From: julie@pascal.org   
      
   This is the original...  I didn't count the words but it ought to be less than   
   500.  (The quoted bits are meant to be italics in quotes to indicate that the   
   words are in a language she doesn't know.)  I'll post a "everything you can   
   possibly do to avoid "   
   was" verbs" revision separately.   
      
      
      
           It was the spell itself that informed her. The magic of it wove   
   through Eileen with tendrils of dreamlike meaning. "You are summoned. We have   
   summoned you. You are a demon, bound to us and our cause."   
   	Her dream self would have supplied a setting of pentagrams and candles and   
   that's what she expected to see when she opened her eyes; Pentagrams if she   
   was asleep or the ceiling of her darkened room if she woke. Instead, what   
   Eileen saw when she opened    
   her eyes was a bowl.     
   	She stood in the bottom of it, a perfect half sphere large enough and deep   
   enough that her head only came halfway to the lip. The voices and murmurings   
   came from above, proving that there were people there just beyond her sight.   
   She could sense their    
   fear and their meaning though she understood not a word.   
   	"Summoned. You must serve us."   
   	She saw that the bowl was made of fitted polished white marble twined with   
   threads of moss green. Rivulets of crimson trickled down shallow gold-lined   
   channels to pool at her feet and between her toes. She stood in a small but   
   slowly growing puddle of    
   blood.   
   	She screamed and scrambled away but the sides of the bowl were smooth and her   
   feet were slick with the blood and she fell. Screaming and sobbing she tried   
   again and again to escape the bowl. Again and again she slipped and fell until   
   she was covered    
   with the blood. Finally she stopped trying to climb and stood, trembling, in   
   the lowest spot.   
   	Think, she told herself as the voices droned on. She pushed sopping hair from   
   her face. There has got to be a way out. She looked around at the golden   
   channels. Could she gain purchase there? One channel remained dry above the   
   blood she had splashed in    
   her panic.  Even as she watched she saw the first red drop begin to flow.     
   	The spell informed her.     
   	A mindless demon was of no use to anyone. The spell informed her so that she   
   would know that the last sacrifice had been made and the spell complete.   
   	Eileen stood still in vain hope that it would delay them if she did not stir   
   the blood. It didn't delay anything. As soon as the new blood reached the   
   puddle where she stood a shaft of pain ripped a scream from her throat.    
   	"We have summoned you. You must serve us."   
   	Eileen writhed as her body twisted and pulled. She writhed as she rose above   
   the floor of the bowl. Her moans and screams were mere animal sounds as she   
   expanded, as she grew large and looming. Visions crawled their way through her   
   mind.  Creatures,    
   people, with fox ears and cat eyes, individuals she never knew and would know   
   forever, armies without names or faces and all of them dying by her hand.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)