Alf the Poet posted:

I awoke slowly, my limbs aching, my head a raging fire.  Where I was and 
how I got there were questions that did not occur to me.

I was lying on a thinly padded bed in a small, brightly-lit room.  I barely 
recognized my reflection in the mirror on the ceiling above me.  Covered by 
a thin sheet, I realized as I struggled to sit up that I was naked beneath 
it.  There was a bowl of some sort of food, and a cup of water, on the 
table next to me.  No utensils.

I took a minute to let the spinning stop before examining my surroundings. 
Except for the black lacquered table, everything in the room was white.  
The door in the wall opposite me fit its opening very closely and had no 
handle.  There was nothing else in the room, no windows.

Suddenly I was very hungry.  I turned to the food on the small table.  It 
appeared to be some sort of rice dish; it smelled spicy.  Steam rose from 
the small clay bowl.  Throwing caution to the wind, I wolfed the whole 
portion in a matter of seconds, and drained the water in one gulp.  I laid 
back on the bed and fell asleep.

When I awoke the food and water had been replenished.  The pain in my arms 
and legs was reduced to a stiffness, but my head still throbbed.  I sat up; 
nothing except the food had changed.  It was the same spicy rice, but this 
time I noticed faint traces of another smell, something I couldn't quite 
place.  I was still very hungry, and I finished the new food quickly, 
draining the water in one long gulp.  The other odd, faint odor lingered.

As I stood there, still naked, still trying to get my bearings, I heard the 
door being unlocked.  Unconsciously, my modesty took over and I grabbed 
the sheet to cover myself.  Just then, the door opened and an old woman 
came into the room.  She was ancient, bent from the long years, her face 
deeply lined.  She was dressed almost stereotypically in the manner of a 
Spanish peasant, and she carried a tray with another bowl of the same rice 
dish.

She was not surprised to see me awake.  Somehow, I thought, she 
wouldn't be surpised by anything.

"Ah, Senor," she said, and continued in Spanish too fast for my high-school 
level of proficiency.  Before I could speak, she was out the door, leaving 
it open.  Before I could take advantage of that fact, she returned with a 
bundle of clothes which I recognized to be mine.  She gave me the clothes 
and gestured for me to dress as she left the room again, this time closing 
and locking the door.

I was sitting on the bed when she returned.  She handed me a few pills and 
a cup of water, indicating that I should take them.  Though there had been 
nothing wrong with the food, I couldn't bring myself to trust the pills, so 
I put them down and shook my head.  She shrugged as if to say "OK, 
stupido, it's your funeral," and pointed to the door.  I hesitated, then 
stepped out into the hallway beyond.

There was only one direction I could go, and the woman closed the door 
behind us and led me on.  The hallway was dimly lit, and it took some time 
for my eyes to adjust after the intensity of the room.  The hall was damp, 
and that smell I couldn't identify before was much stronger here.  I still 
didn't know what it was, though.

I could see we were headed upward.  I heard a noise, a dull roar at first, 
but growing as we proceeded.  The smell grew stronger still.

We reached a door.  Here the noise and the smell were incredible.  Snatches 
of memory began to return to me: a hostile crowd, pain, blood.  And 
something else, worse than all that, the thing from which the smell came.

The woman looked at me with what might have been pity in her eyes, and 
crossed herself as women like her had been doing for centuries.  Then she 
opened the door to deafening cheers from the crowd beyond.  With unlikely 
strength, she pushed me through the doorway and slammed it shut behind me. 
 I looked up into blinding light, the crowd screaming and waving wads of 
money, the smell, now an overwhelming stench, strangling me as it reached 
from  the center of the arena, for arena it was.  I moved toward the center 
of the circle of frenzied humanity.

There, seated on the ground Buddha-fashion, was the source of the stench.  
A small, extremely fat man, holding a lizard tightly in his hands.  He 
sneered at the look of fear and shock in my face as everything suddenly 
came back to me.  Then he flashed an evil grin.

"So, senor, jou haav return for roun two?"