The Sanctuary of Pleasure

 Chapter One The rain wasn't falling; it was attacking. A torrential, horizontal assault that turned her windshield into a churning, opaque vortex. Marci White’s knuckles were white on the steering wheel, her luxury sedan feeling like a flimsy tin can in the elemental fury. Stupid, stupid, stupid. The shortcut had been a terrible idea. The state road was a graveyard of failed businesses, each darkened, boarded-up shell a testament to the highway that had long since stolen its life. And now, with a sickening thump-thump-screech , her driver’s side wiper had given up entirely. Panic, cold and sharp, lanced through her. She couldn’t see ten feet ahead. Every instinct screamed to get off this desolate strip of asphalt. She guided the car forward at a crawl, her world reduced to the frantic, insufficient arc of the passenger wiper. Then, a mirage. A halo of sickly yellow light in the distance. As she drew closer, it resolved into a single, buzzing fluorescent tube illuminating a sign: ...