Didn't your mother ever tell you it was bad manners to play with your food?" Phil Baso was scared, really scared-and that made him bluster.

The woman before him was clearly crazy, but she was amazingly strong and faster than anyone he'd ever seen before-almost supernaturally so. With promises of sexual gratification beyond his wildest dreams, she had led him to this squalid room, in this third-rate flophouse, in a part of town where his body might not be found for days and then might just be tossed out with the trash.

"Silence worm or I shall consume your essence even sooner. Do you not wish to know what I have in store for you?"

"About now I'm wishing for the keys to these handcuffs and to have never met you, you crazy bitch. For the umpteenth time, release me now and I'll walk out of this room and forget I ever met you."

He felt like the open-handed slap nearly tore his head off. Such a feminine act, such pain, it should not be possible. When his head stopped spinning, Phil had to wonder if the crazy lady's crazy story wasn't true.

It was only about fifteen years ago, a fleetingly short time when you are immortal. I had been working as a night watchman in a warehouse by the dock. All sorts of strange things happened there, especially on the night shift.

There were noises from the creaking building as it expanded and contracted with the changes in temperature. There were pipes that would bang whenever there was a demand from the furnace or air conditioners. There were faint scrabbling sounds that I hoped were from mice rather than rats or cockroaches.

And then there were the echoes. With its high ceilings, even when the warehouse was full, which is was better than half the time; it was basically a huge empty space. Every sound was revisited in gradually decreasing harmonics as it echoed from wall to wall and back.

To add to that, there was the lighting. Some companies would keep the full lighting on 24/7. Of course those were usually the warehouses that were in use continuously around the clock unlike the one where I worked. I guess that given the choice or providing better lighting for the mice, insects and watch people they decided to save the pennies and use minimal emergency lighting and make us provide our own flashlights for our rounds. Most of us would keep a spare set of batteries or two and change them during breaks, just to be able to see.

Even once you'd been there a while and learned to recognize the noises and not get spooked by the shadows, there was still the problem of theft. I think I remember reading somewhere that some experts had once estimated that better than 20% of all goods coming through any American port are contraband or diverted into illegal channels. Warehouses, especially ones that closed down for a full shift or two like the one where I worked, were prime targets. All of this added up to making the life of a night watchman more exciting than most of us wanted.

The night in question, the shift was just half over when I started hearing the flapping sounds. I assumed that it was a bird that had snuck in during the day when the loading dock doors were often wide open.

Normally, I wouldn't worry about a bird. There was nothing I could do that would get it out any sooner than waiting for morning and letting it get hungry enough to fly out of the building in order to forage. The problem was, this bird didn't sound right. There was too much flapping. Most birds sleep during the night hours, especially if there was too little light to navigate safely. Even if you disturb them with your flashlight, they usually find the nearest perch outside the glare of the light and settle back down again. This flapping only stopped for brief moments and then started again. Additionally, it seemed to start in one area of the warehouse and be slowly moving closer to me, as if it were searching for something.

The training for a night watchman is pretty skimpy. They tell you to call the police if there's someone in or around the building that shouldn't be there, they tell you to call building maintenance if there is a problem with the physical plant and they tell you to make regular rounds to check for one of the two types of problems mentioned above. If something outside the two realms described above occurs, you're on your own.

I took the course of least resistance. I ignored the noises and went about my business making my duly appointed rounds. I don't know who was more surprised, the bird or me, when it struck me in the face and somehow scratched my neck. I spent the rest of my rounds trying to stop the bleeding. For some reason, it just wouldn't coagulate.

Normally, I would not have remembered the event, but it was indelibly etched in my mind because it was coupled with my firing. I swear, the only unusual sound I heard that night was the bird, but somehow, someone managed to haul a three by three by seven-foot crate out of the warehouse without my seeing it. The company assumed I had stolen it, or had at least been a knowing participant in its theft. What was worse, I couldn't explain why the electronic key boxes showed that I had failed to complete my rounds over a two hour period.

That's when they started, about a week after I got fired. Night after night, it was always the same dream-only it kept changing, just a bit. If I compared from one night to the next I couldn't tell the difference but, if I compared two versions of the dream that were several days apart, there was a change. Unlike my usual dreams, I remembered these dreams; I remembered them as clearly as if they were real.

At first, I welcomed the dream. I was out of work, no girlfriend and no money for entertainment. This took the place of two out of the three and I wasn't in any rush to go find a job when I still had some money in savings.

They all started a minute before midnight. I'd be in bed and I'd come awake in a cold sweat with the alarm clock ringing. I'd reach over to turn it off and there she'd be, standing by the door to the bedroom. She was the most beautiful creature I had ever seen, ever imagined. She would pose for a moment unclothed-never naked, unclothed-and then glide to me with that enigmatic smile on her face.

I would reach my hand out to hold her, to touch her, to make myself believe she was there, but as she approached I found myself putting my hands down and turning my head away. I would try to turn back, to raise my hand, but in the dream, I couldn't. I had no will of my own. I just lay there waiting for her, barely breathing for fear she would leave.

Slowly, seductively, the covers would slide back off my body. I was naked too and fully aroused. The first I would feel of her was her hair-long, silky, blonde hair-as it danced over my face and chest. Each contact was like an erotic adventure. Within moments, I was begging for more, yet secretly afraid that I would die from the ecstasy of the next of those brief touches.

Next, I would feel the bed give as she crawled onto it beside me, still killing me with each gossamer tingle. It seemed to go on forever as she slowly positioned herself on top of me, her breasts against my chest, her legs straddling my waist, her head in the crook of my neck.

I could feel her kissing my neck, light butterfly-like touches. The ecstasy would grow and grow until I would explode and die. When I would wake again, I would be in bed. The covers would be on the floor and the clock would read one minute past midnight. That first night, I lay there for hours reliving the dream, trying to indelibly etch every aspect of it and that woman into my memory. That was how I realized it was changing.

I slept late that first morning, almost until dusk, but I expected that. I don't think I actually fell asleep again until just before sunrise.

When I finally crawled out of bed, the dream still crystal clear in my memory, I showered and shaved, the usual waking rituals. Surprisingly, I wasn't hungry so I passed on that. Instead, I flipped on the TV and submerged myself in mindless escapist entertainment, or at least I tried to submerge myself. It didn't work.

The dream kept intruding as I compared each actress to the woman in my dream and finding that the actresses kept coming up short. Oh, one might have hair that was close to my dream woman's and another might have a smile that was close, but not quite as bright. Yet, not one single one was her equal. Fool that I was, I was looking forward to the night, hoping I might dream of her once again. I was so anxious to meet her again, I remember going to sleep early, before the evening news, to give me time to ready myself for her arrival.

And like clockwork, at eleven fifty nine that night she appeared again. Standing in the doorway, gliding toward me, the touch of her hair, her body, her kiss …

Again, I slept late and again I wasn't hungry. Again, the television was unable to offer me her equal and again I went to bed early.

That third night she again appeared just before the witching hour and again we danced our dance of love.

The patterns were now set. I would live for her touch in my dreams, sleep late, skip eating, be bored with television and go to bed early in order to be ready for her when she next appeared.

It wasn't until two weeks later that I realized I hadn't eaten since the dreams started. I probably wouldn't have noticed even then, except that the building superintendent came pounding on the door to find out why the place smelled so bad. I hadn't taken out the garbage. Most of the perishables in the refrigerator were spoiled too.

I apologized with a twenty-dollar bill and lied, saying I had been out of town. Then I emptied the refrigerator into the garbage and dragged it down to the dumpster. I promised the Super I would walk down to the corner and get some food from the bodega there, but when I got there, nothing appealed to me, not even the fried lantanas and my friends had teased me often about how I was addicted to the greasy things. Instead, I went home and repeated my usual routine.

That night I realized that her hair was a shoulder length brunette and her breasts seemed smaller. I remember trying to change my dream, to bring back the blonde beauty I had first seen and with whom I had fallen in love, but it didn't work.

A week later, the routine was shattered when I was wakened by a friend from work at about three in the afternoon who had heard of a watchman vacancy at a nearby warehouse. It took an unimaginable amount of effort to move my hand the short distance to the telephone beside my alarm clock on my nightstand and I could barely croak out the answers to his solicitous questions. Rather than hang up the phone afterward, I just dropped it to the floor. I could hear rain beating on the curtained windows and the noise was just intrusive enough that I couldn't go right back to sleep.

Struggling to my feet, I dragged myself to the bedroom door, planning to visit the bathroom and then return to my warm comfortable bed. Pulling the door open, I was nearly blinded by the light pouring through the living room windows. It was so painfully bright that I actually stepped back and closed the door.

Now I was wide awake and feeling rather stupid as I realized that I actually felt afraid of the light. Using one arm to shield my eyes, I again opened the door, although much more slowly this time, and forced myself to stagger off to the bathroom. It was ridiculous, but I couldn't bring myself to let the light actually touch me, so I was careful to skirt around the patches that glowed like some hot desert sun on the living room floor.

The bathroom was light enough that I didn't bother to flick the light switch. Too tired to try aiming, I sat and relieved myself. As I washed my hands, I glanced in the mirror and realized that I badly needed a haircut and that I needed to start eating again. I was wasting away.

I decided then and there that I needed to get dressed and go shopping for some food. I was going to do it immediately after showering, but when I came out of the bathroom, still drying my longer hair, the sun was so bright that I decided to wait until the evening. Besides, it was still pouring rain.

My clothes didn't feel right. There was nothing I could put into words; they were just a bit too loose one place, a bit to tight somewhere else. The legs on my only pair of clean jeans needed to be rolled up; the size was right so it must have been a manufacturer's defect.

I lost track of time waiting for sunset and so it wasn't until ten that I finally headed out. My first stop was the corner bodega, but again, I just couldn't find any food I wanted to buy so I went two blocks down and stopped at the Arby's ®-and still couldn't bring myself to eat anything.

Giving up on food, I started back home, but instead stopped at Louie's. It's a tiny little bar in the basement below the bodega. Cheap beer and quiet enough to think.

Grabbing my usual seat at the bar, just below the television, I ordered a beer and tried to figure out what was happening. It didn't take long to realize that I had no clue and I had just moved on to my next concern of trying to figure out who I could see who could help me figure out what was going on, when my beer came.

I had dropped a ten spot on the bar in anticipation. It's an old trick. You make a promise not to take more money out and once whatever is on the bar is gone, it's time to go. Some people keep the swizzle sticks from their mixed drinks; I drop a bill on the counter. The problem was, Louie left my beer, but didn't take the money and make change.

"Hey Louie, when did you start giving it away?"

"I didn't. The guy at the end of the bar is paying." Louie jerked his head in the direction of a tall, dark haired man about my age, sitting at the far end of the bar. Never being one to look a gift beer in the mouth, I gave the guy a brief toast and returned to my thoughts.

A moment later, he was sitting at the stood next to me. I was about to tell him to get lost, I wasn't into guys, when suddenly the world blurred and I was back in my apartment, lying in my bed. The dream was starting again.

It continued like that for what seemed like forever. Each night, just before midnight, I would find myself in my bedroom and the dream would start. It didn't matter where I was; the dream found me and brought me back to the apartment. Once I even went to a friend's house in Jersey to try to get away. It didn't work. Instead, I got a call from the friend the next morning asking where I had gone.

I tried locking myself out of my bedroom. I tried handcuffing myself to the radiator in the living room. I tried staying at Louie's all night on several different occasions. Nothing worked, although I seemed to be offered drinks more and more often. I felt like I was Bill Murray in that movie, "Groundhog Day."

And if that wasn't bad enough, my visitor kept changing. My vision, once the most voluptuous, most beautiful creature imaginable, slowly became plainer and plainer, to the point where one night I realized that she wasn't a woman any more. She was a really effeminate man.

But it didn't stop there. If I focused every week or two I would realize that she-I mean he-was slowly becoming a remarkably handsome man.

Almost as strange, was the fact that I was not upset by the idea of having a man kissing me each night. I had no idea why, but I had to admit that it was just as enjoyable having a man kiss me now as it had been having a woman doing it before. I began to think about the guys that kept offering me drinks at Louie's, how this one had a pretty smile and how that one had a cute butt. I found myself enjoying it when one leaned close to touch me, so much so that I began leaning into them so they would have to touch me. I even began wanting them to bring me to a private place touch me other places besides my hand or my hair. Hell, I wanted them to take me to bed and have their way with me.

As I noted earlier, no matter what I did, I just couldn't break away from the dream or break the pattern of the dream. It was always the same dream, only my visitor changed, ever so slowly. I eventually I had given up and just waited in my bed, waited for it to happen so I could go on with my life.

Finally, it happened. My visitor was an absolute Adonis with long blonde hair and a physique that would be the envy of a Greek god. I couldn't help myself as I almost drooled in anticipation of his touch, his kiss. He appeared out of nowhere, standing by the door, smiling at me. I waited patiently as he slowly approached me, threw off the covers and sat beside me. But this time something happened. Instead of running his hair over my chest before mounting me, he smiled and spoke to me.

"You have turned out well my child."

Those words were like a shock to the system. It was like I had been hypnotized and, after months in a trance, had suddenly recovered my wits. I took one look at him, another look at myself, and screamed.

He nonchalantly waved a hand and I was calm again, although this time I was cognizant of the tremendous changes that had occurred to my body and, I belatedly realized, my brain. I knew what I was and my new role in life, or rather death.

"Succubae and incubi, we're one and the same. It's only a matter of the form we happen to be in. I'm still not quite as good as my creator, thus the handcuffs, but after our first kiss, you shall be mine-if you survive that is. That's why there are so few of us, you know. Most humans seem to die before the process is completed, but I have high hopes for you, that you will be my first child. We shall see."

I lay there on that cheap motel room bed, handcuffs chaffing, as I glared up at the beautiful but mad woman before me telling me her bizarre and nightmarish tale. She sat beside me on the bed. Slowly she leaned forward to kiss me.

"Damn, that one was fun. Let's see if that one gives someone a chubby. Time to check the mail and go to bed. Mac quickly scanned the files in his inbox.

"Garbage.

"Garbage.

"Story. We'll set that one aside to read later when I have time.

"Garbage.

"Garbage.

"Only two stinking responses? Damn that stinks. So what do they say?

"Loved 'Faster than a Speeding Tall Building.' Keep writing. Please."

"Good. Good." MacKenzie beamed with pleasure.

"In 'Vector/Victoria' you incorrectly defined the word 'vector.' It's actually, 'a quantity possessing both magnitude and direction.' You would have been better off calling it a 'medium,' but then you would have to change the name of the story to something like 'Medium Matilda,' and that might give people the wrong impression." It was from Wally the Weasel. Damn.

McKenzie Rigby cursed and turned off his computer and slumped into his tattled couch. "Ungrateful… Why the hell do I bother Igor? I'm not asking for a lot, am I? Just an occasional 'Thank you'."

Igor just rolled his eyes and remained as he was, curled into a comfortable ball.

"What?" McKenzie asked, still angry. Am I being unreasonable?"

McKenzie waited impatiently for a response, but Igor wisely said nothing.

"Oh, I know. You think I should write just for the sake or writing? Right?