The crimson witch

sweeping up at him, swallowing him, chewing at him with teeth that were really pictures of men and horses and elephants and palaces and magic carpets. Leona had stretched out naked upon the rug and was writhing out her own fantasies. Her body became a tossing ship, her breasts the mast platforms, her flying hair the sails whipped by the wind…
        He popped two more capsules.
        Two more…
        Three more…
        Two more…
        Visions exploded around him.
        He was a pit at the center of a fruit.
        The pit erupted in flames…
        In time, the visions faded and he reached a place of great tranquility. Suddenly the tossing of the carpet and the surging of the grain in the floorboards ceased. The others sat about, wrapped in their own arms and lost in the alleyways of their own Ids and egos, their own desires and their private dreams. Yet there was nothing for him, no dreams of orgies, no dreams of great heroism. Just tranquility. It was as if he had passed through the wall of a mighty storm and had now reached the other side where tranquility was as perfect as it had been before he had taken the first red cap. So was this all that a massive dose of PBT would do? No… No… No, he had not passed through the wall of the storm… He had only reached the eye of the hurricane. Again, things began to happen…
        To the left where the walls joined in the corner of the room, the walls no longer joined. There was an immense crack running from ceiling to floor, a crack that widened even as he watched until there was a four-foot gap between the partitions. Still the roof did not sag and the floor did not give way. And, beyond, there was not a scene of the city as he might have expected there would be. Instead, there was a field of rich green grass backed by mountains tall and purple, the mountains ringed with dark forests. And grazing in this field were…
        He blinked his eyes.
        The crack and the field remained…
        He stood, swaying, and approached the crack in the wall, staring through. Unicorns were grazing in the field. No… No, not exactly unicorns either. These were more like one-horned cows than one-horned horses. They were bulkier than horses, bulkier -certainly-than any unicorn, though they were still more slender and graceful than cows. They turned from their munching to study him. Suddenly one of them started and took flight. The others followed it mindlessly. Yes, they could run much faster and much more gracefully than cows. They loped, their broad shoulders plunging them on, on, on toward the trees and the mountains. When they had receded into dots again and, apparently, could not see him, they stopped and resumed their grazing.
        He turned from the scene beyond and examined the crack in the wall. The edges were perfectly smooth. It was not really a crack so much as a slice taken out of the corner of the room, as if some giant had slit the walls and carried off the corner. He reached a hand through and stuck it into the daylight and air of the field. It did not wither or change color. He wiggled the fingers. They acted accordingly.
        Behind, Leona called to him.
        He started to turn, stumbled, and clutched out at the walls to support him. But there were no walls. He fell backwards into the field. He looked back at the door-like aperture through which he had come. He could see Leona standing naked in the room, looking perplexed-and beautiful. Then the door was gone…
        He stood and examined the air where the portal had been, waving his arms back and forth, hoping to encounter some invisible obstacle. There was none. The door was lost to him.
        How long would it be until he woke from the PBT dreams-for this was surely a dream?
        He felt very weary. Did that mean the dream would soon end and he would find himself back in the room with the others? He stretched out on the cool, green grass and fell swiftly into sleep…
        Sleeping in a dream?
        He was wakened by a woman's hands on his forehead. She was dressed in cotton and burlap with a gypsy hairband holding back her gray hair to keep it out of her eyes. The Sorceress Kell…
        And as the days wore on, the realization came that the crack had been more than a simple delusion. With the overdose of PBT, he had somehow opened a psychic doorway between the dimension? time lines? probabilities?-and was now a long, long way from home in a land where