“Samuel has asked me to marry him.” For a moment Ken wondered if he had heard her right but the look on her face told him that he had. “B... bu...... “ “I know,” she said. “I’ve told him that I can’t marry him.” “W... what’s brought all this on?” Ken asked. “I want to marry Sandra and have children with her,” Samuel said. “I... I don’t understand?” “It’s okay Ken. Sandra has turned me down. She has no intention of divorcing you.” Ken sat back on the bed. He was in a state of shock. Sandra. “Up we go…" breathed Alice.Their spirit selves divided themselves and floated above their bodies, clearly discernible to the eye like a pair of three-dimensional charcoal etchings done with exquisite attention to detail. Lucinda saw Alice for the first time since before her suicide; pendulous breasts, her blonde hair running over her shoulders, long-limbed and meaty, full sensuous lips in a round face punctuated with bewitching brown eyes. The spirits at first passed through each other, as if. My eyes set upon a thick carrot resting on the cutting board, already peeled and about to be chopped. Abandoning the eggplant for now, I shaped the carrot end to a rough rounded knob, and carved out a narrower neck below it. I coated the end of it with butter. It was the butter I was going to use to sweat the vegetables. My fingers trembled slightly.Squatting over the floor, I prepared to impale myself by holding my breath. A whimper escaped from my lips as I felt the carrot intrude on my back. None have succeeded. All have looked the part better than you.”“You will let me try?”“I don’t think so,”“I’ll take that as a yes. What have you to be afraid of? You haven’t ever been hypnotized and if I do manage to put you under I would not be able to make you do something you really couldn’t possibly do. For instance, no hypnotist has ever been able make their subject pick up a gun and shoot someone. All a hypnotist does is get rid of your inhibitions and do something you actually deep down.