Sam smiled as I slid the ten-dollar bill into his tip cup. I sat at the bar, and nursed my drink, looking around. An average looking redhead came in, and sat at the end of the bar. When she looked at me, I knew instantly what sort of woman she was. I’d seen many like her, coming in here with hopes of leaving on the arm of a future husband.

The first chords of Surrender blended with my whiskey, forming a rainbow slurry to ease the stress from the cutthroat business transactions of my busy afternoon. Sam’s skilled fingers at the piano were better than any massage I could get in this town.

The redhead glanced at me with a look of pitiful hope and willingness in her eyes. “Anyone wearing Armani and Old Spice would do for you,” I thought. I looked away, and began my ritual of planning my evening with the contents of my briefcase. I had taken tomorrow off in order to meet with my financial consultant about some minor changes I wanted done in my investment portfolio. “Oh Sam, that feels good.”

An inebriated guy in a cheap suit sat down beside the woman. He blocked her view of me, and I was glad.

“Do you mind if I join you?” I turned and saw an elegant blond standing next to me.

“Sure,” I said. “Have a seat.”

Normally, I would have left quickly, since I felt I had to get to my paperwork, but there was a sudden compelling desire to spend some time with this lady. She introduced Herself as Anni. Before I knew it, we were leaving the lounge together, and driving to Anni’s apartment. Though just passed seven o’clock, the twilight had faded, and the enormous orange ball of the full moon appeared at the end of the long city street. The earth’s atmosphere magnified its girth to fill the gap between the two mighty skyscrapers far ahead of us. The ageless shadows and craters became a deep brown-orange of this swollen moon that seemed to announce to the world: “It’s Halloween!” Anni was smiling at it with the loving smile of a proud mother. I shuddered, and turned up the heater in my Mercedes.

“I’ll fix us a drink,” She said and disappeared into Her kitchen.

The apartment was modest in its furnishings, and void of any artwork that interested my discerning eye, except for one piece. A curious statue, about a foot tall, stood in the center of the coffee table. I picked it up and considered the meaning of the peculiar hard baked clay piece. It was probably Egyptian or Greek in origin, judging by its shape and hand painted designs. It was the statue of a woman whose arms crossed flatly against her chest extending her hands outward. The expression on her face seemed to be a deliberate act on the part of the artist to convey a comedian about to spring her punch line. I noticed that her right eye was painted brown, and her left, blue.

“What is this?” I asked Anni, who’d arrived with two cocktails.

“Oh I call her Isis. Apparently, the statue represents an Orphic Mystery ritual. I was told that a secret lover of the great mystic, Anton Mesmer, made this one for him. I was also informed that this woman was the same mysterious lover of Beethoven’s Immortal Beloved.”

“That’s too spooky,” I said, laughing. I mused to myself that the dates and location of both men would have actually made this possible.

“Well, tonight is Halloween after all,” She laughed, switching on some music. It was the slow movement of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony!

“So what is this so-called Orphic Mystery ritual?”

“Well, they call it subconscious transmigration. It’s a mystic combination of mythology, witchcraft, and hypnotism. Would you like to give it a try?”

Her voice was lively and enticing, but Her face displayed the graveness of something dark and foreboding. It was the face of an irresistible beauty with unbearable power. She held my eyes like a fist. My conscious awareness seemed to be examining Her face, the curve of Her lips, and the depth of Her eyes, for a single sign that She didn’t believe what She was saying. Her grim expression told me nothing, yet I felt She was not telling me everything. Though I could not look away from Her eyes, I forced my field of consciousness back to re-acquire the entire room. The moon screamed its way through a window.

“I wonder if we should,” I answered. “Tonight is Halloween, You know, and there’s a full moon out tonight too.”

She curled Her legs against Her on the couch. My eyes followed Her hand as it slowly raised Her drink from the table. I watched it as it passed Her stocking clad thigh, the fullness of Her hips, the sudden inward curve of Her waist, the magnificent swelling of Her breasts, the powerful outline of Her jaw, the full hungry firmness of Her lips, and the compelling seriousness of Her eyes. She held the glass just below Her eyes, and they sparkled with the knowledge that I could not look away.

“I can’t think of a better night to do it,” She cooed seductively.

I hesitated. I could not look away from Her eyes. The feeling of terror was welling up inside me, and I fought to keep it from my expression. My body froze unwilling to reveal a quiver of the fear that built inside me.

“Ah, c’mon. It’ll be fun. And it will only take a second,” She said.

These words hit me like a cymbal. It was as if I’d heard them somewhere before. They echoed in my mind from a distant place in my memory. Warning sirens screamed in my head as I felt the urge of compliance forming. Her warm smile tugged at me with bonds of trust and assurance. I felt a sudden, passionate impulse that this was too good to pass up.

“Sure, why not?” I said, but my eyes were not on Her. They were on the moon.

I caught a flicker of victory flash across Her face. She eagerly placed two pillows on the carpet. She motioned me to lie down, and She lay beside me. The statue stood between us, her hands outstretched in welcome, and her expression of wicked humor playfully looking down it me with its brown right eye and blue left one.

“Hold her hand,” She began, “and focus your attention on something shiny, with your eyes slightly elevated.”

When I raised my eyes, a crystal hanging in the window, bending and reflecting the moonlight into winking twinkles caught my attention. There seemed to be motion, as the sparkling crystal became a thousand stars in a square inch blackness of night. As I slowly grasped one hand of the statue, Anni began to speak. She spoke in slow, rhythmic pulses and Her voice soon became the only thing I was aware of.

“Just breathe deeply and naturally,” She was saying. Her soft voice hung on the vowels of Her words like music. “Let yourself drift into relaxation with every breath you take. Let the sound of My voice carry Your thoughts away like faded memories of the past. Just let them go. Let your thoughts become my thoughts. Let my thoughts become your thoughts. Hear My voice, and surrender. Surrender into the relaxation and into the flowing peaceful tranquility of My voice.”

She continued, and Her voice seemed to be changing into as much a trancelike state as I was. The sound of Her voice, and the words She was saying seemed to become so very natural to me that I felt they were truly thoughts of my own manufacture.

“Feel yourself flowing out of you, and into me. Feel yourself flowing out of you, and into me. Feel yourself inside my body, growing and forming inside my body. Feel yourself letting go of your body. Let the strands and tethers and filaments that bind you to your body gently let go, and drift into me. Such peaceful and trusting feelings as you let Me guide you into My mind, into My body, and into Me. Good. It feels so very, very, good.”

Whatever I was experiencing, it did feel good. I lay with my eyes closed, and just drifted into Her voice. The passing of time disappeared into the empty void around me, and my next conscious moment occurred hearing Her velvet voice with the edge of hoarseness, saying, “sleep… sleep… sleep.” In the confused stupor of awakening from a deep dream, I thought it was my mouth that uttered the words. I opened my eyes. The crystal was still dancing and sparkling above my head, but I felt alone.

I was still holding the statue’s small palm, but now with my other hand. I raised it to my eyes. Oddly, I mused to myself that the right eye was blue, the left brown. I had thought it was the other way around, when I had looked at it earlier.

“Anni?” I called out. The sudden shock of my voice hit me like the icy blast of a winter tornado. The voice was that of a woman. My voice! Anni’s voice! I leaped from the floor and saw a mirror in the hall. I rushed at it with the eagerness of a madman. With frenzied insanity I saw the reflection rushing at me. I was the man I always was. I was the “me”, who had always lived in my mind. But there, an inch before me, as if through a thin sheet of glass, was the shocked face of Anni!