Sometimes the strongest manacles in this life are the bonds forged from painful memories of a past so horrific, that they shackle and incarcerate the very essence of one's soul...inevitably, the constraint is a life sentence. It's storming outside-I'm talkin' the kind of storm that produces the little red stripe at the bottom of the TV, flashing warnings of impending doom and destruction on a scale of Armageddon. Yet, aside from the frequent bomb blasts of thunder and techno-flashes of lightning, my hotel room is eerily quiet-almost deafeningly so. I lay prostrate on one of the two queen-size beds, arms and hands paralyzed from being trapped under my limp, heavy carcass, hypnotized and mesmerized by the slow seepage of blood spreading into the fibers of the duvet...it's my blood. This fact does not alarm me-yet, which that, in and of itself, tells me that all my pistons aren't firing correctly. My vision is impaired by half...meaning my right eye is swollen shut, and I don't really remember why or how it got that way at the moment. I am, on the other hand, well aware of the difficulty I'm having drawing a deep breath. With what little strength I have-God, my whole body hurts-I shift to my back and gasp My clothes are torn and mutilated, draped across me in shreds like curtains in an old abandoned house-weathered and forgotten. For a moment that seems to stretch on forever, I am numb, taking in the macabre scenery that is my body-bites and bruises, blood and scratches, a hand-print on my hip, and a...Christ, what did he do to my breast? My brain begins to come back online, circuits flying through my head, some firing at random (work conference, restaurant, too much wine, storm...) while others are more concrete ( walking alone, man in the corridor by the stairwell, tied to the bed, hands on my throat...hands on me). Then the dream-my whole life in Technicolor flashing before my eyes. Was it a dream, or reality? Oh God...I'm either dead, or I will be soon. And what about the man? It's all becoming clearer now as my brain begins to re-boot. A ghost from my past-the bogey man, Frankenstein, and the monster from under my bed all rolled into my living, breathing, nightmare. Where is he? Did I kill him? Is he still in this room? Futilely, I try to rise up from the bed-oh God, I'm gonna be sick-then I think better of it. Surely he's gone now. There's no one in the room but me. I'm trying diligently to convince myself of this before full out hysterics kicks in. I carefully still my aching head, my single eye heavy with weariness and fatigue, scans the shadows on the walls and ceiling as they dance with the strobe beat of the lightning. I just need to rest for a minute, just a minute, then I'll have the strength to get up and call the police. Darkness surrounds me like a warm blanket in winter. My body is stiff and still as though the bed has been poured around me. The pain in my head and body has changed from a nauseating throb to a dull ache all over. I feel my whole body begin to succumb to sleep, the soothing abyss just waiting for me to fall over the edge into nothingness-that's when I feel the mattress dip violently and the vise-like hand grip my throat. This is going to get ugly.