Author’s Notes:

For those of you following my story “Mockingbirds & Butterflies”, here’s a preview of the chapter I’m currently working on.  I’m not sure when I’ll be done with this chapter, but I wanted to let my readers know that it is in the works and not forgotten on some backburner somewhere.

So here’s the first part of the upcoming Chapter 3…

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His wrists were shackled, the unforgiving metal biting deeply into his skin.

An oily, noxious black vapor, thick with the aroma of sandalwood, threatened to suffocate him with every breath of it he inhaled.  The toxic fumes burned his lungs and throat as it permeated his body from the inside out.

That woman and her body pressed flush against his… coaxing his own treacherous body into betraying him… plundering the last precious thing that had been his alone to possess… even as she whispered into his ear all the ways she wished to kill him once she was done getting what she wanted...

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Tim woke up with a strangled gasp, his body drenched in a cold sweat.  It had been a long time since the nightmare plagued his dreams.  He sat up in his bed and almost immediately regretted the movement.  The massive amount of alcohol he’d ingested the night before had taken its toll.  He’d told Dick several hours earlier that it was only on the tomorrows that he hated rum.

It was officially tomorrow.

And Tim remembered with a pounding migraine, a massive wave of nausea, and a painful clarity, that he really, truly despised rum.

Tim gingerly laid back onto his bed, moving very little as he closed his eyes and kept a hand pressed against his mouth.  Mentally, he tried to will his roiling stomach into some semblance of calm.  It mostly worked.  However, as soon as he wasn’t distracted by the demanding desire to empty the contents of his stomach, Tim realized that something was off.

Old sleeping habits died hard in Tim, and when he first moved into his home in New York, he had his windows adorned with light-blocking drapes.  So when the door was closed and the curtains drawn, the entire room was comfortably pitch dark.  However, that was not the case.

The bedroom door was slightly ajar, and a sliver of light was cutting through the darkness, weakly illuminating the room.  Only then did he notice that he wasn’t alone.

(tbc)