*****
 A Nudge from the Light
 2002 Angelia Sparrow
 *****
 
 

 So he leaves the little café, surrounded by children.

 The lesson is forgotten, it seems.  A refresher course for a most
 recalcitrant pupil may be in order.  My words had no effect.  They never do.
   He remains arrogant and impervious.  And more desirable than when I first
 saw him.

 Yes, desirable, even drunk, disheveled and grieving.  I took him once, so
 long ago, and he has become a handsome man from the gangling youth.  His
 vitriol remains undiluted and his hatred burned like a flame in this smoky
 café.

 It's the opium doing this, making me think of him so.  The waterpipe bubbles
 steadily, taking me back to the night I dared reach out and seize the
 ultimate prize.

 The research, the publishing credit, those had been pleasant enough.  Alice,
 his lovely fiancée, bored me after a month.  I was forced to be heartless in
 sending her away.  I hear she's never recovered.  He thought he'd thwarted
 me, encoding his notes, and discovering the burial chamber.

 I taught him differently.  After all these years, the taste of his skin
 returns: sand, opium and fear-sweat.  I marked him lavishly, and would do so
 again eagerly.  I will do so again.  I will have him, that solid body under
 me, the hatred in his eyes turning to fear when he sees that this time, the
 lesson does not end.

 Africa is not as civilized as Europe, and there are many places where a man
 could be hidden, even so famous a man.  Hidden, imprisoned, locked away like
 a prized odalisque in a harem.  Drugged away from his reason, pliant.

 I taste the smoke from the hookah again, seeing how it will be.

 Jones does not know the girl still lives.  She is hardened.  I cannot
 destroy her as I did Alice, but I can woo her.  I can seduce her from him,
 learn what she knows.  In the end, she will go to the repulsive toad, Toht,
 but I can and shall enjoy her.  It would be a great coup to have her on my
 arm, adoring me, when I seize the next prize.

 I suspect he knows where the ark is.  If he does not, he will soon.  If he
 finds it first, it shall be no different than all the other prizes that were
 his, and are now mine.  I will have it, I will use it.  And it too, shall
 pass into the hands of my temporary allies.

 In the end, I keep very little.  But Jones, Jones will be the one thing I do
 keep.  I see it all, like a motion picture unfolding before me.  He will
 make a final effort to retrieve the ark and the girl, but the Germans will
 thwart him.

 I will finish my experiment with the ark.  Dietrich will leave some men with
 me if I need them.  We shall sail back here, to Egypt, or maybe deeper into
 the interior.  Nairobi is a lovely city.  I will have enough to purchase a
 house, set far from prying eyes, enough to make it secure.

 I do not underestimate his resourcefulness.  Opium, lovely poppies, should
 calm most of his resistance.  Security comes from locked interior rooms as
 well, chains can be fitted out if need be, but I do hope not.

 This expedition will make me rich.  Rich enough to live quietly in some poor
 country, endlessly repeating the lesson.  Endlessly varying it.  But always
 reminding the arrogant, invincible Doctor Jones that there is nothing he can
 possess, that I cannot take away.
 

 *end*