Now Camilla was reliving a memory from four days after her son's drugging and seduction of her; she would re-experience Eros' second sexual encounter with her.
Again, this was late July, about a month before she was stripped naked by ghosts and first made to hover naked over a water tank in a Montreal aquarium. She'd just come home one night after a hard day of teaching in McGill University, just as she had four days previously. Indeed, she was having the most annoying of bad luck: she already had one summer evening course to teach, but about a week before that night, she'd been told that three other English professors had all suddenly fallen ill, and only she was available to replace them. These professors had also been teaching summer classes on the same days as hers, but in the morning and afternoon. So every Tuesday and Friday of that summer would be exhausting for her, days full of endless teaching.
Little did Camilla know (for she was being psychically blocked from finding out) that the arrangement of all her extra work was Eros' doing. He'd used Nigrovum to cause those other profs to get sick suddenly, so she'd be tired at night from replacing all of them. He had begun his plans to have her a few weeks before, all using the utmost subtlety: he didn't want her to suspect that her wooziness at night was being caused by the Rohypnol tablets he was dropping in her bourbon, so he'd make sure she was already tired when coming home two nights out of every week. He--anxious to fuck her--didn't want to wait another month and a half for the next school year to start, so he used Nigrovum to learn about the other profs' classes, and ensured only his mother's availability as a replacement for the profs whom he'd psychically made sick...sick for the remainder of the summer. He'd have her, and she wouldn't know...until he wanted her to know.
After dropping off a bundle of essays on the living room coffee table, Camilla went to the kitchen to fix herself a glass of Jim Beam and Coke. Then she went back into the living room, sat on her chair, and turned on the TV. She turned the channel to CBC's
The National
. That night, Dr. Singh was debating with a member of the Green Party.
"I suspect that the roots of this government corruption go back many years before the rise of the Green Party," Singh said calmly to his incredulous host and sneering Green opponent. "By promoting a policy of divide and conquer, the Greens--with their friends in the media, the banks, big business, and the army--have kept the masses distracted, too distracted to pay attention to the political issues that matter."
"Oh, really?" asked the host in a more than skeptical tone. "And what would this 'divide and conquer' policy involve?"
"That is easily explained," Singh said. "The political Left and Right are portrayed in the media as irreconcilable opposites, hopelessly hostile to each other; and yet it makes little difference which party is voted into office--be they Tories or Liberals, or in America, Democrats or Republicans--for basically the same kind of government rules the country, a statist, intrusive government that's demanding of high taxes, which are spent in dubious ways. The Greens are no different. Similarly, the sexes are divided, and taught to hate each other. Girls are taught in the media that men are the source of all of women's woes; and, forever addicted to sex through a bombardment of images of beautiful women in ads and pornography, men will always objectify women, and will always be embittered by female rejection. The people are thus distracted with hostility and an endless pursuit of pleasure, while the Greens move behind the scenes, insidiously rising in power."
"You should write novels," said the Green Party member.
"Indeed, you have an imagination that's perfect for writing fiction," added the host.
"Why am I not surprised to hear you agree with the Greens?" Singh said.
"Poor Ravinder," said Camilla after taking a sip of her bourbon. "Still crazy and paranoid after all these years."
Eros was waiting upstairs in his bedroom. Eager to have his mother again, he used Nigrovum to expand the feeling of fullness in her bladder, all the while doing it subtly enough so she wouldn't suspect it was him making her feel the urge to urinate. She got up and went to the bathroom.
He went downstairs and into the living room with a Rohypnol tablet in his hand, as he had four days previously. He dropped it in her drink and went back up to his room.
Camilla again cleaned her vagina and anus in the shower after her pee. After that, she dried herself off, got dressed, and returned to the living room. She sat and gulped down the rest of her drink.
Ten minutes later, the already very tired woman almost lost consciousness, her feeble use of Nigrovum barely keeping her awake.
Eros came back down after changing his appearance to that of Brian, the boy she'd spontaneously stripped for in a Toronto strip joint thirteen years before. Eros' skill with Nigrovum was so consummate that he knew every lover Camilla had ever had, without ever having met them. All he needed was psychic access to her memories, as well as access to Brian's lust-energy, which always vibrated in the Nigrovum swimming in Camilla's blood.
'Brian' appeared in the living room, standing before seated Camilla.
"Hi Camilla," Eros said in Brian's voice.
Recognizing the voice, half-awake Camilla looked up at the speaker, blinking and trying to focus on his face. She saw the walls of the burning mansion of her old dreams, a sight Eros was psychically providing, of course. "Brian? Is that you?" she asked.
"Yes, Camilla, it's me," Eros said.
"Hi, sweetie," she slurred. "I'm d-dreaming again, right?"
"Yes," he said.
