6. The Naked Lie (D1)

__ The explosion of the gunshot in the open room was deafening. Ardy felt the impact of the bullet in her chest and whirled as though whacked with a baseball bat. Then everything went dark. And cold.
__ When she came to Ardy thought she was in the afterlife. At any moment an angel or demon was going to step out of the dim to escort her to her final rest, but the smell of cigarette smoke and roar of another semi speeding past outside tuned her back to the world of sweat and pain and nausea she was now cycling through.
__ She was on the couch, but this time propped up with pillows from the bed. Her legs were also elevated and she was covered with a quilt tucked in around her neck. Her right side was stiff and ached and, when she reached over with her left hand to touch the area where she was shot, she felt tight bandages stretching the skin of her side under her arm. She was also bandaged around her right forearm. The bullet must have passed by her right breast, creasing both her side and her arm as it punched through. It wouldn't more more of a scratch if her arm wasn't held tightly to the side by --.
__ Handcuffs.
__ They're gone! Ardy winced from the pain in her side as her right hand felt her left wrist. She could trace the creases of depressed skin where the cuffs had been pulled tight, probably while she was unconscious and being moved around like a rag doll by Munson.
__ Munson. Where? Ardy turned her head but couldn't see the fortune telling table from this angle. A table with gauze, bandages, alcohol, rubber gloves, a syringe, and a small vial of a clear liquid drug obscured her view.
__ Ardy shifted. And winced. She held her side as she attempted to sit up, but immediately felt dizzy and collapsed again. With her left arm across her midriff to her side she noticed something else. Her clothes had been changed. She was no longer wearing any of the gypsy gear she'd worn before. Though she kept her panties, everything else had been stripped away and replaced with a long gray nightshirt.
__ Tears welled in her eyes as her brain forced the horror upon her. She couldn't help imagining what the monster did to her while she was unconscious. How he took advantage of the situation, touching her, smelling her, tasting her.
__ A shock of revulsion seared through Ardy and she pinched her eyes tight against the thoughts that raced like a vicious horror film. She thrashed her head from side to side, whimpering and pulling herself painfully into a fetal position. I have to get out of here. I have to get help.
__ The thoughts alerted her to two things. One, she was alone. Munson had gone and the top of her truck was no longer visible through the big picture window beyond the backwards PSYCHIC sign. And two, she was no longer cuffed.
__ Opening her eyes, Ardy's vision locked on the vial of clear liquid. A tiny glint reflecting off the chrome lip of the drug pierced her vision like a lightning bolt and she found herself pulled into it. As the room elongated and Ardy's body shrunk, she felt herself levitated off the couch, soaring for countless miles, toward the vial on the table right next to her.

__ She was in him again, looking down at herself. But this wasn't a vision of the future, or even a glimpse of where R. Lee Munson was now. This was moments after he'd shot her.
__ She followed his thoughts: Oh my God! No! I didn't mean to! It just went--! I thought I'd flicked the safety! Ardelene! Then aloud, "Ardelene!"
__ He goes to her prone body, face down, and watches as a small amount of blood stains the hardwood floor. He rolls her onto her back and feels for a pulse in her neck. Thank God. Thank God. Just unconscious. She'll be all right. Where's my medical bag?
__ He's a doctor! Ardy was treated to flashes of memory: internships at the Covert Hospital, medical missionary work in New Guinea, crying buckets over the first patient he ever lost, leaving the medical field to become --.
__ Then the thought-chain broke and Ardy finds herself within him as he carefully lifts her and carries her to the bedroom. He gives her a shot of something pulled from the medical bag: a combination sedative/anti-biotic. There, he gently removes her vest and blouse, struggles with her bra (... Never done this before ...), and noticing how tightly she pulls her belt, loosens it and -- from the end of the bed -- pulls off her shoes, socks, and slides down her pants.
__ Oh, God, Ardy thinks inside his head. This is it! But she can't pull away from his eyes, the feel of his hands as his grip flexes.
__ His thoughts are clinical. He takes only the briefest moment to admire her body, but doesn't think of her as anything but a patient. Rolling her onto her side, he wrestles with the handcuffs before laying her flat again and elevating her right arm to check the damage underneath. The bullet passed through perfectly, searing the skin next to her right breast and tearing a trough out of the inside of her right arm. Scar won't even show, he thinks.
__ As Munson works: giving Ardy a Tetanus booster, cleaning and stitching the wound (such detail to minimize the scar!), bandaging her carefully; she can feel and hear all of his thoughts. Again, he thinks of being with her (happily married -- Never done that before, either. She'd be nice, but she'd never want to...) and he fears what will happen when she wakes up. He knows she'll accuse him of raping her, or at the very least attack him for shooting her. (... Has every right. She didn't know it was an accident....)
__ But I need her, he thinks. She sees things. Knows things. She can help me get my life back. And another voice deep within his head, perhaps his conscience, But you killed a man, idiot. You can't turn away from that! You're a murderer.
__ And then he cries. He cries again, like the child who was beaten and told not to cry when his father and uncle did those horrible horrible things to him. Like the lawyer. Clye. Better off dead so he can't do that to his boy. Then nausea. Munson turns, vomits into a waste basket.

__ Ardy would like to stay, hear and feel more as she learns about the demons within the demon, but she is pulled back, out of his mind and heart, out of his hands and head, and painfully back into her own contorted weeping body.
__ She gasps loudly, sucking in air as though she'd been holding her breath the whole time she was in the vision. She closes her eyes and tries to relax, to absorb all the thoughts and miasma of feelings within the man that she experienced. He didn't do anything but correct his mistake. He accidentally shot her, almost killed her, but felt deep remorse for doing so. Ardy couldn't be sure, because it must be different for everyone, but she could almost believe R. Lee Munson, murderer and abused child-man, was falling in love with her.
__ The door opened in time with a distant peel of thunder and her eyes snapped open. She gasped at his silhouette in the doorway.
__ He stood for a moment, still as a tree. She couldn't make out his face or his expression, though the angle told her he was staring right at her.
__ "Had to move your truck," he said. His voice deep and menacing, but more wary, like a jungle cat approaching a zebra large enough to put up a good fight. "Want to make sure this joint looks as closed as it is."
__ Ardy allowed herself to sink deep into the pillows. She nodded slowly, pretending to be more scared than she actually was. Munson approached her, pulling over a chair from the fortune table, and turning it so he could straddle it and rest his arms on the back. He wasn't too close. Maybe he thought she'd spring up and attack him.
__ "Hurt?"
__ She blinked. Nodded again.
__ Munson looked away, thumbed his upper lip, looked back. "You was gettin' too close. That," he said, pointing at her side, "was a warning shot. You step outta line again and I swear I'll put a slug through your skull."
__ Ardy was tempted to call him a liar, to stand up to him and tell him she knew the truth about what haunted him -- at least part of it. But that might be dangerous. He wouldn't -- nobody would -- want to know someone could get inside your deepest most intimate thoughts. And he has a gun.
__ So, instead, she said, "So... What happens now?"
__ He thought for a moment, his eyes tracing her body beneath the quilt, his brow knitting. Ardy guessed he was probably wondering why she didn't point out the fact he had removed all her clothes. He's probably thinking that any woman in her right mind would unleash fury at the violation.
__ She moved her arms beneath the quilt and widened her eyes, pretending like she just came to and was only now discovering the change. She gasped, "W-What did you do to me!?"
__ Munson scowled, stood and pulled the chair away. "I shot you --."
__ "My clothes!"
__ He retrieved the gun from the fortune table and came back to her. He didn't point the gun but swung it at his side to make sure she saw it.
__ "What did you do to me?" She whimpered. And, to her surprise, found real tears to accompany the act.
__ He chewed his tongue, then said, "I didn't rape you, if that's what you're thinkin'. But you don't have to believe me. None of the others did."
__ Others? This new revelation jolted her. In his mind there was only Clye -- the lawyer. "What do you mean, 'o-others?'"
__ "The women I killed."
__ She knew -- felt -- it was a lie, but didn't dare say a word.
__ "And you'll be next if you don't do exactly what I tell you."
__ She swallowed hard. Allowed her eyes to grow wide again.
__ He smirked. "Hungry?"