We entered a dark, labyrinthine passageway and I felt an immediate spasm of claustrophobia in my chest. As I stumbled after Raoul, I heard what sounded like those same jungle sounds again, now louder and more distinct, and I tried to ask Raoul if the beasts were real or just some sort of Halloween prank he’d set up to scare his guests. But he waved me off.

“Come along, come along. You’ll see soon enough,” he said, bounding ahead. It felt like we were gradually descending into an underground cavern, and as I walked on, the pungent aroma of wet vegetation and the ripe stink of animal droppings became stronger. My breathing grew labored, and I felt the first hint of an asthma attack hissing from my lungs as I struggled to keep up with Raoul.

I briefly considered turning back, and at one point I stopped and leaned back gasping against the dark wall of the tunnel, but Raoul shouted that we were almost there and that I could catch my breath later.

He wasn’t lying. Less than a minute later I saw that he had stopped up ahead, and was waiting for me, his hand gripping the curved wooden handle of an enormous door.

By this time my eyes had grown somewhat used to the darkness, and I could see that the passageway was actually much larger than I had thought, maybe five feet wide and eight or nine feet high. The noise and smell were intense, and when Raoul swung open the door I could see why. We entered a vast underground jungle, with monkeys screeching and hanging down from lofty broad-leafed trees, thin red and green lizards slithering underfoot, and brightly colored birds swooping down from above. A thick, tangled mass of vegetation was everywhere.

I had a lingering feeling that this whole episode might be an hallucination brought on by what I now assumed had been BNG-laced tea that Raoul had given to me back in his office. But when I suggested this to him in a thin, asthmatic voice that sounded like I’d had a tube shoved down my throat, he just shook his head and laughed that patronizing laugh of his.

“No, no, not at all,” he said. “All this is as real as you and me.” He led me toward a cultivated area where neat rows of tall herb-like plants grew.

“Here is where we grow our product,” he explained, pointing loftily at the majestic plants, which towered over our heads like great dark-green stalks of corn.

“We found that in order for our plants to thrive, we had to precisely duplicate their natural environment. We even had to import these creatures to keep the plants company,” he said, gesturing with a touch of disgust at a young chimp who hung casually from a nearby tree, screaming and spitting and laughing at us, as a thick stream of dark yellow urine flowed down between his legs.

Raoul was quite proud of his little world, and pointed out some of its highlights, including the gorgeous clusters of vivid pink, purple, and white orchids that grew high up in the forest canopy. But he didn’t let me linger long.

“The laboratory is next door,” he said, ushering me toward another thick door directly across the jungle from where we’d entered.

                                                                 *******

On the third day of my stakeout I spotted her, dressed in tight black leather and walking briskly down the hill in the early morning haze.

Cati didn’t seem surprised to see me, and she laughed at my feeble attempts to explain away my presence on the hill as anything other than what it really was, a deliberate attempt to find her.

We began a friendship, not entirely or even primarily sexual, though when our long, rambling conversations about my life and hers did become erotically tinged, we didn’t hesitate to act on our impulses.

It was actually Cati who first broke the ice toward the end of our second meeting, undoing my pants and gently stroking me to climax when she saw that I’d become aroused by one of her lurid tales of Wicca debauchery. She loved the feeling of power and control she had over me, and would tease and taunt me and bring me right to the edge, before slowing down and making me wait.

But I didn’t complain, and I was more than willing to return the favor, stirred by her bewitching sexuality as she rolled her black tights down her slender white thighs and exposed herself to my eager fingers and tongue. We rarely had intercourse. The logistics in my cramped car made it difficult, and we were both afraid of disease and pregnancy.