rails encircling the ceiling. Large pillows and coffee tables with mugs and cups and pots all made of gold or silver were the only furnishings I could see. I felt the soft pillow beneath my feet and legs, a velvet like clothe as soft as anything I’d yet to feel in my life. The floors were carved from sandstone and had inscriptions in them of a language similar to Arabic. I looked back at my smiling nurse and tried to sit again. I was hurting less and my strength was rushing back but I was still too weak to sit unassisted.
        "You need your rest, love," she said as she held me in her arms. "You'll be strong enough to move in a few minutes but for now you have to rest and recover. You'll do yourself no good otherwise."
        "And you need to give me some answers," I snapped and sounded a bit more hateful than I should have with her. "Who the hell are you and where the hell am I!?"
        "All will be revealed in time," a deeper, more menacing voice said from beyond a curtain draped doorway. "You are in the home of the Great Sheik. You were saved by me and two others on our return home. As for you, Lillith, he wishes to see you now."
        "Tell him I'm busy," she said like a child arguing with a parent. "I have to tend to this man and see him well again!"
        "The elixir will do that, now go!" the voice from the doorway barked.
        She lay my head and shoulders down on a pillow and looked at me longingly. "Don't worry," she said. "I'll be back soon, love."
        And without further conversation she was off through the door. My body tingled as she left, feeling returning entirely to my extremities as the pain melted off and away. The corridor in which my beautiful nurse, Lillith had been taken made for an almost excellent sounding board. I couldn't quite make out what they were saying though it was obviously not a happy exchange. She returned with her smile diminished slightly and knelt by my head.
        "Well my pet," she said, again caressing my face with her silken hand. "He's gone."
        "What was that all about?" I asked, my voice sounding fine and healthy once again.
        "No one," she said coldly. "But I do have some one I would like to introduce you to."
        She left me again and rushed to the curtain-door at the room's edge. She drew it back and welcomed in two men. Both were of equal height and build and wore the same sand colored scale armor. They wore helmets shaped like the heads of snakes and carried coiled rods in their hands. The rods were silver in the center with a golden snake for the coil. At the end, where the fangs would have been was a long, curved blade that glinted in the sunlit room. I sat up and followed them with my eyes as they took their positions beside a throne of pillows at the center of the room. They folded their arms and let their blades fall in the cleft of their elbow, waiting like vipers to strike at anyone they saw fit.
        "And now I would like to introduce our lord and king, his Royal Majesty the Great Sheik Sandman!"
        The light became fainter with his presence as Lillith stepped away from the door and took her place at the foot of the throne. A bulbous, distended belly preceded him as he lurched slowly into the room. His legs were pillars of fat that could barely support his weight as he drugs them over the stone floors. His skin was yellow, sand stained and crusted as his naked form emerged into the full light of the room. His face as well as the rest of his body was fat to the point of being grotesque. His lips were thick, full and dark as a freshly tilled field. His eyes were empty black pools swimming in that ocean of dirty flesh. Any aesthetic beauty was lost within that massive form as it lumbered past me without notice. He waved his fat hand in a nonchalant greeting and looked down at me from his pillow throne.
        "Welcome to my palace," his voice boomed with an uneasy echo that lingered as the words flew forward, "I am the Great Sheik San’man, lord o' the deserts and master o' all that roams in them. Who be you and why you be here, my sof' little friend?"
        I struggled up to my feet, my knees slightly weak from whatever had left me in this place. I was in awe of this unkempt mass of flesh and rolling fat. For something so grotesque and unsavory looking as he was there was a command in his voice, a sound of absolute authority and power that put me in fear. He was no god, that much was obvious, nor a demon; and he was far departed from the days when he might have been a man. He was something else, something more frightening, reviled and more depraved than any could ever be. He was a creature of pure lust and ambition. He was a glutton in every sense of the word. I could tell by his looks, his voice and his home that he would do anything to have what he wanted.
        I cleared my throat and looked at him. "My name is James Damien Cross," I announced with as much strength and pride as I could muster. "And to be honest, I really don't know how I got here."
        He stroked Lillith's thigh with his enormously fat fingers as if he hadn't heard a word I said. He smiled at her, exposing rows of rotten and sharply pointed teeth. Food particles stood out from the yellow veneer as his lips rolled back and away to increase the smile. He stroked his hand up from Lillith's thighs all the way to her neck and face, his eyes never leaving her face. She returned his smile with one similar, though more pleasant and disrobed herself there at his feet.
        The Sandman's jaw began to crack and dislocate until it lay on the pillow between his legs. A long black tongue, two feet or longer lolled out of his gaping maw like a snake slithering from a hole in the earth. It began to slather and lick Lillith's entire body, cupping her breasts, squeezing every thick place of skin and constricting like a boa around her thighs and waist. Finally, after what felt like an eternity of this grotesque perversion the tongue found its way into her mouth and down her throat where it continues its writhing dance. She moaned and sighed, though muffled as this creature wriggled and moved inside her. It slid away and returned to the Sandman's mouth. His jaw began to crack and crunch again as it returned to its normal appearance.
        He waved his fat hand and Lillith gathered her robes and left the room, never letting her eyes stray from those of her king.
        "Quite a lovely thing," he said as he wiped drool from his mouth with one of the tapestries surrounding his throne. "My favorite, bred her fo' the purpose o' pleasure. She truly is a fine creature, don't you think?"
        I stood in silence a moment, unsure what to do next. What do you say to a monster that just took advantage of a woman in the presence of others with a tongue as long as a man's arm. Thankfully I didn't have to answer.
        "I would do mos' anything fo' her," he continued on. "She'd like to keep you here fo' her pet, but I know better than that. She wants no harm to come on you, so I think I'm going to let you go free. What you say 'bout that?"
        "What dangers are there in letting me stay here with her?" I asked, not hiding the disgust in my voice over what I had seen. "You afraid I might just teach her something about freedom and not having to be your sick little lap dog!?"
        "I'd mind that tongue you have, boy! It can easily come out." his voice was not angry but amused in a way. "Besides, you no longer my problem. You are in someone else's jurs'diction now."
        "I thought you were the lord and master of the deserts here!? Whose juisdiction do I fall into now!?"
        "You'll see."

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