🕯Hello Lovie🕯

"Yes!" PJ crows. "Absolutely, we must."

"Dude, no. I'm not fucking around with that shit."

"You've literally said you don't believe in ghosts."

You shrug, pushing the game at his chest. "Every single movie in history, my guy. I'm not a fucking chump. I'm not taking that chance, because with my luck, that's when I'd get proven wrong."

—

Wine happens. More.

Spirits, we implore you to—dude, do you think this house's actually got ghosts?—

—

You see PJ off in his rideshare and slowly sway your way back up to your bedroom, your hands pressing carefully against the walls as you climb the stairs. You stop to laugh, hunched over, at absolutely nothing, just softly chuckling to yourself.

You're gonna be fucked in the morning.

Can't bear the harsh lights, you keep them off as you collapse into bed, phone on your pillow beside your nasty wine-breath mouth. Stay in that position for longer than you should, immediately asleep.

Rolling over at some point, your hand thudding against something hard. You and PJ must've moved your bed against the wall like you'd discussed…?

Out of the murky dark, the wall grows large pale arms that come down and around you, pulling you into a body that is materializing itself, ripping a shrill scream out of your sticky throat.

"Quiet," the new body in your bed — not the wall — says gruffly. The arms tighten around you, banding you until you can't squirm without nausea slithering out of your belly up your throat.

"—be sick," you croak, and pull away fast enough to puke over the side of the bed, hitting the mattress on your way. Hammered. Nightmare. Sleep paralysis. No different than being drunk in bed and continuously dreaming about someone in the doorway with a glass of cold water for you. "Fuck," you grunt. You lay your head flat on the cool bedsheet, trying to force your heavy eyes open. Should get up and clean it now, not wait til morning.

Sleep rips you away before you even feel ashamed.

—

You're moaning. That's what wakes you up.

Thick and gummy moans humming through your body, like you're a cat trying to heal itself with low vibrational purrs. But you're not moaning to heal your hangover; you're moaning because something hard is rocking hard and hot against your cunt, sliding against your slipperiness, between your plump lips. Staying in the shallow end.

"What'fu—" You lift your concrete block of a head with a loud, hot grunt, and twist slowly to not make your stomach roil.

Your sleep paralysis demon in the still-dark, a pale-bodied stack of muscles working in sync to fuck at your cunt without actually going in. It makes a disgustingly harsh noise of pleasure, and clamps a hand over your bare hip to keep you in the same position. Your face stays on its side, stretched flat where his rocking motions are pushing you forward and pulling you back.

He's a man, but not human. Not earthly. In an instant glance, some deep-primal part of you understands that without turning any cerebral senses on. This is when your tether to reality snaps altogether. The surreality blunts fear and panic and confusion into a dreamy film that casts itself to your skin, present, but part of you.

"Am I dreaming."

"If y'want to tell yerself that, be my guest."

"Am I dead."

"Nah."

You moan and it might be the start of tears but you don't actually know anymore.

"Are you real."

Something shifts behind you, and then his cock is stroking up inside you, hitting your walls and stretching tight against you. This is when the dream would break apart and you'd wake up, a sensation too vivid and too real — achingly hot flesh against yours — yanking you from the cloudy haze of unconsciousness. But instead, it only takes a couple strokes until you're crying out, your pillow wet under your face still turned away, your body pitching itself up and over the climax all on its own while the thing behind you grunts and groans heavy and dark, dragging you down with it. Its hand is bruising on your waist until it's fucking you so hard that all you can do is sob and take it, a receptacle for its tension and urgency until the voice is ragged and hollowed out, and you feel heat slipping out of you. Liquid and silky.

You cry yourself back to sleep, unwilling to turn around and pretending the hand on your hip isn't there.

When you come to, the room is light and still. You roll over to see an empty bed. The covers are all fucked up, but it's empty.

Your pillow's marked up with mascara and a small dried puddle. You lean over the bed blearily; a little bit of bile on the floor. Fuck.

Between your legs — the throb, the wet.

You pull on baggy shorts and a t-shirt and clean up the puke while trying not to gag. You scrub at your face in the bathroom and do not make eye contact with yourself.

The pale thing is sitting on your couch. It's naked, arms crossed over its chest and legs resting out on your coffee table. Cock slumbering fat against its hairy thigh. Its eyes open to see you standing there, shaking like a little dog.

"Y'wanna know what you did?"

You just stare.

"Yer little game. Shouldn't poke around with things you don't know, bird. Heard your sweet little voice. You never know who's gonna answer back."

You don't make it to the bathroom. You catch it with your hands.

The thing grunts in disgust. "God, yer a right mess. Can't handle yer liquor."

—

He makes the rules clear over time.

You called out; he answered. There's no returning him. When you try to flee to a hotel, he just chuckles low and dark in your ear in the big king bed.

House didn't summon me, lovie. You did.

The spectrality of his form depends on the day. The days you ignore him, he's amorphous and weak. Terrible housemate, not able to carry his own weight. When you argue with him, which is useless because he has no earthly concerns and derives joy from pissing you off, he looks as real as a human. Those nights are the most haunting; his cock is the hardest, stiffest, driving up inside you as you push against him and fight it the whole way. You can't let yourself actually accept your reality: that you hate him with your whole being and that he is the best sex you've ever had. He tells you later that fucking you makes him feel, for a bit, at least "put back together," although the sensation never lasts.

He doesn't remember how or when or where he died. Doesn't matter to him, so the matter's dropped eventually. Given that he loves your bed better than any place in the whole house and doesn't recognize any modern conveniences, you surmise he'd been milling around wherever, waiting to answer your call, for hundreds of years.

All he tells you is that he thinks he was probably a shit.

"You still are," you grouse as he grips your thick thighs and pries them apart.

"Exactly my point. Now be quiet," he grunts between your legs, his tongue lashing out at you. Never tiring. No ego between his sucks and laps of your cunt. No impatient tongue trying to roll you over the edge so it can be his turn. No sore back that means he has to change position constantly. A real thing eating your cunt until you yell at him to stop, uttering a low unbothered chuckle.

You’d rather stay home and play board games, but Laurie had convinced everyone that it was a good night for clubbing. You hated clubs— The noise, the crowds, the smell of sweat and alcohol and hormones— and spent the better part of club nights standing outside chain-smoking, or crammed into a dirty bathroom stall holding back a friend’s hair as she threw up blue curacao because she didn’t listen to you when you told her to eat dinner before going out. Tonight didn’t look like it was going to end up with anyone puking their guts up, at least. Laurie’s flirting with a gorgeous hunk with a devastating smile, and Alex and Hannah are dancing, so you go out the side door into the alley for some fresh air. Or air, anyway, since the alley’s where folks go to smoke. You light a joint, because at least that will dull the effect that the sound is having on your head. It’s getting close to midnight, which at least means the night is almost over, so long as someone doesn’t drag you along to some weirdo’s house. “Hey, wha’s a bonnie thing like ye doin’ out here all alone?” A voice purrs in your ear. You jump, surprised that he could get so close with out you noticing him, especially once you turn and really look at him. He’s huge, not that tall, probably your height when you’re not wearing boots (You have about an inch and a half on him in your shit-kickers), but broad and way more muscled than anyone has any reason to be, wrapped in a too-tight shirt, and smiling at you, bright blue eyes fixed on yours with unnerving intensity. He pats your shoulder. “Didnae mean to scare ye, lass, just wanted to say hello.” You take a big step to the side, establishing a new bubble of personal space without him in it. “Well, hello,” you say dismissively. “Goodbye.” There’s a snort from a few meters away, a big fellow with a kn95 mask dangling on one ear, his hand up in front of his face, a cigarette clamped between his fingers. “Och, dinnae be like tha’, hen.” “Don’t like it?” you ask, glaring at him. “Go away. Plenty of girls in there’ll go for whatever all this is.” A sweeping, unimpressed glance from his boots and ripped jeans up to his stupid mohawk would usually do the trick, but it only made this fellow smile wider. “No’ enough fer ya? I can sweeten tha deal some. The big fella doesnae mind sharin’ a sweet lass with me noo and again. There’s plenty of ye ta go around.” “Johnny,” the big fellow in question says sternly. His mask is back in place, covering the lower half of his face. “Dun’t look like she’s interested.”