Flesh Gothic by Edward Lee Read Online Free PDF Page A

the squalling baby. At least this way
she had a chance, always arriving early to get a seat with the
first boarding group. Then she'd plunk down at the first
window and would try to look as unpleasant as possible so as
to urge potential seat-takers to sit somewhere else. Adrianne
didn't want to be near anybody. She didn't really like people.
    She preferred window seats because looking into the sky
reminded her of her own style of flying-out of her body.
    The whine of the backup turbine calmed her along with the barbiturates she'd become addicted to. Adrianne just
wanted to be calm...

    She flipped idly through this month's copy of Paranormal
News, and stopped at a picture of a pleasant, librarianish-
looking woman with autumn-leaf eyes and a faltering
smile, a choppy bob of ink-black hair. A distant, knowing
yet distrustful expression. The article read "Remote Controlling by Adrianne Saundlund: Techniques and Philosophies of Remote-Viewing." Adrianne was forty but she
thought, Shit, IT have to get them to use a new picture. That one
makes me look like I'm fifty. She wrote the bi-monthly column plus a small amount of freelancing for other magazines
in the field for side money and to keep her abreast of the
business. Her Army disability pension paid her bills.
    And look at this floozy. She's forty and looks thirty. A twinge
of jealousy then, when she turned a few pages and saw another column by someone a bit more famous than her. She
should've gotten smaller implants, she criticized this other
woman's flawless bosom. Shining hair the color of beach
sand seemed to sweep around, arctic-blue eyes peering intensely back at her, as if enjoying a secret delight. This column read: "Para-Erotic by Cathleen Godwin: Sexual Desire
& The World of Psi." Adrianne looked at the photo of the
woman's face for another second, then suddenly put the
magazine down and shot a glance upward. The same face
was looking right at her from the aisle.
    "Hello, Adrianne. Do you mind if I- Oh, I'm sure you
don't mind," the voluptuous woman said and plopped
down in the next seat, a cased laptop on her knees.
    "Hi, Cathleen." Damn! "I guess this is a coincidence, if
there is such a thing with people like us."
    Cathleen Godwin appeared fatigued but not unhappy to
see Adrianne. They weren't enemies really, or rivals, just dis tant; paranormalists rarely trusted each other. When she sat
down a gentle waft of herby soap scents hovered over to
Adrianne.

    More trace resentment itched. She turn looks elegant when she
dresses like shit, Adrianne thought. Cathleen wore a t-blouse
with flowers and stars that was so faded it must've been ten
years old, and just-as-faded jeans.
    "I don't have to be psychic to know where you're going,"
the blonde woman bid. "Let me see... Tampa International, then a cab to downtown St. Petersburg. You got an
investigation offer from a woman named-"
    "Vivica Hildreth," Adrianne verified. She was genuinely
surprised, and now even more jealous. Not that Adrianne
cared, but she knew that other psi-investigators would be
there, some of them men, which meant that Cathleen
would be slutting around as always, displaying herself. Adrianne wished she could condemn the woman as a tease but
she knew Cathleen Godwin was much, much more than
that. "Or maybe I'm just going for a suntan," she said as an
afterthought.
    "We're two of the top-ten psychics in the country, Adrianne, both on a plane to the same place on the same day, to
a house that's verifiably charged."
    "How do you know it's charged? You've been there?"
    "No, but come on. How many people was it, sixteen, seventeen, all butchered in the same room by a satanist?"
    "She didn't say he was a satanist. She just said he was eccentric."
    "Oh, sure, I'd say that qualifies as eccentrics ritual
murder, almost like a transposition rite."
    Adrianne smiled very thinly. "I don't believe in transposition rites."
    "No, but you believe in God." Cathleen sighed,