"You look wonderful tonight, Janet." Doug cooed, "Almost as beautiful as the Mentranet."

"The what?" Janet batted her eyelashes.

Doug looked around a bit, watching the pumpkins and hay stacks go by. The horses in front of the cart plodded on. An interesting conversation for a hay ride...

"In Menoatian culture there is a a legend of a beautiful woman who is more beautiful than any other woman to have ever walked the earth. The catch is--there's always a catch with legends--that she's actually a ghost, and that once she picks a mate, she stays with him forever and ever... well... at least for a few hundred years until she gets tired of him and eats him." He smiled at Janet, "You remind me of her, actually."

Janet tossed her blonde hair to one side and smiled brightly. "Oh Doug, you think you're so funny."

He leaned closer "I am, aren't I?"

"Funny looking!" She laughed, pushing him away playfully.

The carriage bounced and Janet let out a tiny scream as it jostled her, forcing her into the air. She clung to Doug until the road leveled out again. The smell of hay was especially pungent just then.

Illuminated in the moonlight, Doug watched Janet's eyes fixate upon him, and he shuddered.

"What's wrong?"

"I... I don't know... Something's wrong..."

"Wrong?" Janet looked around hurredly.

"Very... wron-" He froze.

The wind played upon his neck as though it were a piano, depressing and caressing every hair on it. In his ear he heard a high pitched howling, but it was very quiet.

"Janet, I--" He turned back to Janet, but she was gone. Looking around him, he found that the hay cart was gone too. He was alone... in the middle of the pumpkin patch... at night.

"What?" He caught his breath and looked around with wide, frightened eyes. "Where...?"

The wind blew hard, bringing in a thick fog which covered the pumpkins around his feet. He inhaled the crisp air sharply and swallowed hard. Something inside him did a somersault and shivered.

Again, there was a quiet howling in his ear. It escalated into a banshee-like scream and Doug covered his ears to block it out.

He cried out and stumbled backward, tumbling over a huge pumpkin and landing in the mud. Above him the fog gathered and seemed to form some sort of shape. He watched as the shape took a form. It was Janet.

"Janet? What's going on?" He was at first pleased to see her, and then he noticed that she was glowing. "Janet?"

"You certainly know your mythology, Doug." She smiled coyly, "Apparently you don't know it well enough. The Mentranet also hates it when her chosen mate *cheats* on her!"

"Janet, please. I'm sorry, I never meant to-"

"To cheat on me? I know everything, Doug! I know about that little tramp at your office!" She screamed in a voice that was human, and yet a beast-like cry.

"I can leave you!" He blurted insanely.

"If you try to leave me I'll--" Janet's face morphed into some horrid beast with glowing green eyes and ugly horns ripping out of her flesh.

Suddenly, everything went back to "normal." He was on the hay cart with Janet right next to him, her hand in his.

"I said, is there something wrong?" Janet asked, true concern in her eyes.

Doug breathed a sigh of relief, making a mental note to see a doctor about this episode. "Yeah, I just had a little vision, I guess."

Janet's eyes flashed green, "Vision?" She turned her head to him and smiled sweetly. "You'll never leave me, will you?"

"Never."