Gingerbread Man

the mattress as she stretched to reach me. The gleam of her eyes and the shape of her head were clear in my darkened bedroom. I stroked her and leaned over to fumble for the lamp, snapped it on and went limp with relief when light filled the room and the room filled my eyes.
    "Okay, good. Good. It’s all good. It was just a dream."
    My bedroom was just the way I’d left it. Soothing green walls—keep. Ivory curtains and woodwork—keep. Not a single picture on a single wall—big change needed. The circular dog bed lay on the plush green carpet to my left. One of Myrtle’s toys, a yellow teddy bear with one arm missing and white fluff sticking out of its shoulder socket, was lying in it.
    But Myrtle was still standing with her paws on my mattress.
    "Yeah, okay. Why not?" I got up, moved around behind her, linked my arms around her middle and picked her up, grunting as I did. "Not a lightweight, are you, Myrt?"
    Snarf
, said Myrtle.
    I got her into the bed, then climbed back in myself. She padded around until she found a spot she liked—as close to me as possible—and dropped. Myrtle didn’t lay down. Myrtle collapsed.
    I sighed. "So what the hell was that about, do you think?" I asked her.
    She opened her sightless eyes and looked back at me as if to say,
You’re asking me? I’m just a dog.
    I’d never had a nightmare like that in my life. It had been vivid. Real. And the feelings running through me in that dream had been majorly fucked up. Way out of line with anything I would ever have felt. I had never equated blood and sex. Not even in fantasy. Sadism was not my thing. I didn’t have a dominatrix bone in my body. So what the
hell
was up with the sensations of sexual pleasure and all that blood?
    "All right, well, I’ve been through a lot this week. Hit by a car, got my eyesight back, and Tommy’s still missing and-—"
    I flashed back to the man on the floor in my dream, the obvious question popping into my head. Could it have been my brother? Was I having some kind of psychic vision about what had happened to Tommy?
    I sat up again, my eyes shifting rapidly side to side as I searched my brain for the memory, for any clue. What clothes was the guy wearing? What did he look like?
    Blood and hamburger.
    What the
hell
was wrong with me?
    "Simple, stupid. Stress, a major physical change, every sense in my body undergoing a radical new state of being, and I’m still worried to hell and gone about Tommy. Maybe even feeling guilty that we were celebrating tonight while he was—"
    Blood and hamburger.
    "What do you say we leave the light on for the rest of the night, huh, Myrt?"
    She closed her eyes and sighed.
    But even then, I didn’t go back to sleep.

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About the Author
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    New York Times bestselling author Maggie Shayne has published more than 50 novels and 23 novellas. She has written for 7 publishers and 2 soap operas, has racked up 15 Rita Award nominations and actually, finally, won the damn thing in 2005.
    Maggie lives in a beautiful, century old, happily haunted farmhouse named "Serenity" in the wildest wilds of Cortland County, NY, with her soul-mate, Lance. They share a pair of English Mastiffs, Dozer & Daisy, and a little English Bulldog, Niblet, and the wise guardian and guru of them all, the feline Glory, who keeps the dogs firmly in their places. Maggie’s a Wiccan high priestess (legal clergy even) and an avid follower of the Law of Attraction