Shrieks and howls in loud, deep agony accompany satanic laughter. Fear crawls down my arms and legs. I am psychically prodded to look within. A naked, muscular young man with black hair is writhing in pain, chained by arms and legs to a wall-mounted wood cross. Nearby, I see a creature unimaginable and mythical; a seven foot tall , bright red hued Devil, replete with tail, who wears a black-hood and demonically laughs, in stentorian fashion, as he delivers whip-snapping cracks onto the screaming man's back with the whip. The man screams and pleads for mercy in fervent agony, between each blow of the whip;. blood and tissue, noisily splatter the walls at each stroke.

My mind shrank back in mortal terror, disgust and raw horror.

Next, a scenario materializes and reveals a thick-bodied, squat, gangster who sits at a table playing solitaire. With a growl rich and deep with menace ,the gravel voiced gangster picks up a hand gun and flatly tells me that he is going to kill me. Helpless, I nod in silent placation and tacit agreement. The gangster, never taking his eyes from his cards in front of him places the gun at the far end of the table close to me. The killer assures me, in a gravelly voice, that no matter what I do, he will definitely murder me. I am urged to go for the gun. In response, my mind's eye measures the distance between the gangster's hand and the gun and my own relative distance from the gun; I decide that it was surely a trap and that I would be shot before I got to the gun. I resist the suggestion and my survival response is recorded. The next scenario - a beautiful woman, a Hollywood femme fatale type with short skirt, long white gloves, very long legs and dark hair, tells me that she is in danger and needs me to go with her to help her. I awaken more now, and patently refuse, smelling danger, seeing through the disguise. She promises me her body if I would help her. I abjectly refuse, again. Now, she pauses and looks surprised and seems to not know what to say or do next. The delusion is wearing thin and I begin to stare hard at each participant. The alien introduces a promissory image of her long limbs lasciviously intertwined with mine. I still refuse, seeing a ruse.

The next psychic measurement is for honesty and guilt; I am left in a room with money piled high on a table. I am urged to fill my cassock pockets and I do. I am made to feel the slow burn of shame.

At the end of the exam, bereft of strength, disheartened, deeply depressed, I sat in the spacecraft drained and exhausted. At this point the alien applied an artistic touch to the delusion. It gave closure and diverted my mind, but it also mercifully alleviated my soul's suffering. Each main character from each scenario filed in one by one with knowing smiles and sat at a table in front of me. My God; I was at the center of a "Mission Impossible" scenario!

With a dawning realization that these people were simply players, conspiring to fool me, two things happened: surprise at the complexity of the dream, and awe, at the enormity of the staging, by seeming strangers. This new revelation replaced the angst that this series of visions had provoked. It also underlined the alien's total duplicity; when the alien saw my slow smile and lightening of spirit he brought me out of the delusion and back into blackness. When my alarm rang, I swung my feet onto the floor.

"Dreadful dream," I thought "My god, what a dreadful dream; someone was butchering babies; horrible dream."

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