[center][h3][color=7ea7d8]The Pleiades Casino & Resort: Lodging[/color][/h3][/center]
    [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziQ9GURNrUg][color=7ea7d8]<< Theme: Solitude >>[/color][/url]

    A silent scream scathing my throat, a moan escaping my clenching teeth. I wake. The dream vanishing, the day before fading, the samsara renewing.

    I know, as usual, nothing.

    Sleep paralysis subsiding, I emerge from the chrysalis of slumber. My senses awaken to a peculiar reality. Telltale coral or perhaps sponge wedges cling to the ceiling, floor and walls of this otherworldly chamber. My bedroll hovers, suspended by silk ropes that form a celestial grid. Clothing dangles from these same ropes, swaying like forgotten memories. Small, oddly angular furniture hangs on the rope walls, too, as if utility and function have forsaken their duties. And there, a wending path leads to a small irregular door. An exotic monochrome cage, perhaps just due to the silver candle light, but I know somehow that the door to this cage is easy to open. Everything is loud and silent. Blood roars through my veins, a freight train hurtling toward eternity, yet my joints pop and ache in eerie quietude.

    I can move, so I stand and don garments that inform me of my elusive identity.

    I approach tarnished glass and bear witness to a horror I already know, and the fact of that knowledge is a shock. Before me looms an ugly person, an abomination, an assemblage of decay. Bald. Skin like smallpox. Body lean long and desiccated. A husk, with pits for eyes. Deep, dark pits, like igneous spiral mines, where from fleeting strikes of light onyx glints sharp amid the basalt. Lips held forever silent with iron twine. Beyond my ugliness, another sensibility looms, a sensual somber dignity of poise, frame and breeding flaunting itself in the shadow of my bodily debris. I wear the simplicity of a sleeveless scoop neck gown, heather grey with diamond dust; something between royalty and flapper. Shimmering fabric that contrasts against my tawny corpse flesh. Without the shoulder straps, I’d be naked. My breasts, infertile and scant, make modest my risqué attire.

    I turn from the scene. Woven into the rope wall, I remove a pair of elbow-length lace gloves and hide my hands; mostly plain, but the palms combine to disclose a secret: a glyph of an arc girding an inverse pyramid within which looms an eye. Someone precious once told me of its origin, but I struggle to recall the story. I trace backwards in time, to the Freemasons and Knight’s Templar. No, older. To Moonshaft and Amarna. No, older. Finally to Leth, the first world-seeders, creators of woman, womb and sex.

    Remembering where I am, I exit my meditation chamber. My hotel room. Down the hall, down the stairs, into the lounge. It is all very overstated. Garish art deco. Clashing geometric patterns and false gold enamel burden the senses. Along my journey, I see many strange creatures. Demons, damned, fallen angels. All I want is lotus blossom tea, preferably steeped in tears. False tears are better. I can drink it through a metal straw. Through the small necrotic gash in my left cheek.

    [color=ed1c24]“Your usual, Lady Ruohtta,”[/color] approaches a spade-tail red imp in a tuxedo, a charming Rick Blaine corruption. It offers a decanter from which meanders an intoxicating aroma of duplicity.