I think most people could benefit from a stay in a dungeon. It would help them appreciate the simple things in life like trees and birds and fresh air. They'd realize that any day you're not having a branding iron grilling your flesh is a good day, and who couldn't use a little time off from work? I'm supposed to deliver the people of the city of Saint Janith and defeat the dark gods, but I'm shackled and muzzled in a dungeon, branded like a slow-witted kid has gone wild with a rubber stamp.

“Sorry, Lord, that I've failed you.” I can't say the words because I'm muzzled. Even if my hands weren't shackled to the rough wall that's been carved out of the rock, they couldn't reach the muzzle to remove it.

It's dark in here, with scant light coming into my cell from the torches outside, but at least it's cool underground. I look down, and note that the 'B's branding my body, like a sadistic episode of Sesame Street, “Today's torture session is brought to you by the letter 'B',” are dissolving. My low-light vision is good enough to see that the B's scarring me are altering before my eyes, subtly taking shape as R's. That would be 'R' for “Riyel.” My heart heart is filled with hope because I realize that I'm not alone, and haven't been abandoned.

I bring up my tail, which by the grace of God is prehensile, and slip it between the back of my neck and the strap that keeps the muzzle secured to my snout. The thin tip of my tail lifts the strap up off of my head and pulls the muzzle forward so that it slides off of me. I open my jaws wide, working them to loosen them up.

I see a long, black centipede crawling over the tunnel floor. It is large enough to be a snake, but a rippling motion of its tiny legs propels it as it winds its way among the nooks and crannies in search of prey. The centipede is large enough to kill and eat a rat, and I'm certain it's poisonous. My tongue shoots out, striking the centipede and pinning it against the wall for a brief moment, until my tongue retracts with the tiny black legs of the centipede still crawling on the bulbous end of my tongue.

In a moment I am chewing, just a couple of chomps to break it up, and I gulp it down. The human part of me, the observer trapped in this body, is repulsed and horrified, but the gecko is thrilled. There's nothing as satisfying as a good meal after a torture session.

In a flash I see a way to escape, when I hear a voice.

“Wait.”

I know that Lord Riyel has spoken to me, so I begin to sing the psalms.

O God, You reign over the visible and invisible kingdoms.

By the power of Your death

and the might of Your resurrection into eternal life

Suffuse me with Your presence,

Grant me power that I may deliver

the oppressed and free the captives.

Let me serve as a channel of Your energy

so that loss becomes victory

and death is changed to life.

I sing and feel my spirits being lifted. I start to realize that it's not about me. I'm not good enough to be the vicar of God—I've never been and never will be. For reasons I can't understand God the Empowerer has reached into a dark corner of purgatory to haul out a vain, self-centered man who had it all, the most beautiful wife and son, but was too busy playing the Big Man to appreciate what he had. He takes an empty man like that and crams him into the body of a gecko as a lesson: it's not about you; it never was. You're simply an example that anyone can serve Lord Riyel, who is great enough that He can use even the most screwed up, lost causes to accomplish His will.

I'm tired. Getting tenderized and branded like a cheap steak in a greasy diner will do that to you, coupled with blood loss. That's the killer right there, blood loss. It's death by a thousand cuts, unless you're dealing with morons who don't know enough to make the cuts shallow, and get carried away in the party-like atmosphere of capturing and imprisoning a giant gecko. In that case, a couple dozen cuts will do the job.

I look at my body and see I'm peeling. Did I get sunburned? I'm puzzled, but I'm feeling very, very sleepy.

* * *

I wake up feeling refreshed, which is an odd thing to feel while shackled to the rough stone wall in the cell of a dungeon. I see a black rhinoceros beetle scuttling over the cave floor. It's black with a distinctive horn, and as big as a fist. Well, not a gecko fist, if I could even make one, but a human fist. My tongue darts out, nails it, and reels it back into my mouth in an instant. Breakfast is served.

The peeling is a lot worse now, and I'm reminded of the time I decided to get a suntan at Huntington Beach. You'd think that as an Italian I'd suntan easily, but my family is from Naples. We're the light-skinned ones, not like the dark gangsters, the calabrese, from Sicily. See how easy it is? The vanity, puffing yourself up like you're better than someone else, only having ancestry from Naples does you no damn good when you're roasting in purgatory, or cooking on the sand at Huntington Beach and peeling for the next five days.

I'm peeling all over, and I'm thinking it's an effect of being repeatedly branded with a hot iron. I shake my head and laugh. If you're going to torture somebody who's been in purgatory, start with at least four or five branding irons coming in from several directions at once, and I'd do that just as a warm-up.

I resume singing the psalms, and my spirits are lifted. I'm a screw-up and a failure, a vain idiot who threw away a tray of gems because I saw a rock in the mud. Now I'm reincarnated in the ridiculous body of a six-foot gecko. A Ronald MacDonald costume would be more dignified. So it's not about me. I've got a heroic mission but I can't do it—I never could, so I'm forced to rely on God the Empowerer and the grace of Lord Riyel.

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I'm singing with joy, and just about the time I think I'll be forced to stop because my throat is too dry, a moth flutters in from the corridor outside, mistakenly winding its way toward the next torch, The moth spirals in, flapping its gray wings, and practically flies into my mouth. My thin vertical irises dilate when I see that the erratic moth is the size of a bat. I bolt up from the floor where I'm seated, reaching the full limit of my chains, and snap it up out of the air. The dust on its wings is like powdered sugar on a doughnut, and if I thought that scarab beetle the other night was delicious, the moth was several orders of magnitude better. I recommend a stay in a dungeon just for the food alone.

Any day I'm not roasting in purgatory is a good day, and this one passes with me singing, eating well, and finding myself in surprisingly good spirits, remembering good times with Juvy and Max. Of course, I can't see the sun so I have no idea whether it's day or night. But I'm tired, so I sleep.

* * *

The bobber in the pond dips below the water level twice, like it's bouncing, and then begins to swim across the surface.

“Hey, Max! You got a fish!” I shout.

“Ooooh!” he exclaims and pulls the Captain America pole up, walking backward on his chubby legs.

“Reel it in!” I shout, motioning for him to reel it in, which is the easiest thing in world on a little spin caster, but he's four, and it's his first fish.

With her wavy black hair bouncing, Juvy comes running in from a trail passing through the cattails. Max is still lifting his pole straight up and walking backward. By now the bobber has submerged and the line is zigzagging in the water. I grab the pole and start reeling for him.

“Okay, I'm the one. I do it by myself.” He reels slowly, but he's walked back far enough that he's hauled a little pumpkin seed up onto the bank of the pond, complete with a bit of moss wrapped around the line above the bobber.

“Yes!” Max shouts and spins to me with a huge smile, unintentionally yanking the fish up behind him.

Juvy is kneeling, gingerly picking up the fish to keep from getting stuck by its spines. She disgorges the hook, which has a bit of nightcrawler left on it and tosses it aside, before displaying the little panfish with the spot of brilliant yellow just under its chin.

“We'll throw it back,” I tell her, and begin winding in Max's line.

“No, we'll cook it and eat it.” Juvy pinches the fish between her forefinger and thumb.

“Cook it!” Max chimes in.

We take it back to the house, which is right next to Wilson Pond. Filipinos like Juvy aren't going to waste any chance to eat a fish. Juvy has been buying and cleaning fish all her life, so in no time the little fish is lying on Max's plate.

He looks down at the fish. “The head's still on it.” He looks up at me with his chubby cheeks and curly hair.

Juvy reaches over and tears the head off, then begins eating it. Using her fingers, she scoops out the meat from both sides of the upper ridge of the head.

Max pinches a bit of meat from the side, and peels off the charred skin.

I pluck out a bone from his little hand before he stuffs it into his mouth.

There's a text message on my watch from Keisha.

* * *

I awake with a start, bolting upright until the chains go taut, then I slump back against the rock wall. For a moment there I thought I was a man, when in reality I'm a reptile and a prisoner.

Two more days pass, but without a moth, a centipede, or a beetle. I continue to sing and relive every joyful moment I had with Max and Juvy, like us getting Max a pair of cowboy boots for his third birthday. I'm getting hungry, and I keep thinking about that moth, and how delicious its powder tasted dusting my tongue. By now it's clear that I'm not sunburned and peeling, but that I'm shedding my skin like geckos do, another little tidbit I recall from Mr. Frazier's biology class.

I toss and turn in my sleep, at least as much as the shackles allow. When I wake up in the “morning,” I see lying beside me a ghostly shell of myself, a husk of dry skin as though my dead twin is sitting in the cell beside me. My shed skin is torn in several places, but otherwise intact, a translucent form of a gecko. Looking down at the skin of my belly, it is soft and new, completely free of brand marks.

It's been two days without food, and I'm starving, so I begin eating my discarded skin shell. It doesn't taste as good as a moth, but it's still pretty tasty, and very filling. The human in me would like to put a little Tabasco sauce on that dead skin, maybe saute it with garlic and onions in a bit of olive oil, then sprinkle it with sea salt. I have an idea: I could make a light jacket or a windbreaker out of that dead skin, wear it when I go out, and then eat it when I get hungry.

I'm snapped out of my train of thought by the sound of someone approaching. I quickly slip the muzzle back on as best as I can. There are multiple footsteps, some scuffling, and the key clanks and scrapes inside the lock to my cell. The albino girl in a torn dress and with all four limbs gripped by shirtless goons, is slammed into the wall and shackled in place.

Mr. Noose Pole looks at me and stops. “Gimme the light,” he orders. Holding the flickering torch in front of me, he studies me with curiosity. “All right! Outside, everybody!”

The men scuffle out, leaving behind them the stench of sweat and grime. They gather outside, and Mr. Noose Pole barks, “Who's been feeding him?”

There are multiple protestations, and confused replies.

“Look at him! He's fit as a butcher's dog!”

“A butcher's lizard?”

There is the thwack of a hand hitting a face. “Who's on the take? We're gonna sort this out. Nobody stays in a cell for four days and looks like a fatted calf.”

Mr. Noose Pole continues haranguing the men as the voices trail off down the hall.

My tail snakes back up to the back of my head to remove the muzzle and to set it down on the stone floor beside me. “Are you okay, Liana?” I ask, and I see her torn dress, the snapped twigs of her hair-weave, and her ghostly skin in the dim light.

She bites her lip, and I know that's she's been abused, taken advantage of by the animals who just dumped her here. “I'm fine. I'm used to it.”

I know she's including her life in the albino slum, where physical, emotional, and sexual abuse are rampant and unreported, as though anyone cares about an albino.

“It stops,” I tell her. “That kind of abuse stops, so help me Lord Riyel. That's why I'm here. Life is not going to be like that for you, or anyone else.”

A fire is burning in me, and I'm beginning to feel very impassioned about my mission. We sit quietly in the dark. A normal girl would be sobbing, but apparently she's been toughened.

Minutes go by until her voice breaks the silence. “Vic, what's the difference between a lizard and a gecko?”

“Geckos are way cooler. If I were a lizard, we wouldn't be having this conversation.”

“You mean lizards can't talk?” She pulls her hand from the wall until the chain goes taut, testing it.

“Geckos can't talk, either, except me, but we vocalize. Plus, our skin isn't scaly.” I extend my hand to her, but the chain on my wrist stops it short. “Well, later, when you have the chance, you'll have to feel my skin, which is surprisingly soft. It's brand new skin, too—I just finished shedding.”

Several moments pass until she speaks softly in the dark. “You're going to have to show your faith like Peter.”

Nobody on this planet knows who Saint Peter is—it's a completely different religious tradition. There's no way she could know that on her own. Now I just need to figure out what that means.

“They're coming,” she says.

My gut tumbles. I may be used to torture, but that doesn't mean I enjoy it. I slide the muzzle back on and wait as their footsteps grow nearer. Here goes Round 2.