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==Synopsis==
The story begins with Jessie Burlingame and her husband Gerald in the bedroom of their secluded cabin in western [[Maine]], where they have gone for an off-beat romantic weekend. Gerald, a successful lawyer with an aggressive personality, has been able to reinvigorate the couple's sex life by [[handcuff]]ing Jessie to the bed. Jessie has been into the game before, but suddenly balks. As Gerald starts to crawl on top of her,
The only
▲The only thing that shows up is a hungry stray dog that starts feeding on Gerald's body and a terrifying, deformed [[ghost|apparition]] that may or may not be real; Jessie begins to think of this bizarre visitor as "The Space Cowboy" (after a line from a [[Steve Miller (musician)|Steve Miller]] song, "[[The Joker (song)|The Joker]]"). A combination of panic and thirst eventually causes Jessie to hallucinate. She hears voices in her head, each one ostensibly the voice of a person in her life, primarily Ruth Neary (an old college friend) and Nora Callighan (her ex-psychiatrist), both of whom Jessie hasn't spoken to in decades. These voices represent different parts of her personality which help her extract a painful childhood memory she has kept suppressed for all these years. She was [[child sexual abuse|sexually abused]] by her [[incest|father]] at age ten during a [[solar eclipse]] that occurred in her Maine hometown. She also begins to realize how unhappy her marriage was, and that she sacrificed the life she wanted for the security of Gerald's paycheck by being a trophy wife without children.
This internal dialogue is mixed with descriptions of Jessie's more and more desperate attempts to get out of the handcuffs. Finally she does escape after one of the voices in her head tells her that if she stays another night, The Space Cowboy will more than likely take a part of her to add to its trophy "fishing creel" filled with jewelry and human bones. Jessie escapes the handcuffs by slicing her arm open all the way around on a broken glass and giving herself a [[degloving]] injury, but passes out due to blood loss. When she awakens, it is now nighttime, and the Space Cowboy has made his way back into the house. Jessie confronts him and throws her wedding ring at his box of jewelry and bones, then turns and runs out of the house. She is able to make it into her car and finally escape the house, but is terrified to discover the Space Cowboy sitting in the backseat of the car. Jessie crashes out of fear and is knocked unconscious, and it is revealed that she only imagined the Space Cowboy in the backseat.
The story cuts to months later with Jessie recuperating from the incident and being looked after by a nurse. An ambitious law associate of her husband's assists her in covering up the real incident, as well as assisting her in her recuperation. At the end, we get to read the letter that Jessie writes to Ruth Neary
The only true supernatural event in the story occurs as described during one of Jessie's flashbacks, when, during a particularly stressful incident at the time of childhood, she has a waking dream.
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