Walter's Alignment

His cry was a bestial roar, a bellow from deep in his lungs that woke up the couple sleeping in the room above them. He backed away from her, leaving her squirming on the bed with two of her fingers in her pussy. He stood at the edge of the bed, his chest heaving and every muscle gorged with blood. The condom was filled and ready to burst. His crotch and thighs glistened, and he realized she'd soaked him again.

He felt tall, taller than he'd ever felt before. His posture was perfect, like an ethereal string reaching up to the heavens held him upright. Gravity had only a tentative hold on him. All the colors in the room were twice as bright.

"How do you feel?"

She stood in the bathroom doorway, drying her hair. She was beaded with water, and there was a smell of fresh soap and perfume in the air. How long had he been standing there in his trance?

"Light," he said in a voice he almost didn't recognize. He didn't always sound so exact, so clear, and so confident. "But strong at the same time. And everything is bright."

"All your chakras are open," she said. "You are feeling as you truly are."

He noticed she was getting dressed, and he remembered he still needed to pay her. He turned, his body a smooth machine, to look for his wallet. It was on the table where he'd left it while he was a different person. He pulled out five hundred-fifty dollars.

She was gone. Her purse wasn't on the bed. The scent of her perfume was the only sign she'd ever been there. He pulled on his bathrobe, unlocked the door, and then ran to the end of the empty hall. Once in the lobby, he looked for her in the lounge. No one was there. He ran out the front door, but found no one in the parking lot except a yuppie couple who were staring at him.

He walked back into the lobby and approached the desk clerk. "Did a woman just leave?" Walter asked. "A small blond woman with dreadlocks?"

"No, sir," the clerk said. "I haven't seen anyone come in for the last two hours, apart from you."

He gave the clerk a detailed description, down to the tattoo and toe rings, wondering if she was a guest at the hotel.

"No one here like that," the clerk said. "I'd remember her. But maybe I wasn't working when she checked in."

Walter went back to his room, hoping he'd been mistaken and that she'd still be there, lounging on his bed and awaiting his return. She wasn't.

He locked the deadbolt on his room door. He stopped when he reached for the door chain.

He had unlocked the deadbolt and removed the door chain before racing from the room to look for her. The deadbolt may have tripped itself when the door closed behind her, but he hadn't heard the door close and there was no way she could have reset the door chain.

"I'm Devi," she had said. "I always appear in times of need."

He found a Hindu temple listed in the phone book. He mailed them an anonymous donation of five hundred-fifty dollars.

END