Jessie meets Madame Guillotine

Remember Past Lives! Re-live past adventures!

That's what the posters said. Jessie always felt she had lived many times, half-remembered dreams of the days of glory and luxury and eating cake whenever she wanted it... to be there again, feeling the incredible satin against her skin, the pleasure gardens of Paris, the French monarch playing with her in the orchard, making love on the swing in the sun while a servant obeyed her every whim... that was worth paying a small fortune to relive!

The spiritualist always wore a mask, which was bit scary. His deep voice asked probing questions, personal questions, exploring her memories and her fantasies... he seemed so fascinating, so knowledgeable, as if he could right into her reincarnating soul. He gave her the cup to drink from, led her into the dark velvet shadows of the sacred chamber...

She found herself clad in the gown of her fantasies, the real satin smooth against her skin, more sensuous even than in dreams. But where was the pleasure palace? Where were the gardens of Paris? This wasn't the dream she wanted to relive... this was the nightmare! The darkest, deepest, constant terror from her worst childhood fevers! The steps of the Bastille, the roar of the crowd... always in her dream she had managed not to turn, to look away... to retain her sanity against the terror that would undo her. But in the Evil Magician's sacred chamber, there was no turning away. Madame Guillotine there waiting for her, as she had been for hundreds of years, for life after life after life...

The drug had sapped her will. She could do no more than scream as the Evil Magician seized her, placed her head in that dreadful apparatus. She remembers the screech and scrunch of the falling blade, of hearing the rush of her own blood spurt from her severed neck...